In a quiet inn courtyard within the city, two young men sat in a pavilion behind their rooms. Wine cups rested between them on a circular table. The lanterns on the pillars had burned low; they continued drinking under the moonlight. Four hours passed as neither spoke, simply enjoying the tranquility of the night.
Then, finally, one of them glanced back toward the darkened corridor leading inside to the rooms and the sleeping disciples.
"Where is that junior?" Ye Jianxu asked lightly, his thumb tracing the rim of his cup. "Does he not remember that we're departing for the sect at dawn?"
Across from him, Ye Jianheng did not answer immediately. He took a sip, then looked at him.
"No," Jianheng said at last. "He remembers. But he simply assumes nothing can happen to him."
Ye Jianxu chuckled. "Were we this foolish at his age?"
Jianheng's eyes narrowed on his brother's face, his gaze shifting, cool and cutting. "Brother," he said solemnly, "you seem more unsettled than I am. Your emotions… they are hardly different from those of mortals."
Jianxu's mouth opened, then paused. He threw his head back and laughed. "Or perhaps I am more suited to this path than you."
He leaned back against a pavilion pillar, his eyes half-lidded, his smile fading. "The more I blend with mortals, the more I allow myself to feel what they feel, the greater the severance will be when I cast it aside. The rebound should be magnificent."
Jianheng studied him. "Or catastrophic," he said calmly. "The deeper you walk among them, the easier it is to mistake mud for foundation. In the end, you may try to break free and realize there's nothing left to break free from."
"A shattered Dao heart, huh?" Jianxu smiled faintly. "You exaggerate, brother." He lifted his wine cup and watched the surface ripple. "Even Father's death did not move me. What could mortal attachments possibly do? Women? Friendship? They are fleeting warmth."
He took a sip, savored the taste. "What concerns me is something else."
Jianheng's eyes narrowed slightly on his brother's face.
"What will remain," Jianxu said quietly, "after I cut everything away. I hope... at least a sliver of myself survives."
Silence settled between them. Unseen above the pavilion roof, Fuxi observed, his expression pleased at their philosophical friction—reflection upon severance, doubt without weakness. "Good seedlings. Good potential." He murmured, then his thoughts turned to the missing young disciple. A faint crease appeared between his brows.
He did not rise to look for him. He felt no urge to. The boy had wandered off at night before. Young disciples, intoxicated by freedoms they would soon surrender to the sect, often did.
And in these lands, a disciple of the Heaven's Fall Sect was nearly untouchable. A king among mortals, to be exact. Even demonic cultivators would not dare touch them. They skulked in shadows, fed on scraps, and avoided open confrontation.
In the Heaven's Fall region, the last thing they wanted was to provoke sect retaliation. Well, except the crazy ones—and the strong. But none of those were around when he arrived with them.
With this, Fuxi dismissed his faint unease. If something had happened, he would have known. Or so he believed, as his gaze landed on the flickering lantern flame in the night breeze.
He watched the two brothers speak for a long while. As dawn rose slowly, a wash of pale gold spread over the tiled roofs and narrow streets, gently illuminating the waking city.
By morning, the disciples had gathered at the inn on the second floor, occupied solely by them. One elder was present, and the two brothers had already returned to their disguises, standing among the others as ordinary outer disciples.
Only Mu Li was missing. For minutes they waited on the upper floor, the lower floor people stealing glances upward now and then.
"What's wrong with Mu Li?" one of the younger men muttered, his voice impatient. "Does he lack basic common sense? If he has business, he could at least inform us."
A snort followed from another. "Haha, we simply have to wait for him to finish with his little wives. I still don't understand why he wastes time on mortals. Does he think he'll reach Foundation Establishment early and come back for them?"
"He's distracting himself," another added. "By the time he comes back, they'll be old and sagging. What will be left worth keeping?"
Laughter rose and fell. The topic lingered, circling lazily among them. Finally, one of the elders approached from the back of the room—a lean man with narrow shoulders and cold eyes.
"Elder Li will escort you back," he said flatly, his gaze landing on Elder Li. "I will retrieve that brat."
With a nod between them, he descended the stairs and stepped into the bustling street, his lean frame disappearing into the crowd like a normal old man.
But his eyes remained focused, and his spiritual scan expanded, sweeping across the city in widening three-hundred-meter circles. Courtyards, markets, alleyways—nothing escaped his scan.
With his departure, Elder Li led the remaining disciples away from the city. They had already said goodbye to their families, so nothing delayed them. The procession moved steadily toward the sect as they walked back.
A full day passed. The searching elder had found nothing. He scoured the city again and again, from roof to cellar, wall to wall. Three loose cultivators within a brothel aroused his suspicion.
He swiftly subdued them without alerting the mortals—they were merely in Foundation Establishment—interrogated them, and soul searched them. Finding no satisfactory answers, and learning they were there for young virgin girls' yin essence, he killed them. Not that he would have spared them anyway.
But even then, he found no lead in their belongings. He pocketed their items and continued his search. At night, only one thing stood out: signs of a struggle near the western wall he had not yet searched as the city was huge even for him. Missing guards, twenty-six of them. Broken stones. Faint gouges on the red-stained ground. Dried blood on the wall.
Mu Li had been there. He immediately suspected this, as it was the only anomaly he found in the city.
Hovering above the area, he closed his eyes and scanned once more, probing for residual qi. There was none. No lingering spells, no spiritual fluctuation. It was as though the fight had been swallowed whole.
His expression darkened. What should have been a simple escort mission had turned into a puzzle. And puzzles meant variables, which he did not like.
He took out a sword-shaped jade talisman from his spatial pouch, injected his qi, and sent his consciousness through it.
Miles away, Elder Li felt his jade talisman activate. He took it out, stopped walking behind the disciples, and injected his consciousness. The message inside was brief and precise: a missing disciple, no way to trace, but the life jade token was still intact—though flickering.
Unseen above them, Fuxi noticed the elder communicating via jade. He opened one eye, glanced at Elder Li's distant figure, then closed it again. Telepathic exchanges were common during travel. Routine matters rarely deserved his attention.
Even if he had known the subject concerned a missing outer disciple, he would not have been moved. The sect possessed thousands. Unless one bore double or more spirit roots—or greater talent, or a special physique—their life held little weight in the grand calculus of the sect.
And unfortunately for Mu Li, he possessed only a single spirit root. Expendable, to say the least.
As the morning wind moved gently through the plains, dried shrubs rolled across the landscape. Somewhere far to the west, Wuji's horse moved through the plains, Wuji seated on the cart guiding it as he constantly looked for landmarks from Mei Xu's memories.
On the third day, as Wuji drove the horse and cart across rolling plains and low hills, a faint silhouette of a city emerged on the horizon, wavering in the heat. He immediately smiled, realizing he was on the right path, and turned toward it. Hours later, he entered without haste.
Inside the bustling city, he kept his head lowered, his presence unremarkable. Within the markets, he purchased several bundles of common herbs, nothing rare, nothing memorable, and several fine dishes, enough to last him for a while alongside the food already in storage.
With his purchase of expensive foods, a few local gangs noticed and watched him from shaded corners, their gazes lingering on the lone traveler and his cart. But something about him, or perhaps the presence of the husk inside the cart, gripping its sword lifelessly through the curtains but appearing ready to move at any moment—discouraged them from pressing further.
An hour later, he left as quietly as he had arrived.
Back on the open plains, restraint no longer existed. He remained constantly on high alert. For a while, nothing happened. But near dusk, a band of mounted brigands emerged from behind large anthills to encircle him, confident in their numbers and emboldened by the emptiness of the road.
They did not even manage to shout their threats.
The husk attacked at once, its sword slicing through bodies like butter. Wuji watched the massacre, his gaze cold. His mind had grown accustomed to the sight of corpses and blood, though his nose still rebelled against the thick stench. When the dust settled, the riders lay sliced upon the grass.
As ordered, the husk carried their corpses to the Heaven Burial Coffin. They joined the others within the interment space—still, suspended, awaiting burial.
Wuji did not linger. He had no interest in wasting more lifespan on mere bandits. Of the original ten years stored within the husk, only two remained. He could feel the invisible weight of that limit pressing against him.
And he knew, with quiet certainty, that what awaited within the gathering would demand more than two years if he needed a foothold.
He resumed the journey.
Time passed. Twenty-five days later—five days earlier than he had estimated—the land around began to change slowly. The hot winds he had endured the last week softened. Moisture clung faintly to the air.
He halted the cart, his gaze sweeping around. Before him stretched a vast bamboo forest, its length seeming to disappear into the horizon. He looked deeper and could see emerald stalks rising skyward like clustered spears.
Pale mist drifted between them. With his knowledge of arrays, he understood why the mist seemed thin yet structured, and dangerously deceptive.
Mei Xu's memories confirmed he was at the right location, though not at the true entrance.
He moved the horse cart along the forest's edge, his gaze on the spaces between bamboo trees. No banners marked its borders. No clear array signs warned outsiders away.
Only loose cultivators, those versed in such formations, those with information about this area, would notice the faint distortions in spiritual flow, the concealed footpaths threading between the bamboo, the almost imperceptible pulse of hidden arrays buried beneath the soil.
Wuji was not among those who could see such things clearly. Though his knowledge of arrays had reached peak grade one, the forest's formations seemed to be grade two.
And it was not as if he could interact with them or truly see them—he was still mortal. The random placement of stones only showed him what he needed to know.
But for now, that did not matter. One wasn't examined on arrays to gain entry.
He slowed the cart, coming to a halt before a section of purple bamboo. His eyes narrowed slightly, a faint smile forming on his lips.
"Finally," he murmured. "I have arrived at the real entrance."