Chapter 21: The Sound Hidden in Silence
They moved deeper into Sunset Forest without slowing.
After Lin Su warning, the mood in the group changed so quickly. The earlier fight against the Ironroot Tusk Beasts had left behind broken branches, torn earth, and the stale scent of frightened monsters. Now all of that faded behind them, replaced by a quieter stretch of woods where the air felt heavier and the sounds farther apart.
Qin Ming took the lead in full.
"We will see the same formation," he said. "Butthis time we will tighten the spacing."
No one questioned him.
Yu Tianheng shifted slightly closer to the center without complaint. Dugu Yan fell into step at the left with a face that clearly said she disliked it. Ye Lingling remained calm in the middle, hands near her pouch, posture neat and undisturbed in a way that somehow made the surrounding forest feel even more dangerous. Lin Su moved ahead in short, controlled bursts, never vanishing completely, never staying visible for too long.
Renyu kept the right flank.
But now his attention felt different.
A little earlier, his mind had still been occupied by Dugu Yan question.
'So how can we trust you?'
The words had not left him.
The word should not have landed so deeply. He had heard harsher things. In the palace, sharper things. In court, more poisonous ones. Yet that question had struck at a place those others had not.
Because it had been asked in a team.
Not as insult.
But as a reminders.
Renyu let out a slow breath through his nose.
The road of the forest ahead narrowed as the trail make by human reduce and trail of the beast appear. The deeper they goes the trees grew taller, their roots rising as big as like an old knuckles through the damp soil. Less underbrush. Less noise. Even the insects seemed to hum slowly.
Dugu Yan glanced toward the canopy and clicked her tongue.
"I hate this place."
Yu Tianheng, walking a little ahead of her, said, "Well we are no longer in the city."
"Hmph."
Yu Tianheng did not turn, but Renyu saw the corner of his mouth shift faintly.
'Love bird,' Renyu thought. He remember that in the show he watch that this two are lover but they separate in the end.
Unlike others normal people that want love for them only, Yu Tianheng because of his clan was annihilated at the climax of Douluo Dalu 1.
Lin Su raised a hand from ahead.
The group stopped immediately.
Qin Ming moved up beside him. "What?"
Lin Su pointed at a tree trunk on the right.
At first glance, it looked normal—gray bark, a patch of moss, one long scar where age or weather had stripped the outer layer. But when Renyu stepped closer, he saw the difference.
There were lines of cut along the bark.
Not claw marks.
Too fine for that.
Not blade marks either.
They were thin, shallow, and strangely regular, as though several taut strings had swept across the trunk at once.
Yu Tianheng frowned. "Metal-type beast?"
"Not likely," Qin Ming said.
Dugu Yan crouched near the roots. "No blood around this place."
Ye Lingling looked upward, following the angle of the cuts. "The strike came from above."
Lin Su eyes remained on the tree. "And not only once."
He stepped back, then pointed farther ahead.
There were more marks.
On another trunk.
Then another.
Not a straight path. Not a random one either.
A pattern.
Renyu studied them silently.
The cuts were too clean. Too light. Whatever had made them had not been hacking or tearing. It like the beast had been testing the skill or showing its territory.
Or hunting.
Qin Ming looked around the dim clearing, then said, "Do not talk loudly from here on out."
Dugu Yan rose smoothly. "You think it's already near?"
"I think," Qin Ming said, "that something here can attack from angles it doesn't physically occupy."
That quieted even Yu Tianheng.
They advanced more slowly after that.
A few dozen steps later, Lin Su stopped again.
This time he crouched by a fallen leaf and lifted it carefully between two fingers. Renyu moved close enough to see the surface.
There was powder on it.
Pale silver, faintly luminous even in the filtered forest light.
Dugu Yan leaned in. "Wing dust?"
"Possibly," Qin Ming said.
Ye Lingling gaze sharpened. "It hasn't been washed away. So it's must recent."
Renyu looked at the silver dust, and something inside his chest seem to gave the faintest pulse.
Not a pain.
Not a warning.
But like a recognition.
His fingers tightened slightly at his side.
The red converter crystal had not been summoned, yet he could feel the martial spirit respond in some subtle place beneath the thought, as if the air around that silver powder carried a vibration into his body has been noticed by his martial spirit before his mind did.
Qin Ming saw the change in him.
"What is it?"
Renyu lifted his eyes. "I feel like there's sound in it."
Yu Tianheng frowned. "Sound?"
"In the dust?"
Dugu Yan folded her arms. "That makes no sense."
Renyu answered without irritation this time. "I know."
Qin Ming did not dismiss him. "Explain."
Renyu crouched and held his hand above the leaf without touching it.
"It's not actual noise," he said slowly. "More like… residue. The same way some places feel hotter after fire has already gone out."
Ye Lingling looked at the dust again. "You can sense that?"
"Only vaguely. Even I do not understand the reason. It like this thing resonate within myself."
Lin Su eyes narrowed by a fraction. "Sound-type spirit beast, then."
"No," Qin Ming said. "Not only that."
He straightened and looked into the trees ahead.
"A beast that attacks from unusual positions. Fine cutting lines from above. Wing dust. Residual vibration."
Yu Tianheng expression sharpened. "An insect spirit beast?"
"Likely."
Dugu Yan clicked her tongue. "I dislike this even more."
"I noticed," Yu Tianheng said. Most of the girl do not like insect to begin with, so he understand.
She ignored him.
They moved on again.
The deeper side of this part of Sunset Forest pressed around them with a peculiar weight now. It was not empty with strong beast. Renyu could feel that clearly. Birds still existed here. Small creatures still moved. Leaves still shifted in the thin air.
But everything felt subdued, as if the forest had learned to keep its voice low in this zone.
At one point Lin Su abruptly vanished to the right, then returned three breaths later.
"Nothing on the outer perimeter," he said. "But the marks repeat in a circle ahead."
"A territory," Qin Ming said.
"Looks like it."
Dugu Yan exhaled softly. "Good. At least we know it belongs to something and it's near."
Renyu glanced at her. "Did you think the forest was decorating itself?"
She stared at him.
Then, unexpectedly, Ye Lingling made a very small sound.
It took Renyu a moment to realize she was trying not to laugh.
Dugu Yan heard it too.
"You—" She stopped and looked at Lingling in disbelief. "Was that a laugh?"
Ye Lingling face returned instantly to its usual quiet composure. "No."
Yu Tianheng finally did laugh, low and brief.
Even Qin Ming mouth moved by the smallest amount.
The tension loosened.
Only slightly.
Then Lin Su stopped so abruptly that everyone nearly did the same before Qin Ming signal came.
He had gone half to one knee, one hand raised, eyes fixed ahead through a sparse line of trunks.
Qin Ming voice dropped. "Is there something?"
Lin Su did not answer immediately.
Instead, he pointed.
Renyu followed the line of his hand.
At first he saw nothing.
Then—
A shape.
No, two shapes.
They hung in the dimness of the trees ahead, motionless except for the faintest ripple of movement. Pale silver-blue, almost transparent at the edges. Wings long and strange, not like ordinary butterfly or moth wings, but thin and string-like, stretched in delicate lines that seemed less like membrane and more like the frame of an instrument.
'A harp', Renyu thought at once.
Or something built to be played.
The two creatures hung at slightly different distances from the same branch, one higher, one lower, both almost too beautiful for Sunset Forest damp gloom.
Yu Tianheng voice was barely a breath. "There are two."
Qin Ming eyes narrowed. "Maybe."
Dugu Yan looked between them and lowered her voice further. "Why do I feel like only one of them is real and the others not?"
"Good observation," Renyu said before he could stop himself.
She gave him a flat look, but there was no real heat in it now.
Ye Lingling gaze moved from one creature to the other. "Their wing vibration look different."
That made everyone look at her.
She blinked once. "One feels slightly delayed."
Lin Su murmured, "A false body."
Renyu pulse rose.
Not from fear.
From certainty.
Like it calling him.
The converter crystal stirred again beneath his skin, more clearly this time. The sensation was subtle but undeniable. The beast ahead resonated in a way that pulled faintly at his martial spirit, as though the air around it carried a quality his build recognized instantly.
Illusion.
Sound.
Resonance.
A second false self.
Qin Ming eyes moved once across the group, taking in their tension, their spacing, and the direction of every gaze.
"No one attack yet," he said quietly. "We confirm first."
Yu Tianheng nodded.
Dugu Yan did not argue.
Renyu took one slow step forward.
The nearer of the two moths shifted.
Its wings vibrated.
No loud sound came from them. Instead, the air itself seemed to shiver. A nearby leaf split in half without anything visibly touching it.
Ye Lingling expression sharpened. "Air blade or... Sound blade."
The second moth moved a breath later.
Except—
No.
Renyu saw it then.
Not with his eyes first, but with the strange resonance pulling beneath his ribs. One body moved with weight. The other moved with imitation. Perfect at a glance, wrong in the details.
His mouth went dry.
Twin-Chorus Mirror Moth.
He did not know how he knew the name.
Perhaps instinct from the martial spirit.
Perhaps the shape of it simply fit too well.
The true moth lifted slightly from the branch, and the false one echoed the motion beside it.
Both turned.
Both faced them.
Face to face, the creature was even stranger. Its body was slender and pale, its head small, almost delicate, but its wings were the opposite—long lattices of vibrating silver threads, each line catching the filtered light like strings under a musician's hand. It was beautiful in the way some dangerous things were beautiful, too precise to be harmless.
Yu Tianheng voice dropped to nearly nothing.
"What is that thing?"
Qin Ming did not answer.
Because for one brief, taut moment, no one in the group wanted to break the silence first.
The real moth hovered there in the forest gloom.
Its false body hovered beside it.
And the two of them, true and echo, stared back at the hunting party as though Sunset Forest itself had finally decided to show them what had been listening.
Renyu head felt a headache. The air, the light, the earth and the sound are calling him.
Then he lost himself.
"Balwisyall nescell Gungnir tron."