It was the ugliest Yung had ever seen Chao.

The usually radiant boy, who despite his crippled cultivation could swoon girls left and right by his looks alone, was collapsed into a pile of bloody limbs right now. He foamed from the mouth, his right cheek caved into his jaw, and half of his teeth were missing.

“So cruel,” Yung was mortified.

His girlfriend had just punched the protagonist!

“Why?” Yung asked.

He could not fathom the reason for this sudden outburst of violence. She had lifted him off his feet for a wild roller-coaster ride, and when the ride ended, a bloody Chao was lying by his feet.

“Thief!” Nanya said, pointing at the bloody Chao with her finger. She was in her Yao form, pretty as always, but her face was scrunched up in anger. “This plebeian stole our most precious jewel!” She bristled, giving the prone form of Chao a kick in the side.

The unconscious boy flew out again and crashed into a boulder, a rain of blood spilled in his wake. He groaned but did not wake up.

“Thief!” Nanya screamed.

“Wait!” Yung raised his hands and came in between his angry girlfriend and the dying acquaintance. “Wait, wait!”

There was only one thing to steal here, and that definitely was not Nanya's most precious jewel.

“Do you mean, he stole your foxball?” Yung said, sweat dripping and his girlfriend’s stupid innuendos.

Nanya nodded. She looked super fierce.

“Then take it back?” Yung said as though stating the obvious.

Perhaps Chao found it in these caverns, lying around somewhere.

Perhaps something had happened to Youjin Fuqiang, and he was forced to leave it behind? It would be good for everyone if that cultist was dead.

“Pray tell sooner,” Nanya snorted. She walked around Yung and kicked Chao again to flip him over. “Grant us permission to rip this beast open.”

Her hands turned into sharp fox-claws, her eyes narrowing as her chilling intent spread out.

Yung could clearly see the red thread extending from her to Chao.

“Wait!” Yung grabbed her hair and pulled.

“Nya-ahn. Oh, you rude man. Can you not wait until we return?” Nanya turned around, blushing.

But she was still angry, her large dimples red.

“No, not... Why are you trying to stab him?” Yung asked again. “Oh. Ooooooooh.” The realization hit him. “He assimilated your occultic foxball,” Yung looked at Chao again, this time with a more complicated expression. “He used it as an artificial spirit root.”

Nanya kicked the floor in fraustration, “It is ours! How many a painful hours have we spent, separating our unneeded Dao aspect shards into such a precious jewel? Yet this man of extreme Yang—” Her voice turned lower and lower as she aired her grievances.

“If you remove your foxball, what happens to him?” Yung asked.

Nanya looked at him. Then tears welled up in her glistening golden eyes, “We cannot. The thief stole it. It is his now.” She whimpered, “Another man... took what was ours before you did.”

Mad heavens. This girl. Yung was feeling mighty awkward. Nanya was the most annoying grandmaster of double meaning he’d ever met!

“We shall send him to the other side!” The vixen stopped crying and turned her hands into claws again. Yung had to get into a scuffle with her once more to stop the wronged woman.

“Let’s take him back. We’ll... We can deal with it later,” Yung tried his best to calm his girlfriend down.

He didn’t know the full circumstances of what led Chao to assimilate Nanya's foxball.

The youth should have known for a fact that it belonged to the Su Fox Clan. So even if he found it, he should have returned it.

But he didn’t.

And where was Youjin Fuqiang in all of this?

Yung pointed at the two entwined dead corpses of the Four Fears Chimera and the Bone Eating Putrid Python. “Look, there’s a story here. The two fiends escaped here, and whatever happened, ended up with Chao stealing your foxball. Let’s hear his side first.”

Two dead fiends, each far stronger than the comatose teen. But Youjin Chao was alive, loitering in the same place in most certainly a highly suspicious manner, with a restored cultivation base no less.

“Can you check… his status? Did he successfully assimilate the foxball or did he waste it?” Yung asked his girlfriend. She ignored him.

A few minutes of head pats later.

Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.

“How infuriating,” Nanya scowled, then kicked Chao's body again. “A triple Dantian cultivator, same as we. Same as that philanderous hero.”

Yung took a deep breath.

Indeed, a protagonist. He could kind of guess what had happened here. Whether his guess was correct, he would have to ask Chao.

But this world had a tendency to favour certain… people. Forcefully, if necessary.

Maybe Chao didn’t even have a choice when assimilating the foxball.

But in the end, he did. And I am on Nanya’s side. Yung thought. He looked at the Celestial Link leaving Chao and Nanya. Fate. No… The fates. Oh Moira. He really, really needed to look more into his powers.

There was a groan.

It was Chao; Nanya’s recent kick had woken him up.

It spooked the vixen so much she ran to Yung and hid behind his back. “Man of extreme Yang. How dare you steal what is our Yung’s?! We shall be kind enough to merely cripple your cultivations if you beg for mercy,” she said. She was being mean.

“Ch—…” Chao said, coughing up blood.

That’s another tooth. Yung flinched. Do they grow back?

“Chi—…” Chao was trying to say something.

“Brother Chao…” Yung said. He knelt down beside the boy, bringing his ear closer. Nanya didn’t follow; she looked like she didn’t want to be anywhere near a man of Yang who was conscious.

“Chiri.” Finally, the message got across. Youjin Chao spoke through a lisping voice, and Yung’s eyes widened.

He looked at Nanya.

“No,” she said.

He looked harder.

“Fine! What a demanding man,” she sniffed the air, then pointed at a tunnel.

Some time later, Nanya was holding a bundle with a crying chaosfiend pup inside.

“Cute,” Yung said. The Fiery Wine Lemur’s face was chubby and fluffy and poofy enough to eat.

Nanya pouted.

“Cute in a platonic way,” Yung corrected himself. Nanya’s toxic insecurities wouldn't heal in a day. He knew it, but sometimes it could become very annoying.

Nanya pouted harder.

Youjin Chao had passed out again. According to Nanya, he had suffered brain damage from her punch.

But since Yung told her not to kill him, she wouldn’t. The boy had been given a pill and it would heal him up.

Slowly.

While he was conscious.

After which, she would throw him in jail and decide his fate.

“Chri,” Chiri, the Fiery Wine Lemur pup was tussled in Nanya’s embrace in a clothe bundle. Seeing Chao passed out, her giant eyes widened.

Then the tears started rolling like waterfalls.

“Chrriiii!”

Nanya held the bundle up above her head.

“Quiet, you,” she said, a bit of Qi mixed in with her voice.

And Chiri fell asleep.

They stored the fiend corpses inside Nanya’s storage artefact. Yung carried Chao on his back, reminiscent of that one time in the Warring Twilight Forest, after the goons from the Malignant Moon Sword Sect had attacked the boy.

It had barely been two months since then.

But it felt like years.

They walked back to the cavern with the foxmoths and met up with the rest of the team.

“Kyeie!” Silky came flying. He sat on Yung’s nose, his wings buzzed.

He then flew away again, landing on a sleeping Chiri’s face. The Fiery Wine Lemur moved her pudgy arms as if dreaming.

Silky tilted his head. What a mysterious creature!

“Elder Brother Chao!” The scream of a girl rang out.

It was Youjin Chun. She ran to Yung, pointing at the passed-out, injured boy on his back. “How? Why?”

“A thief,” Nanya said, as if that would explain everything.

Youjin Chun sent her a glare. Youjin Yetu hit her in the head, and they both apologized for their rudeness.

But it was clear from their eyes that they were curious. As were the Free Sparrow Gang. Yung didn’t miss the slight hint of animosity Ziyou Ling sent Nanya’s way through the red Link of Intention either.

With a sigh, he explained what happened.

“I see,” Ziyou Maque said. “Then he has committed a grave sin.”

“You—!” Youjin Chun wanted to interject.

“Pa,” Ziyou Ling said. “Chao, he—”

“But now, his fate ain’t urgent, is it?” Ziyou Maque said. “Come with us. We found somethin’.”

“Perhaps a windfall. Perhaps a curse. No matter, this region shall prosper,” Nanya seemed to know what lay ahead.

Yung deposited Youjin Chao into the hands of one of the Madlander 2nd Realmers, the woman who used a staff.

They followed after Ziyou Maque through the middle tunnel in the fork.

It was long and winding.

And as they walked, the algae along the walls seemed to grow... bluer?

There was a sloshing sound of water coming from somewhere afar.

The air grew moist. The humidity had increased many times. A cold wind blew, and Yung couldn’t help but shiver.

Along the tunnel, they saw corpses of some cultists. Those who had not escaped in time, slain by Ziyou Maque's group.

But the corpses numbered too few. More were voidfiends, strewn about after meeting fatal violence.

Strange bipeds with fish-like heads, reaching up to Yung’s torso.

Giant crabs with skin the texture of seaweed, having four large pincers covered in barnacles.

The shattered shell of a large oyster, barbed octopus limbs spilling out from inside.

Yung knew where these creatures came from.

The group soon reached the last stretch of the tunnel. They had encountered no caverns on the way.

The tunnel angled upwards in a steep climb.

The group continued without stopping. Nanya was already in her fox form, lazing on Yung’s head. On her head lazed Silky.

Chiri had woken up and was being carried by Ziyou Ling.

They saw the exit. It was surrounded by fiend corpses. These were tiny bats, like wretched chiropteras but with bluish skin and crab-like protruding eyes.

Light spilled in through the exit. It was blue.

Moonlight blue.

The group exited from a hole in the ground onto a small island. A solitary rock, alone in the middle of a never-ending ocean.

From afar, Yung could see squid-like heads rising halfway up the water surface among the waves, filled with malice.

The cultists, they were gazing at the group from a safe distance.

“T-The sky!” someone exclaimed.

It was filled with swirling grey clouds with unsaturated blue hues. They roiled and flowed, almost like the canvas of Vincent Van Gogh’s famous painting, The Starry Night.

But there were no stars. Instead, the clouds swirled from horizon to horizon, and in between, where they merged, were vortex-like holes akin to the eye-holes of dead giants.

And within the slightest gaps of such holes, the faintest moonlight rays shone through.

Silver, with a neon blue aftertone.

It tinged this whole Lost Plane in a shade of sadness.

Out into the ocean, as the waves crashed into each other, silvery foam appeared too, reflecting the moonlight blue light like mirrors.

“You shall rue this day on the eve of your demise,” a voice carried over by the wind.

It was one of the cultists. They glared some more, then plopped back down.

Into their own realm. Swarming with creatures that had swapped their heads with each other.

The realm Yung had seen when he had struck the occultic foxball in Youjin Fuqiang’s core.

“So it wasn’t an illusion.”

Then the fleets of yaoren ships I had seen, and the villages full of voidified cultists, are all real? Yung drew a cold breath.

The ocean shook as if an earthquake had hit the island. A few screams of panic rang out, but no one was harmed.

“Such a pitiful worm,” Su Nanya, in her ever-confident grace that no being could match, yawned out an insult, “it knows that it shall die.”

Yung could not be so confident. He knew what Nanya was talking about.

“The headless giant.” At the bottom of the ocean. With a body made out of billions of writhing feelers, wearing the skulls of a trillion ren as accessories.

A being like no other Yung had ever seen. And he was pretty sure that it was the ‘Lord’ all the cultists had been referring to.