They discovered a village on the island.

There were around fifty structures scattered around a ritual ground in a sparse circle.

Most were longhouses, constructed by covering the skeletons of whale-like creatures with hide and reed.

The smaller buildings were similar, using bones for support, skin for cover, fangs for nails, and tendons for rope.

The ritual ground in the middle featured a giant nine-pointed star set upon an elevated stone stage.

An altar, on which was etched a formation for voidification. Slightly different from the one for the foxmoths, but perhaps the same in essence.

“Death’s too good for’em,” Ziyou Maque, the strongest there if not counting Nanya, said with a grim face.

He poked one of the crystallised heads placed upon the nine-pointed star.

Yao, judging from the feathery hair.

“Can we take a few back?” Yung asked Nanya.

The vixen tilted her head cutely. “Strange a hobby, dear boyfriend.”

“Samples! There should be coroners in the sects and clans,” Yung said, this time addressing everyone. “I want to understand how they survive after switching heads.”

“That’s the territory of the damned, Young Yung. You better be sure.” Ziyou Maque said.

Yung nodded.

This was a new Lost Plane, and this flavour of void magic was new even to the Su Fox Clan.

The ‘Grand Dao’ forms on both sides, here and on the Last Ascension Mortal Plane, were not similar, and even those in the Harmonious Heaven realm couldn’t understand this magic without extensive research.

For this side, it was corrupted. Obscured by the evil of the ‘Dao’ alternative that was the void.

Still, Yung wanted to know.

If Youjin Fuqiang wasn’t lying, then why did Grandpa join them?

He needed to know!

They explored the village further. Inside the longhouses, there were items resembling daily necessities.

Chairs, tables, beds, mats.

Barrels full of rendered fat, containers of spices and salts.

One of the shorter structures was an outhouse.

And the two taller ones at both ends of the village were guard posts.

Yung found bones tied together into toys and skulls that served as crown-like accessories.

These cultists had a civilisation here.

“Nothing much of value,” Youjin Yetu said. The old man showed a few bone trinkets that faintly glowed in strange colours in Yung’s Link Sight. “Other than these and that formation. These are probably Imperfect Heaven 1st Realm, all Common Class no doubt. Might be worth dismantling.”

“Let’s go back,” Yung said. There was nothing more he could learn here.

And the ocean was becoming restless.

“Does it know?” He asked his girlfriend.

“A sleeping corpse. Why should it?” Nanya said. “Merely its heartbeat. The immunity in its biological system trying to drive us out, us invaders. Us infectors.” She covered her mouth with her tail and giggled.

A spear flew over.

One of the Youjin Clan cultivators deflected it with a slash of his sword.

The island was scarce in trees, so they could see for miles around.

“It escaped,” Nanya growled. “Without even bowing. How dare it!?”

“We’ll send people over to guard the entrance,” Yung said. “But we need to leave.”

Another barrage of spears approached.

“Now!” His voice was urgent.

The spears did not pack much power. With Nanya and Maque, they could probably withstand these assaults.

But there’s that headless giant. Yung did not want to fight with too many unknowns abound.

Others might call it cowardice. But so be it.

Spooky things are spooky!

Even it the spooky attacks lacked spirit.

The group made it back to the hole in the ground that connected to the Last Ascension Mortal Plane.

Youjin Yetu offered to set up a temporary formation there to secure it.

But Nanya simply scoffed. She hopped down from Yung’s head and dug a small hole with her paws.

Cute!

She left a talisman there. “This lost plane is but one more resource world for our clan. We shall mark our territory.”

For a single second, her crown glowed green, and greenish gold globules of liquid-like gooey Qi materialised in the air.

They sank into the ground. Nanya filled back the hole with the talisman. There was a low rumble. Nanya triumphantly raised her snout.

Yung scratched his head awkwardly. He was reminded of how dogs would mark their territory.

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“Dare thee utter such blasphemy!” Nanya growled, her fur spiking up. She bit Yung’s shin.

“Ouch! Ow-ow-ow—I’m sorry!” It hurt! Yung grabbed Nanya’s tail instinctively and pulled. That just made her bite even harder.

It took another barrage of spears for them to re-enter the hole in the ground.

“There were fewer spears,” Yung noted.

“They are fleeing,” Nanya said.

The walk back was uneventful, other than random hordes of voidfiends.

But with their firepower, it was no problem.

“Feels wrong, you know? Leaving all this behind,” one of the Madlander cultivators said.

They were fiend hunters. The flesh and skin of these monsters were valuable materials. The cores could be used in alchemy and trade.

Yung had expected the Youjin Cultivators to scoff.

But perhaps the multiple literal life and death experiences they shared had dampened the prejudice.

Then he should also keep his own prejudices about the Youjin low.

Back in the cave with the foxmoths, the group discussed what to do with the flock.

“Silky says that the flock can’t leave immediately. There is a process of uprooting the... nests?” Yung looked at the critter.

“Kyi,” Silky chirped.

“Yep. But let’s seal the cave. If possible, I would like to leave some guards but in case some fiend or creature invades from the lost plane again—”

“None shall. Our markings shall deceive and destroy,” Nanya said.

“Just in case. You know?” Yung said. “So leaving people behind doesn’t seem like a good idea.”

“Kyi!” Silky said.

“Oh, ok,” Yung nodded. “The foxmoths will be ready to move in two days.” As he was speaking, the semi-domesticated chaosfiends started flying in strange patterns in the cavern sky.

Some went towards the nests with the eggs, others went to the fat caterpillars and started cuddling them.

It was weird.

But Yung could feel the Faith Qi slowly being generated, and Silky absorbed it with a relieved face.

They sealed the cave with four formation flags and the scattered rubble. With a grey shimmer, it looked like there was no cavern entrance there at all. Just a dead end.

Nanya went down and booped the illusory wall. It rippled, then stilled.

“Thanks!” Yung said.

Silky decided to stay behind with his flock.

Yung didn’t mind; he would let the little critter catch up.

They went through the cavern where the ‘deaths’ had happened.

“I’ve written everything I want to tell you down.” Yung said. Being specific in important talks was important.

“You have.” Nanya sounded dejected.

“Yep, on a talisman.” Yung said, “Too bad the communicators were destroyed.”

“We shan’t be using such unfeeling ways of speaking.”

“It’s efficient.”

“It is loveless!” Nanya huffed, and that was that.

Ziyou Maque and the rest had complex feelings about this place, still laden with cultist corpses.

Not long ago, they too were lying there, no life in their bodies.

They had cursed the capriciousness of the vixen, how uncaring she was. But now they walked among the living once more. Maque was a 3rd realmer, the 2nd realmers each achieved significant breakthroughs. 1st realmers like Ling and Chun did not gain any apparent advantage, perhaps their souls were too weak to even perceive a figment of the Grand Dao. But when they finally crossed the boundary of the realms, today’s experience would serve them immensely.

All was as the Su Clan dictated. They should only be grateful.

They ought to, even if it was difficult.

Yung didn’t forget to store a few cultist corpses in Nanya’s storage artefact, both 1st and 2nd realmer.

The coroner would have more samples.

He ignored the complex feelings coming his and Nanya’s way. His girlfriend would need a talking-to, yes, but not in public. He had to make sure that she wouldn’t toy with people like this anymore, but criticising her in public was not the way to go about it.

Nanya squirmed in his embrace, sending him an annoyed look.

Yung also had to fix his own behaviour. He needed to self-reflect; had he been too opportunistic? Too self-serving, cowardly, and disregarding of others too? Why could he now see the Empathic Links denoting positive and negative intentions connected to not only him, but also Nanya and Silky, but no one else?

They crossed the caverns and tunnels, bridges and chasms.

Chao woke up. His jaw wasn’t fixed yet, but the pill seemed to be working. He was bound like a prisoner with special shackle-like artefacts. His cultivation bases were sealed, his Mirror Fortress seized.

All he had was Chiri. The little lemur lass would not stop crying unless Chao held her.

Nanya wanted to force her asleep again. But Yung thought it was too heartless.

At least Chao showed gratitude for that. But otherwise, he did not exchange any words with them. He ignored Youjin Chun and Ziyou Ling too despite their attempts to talk and simply walked with the group with his bruised face.

They exited the original entrance to the cave.

“Patriarch, they are out!” a cultivator outside yelled.

The shadowy barrier that had been covering the entrance was no longer there.

“Chun’er!” Youjin Liu approached them, accompanied by other important members who had been left behind.

“Father,” Chun said. Then her tears fell. She was, after all, a teenager. The memory of death still haunted her. She ran into his embrace.

“It’s fine now. Everything is going to be ok,” the patriarch said, patting his sniffling daughter. He looked at the tired, spent delve team.

His eyes widened when he realised that Maque had broken through, then narrowed as he saw Chao in chains.

The explanations would be long. Yung left it to Maque and Yetu.

“Aren’t we such a beautiful genius?” Nanya said to Yung.

The secret she was so afraid and ashamed to show others was not her Revival Abilities nor properties of her foxballs. Nor her strange ‘relationship’ with Su Xiya. Anyone who was important already knew.

The delve team did not need to sign any blood spirit contracts or make any heavenly vows for it.

What she wanted to hide was the existence of the six-tailed white fox currently doing something sneaky inside that infinite entity beyond the plane’s horizon.

She refused to elaborate on it. Perhaps she couldn’t.

So it was fortunate that only Yung had been ‘alive’ while the vision of that entity had overlapped with reality in the cavern.

Everyone else had been too dead to see.

How convenient!

No one needed to add more vows to their soul, and the Su Fox Clan secret was safe and sound.

Only Yung and Silky knew it because apparently, the cultists and Youjin Fuqiang were under the ‘influence’ of another equivalent entity and worshipped a figment of the Grand Dao that was not that of this mortal plane’s, hence they could not perceive the vision with the Six-tailed Nyanya that Yung and Silky had.

How devious his girlfriend was. She killed many birds with one throw of a pebble.

Because the only reason Yung was able to see it was because Nanya had truly been on the verge of death while she had been bound.

She had no choice but to use her super-secret Su fox clan powers.

Yung grumbled. “Psycho.”

“Must you insult us?” Nanya sounded hurt.

Yung caught himself, “Sorry.” He should not be using such words against her when he had requested her to use better language too.

Sure, she used words like foolish. And sometimes, while in her manic ‘phases’, she would utter quite creative expletives. But Yung knew she was trying. And he loved that.

So he should too.

Nanya preened, the princess was pleased.

The area outside was littered with corpses, voidfiends and chaosfiends.

There were hundreds of people in the valley, cleaning it all up.

This amount of cores and materials were nothing to scoff at.

Not to mention nearly ten 2nd order fiends.

It’s a shame that the 4th order fiend, in other words, the Unfolding Heaven 1st Order Wretched Emissary didn’t leave a core behind.

The only notable spoil from that fight was the chalice.

The Flareful Empress, in new sets of imperial robes but visibly injured, presented it to the fox Nyanya.

“May we have the dignity of performing this tribute, oh Honourable Revived Grace From the South?” The Flareful Empress kneeled, as did the other elders behind her.

“You may. One such knighted as you may have such fortune. All praise our magnanimity,” Nanya said.

They did. Some solemnly, yet all with complicated feelings.

Fox Nyanya turned into Yao Nanya and extended her palm.

The chalice flew to it. “A fine utensil. We shall receive it.”

She would, of course, give out suitable rewards. She had them rise, then poofed into fox Nanya again, holding a blanket in her mouth.

“Bundle us.” She commanded.

Yung did. Nanya had been jealous seeing Chiri in that comfortable bundle. She wanted to experience it too.

Holding the now burrito Nanya, Yung walked to command pavilion. Nanya’s palanquin was there.

He climbed up, the laid down. He was tired; he needed a long nap. He made a mental note that he would have to arrange an after-briefing with the Dark Star Mercenaries and all other parties who had contributed.

Left behind, Han Xinglou, the Elder from the Malignant Moon Sword Sect, was trying his hardest to appear nonchalant.

While the Flareful Empress, showing no emotion on her face, was staring at the Fiery Wine Lemur pup in Youjin Chao’s embrace.