Gu Tian! Hui stared, wide-eyed. That’s right, I remember! Those cultivators mentioned him vanishing into the realm. With Li Xiang vanishing, I forgot about Gu Tian. Did he end up in the same place as me?

Wait. What do Gu Tian and I have in common? Hui frowned, putting a hand to his chin. His brows furrowed. We were both in Black Asp Sect. Did something mark us there? Or was there something else? Gu Tian’s soul was swapped into his body, but… mine wasn’t.

Unless… that time I transmigrated counts.

Then, Li Xiang… did she end up here, too?

Hui paused, looking up at Gu Tian. “Xie Hao?”

“That’s your name, right, Junior Brother?” Gu Tian asked, smiling. His body wobbled, and for a second, the barren, empty realm appeared, replacing the sunny garden. His strong, tan body turned into a black shadow, blurry and indistinct. Gu Tian turned around, and the sunny garden reappeared, Gu Tian’s body stable once more.

His soul is deteriorating. The realm is eating him. I have to get Gu Tian out of here!

Gu Tian led him to an empty plot and squatted down, opening a small hole in the rich earth. “Here. Take those seeds and copy me. Quickly! We only have a short window to plant the Soot Vine. If we plant it even an incense stick’s worth of time after noon, it’ll be Ash Vine instead, a weaker medicinal plant with a lower concentration of yang energy.”

Hui glanced around, caught up in Gu Tian’s momentum. A few black seeds sat on a stone nearby. He grabbed a small handful and crouched beside Gu Tian, copying the man’s movements. Gently circling his fingers, he made a small hollow in the earth. He tipped a seed inside, then carefully pushed soil over it to cover the seeds.

The two of them moved along, planting the seeds one after another. Hui finally planted the last seed and sat back, wiping his brow. Whew. Got them all planted in time.

Abruptly, he jumped to his feet. Scowling, he slapped his face. Awake and alert, Hui! Dammit, I fell into the pace of this realm again. If I let down my guard for even a second, it’ll devour me!

“What is it, Xie Hao?” Gu Tian asked. He stood and shaded his eyes with one hand, peering to the horizon.

“Nothing. Elder Brother Gu Tian, we should go. We’ve been here too long already,” Hui said, smiling.

“What do you mean? We’ve only begun,” Gu Tian said, turning back to look at Hui.

“Eh?” Hui asked.

“After Soot Vine, we still have the Three-Colors Lily, the White Flametongue, the Bleeding Heart Blossom, and the Summer Peony to plant. If we miss today, the auspicious date, season, and solar angle won’t align for another dozen years, and that’s assuming the weather is good!”

Hui shook his head. “Listen to me, Gu Tian. You might not believe me, but this is all an illusion. If we don’t get out of here soon, you’ll—”

Gu Tian pivoted. He put his arm out in front of Hui, pushing him back. “Xie Hao, watch out. Those crows are back again.”

Crows? Hui peeked around Gu Tian.

In the distance, a mass of shadows swirled in the sky, blotting out the sun. Wings beat on the wind, stirring the dust into a tempest. A thousand crows swirled in the gray sky, silhouettes against an even-tone shadowbox.

Eh? Gray sky? Hui stared up. Overhead, the blue sky faded evenly toward the horizon, turning gray where it met the crows.

The crows dropped from the sky and settled onto trees around the edge of the garden. As they dropped, the leaves reddened and dropped from the trees, flurrying down like snow. The trees left behind stood skeletal, branches bare save the crows. Red flashed amidst the monotone sky and black crows. Hui flinched, taking a step back. All the crows turned to look at once. A thousand red eyes stared at him. The red light blurred, swirling together into a red robe. Laughing, a man stepped down from the sky, the red robe settling over his shoulders, a counterpoint to the black robes he wore. Long black hair flew behind him, wild and free, ends ragged as a crow’s wing. His eyes burned red, and black stained his fingertips. He jabbed a hand at Hui, wild eyes blazing.

“Fen Long! I’ve found you. You can’t hide the scent of your life qi, even in your ghost form. Let me out, or else die!”

Easy choice. Hui instantly killed his qi and flopped backward, plopping toward the garden.

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“Xie Hao!” Gu Tian shouted. He snatched Hui out of the air, then glanced behind him and sighed. “Phew. Nearly fell into the Soot Vine.”

Er, Elder Brother, were you… more concerned about the Soot Vine than about me dying? Hui wondered silently.

Overhead, the man paused, confused more than anything. He frowned, his brows furrowing faintly. “Not… Fen Long? He would never die from me shouting at him…”

Internally, Hui nodded vigorously. That’s right, that’s right! Mysterious Senior, you’ve made a mistake. Go on, leave this small disciple alone. There’s no need to attack me.

Red robe floating from his shoulders, the man descended to the earth and approached, still frowning.

Gu Tian set Hui carefully aside and drew his sword. “Not one more step.”

The man froze, foot still in the air. He looked down. A short stem pushed out of the earth, barely four leaves on it, still little more than a sapling. He looked at Gu Tian and slowly lowered his foot. Gu Tian tensed, tightening his grip, and knelt, preparing to charge.

The man in red put his hands up. He stepped back, avoiding the plants. “If you let me examine that boy there, I’ll go. I’m not interested in the death throes of some poor idiots who wandered into the trap Fen Long set for me.”

Gu Tian lowered his sword. He gave the man a wary look, but nodded, once. Stepping aside, he allowed the man to approach Hui.

Hey! Elder Brother, hey! This small disciple is still alive here, okay? I… okay, I know I look dead, but—don’t just let strange men examine me!

“What’s your name, fellow Daoist?” Gu Tian asked, as the man knelt beside Hui.

The man reached out toward Hui’s face. “Ah? Call me Chen Wuya.”

Hui tensed subtly, watching the hand descend with dead eyes. What do I do? What do I do? Wake up? Run? Replace… no, I don’t have any ghouls in my soul form. The snakeskin technique… probably won’t work, either. Jin Xian is gone. The lotus beast is gone. Dammit, what do I do?

The man’s hand latched onto Hui’s head. He smirked, looking Hui directly in the eye. “Souls don’t leave a corpse when they die.”

Oh, shit! Hui released his qi and grabbed the man’s hand, fighting his grip. It felt as though he grabbed steel. The man’s skin didn’t give an inch, let alone moving his hand away from Hui’s head.

“Xie Hao!” Gu Tian shouted, slashing at the man’s back. His sword bounced off the man’s shoulders. The full force of Gu Tian’s blow didn’t so much as force the man to twitch, let alone injure him.

“Alright, then. Show me what this world has become!” Chen Wuya shouted.

Qi poured into Hui’s mind. Hui marshalled all the death qi he had and poured it at Chen Wuya’s qi. Chen Wuya’s attack faltered, but Hui’s death qi drained at an alarming rate.

“Oh? Interesting. A ghost cultivator?” Chen Wuya asked, eyes glittering. He tightened his grip. More qi poured into Hui.

Hui fought back, but the more he fought, the more real the illusion became around him, and the colder his body became. He bit his lip, then retracted his death qi. If I use it all up here, the realm will directly eat me! I can’t—

Wait!

Hui quickly marshalled his mental energy and drew a talisman in his mind. A barrier formed and spread over his mind, closing it off from Chen Wuya’s probes.

“A cute trick. But a mantis can’t stop a chariot,” Chen Wuya chuckled. A bolt of qi shot into Hui’s mind and shattered the barrier.

Hui spat up a mouthful of blood as the backlash from the barrier shattering hit him. His soul shook, on the verge of breaking apart. He circulated his death qi, desperately stabilizing his soul. I can’t use my plant technique or my crystallization technique without a body. Ah, how could I have overlooked my soul? Playing dead as a soul is an equally important skill! I need more, more skills to play dead!

“Calm down. I’m not trying to hurt you. I’ve been trapped in here for a thousand years. I want to see the outside, that’s all,” Chen Wuya grumbled.

Say that before you attack me, Senior, Hui grumbled back.

Memories flashed before his eyes. Chen Wuya’s eyes went blank. After a moment, he retracted his hand, leaving behind a scrap of his qi. “Take it. My thanks.”

Fuck your thanks! Hui shouted silently, but quickly surrounded the qi with death qi. Unlike normal qi, almost seventy percent of Chen Wuya’s qi converted directly into death qi. A strange duck emerged, with blazing red eyes and jagged, crow-like feathers. It shook its head, preened itself and flapped down into Hui’s dantian with the rest of the ducks.

Hui took a deep breath and circulated his qi again. With the addition of the crow-duck, his soul quickly stabilized, and the illusion’s hold on him lessened. He stood, dusted down his robes, then bowed shortly to Chen Wuya. “Senior, is this your realm?”

Chen Wuya snorted derisively. “My realm, my ass. I got trapped here, didn’t you hear me? It’s that bastard Fen Long’s realm. He put all my treasure in here as bait, and steals a little bit of the visiting cultivators’ qi and vitality to sustain the seal on me, while giving away my fortune at the same time.” He scowled with the last line, as if it hurt him to remember his losses.

“Why? I mean… why did he seal you here?” Hui asked.

“No reason, no reason at all. All I did was build a little a spell formation. In the middle of it, I got exhausted and fell asleep. While I slept, he attacked the spell formation and trapped me in here. Jealousy is an ugly emotion,” Chen Wuya said with a sigh, shaking his head.

“A spell formation? What for?” Hui asked.

“Soul transferal. It wasn’t finished. I tried to tell him, but he wouldn’t listen. Better to ruin the formation and lock me away than let me make it safe! If no one has finished it since I left, and how could they have, when no one understands soul transferal as well as I, it’s more dangerous right now that it would have been, had I finished. If someone fixes it and forces it to activate now, it’ll steal soul energy from whatever is weakest. In a word, mortals. If he’d let me finish it, I could have redirected the draw, but…”

Hui’s eyes flew wide. Mortals? Stealing mortal souls for a soul transferal. Doesn’t that sound like… what happened when I crossed into this world? The Midnight Massacre… what if that’s the result of mortal souls being paid as a price to summon my soul? And then my soul transferred into this world…

Chen Wuya turned his head, looking at Hui from the corner of his eye. “So? How many mortals did it cost, when you came over?”