Red didn’t know what to say. However, when he stared at the core and noticed how weakened it had become, he was immediately alarmed.

“The disguise - can you still keep it up?” he asked the woman.

Aurelia’s enraged voice was quick to respond. “That’s what you’re concerned with?! You almost killed me!”

“Can you?”

“What do you think?!”

Red frowned, but the implication behind her words was clear enough. The only reason Domeron was able to distance himself and afford the youth some privacy was because the range from which the woman could disguise his emissions was improved after she absorbed the energy from the dagger. Now, though, all that energy was gone.

‘I can’t let them find us here.’

If there was a chance the imperials were after them, then this would be the best opportunity they would get to kill both Red and his companion. He didn’t hesitate to get up after storing the insectoid and run towards Domeron.

The swordsman heard his approach from uphill and turned around to look at him with a confused expression. “What is it?”

“We need to move.” Red said.

Domeron frowned. “Why?”

“Your position was probably exposed. We can’t afford to stand still.”

From the outside, it might have seemed silly to be so worried about an enemy they didn’t even know was pursuing them, but the youth knew better. All it took was one lapse in judgement or a lack of caution for them to die without knowing what hit them, and he wasn’t about to let that happen.

It was always better to assume your enemies were more competent than they truly looked.

The swordsman, however, still looked hesitant. “What about your problem?”

Red shook his head. “I will still need to deal with it. We will try to find another place to settle in.”

Domeron nodded. “Then let’s run as quickly as we can.”

They started to do as much.

Red picked a direction away from town, and they started to run as fast as they could. The youth had to hold himself back for his companion to keep up with him, but even then, they were able to travel extremely far in just a matter of ten minutes.

Red, however, still wasn’t satisfied with their progress. From here, they could still see the hills they had been on in the distance, and he knew that this meant anyone searching for them there would be able to see the trail of green mist leaving his body. At the same time, he knew he didn’t have much time.

He looked up at the sky. Night had arrived, and with it the shooting green stars that had become commonplace in his vision. There were still only a few of them he could spot at a time, but he knew this would soon increase in number significantly as the Moon approached its zenith. When that moment came, his curse would strike at force too.

The youth could keep running up until that moment, but it was important for him to prepare himself for when the moment came, much more so because he didn’t know the state his body was in.

With a frown, he reached into his pouch and grasped the insectoid core, extending his awareness towards it.

“What’s the situation?” he asked through this connection.

An angry response came back to him. “What do you think?!”

Red sighed. “You can’t possibly think I’m responsible for what happened.”

Aurelia snorted. “Oh, I don’t blame you, I blame myself! I should have trusted my better judgment and stayed in that damn prison instead of offering to help in spying you! At least I wouldn’t be at risk of dying!”

“… Are you done?”

“Bah, not by a mile, but we both have better things to do!”

Red ignored her outburst. “Can you sense anything odd about my body?”

The youth had done a cursory examination of it with his expanded awareness while he was running, but he hesitated to get near the special “acupoint” in his forehead out of fear of having his consciousness dragged away to whatever dimension that led. At the very least, his other acupoints were still filled with the Moonstone Energy, with the exception of the one in his Five Senses Vein.

She laughed with ridicule. “You think I would try examining your body after what happened? What if that thing also absorbed me? I’m not stupid!”

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It seemed, however, that Aurelia had the same concerns as him. Even still, he had more bad news to give her.

“One of my acupoints wasn’t filled.” Red said.

Aurelia was shocked. “What?! After all that, you weren’t even able to fill your acupoints up?!”

“The accident happened while I was trying to fill up one of the acupoints in my head. I didn’t have the opportunity to do it before the… thing on my forehead started to absorb the energy from the core.”

“Damn it all to hell! How are you going to resist the curse like that?!”

Red hesitated. “… It will be cutting it close.”

He was at a point where the draining force from the Moon had become strong enough to require almost every special acupoint in his body to resist. The youth, however, could never make a precise judgement on how much was needed at every turn, so now that he didn’t have all of his acupoints filled, he was at risk of having his life force absorbed instead.

It probably wouldn’t mean his death, but it would cause him to lose even more life expectancy and make his future cultivation journey even harder. So, in a sense, it was the second worst thing that could happen to him.

“Well, I can’t help you with that!” Aurelia said. “I’m barely holding this core together as it is, and I won’t risk dying to that thing in your head!”

Red would have liked to say that it wasn’t up to her, but he agreed with her decision, even if not for the same reasons. He didn’t want to risk draining the core dry and would rather suffer now than possibly dooming himself later. What came ahead could be extremely bad for him, but even in these situations, the youth knew he needed to look ahead for the future.

A few minutes later, he started to feel it. The familiar pressure settling upon his mind.

The Lunar Gaze.

He slowed down and turned around to look at Domeron. “We’ll stop here.”

“Here?” The swordsman frowned. “There’s barely any cover around us.”

Red shook his head. “I can’t delay it any longer.”

Domeron looked at him with a worried expression. “Should I go away?”

“You can’t distance yourself further than fifty meters, but… I would appreciate if you didn’t stare.”

The youth had already given up on hiding what was about to happen from his companion, but even then, he didn’t want the man staring directly at him as it happened. That could interfere with his focus.

Domeron nodded and looked over to the side. “I’ll be behind that tree.”

The man walked off without saying anything else, leaving Red by himself. There were no more than fifty meters between them, which hardly made the youth feel ‘alone’, but it wasn’t something he could afford to concern himself with right now.

He sat down and entered a meditative state, focusing on his body. Red couldn’t find anything that stood out, and he realized there was nothing else he could do but wait.

‘This is it then.’

Although he tried to prepare himself as best as he could, the process itself was completely outside of his control. He didn’t have any input on when it started or when it would end, and this was all left to the whims of the being in the Moon. Even after seven years, this moment that came around every month or so was still the most powerless and vulnerable he ever felt, and no amount of experience helped assuage these feelings.

Red looked up with a heavy heart. This time, of course, there were a couple of different things.

One was the “tumor” of energy on his forehead, and the other was the lights in the sky. Right now, he could only focus on the latter.

Individually, these flashes of green light were so quick and thin that it was hard for the youth to follow them, but at the moment, there were so many of them in the sky that they seemed to form multiple continuous streams that flowed towards the New Moon, ethereal and hard to place, but there all the same. These streams turned too thin for Red to see them make contact with the celestial body, but their destination was obvious, much more so with so many of them.

What stood out to the youth was how many of these currents of flashing lights he could see. Every small strand seemed to converge into one of seven large streams, while the rest of the night sky seemed relatively free of its influence. The perspective and distance made it hard for the youth to discern where they were coming from, but he almost felt certain that all these currents of green light were formed in the earth below before rising towards the moon as these shooting stars.

He wondered if there was a way to find where these lights came from.

‘Could those be other entrances to the underground?’

Before Red could think any further, he felt a pull in his body.

‘Here it comes.’

The youth looked down, and sure enough, the draining process had already begun. Small strands of misty green energy started to flow out of his body, unhindered by skin or clothing. They came from all parts of his body, more specifically from the parts where his special acupoints were located.

There were eleven small green mist trails. There should have been twelve, but one of his acupoints was completely empty.

‘Please, be enough…’

These trails started to rise up in a slow manner before disappearing into the night sky above. Red looked up again, staring at the dark surface of the New Moon. There, he saw the faint shape of the monstrous being responsible for the majority of his woes since coming to the surface.

Its indescribable, elongated shape wrapped around the surface of the celestial body, the creature too big for the youth’s head to wrap around. Amidst its indistinguishable form, Red could see what he thought were eye slits, staring at him from distances that were impossible to cross.

They were always looking at him.

The draining process seemed to be going as usual, but it was then that the youth felt it. Another pulling force, this time coming from within him. More specifically, it came right from the center of his glabella.

For the second time, in a rather short interval, Red felt the same draining force coming from the thing on his forehead. This time, however, it directed its force over the strands of Moonstone Energy that rose from his body.

‘Oh no…’

Unfortunately for him, he was still helpless to control it. The misty strands that were rising from his body suddenly stopped moving, frozen in midair. Then, slowly, they started to come back down, being drawn towards his forehead.

“What the hell are you doing, Red?!” Aurelia’s concerned voice reached his ears.

Red gritted his teeth. He didn’t have the time nor the will to explain this wasn’t his fault, and the woman likely knew that anyway, so instead he focused on trying to stop it from happening.

However, suffice it to say, he still didn’t have any idea on how to interact with this strange organ of his, and so he could only watch helplessly as the energy that was meant for the Moon started to be drawn towards it instead.

All of a sudden, the pressure of the Lunar Gaze intensified by tenfold. Even Red, who had become used to the feeling, couldn’t help but grasp his head in pain as he keeled over, grunting in pain.

He could feel it - a sensation being transmitted to his mind. Indignation, anger.

This energy belonged to the Moon alone, and the being wouldn’t let these transgressions stand.