The moment Bo had pulled Li free of the cold river they had both collapsed upon the banks to rest. Bo was not sure how to comprehend what had just happened to him when he jumped into the water like Rui Yifu ordered, and he decided he did not want to understand it. Or ever do it again. He sat up on the grass, shivering in the cold while he drew up his knees to his chest. "H-hey Li, how are you feeling?"

"Cold," Li Baobao replied. "Tired."

Bo also felt cold and tired, but the chill and exhaustion was not bothering him as it once would have. When he was younger, wandering at the sides of the streets and begging the cold would cut into his bone, sinking into his marrow. He remembered exhaustion at its worst, when he was so tired he could not even sleep but instead simply lost hours to nothingness and awoke with the gait of a puppet being dragged with thin strings. "Boss, Rui..." he called out. He thought about calling for Ji Ying too, but the mood passed quickly when he thought she would quickly curse at him.

But there was no response from anyone.

Just the sound of the river's calm movement.

He sat up and looked around. Everything looked much the same as it did before. Pine trees, the river, the ground being pecked at by frost. Where had everyone gone? He took Li Baobao's hand to make him sit up as well, "look! Everyone disappeared!"

Li Baobao's face was set in a frown. Not a frown of sorrow, or consternation. It was just a frown, while his eyes seemed fixed on something invisible far away.

Bo felt very alone.

He got to his feet and pulled Li Baobao up too, patting his friend's back, "I'm pretty sure if we just follow the river, we'll come on something."

"Why?"

"I don't know," Bo replied honestly. Now was not the time to slake an ego by making himself sound smarter, nor was it the time to let the increasingly many-legged fear crawling over his heart take control. "I don't know, I remember hearing it once from my mother. People build close to rivers." If they found a town, then surely Liu Xie and Rui Yifu would turn up soon as well. They were smart and would follow the same logic, he felt. He did not much care if Ji Ying showed up.

"Your mother wasn't human."

Suddenly the fear in Bo's heart turned into fire instead. His throat dried from its heat. "...That doesn't matter right now, Li Baobao-"

"What can I even do?"

Bo was beginning to wonder if something had killed Li Baobao and started wearing his skin. But when he looked into Li Baobao's eyes he only saw the gloomy merchant's son staring back at him. Something had changed and Bo did not know what. He did not have time to ponder on the abrupt change in Li Baobao's attitude. The cold from their clothes and the air was seeping deeper into his limbs. "What you can do is keep us moving, Li. That's what matters right now. We'll head upstream." Bo did not give Li Baobao a chance to protest, holding his wrist firmly and pulling him along as he started following the river's upstream current.

The entire forest had hints of frost on it. Sometimes a patch of it would still be clinging to the grass where the shadows of the trees still hid it. Or the lowest branches might have a light coat of white. There were deceptively-looking delicate shrubs and smaller plants that clung near the trunks of the larger trees. As they walked, the ground tilted slowly upwards beneath their feet, rocks tumbling aside where they got dislodged from the cold muddy bank.

As Bo kicked another rock, it skipped out into the river, plunging into the water and knocking a white chunk of fabric free that floated upwards. Curiosity took hold and he reached into the water. The icy chill raced up his arm as his fingers closed around the fabric so he yanked his hand out quickly with the fabric still entwined with his fingers.

The fabric was cold and oddly smooth. The edges of it were not tattered so much as torn like paper would be. Bo experimentally flopped it around. "Li, what kind of fabric is this? Is this rich people stuff?" He handed the fabric to Li Baobao, then continued moving along the riverbank while still holding onto Li Baobao's sleeve.

"I've never seen fabric like this," Li Baobao answered.

"Huh," Bo wondered if it was a new thing when the pale shape of another piece of fabric floating in the river caught his attention again. Its pale shape floated atop darkening water, tiny pieces of it breaking away and disappearing. Bo's eyes went against the current, watching the dark stain in the water grow and extend its tendrils down river.

The water...

Bo sucked in a breath as he realized the dark color spreading through it was blood.

"I see it did not work out as you had hoped," a voice came from ahead. A vaguely familiar voice, one that made Bo's stomach feel cold. Panic rose in his chest as he looked for somewhere to hide. Something told him he did not want to be found by the speaker, and after a second that stretched for too long he spotted a decayed collapsed tree trunk that he lunged for, pulling Li with him. Li Baobao tried to yell as they hit the ground but Bo clapped a hand firmly over his mouth, his entire body tensing as he tried to crush them both as flat against the trunk as possible.

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"I will admit, I was overeager," the replying voice was soft.

Bo dared to peek over the trunk, to see who these two speakers were. The sight stopped his lungs, as though two ghostly cold hands had grabbed them and squeezed.

When Bo was a child, a great buzzing sound had overtaken his village. Cicadas had come from the damp earth to begin their transformations. It had been a great time of jubilation, he remembered. Cicadas tasted delicious fried. His mother told him it was a recipe she remembered from multiple lifetimes and he had thought she had simply been exaggerating her age at the time. But what he really remembered was climbing a tree with his sisters to watch a cicada as big as his thumb shed its shell.

The sight in the river reminded him of it, except filtered through a demon's nightmare. A body was submerged a little below its waist, and it was bowed forward, arms and long silky black hair in the water. The flesh on its back was splitting open slowly, sending rivers of red cascading down its ribs and into its hair where it eventually made its way into the water. The smell was a horrible pungent mixture of copper and flowers. The skin at the scalp split with a noisy tearing sound and the person's body shuddered, the back rising and falling slightly.

"Do you need help?" A kind faced man was standing near a tree, holding clothes in his arms. At his feet was a pile of jade and black fabric. Bo's guts clenched. It was that man from the Free City; Wang Huaqing, who stood with the same falsely pleasant expression on his face.

"No," the other replied, the peeling flesh on one side hurled up more blood and some sort of oily substance. Then all at once, the shed flesh peeled away, the black strands of hair toppling into the water as the shed skin separated into shrinking chunks. Pallid flesh and long white hair, still stained heavily with blood, were left behind. Then they submerged themselves in the water.

Wang Huaqing moved closer to the riverbank as the person emerged from the water. It was a very slender very pale young man, utterly nude, who seemed unsteady on his feet. His paleness felt wrong to Bo somehow. There was not a hint of blood beneath, the color of porcelain, or of the moon. Wang Huaqing dressed the man in white clothes, which seemed to have more color than the strange pale being himself. The pale man turned his head towards Wang Huaqing, exposing his face to Bo's sight. An elegant nose and delicate chin set within an overall oval shaped face but it was all just so wrong! The lips had no color, there was no blush to the cheeks, and his eyes. Pitch black things with narrow white pupils that Bo prayed to any god that was listening would not see him and Li hiding behind the trunk only a short distance away. What was that thing? If Liu Xie or Rui Yifu were around, Bo was certain they would know.

"You look more the part of a lord now," Wang Huaqing said, helping the unbalanced being stand. "How do you feel right now, my lord?"

"Ah, much better. I was growing tired of being in her flesh," the pale thing replied. "And I got to see her."

"You scared her, unfortunately, my lord."

"No, the 'Lady of Calm Waters' scared her. She still has not seen me properly," the pale being said before speaking with a more more jubilant tone. "I got to touch her! She was so close to me. She looks so much healthier now, and happy! I could have taken her into my arms, imagine how much happier she would be with me and her. If only I were a little more patient..."

"With all due respect, I believe there are a few other concerns to take care of still. The Jade Prince will probably notice one of his favorite concubines is gone soon."

The pale thing laughed, and it was a laugh of genuine warmth and amusement. Somehow it did nothing to soothe Bo's own troubled heart. "I think he already knows something is wrong. However, he is just as beholden to the agreement as his sister and brother are. I did not expect the Amber Emperor to give Idony that 'pig' to help her, but that was taken care of. I was surprised the Empress of Hell did not give anything to her though."

"So you believe you've been discovered already?"

"I believe they think the Lady of Calm Waters was doing something suspicious, but..." the pale being smiled gently, "I do not think they know I'm here. Do not worry, Wang Huaqing, we have not been discovered by the heavens yet."

Bo looked back down to see Li Baobao's wide eyes looking up at him in fear. He may not have been able to see what was behind the trunk, but he certainly could hear the words being spoken. Bo pointed back down the way they came, and Li nodded. The two men shifted slowly, ever so slowly. The two strangers were talking about something else, Bo was not wasting the energy to listen in except to make sure nothing akin to 'there are people behind that trunk' was spoken.

Every movement seemed excessively loud, each shuffle a waterfall, and the moment they both got to their feet their footfalls were like thunder. Bo, holding Li Baobao's wrist, then broke into a dead sprint forward. The river, the trees, all rushed by them quickly as he ran as fast as he could with Li Baobao in tow. The cold air whipped at his face like wind as he found the strength to haul them both forward faster than he could remember ever running before. His heart labored in his chest and his throat grew dry as he moved. A shape seemed to abruptly spring up ahead of him and he came to a stop so suddenly that Li Baobao smashed into him, bowling both men over head over heels until they came to a stop against a hardy elm tree which thankfully only had a small amount of frost to dump on Bo's head.

Li Baobao groaned in pain.

Bo grumbled, his vision still spinning. Someone was talking but all he could hear was his own heart pounding in his ears. He blinked quickly, as though that would somehow right the spinning world around him.

Then he felt something poke his cheek. He grunted in response, focusing his eyes up at a small face staring down at him. His spinning brain struggled to put the sight together until he noticed... red hair.

Bo bolted back to his feet and yelled, "BITEY SISTER!" He grabbed her in his arms and gave her a hug, now laughing in strange relief. Despite the horrifying things that had happened, the burning city, seeing a grave clan, the long slog to the mountain and the truth of his family, then the events in the fish people city, all of that seemed far away. His broken world had been stitched up a little. "You're here! You're okay!" He said, holding her up.

"Hi Bo!" Zhu'er answered with a smile, not trying to sink her teeth into Bo or struggling in his grip as she dangled above the ground.

"Z-Zhu'er.... we're glad you're okay..." Li Baobao managed to sputter.

"Ugh," Ji Ying, the person who had been the shape that had caused the crash of the two men, crossed her arms. "Of course, it's you two."

"Happy to see you too, jiejie!"

Ji Ying's shriek of offended anger was such that Bo felt certain even the dead heard it.