She bit down hard on her lower lip, not making a sound. Her eyes quickly scanned the corners of the log cabin, confirming no one lay in ambush. Only then did she hurry across the scattered trash littering the floor and reach the bedside.
The room was pitch black, but Gu Xianwang could see everything with crystal clarity. Long Li lay covered by a tattered blue cloth sheet, her face pale as paper, her chest barely rising and falling—like an iceman frozen solid in some alien realm.
Gu Xianwang’s hand hovered in midair, hesitating for an instant before daring to touch her face. This was the first time, she thought—the first time Long Li lay so utterly defenseless right in front of her. A flood of urgent steps filled her mind: check her condition, get her to a safer place fast, figure out how she’d ended up like this. Countless tasks crowded together. But her heart hammered wildly, like a rubber ball smashed against concrete. Her blood seemed to freeze, leaving her limbs numb with cold.
In that very instant—as Gu Xianwang leaned down, reached out, and her fingertip pressed against the pulse in Long Li’s neck—a single thought flashed through her mind.
She wanted to grow stronger. Not just the ordinary kind of strong, but to claim a qualification that would let her stand as an equal with Master and Long Li.
She was sick and tired of always showing up too late.
A moment later, Ye Chan peeked one eye through the door crack and whispered inside, “Sister Gu, find anything?”
Gu Xianwang had already pulled back the cloth sheet covering Long Li. Beneath it, she wore a simple tank top, a broad stain of blood smeared across her side. Between her ribs and abdomen, right in the liver area, gaped a raw hole punched clean through—likely by some long, rod-shaped weapon. It was now stuffed full of something like wood ash or carbon powder, which had stanched the bleeding for now.
Another backpack sat at her feet; it had been stashed under the wooden bed. Fortunately, Long Li had gripped one of the straps in a death grip, or Gu Xianwang might not have spotted it right away.
Long Li was still alive. Her pulse was faint but steady, her body temperature dangerously low, her skin chilled to the touch—classic signs of massive blood loss.
It was strange. From what she’d shown back in Guizhou, this gecko of a woman always healed at speeds no normal person could match. But this time, the blood on her clothes had dried to a dark crust, and yet her wound showed not the slightest sign of mending.
Was something wrong with her, or was this place different from everywhere else?
Gu Xianwang shielded Long Li with her body and glanced back. “Anything unusual outside?”
“Nah, just wondering why you haven’t come out yet.”
She paused to think, then shifted half a step sideways, revealing Long Li’s upper body. Ye Chan’s eyes went wide. “Long—”
“Shh.” Gu Xianwang shook her head. “You bring the medical kit?”
Ye Chan clapped a hand over her mouth and nodded vigorously. She shrugged off her backpack and tossed it inside. “I’ll stand guard at the door.” With that, she crossed her arms like Guan Yu himself and planted herself by the entrance. But she couldn’t hold still; she sneaked a glance back and asked, “She… she’s gonna be okay, right?”
“Where’s Yang Baibai?”
“No weird stuff outside, so he looped around back to check things out.”
Gu Xianwang gave a quick hum and rattled off, “She’s still out cold. Stab wound straight through her abdomen—looks like rebar or some other rod-shaped thing did it. Heavy blood loss; she could go hypothermic. Someone gave her basic treatment before, but it was botched.”
Less treatment, more like an exorcism.
By the end, Gu Xianwang was fuming herself. If you don’t know how to treat someone, don’t half-ass it. Picking her up, jamming carbon ash into her gut to plug the hole, weighing her down with paper money and coarse salt—what was that supposed to be, saving her life or shoving her into the grave?
Sprinkling salt right on the wound? Good thing she was unconscious and couldn’t protest. Who the hell treats people like that?
The conditions here were abysmal—not fit for Long Li to stay in for long. But in her current state, she might not survive being moved. Gu Xianwang first swabbed the crusted blood from her skin with alcohol. Then she painstakingly dug out the contaminated ash from the abdominal wound, grain by grain. She had to work fast—before the log cabin’s owner came back, and before Yang Baibai realized something was off.
Even as she fought to keep steady, watching that finger-wide hole expose raw, bloody flesh made her heart quake. Her hesitation slowed her hands; in a shaky moment, the cold forceps grazed the edge of the wound. Long Li’s brows furrowed tight even in her coma, a hoarse groan slipping from her lips.
This woman… could feel pain after all.
Gu Xianwang bit her lower lip and simply sat down beside her. With her right hand, she continued cleaning the wound while stretching her left arm toward Long Li’s face. She gently stroked Long Li’s forehead and murmured softly into her ear, “Blow on it, pat it, and all the ouchies fly away.”
“Good girl, just bear with it a little longer. It won’t hurt soon.”
She tended to both the upper and lower parts of the wound without even realizing how deftly her hands were moving. In truth, Gu Xianwang had become something of an expert in medical matters from treating her own injuries over time—but self-care and caring for someone else were two entirely different beasts. She held her breath the whole way through, beads of hot sweat forming on her forehead, until she finally cleared away every last bit of carbon ash. Then she carefully packed the wound with medical cotton.
These were the bare-bones conditions they had to work with: a layer of wound powder applied on top, followed by a covering of gauze. Gu Xianwang stared at Long Li’s abdomen. Perhaps from dehydration, the lines of her muscles were etched deeply into her skin, rising and falling with her steady breaths. Good—no more blood seeping through. She let out a long sigh of relief at last and wiped the sweat from her brow with her sleeve.
Now she needed to get Long Li out of here as quickly as possible. If whatever had caused the injury carried tetanus or some other bacterial infection, they’d be in real trouble.
“Not chanting anymore?”
Lost in thought, Gu Xianwang heard a hoarse voice speak up out of nowhere. She whipped her head around and locked eyes with Long Li’s jet-black pupils, which gleamed like polished jade. Weakened as she was, there was a rare, languid haze in her gaze—like a cat stirring from a nap on a fluffy blanket during a sunny afternoon.
Gu Xianwang froze for a moment, blinking reflexively as heat flooded her cheeks. “When did you wake up?”
“Mm… not long ago.” Long Li’s lips curved into a faint smile, her long lashes dewy as they fluttered shut for a brief moment, savoring the last traces of peace. “Water?”
“Got it.” Gu Xianwang hurriedly fished the water bottle from her pack, twisted off the cap, and held it to Long Li’s lips. Then she hesitated, realizing the angle might make her choke. “Want me to feed you?”
In the cramped confines of the dilapidated hut, their voices were hushed whispers, like a pair of thieves plotting in the dark. Long Li was weak, that much was understandable, but somehow Gu Xianwang had caught the mood as well. Meanwhile, Ye Chan was still out there playing the fool, shifting through awkward poses to block the doorway—completely oblivious to the two inside furtively propping up Long Li’s waist to help her sip water.
Long Li’s lips glistened now with a thin sheen of moisture, like parched earth after the first rain. Her throat was so raw she had to lean in close for Gu Xianwang to make out her words. “You… how did you find this place?”
The phrasing alone confirmed it: the message hadn’t come from Long Li herself. Given her current state, there were a thousand possible explanations, threads upon threads to untangle. Gu Xianwang’s mind raced as she cut to the chase. “Do you know Sheep Bend Gully?”
In the darkness, Long Li’s expression sharpened for an instant before shifting to bewilderment. As she tried to sit up a little, the motion tugged at her wound, and she slumped forward, exhausted, into the crook of Gu Xianwang’s neck. They were already pressed so close that their cheeks brushed together, one cool and one feverish. Gu Xianwang’s mind went blank with a buzz; she could barely make out Long Li’s murmured words: “Where is Sheep Bend Gully?”
The shadow at the door darkened as Yang Baibai called out impatiently from outside. “Hey, is there a gold mine in there or what? You’ve been digging forever!”
Ye Chan flailed her arms to block him. “Hey, hey, no peeking! Back off, back off!”
The commotion jolted Gu Xianwang; she sprang to her feet in a flash, her back ramrod straight as if she’d been caught and punished to stand in the corner. “W-wait just a second.”
A cough escaped her—had it really been so long since she’d spoken? Her voice cracked awkwardly on the first word.
As soon as she moved, Long Li straightened up as well. She reached into the medical kit, pulled out a roll of elastic bandage, and wrapped it tightly around her waist several times before tying it off in a firm knot. Her lips had gone pale, but her eyes were sharp now—like she’d transformed into a different person in an instant. She carried herself with the unstoppable momentum of wind, forest, fire, and mountain.
Standing in the shadows, Long Li glanced sideways and asked in a low voice, “What day is it today?”
The question came out of nowhere, but Gu Xianwang understood immediately. “The second day.” The second day you’d gone missing.
The tank top Long Li wore was pierced clean through front to back and soaked with a huge swath of blood. From the side, the sharp lines of her shoulders and arms caught Gu Xianwang’s eye and held it. Without a second thought, she shrugged off her own windbreaker and draped it over Long Li, who stood obediently in place to let her. The stiff fabric rustled as it settled, muffling Long Li’s quiet sigh. “I’ve still gone and dragged you into this.”
Gu Xianwang’s attention was fixed on the door; she hadn’t quite caught it. “What?”
“Hm? Someone’s in there?” Yang Baibai was taller than Ye Chan, and even with her arms outstretched, she couldn’t fully shield his line of sight.
No point hiding it any longer. Gu Xianwang stepped outside. “Yeah, I came here to pick her up. She’s one of Rat-Walkers’ people.”
Ye Chan turned her head and exchanged a knowing glance with her, nodding as if sudden realization had dawned. “Exactly. One of the Rat-Walkers’ sisters got hurt, and Sister Gu was just giving her emergency first aid. What’s the rush?”
“Rat-Walkers?” Yang Baibai arched an eyebrow and craned his neck to peer inside. He recognized her immediately from her silhouette alone. “You?”
Gu Xianwang had known there was no fooling his sharp eyes, so she might as well borrow Third Sister Red’s reputation. “Third Sister sent her to lend a hand, but she ended up falling into this Ghost Camp by accident too.”
It helped that Third Sister Red was infamous for her mercurial ways—Flowing Cloud like an illusion, a fact known to all in the jianghu. For one of her underlings to switch faces every so often was nothing out of the ordinary. Yang Baibai let out an indifferent “Oh” and asked, “She only sent the one of you?”
Long Li slipped into character effortlessly. She stepped out from the shadows and replied in a calm tone, “The Rat-Walkers have always valued skill over numbers. Third Sister instructed that this matter be handled in strict secrecy. Bailian thanks the three of you for saving her life and asks that you keep her whereabouts confidential.”
“White Lotus(Bailian)?” Ye Chan’s eyes sparkled with mischief as she drawled exaggeratedly, “Ooh~! So you’re the infamous White Lotus, huh.”
“Tch, her code name is Bailian, the medicinal herb,” Yang Baibai scoffed. “She’s a Close Guard for the Rat-Walkers, a personal favorite raised by the Boss herself. They use herb names as code names—it’s hereditary. When one dies, it passes to the next. You know nothing.”
Ye Chan: …The last time someone called me clueless was the last time.
Seeing her aggrieved expression, Gu Xianwang cleared her throat lightly and said, “Did you check outside the house? See anything unusual?”
Yang Baibai chuckled. “Does anything in this place look normal to you?”
He stepped inside and prowled around the room. “This woodshed has to be at least a few decades old, but the trash inside is a real mix—some fresh, some not.” He fished half a pack of leftover snack bread out of a red plastic bucket against the wall. Mold spots had already bloomed across the white dough. A quick glance at the date: “Heh. Expires October next year. That’s brand new.”
Gu Xianwang frowned. “Doesn’t that just prove this so-called Ghost Camp can be entered and exited freely?”
“No, this isn’t a Ghost Camp.” Long Li gazed at the thick fog shrouding the distant woods. “This is a Mist Mirage.”
