“Yin Vortex.” Yang Baibai mulled the term over for a moment. From another angle, it did carry a certain intrigue. “Hold on—you need to explain exactly how you got injured first. Was it inside the Yin Vortex or outside? If this place is real, then we can’t drop our guard against whatever’s lurking in the Mist Forest.”
Perfect. That was precisely the question Gu Xianwang had been dying to ask.
“I can’t go into the prior details, but in short, I entered the Yin Vortex about half a day ahead of you all. Soon after passing through the Mist Barrier, it felt like I’d been drugged. I grew groggy and was ambushed in the woods.” Long Li paused there briefly before continuing. “I can’t remember what exactly attacked me, though. After that, I fell unconscious until you found me.”
Groggy? Ye Chan slapped her thigh. “Hey, same here! For a stretch in the forest, I felt like I’d chugged some rotgut booze.”
Long Li glanced at her and gave a vague nod.
This account… Gu Xianwang watched her impassively and suddenly asked, “Did you notice anything strange about how time was passing?”
According to Long Li’s story, they weren’t trapped here by some ghostly illusion that had them circling in place. Rather, the fog blanketing the entire ridge was alive, shifting like those ever-moving road barriers, flipping directions from one second to the next. Personal sense of direction was useless, and to top it off, the bizarre magnetic field had knocked out all electronics, compasses included.
If they plunged back into the forest now without thinking, they’d never find the path they’d taken to arrive. The smartest move was to hole up here and wait for the Log Cabin’s owner to return. After all, if he could bring back fresh food, he clearly had a way in and out.
For Gu Xianwang, though, the real crux of the matter was time.
Why hadn’t the light in the sky changed at all? And why were there no signs of Long Li’s wounds healing?
The very first question she’d asked upon waking had been about time. Gu Xianwang reflected that it was the deadliest detail of this place.
Held under that steady gaze for a moment, Long Li abruptly looked away. “Truth be told, my head was so muddled I couldn’t track time’s flow at all back then.”
Yang Baibai tsked and scratched his head. “You Rat-Walkers know all about this Yin Vortex and Mist Mirage business, so how’d you end up in such a mess? No countermeasures or anything?”
Long Li shrugged. “The Yin Vortex gets mentioned maybe once or twice in ancient texts over the past millennium. Even the Ghost Camp theory—how many times have your Yang Family ancestors actually run into it?”
Yang Baibai choked on that, muttering sullenly, “Then why’d you lay it out like you had it all figured?”
Exactly. Yang Baibai had unwittingly nailed the key inconsistency—Long Li’s story was off.
Gu Xianwang frowned to herself. Her conclusions were far too precise, yet she breezed past the middle part with hardly a word. With so little in the records, how had she sorted Yin Vortex from Ghost Camp in such a short time? How had she known the Mist Mirage was actually alive?
It was as if she’d bookended the tale but sliced out the vital center. It sounded plausible enough on the surface, but rang utterly hollow inside.
Long Li’s boots were thickly caked in mud, but her clothes were clean. The Mist Forest was sodden, with clear traces of recent rain—she’d trekked through it on foot at least within the last half day, and she hadn’t collapsed in a heap while unconscious. Charcoal smudges stained her waist sash, but not her nails. That meant she’d bathed just before blacking out.
After waking, she’d taken water but shown no frantic need for sugar. If she’d been out cold from grave injuries for any length of time, her craving for salt and sugar wouldn’t have been so subdued.
The thought struck Gu Xianwang like lightning. She suddenly recalled how Long Li had deliberately straightened her hem after leaping down from the eaves.
“I just remembered—Third Sister asked me to pass on something important to you.” Gu Xianwang turned and headed back to the Log Cabin, calling from the doorway, “Bailian, come here a sec.”
Ha? Something from Third Sister?
Ye Chan craned her neck to peer back, wondering why they were suddenly going into a huddle.
Sister Gu’s expression looked deadly serious.
…
By the time she stepped inside, Long Li had likely guessed what was coming. She’d sensed the slip the moment those words had tumbled out. But time had been too short, her body too frail; the explanations had spilled forth, scattering flaws in her wake. Could she patch it? Perhaps. Yet even with her gift for words, staring into those eyes now, nothing else would come.
After a long silence, she sighed. “I’m fine.”
Her unprompted admission brought Gu Xianwang no relief. Instead, her brows knotted tighter, her voice turning hoarse. “Lift your clothes. Let me see that wound.”
No wonder her first move was to rummage through her own backpack. The Bronze Sword was so heavy that she could tell immediately by touch whether it was there or not. What on earth could require turning her back to search for it?
No wonder the moment she could stand steady, she leaped impatiently onto the roof ridge, using the high vantage point to scan the distance. But all that lay before her was this single stretch of woods—what marvels could she possibly spot?
Long Li stiffened under her gaze, feeling more mortified than at any point in her life. Her four fingers clutched the zipper pull on the jacket Gu Xianwang had draped over her shoulders, her thumb rubbing restlessly over her fingertips. After a long hesitation, she finally caved. “It’s nothing, this fog—”
“What fog?” Gu Xianwang cut her off, frowning as she strode forward and invaded her space in a flash. Now they stood just half an arm’s length apart, their quickened breaths’ warm puffs hanging vividly between them. No matter how adept Long Li was with her footwork, she couldn’t slip away from this range.
Gu Xianwang lunged out suddenly, one hand seizing her wrist, the other yanking at her clothes. The stiff fabric rustled sharply as it was manhandled. Long Li could only smile wryly, pinned in place by the hold. Her close-fitting tank top came into view, fresh swaths of crimson blooming over the crusted bloodstains along her side.
The clothing bulged unnaturally inside, far more swollen than at the initial bandaging. This time, Gu Xianwang gave her no chance to hide it, swiftly hiking up the tank top with quick hands. There, stuffed secretly into the bandages along her entire side abdomen, were wads of medical cotton—now all thoroughly soaked in blood, sagging heavily in place.
“You’re fine?” Gu Xianwang lifted her gaze, hands unmoving in their grip. That streak of scarlet tainted the edges of both their visions. “So this is your definition of ‘fine.’ Got it.”
It was as if their roles from that day in the stone chamber—bandaging and applying salve—had reversed. When Gu Xianwang said “Got it,” Long Li’s heart jolted. She grasped the unspoken fear in those words at once. This mad girl was genuinely terrified. Surrendering with raised hands, she admitted, “I didn’t feel the pain until I saw it now.”
When Gu Xianwang still wouldn’t yield, Long Li repeated softly, “It hurts.”
If only her own heart were a touch harder…
Gu Xianwang let out a sigh. “Tell me the truth—how long exactly have you been in this Yin Vortex?”
The girl was sharp, as expected.
Long Li’s long lashes drooped halfway, leaving her unsure whether she felt more helpless or relieved. She skimmed over it briskly. “About three days.”
Three days. Seventy-two hours. Gu Xianwang had no idea how she’d tracked the time, nor did she dare dwell on it.
“After you were injured?”
“Yeah.”
Gu Xianwang drew a deep breath, grinding her back molars until a vein throbbed along her neck. It took ages for her to steady herself. “So the time flow inside the Yin Vortex doesn’t match the outside world, right?”
“Not exactly.” Long Li recalled. “As I remember, the time here has synced up once before.”
“Synced up?”
“Yeah. The Bronze Drum sounds, the Mist Mirage clears, and once the passage connects, the Yin Vortex’s internal time calibrates to the outside. Night can flip to noon in an instant. That was when I stanched the bleeding.”
Gu Xianwang asked gravely, “No stove in the Log Cabin. That plant ash—you packed it in yourself?”
Long Li gave a small nod, and Gu Xianwang went quiet.
The sensation defied description, like an unhealing gash had ripped open in her own gut—hollow and drafty, gales howling through mercilessly, chilling to the bone amid the agony. Better to just let her tough out the hurt.
She exhaled heavily, willing herself into cold detachment. Then it clicked: Long Li must have entered the Yin Vortex the very day she’d gone missing. And between her injury-induced coma and Gu Xianwang finding her, the Mist Mirage had activated more than once.
The first time, via the calibration, she’d briefly regained her regenerative powers and used the plant ash to halt the blood flow. Her condition synced then too, plunging her into frail unconsciousness. Right around that moment, someone had gotten hold of her phone and fired off the first message: a spider emoji hinting for them to seek out Third Sister Red.
Between the first and second activations, Long Li’s wound had held in a tenuous clot. Then came the second: she was deposited in the Log Cabin, the injury tearing open anew. That explained the plant ash in her belly fully saturated and clumped—and why the photo from her phone was a nighttime shot.
The crux lay in whether the message sender and the Log Cabin’s owner were one and the same.
Just like the old hunch about whether the flyer mailer was the same person numbering the Gu Worms in the Karst Cave. Only this time, Gu Xianwang’s reasoning pointed firmly to no.
From the state of the log cabin, it was clear that whoever lived here must have been in wretched physical condition, scraping by on the bare edge of subsistence with no spare mental energy for elaborate schemes. If that person was a “nail,” and Gu Xianwang imagined herself as the shadowy boss behind the scenes, she would never trust one of such shoddy quality.
Thus, it was most likely that the one who had used Long Li’s phone was also an outsider. They had trailed Long Li straight into the Yin Vortex and probably delivered her to this very cabin. Given the timestamp on the photo, that person might still be lurking somewhere in the shadows, watching them.
Noting her expression, Long Li pursed her lips and, with a helpless sigh, pulled a copper luopan from her pocket. “After reaching Xi’an, I made straight for Golden Hook Town. The terrain there is strangely rugged, but I spotted no traces of the Rat-Walkers. I figured your master and his group hadn’t gone that way, so I pressed on toward the Dragon Head. Deep in the mountains at One-Line Sky, I found this Xiang Ling’s Primordial Compass—the blood on it was still fresh.”
“Not long after, the compass in my hand lost all sense of direction. Thick fog descended moments later, and in the blink of an eye, I was inside the Yin Vortex.”
Xiang Ling?
“Do you know who came with my master?”
“The Xieling Leader, plus members from Xiang Ling, the Gongshu Mechanicians, the Daoist Sect, and the Rat-Walkers—thirteen in all.” Long Li drew the dagger from her waist and bent her head to slice through the sodden bandage. “By the rules, Rat-Walkers check in every half day when they’re out on a job.”
“How do you expect to make sense of it alone?” Gu Xianwang batted the blade aside, swabbed her hands twice with alcohol, then took the gauze and fresh bandage. This time she wrapped it thick and secure, winding it snugly in even layers. “These people sound formidable just from their titles alone. If contact’s truly been lost, what can you accomplish by yourself?”
Gu Xianwang felt she finally understood. On matters like these, Long Li was of exactly one mind with her master. They all schemed to shove her beyond the pale, convinced it was for her own good, blind to the fact that she was already mired deep in the snare, writhing helplessly in the grip of fate.
To say nothing of the unknown talons still concealed in the gloom, that vast encompassing net draping over everyone she held dear, shadowing her every step, tightening relentlessly.
Long Li said, “Any place marked on the Long Family Human Skin Map spells great peril. Xianwang, you shouldn’t have come.”
“Yes.” Gu Xianwang shot her a glance, pinched the bandage tail between two fingers, and yanked it taut, drawing a muffled hiss from her before knotting it off. “This is your jianghu folk’s playground. Me barging in was sheer hubris.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“Heh, you lot with your deep plots and mighty skills—just pick up your feet and vanish.” Gu Xianwang lowered her eyes. “But who among you is truly dispensable?”
Long Li knew the words seemed aimed at her but really fretted over Ninth Master Shang’s safety. She hurried to reassure. “Perilous as the Yin Vortex is, it’s not without counters. This living mist follows set patterns in its drift. I once read a verse in an ancient book and have watched it closely since—might be the key.”
Gu Xianwang regarded her wordlessly.
“The verse goes: ‘Fluorescent Candle Fire repels the Yin Vortex; Bronze Drum Thunder—eyes stay shut.’ I reckon Fluorescent Candle Fire means firefly glow. Lanterns made from fireflies might drive back the mist.”
“If the Mist Mirage follows a pattern as straightforward as a tangram puzzle, even the four of us might not crack it quickly.”
Before Gu Xianwang could continue, Long Li shook her head. “No. I have to handle this alone.”
“Why?”
“The Mist Whipping Technique is fiendishly intricate—”
Gu Xianwang interrupted, throwing her own words back: “Because something lethal’s still out there in the Mist Forest. You’ve seen what hurt you, haven’t you?”
The exchange ground to a halt. Long Li fell silent for a long beat before murmuring, “…It’s the most efficient path.”
Perfect. This was the second time those words had passed Long Li’s lips. One self-righteous soul after another. She’d never bested her master at this game—did that mean she’d forever yield to Long Li?
After a measuring look, Gu Xianwang pivoted sharply. “Aren’t you wondering how I got your coordinates?”
She tossed out the bait.
Long Li’s gaze darkened. “You went to the Red Pavilion?”
Right on cue.
Gu Xianwang said, “Yes. And I struck a deal with Third Sister Red.”
Long Li frowned. “…What terms did you accept?”
Turnabout was fair play. From the shadows, Gu Xianwang eyed her expression with smug satisfaction, shrugging languidly. “A deal’s a deal—confidential.”
“You pried the Spider Brooch loose from Third Sister, so you know the rules, don’t you?”
“So,” she said again, “by now you should realize that you and I are in the same boat.”
“If you row too fast, our paddles will clash, the boat will capsize, and we’ll both drown.”
Long Li pursed her lips, momentarily at a loss for words. She only heard her softly speak the final words.
“Perhaps you can try trusting me. Wait for me—it won’t take too long. I promise.”
