“Is it a way out?” Song iyu asked slowly, peering at the narrow gap.
“Depends,” He Yuying said grimly. “If you an way out of this cave, maybe. If you an way out of this life, also maybe.”
Shen Zhenyu didn’t waste ti answering. His jaw tightened, and without a single word he dropped to his knees and crawled straight into the hole. His shoulders scraped against the damp stone as he disappeared into the darkness.
Song iyu gasped, hands flying to her mouth. “Wait—what if sothing grabs him?!”
A beat of silence. Then Shen Zhenyu’s calm voice echoed back through the gap. “You can co here.”
No screaming. That was a good sign.
The three left behind stared at each other.
He Yuying sighed, dragging both hands down his wet face. “Next ti, let’s just pick a myth that grows in a nice adow. With butterflies. Maybe a tea shop nearby.”
“Ooh!” Song iyu perked up instantly, already bouncing on her toes. “Maybe one that involves sunshine!”
Linyue had already crouched beside the gap. Her voice was flat as she wriggled in after Shen Zhenyu. “Or a library. I miss chairs. And naps.”
He Yuying watched her vanish into the stone and muttered darkly, “I miss dry socks.”
Linyue squeezed through the gap, shoulder scraping stone, and grunted once before popping out the other side. Her ponytail flopped into her face, and whatever dignity she had left stayed trapped sowhere in the tunnel behind her. She straightened, brushing damp strands away, then froze.
It was another large chamber. But the river of blood ended here, pooling into a wide, dark crimson basin. In the center of the blood pool stood a single flower, its stem rooted in what must have been so kind of island, though it was hard to tell under the thick, red water.
Her breath caught. It didn’t look real. The flower was unlike anything she had seen before. It had seven large red petals, each one unevenly shaped and spread out like they were reaching in different directions. They glowed softly. Not with light, but with sothing… older. Sothing that humd in the air and stirred the back of her neck. Red energy pulsed faintly from the center, slow and steady.
One by one, the others stumbled in behind her. He Yuying coughed like the tunnel had tried to poison him, then shook his leg sharply, muttering darkly as if sothing had nibbled his boot. Song iyu tumbled out next, hair sticking in every direction, already swatting at her sleeves and grumbling that tunnels were clearly invented by people with no sense of fashion.
Linyue’s gaze never left the flower. "Brother Zhenyu," she said quietly, eyes narrowed with sharp focus, "lights off."
Shen Zhenyu did not hesitate. The flas hovering in the air blinked out at his will, and the chamber was swallowed in absolute darkness.
Then—
“The flower! It looks like red stars!” Song iyu gasped, still flicking suspicious red goo off her arms. “Oh! So pretty! Terrifying. But pretty!”
He Yuying squinted at the eerie glow, unimpressed even as his jaw tightened. “So… it wasn’t a myth after all?” he muttered, a little annoyed that they were, in fact, still inside the worst cave in existence for sothing real.
In the pitch-black, the strange petals gave off a glow that pulsed and shimred like red stardust. The uneven spread of the petals made it resemble a constellation scattered across the pool. The flower didn’t bloom. It reached. It stood alone in the center of the bloody water, casting a quiet, ghostly light that made everything else seem more wrong.
Dream Star Leaf.
Suddenly, the na made a little more sense. The petals really did look like scattered stars glowing softly in the dark. Still, Linyue could not understand why anyone had called it a leaf when it was very clearly a flower. Perhaps whoever nad it had bad eyesight. Or questionable taste.
Shen Zhenyu quietly let his fire spiritual energy rise again, a faint glow spilling across the chamber. The flower’s ghostly shimr dimd in comparison, and with the light ca details they all wished they had missed.
Bodies. At first, none of them noticed. Their eyes had been too fixed on the strange flower in the pool. But now… now the rest of the chamber revealed itself.
Around the edge of the water, more bodies lay slumped against the rocks. Not skeletons. Not ancient, fragile bones like before. These still had skin, faces, empty eyes. Gray, sunken, half-preserved by the damp chill. So mouths were frozen wide in silent screams. So faces were twisted in shock, lips peeled back over yellow teeth.
He Yuying made a noise that was part groan, part squeak. “Oh good. New corpses. That’s exactly what this cave was missing.”
Linyue took a step forward, her boots squelching unpleasantly on the wet stone. Her eyes swept slowly across the chamber. The cave walls weren’t just cold stone. They were ruined. Deep claw marks scarred the rock, long and jagged, like sothing had raked through it again and again. Other marks were smaller, uneven, desperate—fingernails scraping, people trying to climb, trying to escape. Drag marks stretched from the walls to the water’s edge, carved by bodies being pulled unwillingly toward the pool.
The whole chamber whispered one horrible truth: none of them had co here by choice. Soone or sothing had brought them here.
Linyue narrowed her eyes. “Maybe they fought. Tried to run,” she murmured softly. “Or maybe... they were thrown in.”
Her gaze returned to the strange red flower standing tall and proud in the middle of the bloody pool, like it had nothing to do with the horror around it. It still glowed faintly, pulsing in rhythm with sothing unseen, like a heart that should not exist. She didn’t warn anyone. She didn’t explain. Blue fla burst to life in her hand as she raised her palm toward the flower.
Song iyu gasped, nearly choking on her own breath. “Sister Linyue, wait—!”
He Yuying imdiately tensed. His eyes went wide. “Should I be diving? I feel like I should be diving.”
Shen Zhenyu said nothing. He just stood there, still and quiet, watching her. Trusting her, as always.
The fla left her hand. It streaked through the air and slamd into the flower, curling around the red petals in a swirl of heat and light, crackling as it touched the strange red glow. But the flower didn’t burn right away. Its red aura burst outward, bright and throbbing like a heartbeat, pushing against the flas. The clash filled the chamber with pulsing flashes of blue and red, painting the corpses on the ground in grotesque shades.
Linyue didn’t stop. Her arm didn’t waver. The glow reflected in her eyes, which were calm. Not angry. Not afraid. Just resolute. Like she had already decided this thing didn’t deserve to exist.
The petals shriveled first. Then they sagged, sizzling and hissing as they lted. One by one, they collapsed inward, slumping into blackened ooze that slid down the stem and dripped into the red pool with faint, sickening plops.
No more glow. No more flower. No more myth.
“…It will only bring disaster,” Linyue said softly, almost as if she were speaking only to herself.
The silence that followed was heavy.
Shen Zhenyu turned his gaze to her, his expression unreadable, calm on the surface. But inside, he understood. Anyone else who had stood in front of that flower would have lunged for it. Eternal youth. Immortality. A miracle that could turn the realm upside down. People would have killed for it. Died for it. Torn the world apart for it. But not her. She burned it.
One look at the bodies piled around the pool was enough to know she was right. Whatever the flower had promised, it had already demanded too much in return. Better to erase it than let the world destroy itself chasing a lie.
Song iyu, pale and still dripping with suspicious red water, nodded slowly. Her voice was faint but steady. “Yeah… yeah. That’s fair.”
He Yuying crossed his arms, nodded once, and muttered, “Not worth dying in a blood river over.”
No one argued. Not even Song iyu. With the bones scattered around them, the blood pool behind them, and corpses that were far too fresh for comfort, burning the flower felt less like a bold choice and more like common sense. It was, without question, the best decision anyone had made all week.
Together, the four of them let out a breath, long and heavy. It wasn’t peace. But it was the closest thing they had found since stepping into this haunted cave. Then, just when they thought they could start figuring out how to leave, a sound broke through the silence.
Footsteps. Lots of them.
Everyone froze. They were all thinking the sa thing: Seriously?
They stared at each other in quiet horror. Song iyu mouthed a single word: “More?”
There was no ti to panic properly. The only exit they had was the way they crawled in—the blood river, the fox-sized crack, the whole humiliating squeeze—and not one of them was excited to repeat that.
Then the cave itself answered.
Rumble. The wall beside them shifted with a long, grinding groan, stone dragging against stone. A section slid open, revealing a passage they hadn’t seen before. And right on cue, a bunch of very serious, very armored people sward. Swords, spears, scowls, the whole package. At least ten of them, and none looked friendly.
The four cultivators sighed. In unison.
He Yuying muttered, “Why does trouble always find us?”
Song iyu snapped her head around, pointing at herself with both hands. “It’s not because of !”
Linyue exhaled slowly, flicking a sticky, red-stained strand of hair off her face. Her tone was calm, but her words weren’t exactly hopeful. “Do you think they brought towels? Or clean robes?”
Shen Zhenyu chuckled under his breath. “Unlikely.”
He Yuying glanced down at his sleeves, still wet and stained with suspicious colors. His voice was mournful. “Maybe snacks? I could forgive a lot if they brought snacks.” He paused, then grimaced. “Unless the snacks are blood-contaminated. Blood pie. Red bun disaster…”
Song iyu gagged at the image.
And then, before anyone could raise a hand to say “wait, we can explain,” the strangers attacked.
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