They stood upon the jagged ledge for a long while, staring into the pulsing fog below.
The altar lood like the heart of a corpse god, its eye ever open—watching, breathing, beckoning.
Lin Mu broke the silence.
"We go no further together."
Daoist Chu turned, startled. "What?"
"You and ng Bai should stay back," Lin Mu said calmly. "This depth… it doesn't welco us."
ng Bai clenched his fists. "But Master—"
"You've seen it," Lin Mu said. "These phantoms—these specters—they're not simple ghosts. They're not like anything we've faced before."
Daoist Chu exhaled slowly. His robes were scorched, and more than a few talismans had turned to ash at his waist. The fatigue in his bones was not rely physical.
"You're right," he admitted. "I've hunted ghosts and restless dead since I was a Junior disciple in the Zenith Dao Sect. But this—this is sothing else entirely. They don't move like ghosts. They don't feel like them."
"They're… heavier," ng Bai said, rubbing his chest. "Even when they vanish, it's like sothing stays behind."
Daoist Chu nodded. "It's more than residual resentnt. Their qi… it's not yin-based. Not fully. So of it feels like—like corrupted intent. As if their cultivation twisted them after death."
Lin Mu looked out toward the valley floor, his gaze tracing the drifting forms that danced like shattered reflections in a pond of nightmares.
"I've felt it too. Their strength doesn't register properly. It's as if we're looking at a storm through cracked glass."
Daoist Chu furrowed his brow. "Could it be a matter of different cultivation paths?"
Lin Mu's eyes narrowed.
"That would explain much."
A long silence fell between them, broken only by the faint hum of the altar's pulse below.
"Not all paths follow the sa roots," Lin Mu murmured. "We walk the lines of qi, spirit, and body… but these things? They tread forgotten veins—paths of mory, madness, and grief. How do you asure a ghost who's powered by a broken oath? By a death they refused to accept?"
Daoist Chu looked grim. "You don't. You feel them. And feeling them… hurts."
ng Bai shifted uneasily. "Then we should leave. All of us. There's no use—"
"No," Lin Mu said softly. "I must go on."
ng Bai opened his mouth to protest again, but Daoist Chu raised a hand.
"No," he said quietly. "He's right. We've reached the edge of what our skills allow."
His fingers twitched at the frayed edges of a failed ward talisman.
"My seals can bind restless dead. But these aren't just restless—they're bound elsewhere. Their chains are deeper than any ritual I know."
He turned to Lin Mu. "You carry the Buddhist aura. It… resonates with them. Like they rember sothing they forgot when they died. That's not just power—it's authority."
Lin Mu nodded solemnly. "Then I'll invoke it again."
"You'll go alone?"
"I must."
A stillness settled over them. The fog had grown denser, as if the valley itself held its breath.
Daoist Chu finally placed a talisman at the cliff's edge. "Then we'll wait here. If anything follows you out of that pit, we'll be the first line."
ng Bai nodded reluctantly. "Be careful, Master."
Lin Mu didn't answer imdiately.
He looked toward the altar, toward the shape carved in thorns and stone.
Toward the eye.
"I don't think caution will matter now," he said quietly. "But I will return. Or you'll know I didn't."
Without another word, he stepped off the ledge and began to descend.
The mist swallowed him like a curtain drawn shut.
The path down was not made for feet.
It spiraled, jagged and shifting, like a mory retold too many tis. Stone twisted into root, then into bone, then into shadow, then back again. It was as if ti lost aning.
As he moved, the phantoms grew still.
They did not attack. They did not flee.
They simply watched.
Dozens of them lined the cliffs and hollows—warriors in broken armor, nobles with decayed crowns, monks with hollow eyes and no mouths. A procession of the damned, silent witnesses to his descent.
Lin Mu's footsteps rang like gongs in the stillness.
The altar drew closer, its eye ever open.
And sowhere within its gaze… sothing stirred.
Lin Mu reached the final descent—a basin sunken into the roots of the world, where the mist thickened into a wall and ti no longer obeyed the heavens.
There was no wind here. No sound. Not even the distant whispers of the phantoms remained.
Only silence.
Before him stood the altar—not the cracked stone visage he had seen from above, but its true form: a monolith of bleeding roots and bone, fused with obsidian slabs etched with glyphs that squird when gazed upon.
And in its center… the Eye.
Dormant. Thorn-wreathed. Closed.
Until Lin Mu stepped onto the final platform.
Then—it opened.
A thousand screaming voices erupted in his mind.
Not sounds. mories.
"She was my child—why didn't I take her place?"
"The war ended. But they kept alive. To rember it."
"I saw the stars once. Then they burned."
Lin Mu staggered back, gripping his head.
The altar breathed.
Its pulse echoed with seven heartbeats—and then broke into chaos.
From behind the altar, the ground split.
Blackened roots unfurled like tendrils from a dying god, dragging forth a figure clad in tattered robes made of ash and whispers. Its face was a mirror of Lin Mu's own, cracked and inverted. A mockery of life. A reflection long lost.
Its eyes… bleeding thorns.
Its na thundered in his mind before it even spoke:
"EPHERARCH."
'The Crown of the Crimson Roots.'
'Warden of the Thorned Eye.'
"You should not have co."
Its voice was not one, but many—each syllable echoing with the agony of an entire lifeti.
Lin Mu stood tall.
And drew in a breath.
He pressed his palms together and chanted.
"May the heart be still…"
The Calming Heart Sutra ignited.
Golden light blood from within him, pushing back the shadows, peeling away the rot of the altar's will. The fog retreated like cowering spirits. The Eye narrowed.
The Epherarch raised its hand.
The arena shattered.
User Comments
0 comments from readers