The abandoned spiritual farm materialized from the darkness just as the clouds devoured the moon whole, leaving them in a world painted in shades of despair. What had once been fertile ground blessed by cultivation now lay cursed beneath their feet—crops withered into skeletal remains, soil cracked and bleeding a sickly black essence, broken talismans scattered like the bones of forgotten prayers. In the distance, a scarecrow stood sentinel against the void, its head twisted at an angle that nature never intended, as if something had snapped its neck and left it to rot.
The very air tasted of decay and lost hope.
Rou Rou pressed herself against Lan Xueyao's side like a frightened sparrow, her whispers carrying the tremor of genuine terror.
"Shijie... something is watching us. I can feel eyes on my back, following every step..."
Xinyu found himself gravitating toward Hua Ling's presence without conscious thought, while Yan Zheng, Shen Yao, and Qingze spread out in a practiced formation, their movements silent as hunting wolves.
Then—piercing the suffocating quiet—came a woman's voice.
It rose from the darkness like smoke from a funeral pyre, low and eerily melodic, weaving a lullaby in a tongue that predated memory itself. The words carried such profound sorrow that they seemed to seep into one's bones, promising nightmares for weeks to come.
A murder of crows exploded from the canopy above with the violence of black thunder, their wings beating a chaotic symphony of panic against the night.
Xinyu yelped—a sound torn from his throat by pure instinct—and his hands shot out to grasp the nearest anchor in a world gone mad.
Which happened to be Hua Ling's sleeve-covered arm.
Eyes squeezed shut against the assault of shadows and sound, heart hammering against his ribs like a caged bird, Xinyu clung with the desperation of a drowning man finding driftwood.
Hua Ling looked down at him, something flickering across his usually impassive features. That warmth again—soft, trusting, utterly guileless in its need for protection. His pulse quickened traitorously.
Slowly, as if awakening from a dream, Xinyu opened his eyes.
Their gazes collided in the moonlight. For one suspended moment, the world narrowed to just the space between them—the sound of their mingled breathing, the whisper of wind through dead leaves, the electric tension that crackled in the air like the prelude to lightning.
Then reality crashed back like a cold wave.
Xinyu gasped and jerked away as though he'd been branded, horror painting his features in stark relief.
"I—! Forgive me, Your Highness! It was reflex! Purely reflex!"
But as he stumbled backward, his heel struck something metallic buried beneath the deceiving earth.
*Click.*
The sound was soft as a lover's sigh and twice as deadly.
A hidden mechanism deep beneath the corrupted soil awakened with a sharp whirring that spoke of springs wound tight and death delivered swift. From the bamboo hedges that bordered the cursed ground, dozens of wooden arrows burst forth like angry wasps defending their nest.
Just as Xinyu turned to flee, strong arms seized him around the waist and yanked him backward with enough force to steal his breath.
His body collided with someone's chest—solid, warm, steady as mountain stone.
The arrows buried themselves in the earth where he had stood mere heartbeats before, their fletching still quivering with murderous intent.
Breathless and wide-eyed, Xinyu tilted his head back—
Hua Ling held him close, his expression unreadable as carved jade, but his eyes blazed with something that might have been fury or fear or both.
"Watch your step," he said, his voice carrying the chill of winter peaks.
Xinyu's knees threatened mutiny. Trapped within the circle of those arms, breathing in the subtle scent of sandalwood and steel, he could barely form words. "Y-Yes... I'll... I'll do that..."
Hua Ling released him and continued forward as if nothing had occurred, leaving Xinyu to press trembling hands against his chest where his heart performed acrobatics.
Shen Yao materialized at his side like a concerned ghost. "That was dangerously close, xinyu ! You nearly became the world's most pathetic hedgehog!"
Yan Zheng knelt to examine the sprung mechanism, his face grim in the moonlight. "This place isn't merely abandoned—someone wanted it sealed away from the world. Traps of this caliber aren't meant to keep intruders out. They're designed to keep something in."
Rou Rou clung to Lan xueyao's sleeve with white knuckles, her usual chatter finally subdued. "I despise this place..."
Xinyu rubbed his wrist where Hua Ling's fingers had gripped him. The skin still tingled—not from pain, but from something far more dangerous that he refused to name.
"Compose yourself," he muttered under his breath.
But the very air had shifted, growing thick with malevolent intent.
And from beyond the half-collapsed barn came a new sound—a child's voice, soft and wavering, singing a melody that had no right to exist in this world.
The singing swelled like a tide, and with it came fog that rolled across the ground like the fingers of the damned reaching up from hell itself.
A woman's voice joined the chorus, heavy with sorrow and the particular madness that comes from losing everything one holds dear.
"Why... why... why did you abandon me... why did you all forsake me..."
The mist coiled around their ankles like serpents, and visibility vanished as if the world itself had gone blind. One by one, the group was swallowed by the hungry darkness.
"Qingze!" Hua Ling's voice cut through the night like a blade through silk, but his shadow guard had already been claimed by the void.
"Xinyu—" He turned, expecting to find those familiar worried eyes.
Nothing. Only mist and the echo of his own voice.
The fog thickened until it felt solid as cotton pressed against their faces. The temperature dropped until their breath came in visible puffs.
Somewhere in the distance, a cry began to echo through the skeletal trees—long, mournful, and utterly inhuman.
---
Chen Xinyu moved through the fog like a man walking through water, his eyes glazed with the particular emptiness that spoke of a mind no longer his own. The ground beneath his feet might as well have been clouds—he felt nothing, knew nothing except the compulsion to walk ever forward.
A flicker in the mist ahead made him pause.
Two figures materialized from the gray void, their forms soft and luminous as moonbeams given flesh. So achingly familiar that his heart stuttered to a stop.
"...Mother?" The word fell from his lips like a prayer.
The woman turned her head with infinite grace, her eyes holding all the warmth he remembered from childhood dreams.
"...Father?" His voice cracked on the syllable.
The man remained silent, but his gaze locked onto Xinyu's face with a sadness so profound it seemed to echo in the very air around them.
Xinyu's legs nearly buckled. His eyes burned with unshed tears that felt like fire against his skin.
They stood just beyond his reach, tantalizingly close yet impossibly distant.
"It's me!" The cry tore from his throat, raw with desperate hope. "Xinyu! Your son—I'm here, please, I'm here!"
He tried to run toward them, but his feet dragged through the phantom ground as though weighted with chains forged from his own guilt and grief.
The fog pressed closer, suffocating and cold.
Then came the screams.
His mother's voice, twisted with agony. His father's final breath, rattling in his throat like autumn leaves. The sounds drilled into Xinyu's skull and echoed in the hollow spaces of his heart, forcing him to relive those final moments—the moments he'd been too far away to prevent, too powerless to change.
He collapsed to his knees, hands pressed against his ears in a futile attempt to block out the symphony of his failures.
Tears carved silver tracks down his cheeks like rivers of starlight.
"I miss you," he whispered to the phantoms of his past. "I never... I never got to say goodbye..."
---
Hua Ling moved through the mist with the predatory grace of a hunting tiger, his senses straining against the supernatural fog. A faint pulse of light ahead drew his attention—soul energy, erratic and drowning in distress.
When he reached the heart of the cursed field, he found him.
Xinyu knelt on the corrupted earth, hands clutched over his ears, his entire body wracked with violent tremors. Tears streamed from his closed eyes as he mumbled words that made no sense to the waking world.
Trapped in an illusion powerful enough to shatter minds.
Hua Ling's expression shifted, a shadow passing across his usually controlled features. He had never seen Xinyu like this—the loud, foolishly brave boy reduced to someone haunted by ghosts that lived only in memory.
"Xinyu," he said, his voice cutting through the phantom sounds with imperial authority.
No response. The boy remained lost in his private hell.
Hua Ling knelt beside him, spiritual energy gathering at his fingertips like captured starlight.
"Chen Xinyu. Return to yourself."
Still nothing. Xinyu continued to shake, lost in a grief so profound it had become a prison.
Then—a single tear slipped from Xinyu's chin and landed on Hua Ling's wrist, warm as blood against his skin.
The prince's jaw clenched. Something twisted in his chest—an emotion he had no name for and refused to acknowledge.
He placed two fingers against Xinyu's temple and whispered an incantation that tasted of moonlight and winter snow.
The mist around them fractured like struck glass, reality reasserting itself with violent clarity.
Xinyu collapsed forward, consciousness fleeing like a frightened bird. Hua Ling caught him before he could strike the ground, gathering the unconscious form against his chest.
though the word held no heat.
With infinite care, he lifted Xinyu onto his back and began the long walk out of the cursed ground, each step deliberate and protective.
---
Elsewhere in the fog-shrouded battlefield, Lan Xueyao carved through the mist with her sword, the blade singing as it parted the supernatural gloom. Her eyes, cold as winter stars, scanned the darkness for threats.
Rou Rou maintained her death grip on her senior sister's arm, voice pitched high with terror.
"Shijie... what if something seizes me? What if a vengeful spirit possesses my innocent soul?!"
Lan xueyao's sigh could have extinguished candles. "You've been possessed by foolishness for years. What's one more spirit?"
A child's laughter echoed behind them—sweet as poisoned honey.
Then silence fell like a blade.
A piercing scream shattered the quiet—distant but close enough to make Rou Rou leap like a startled cat. The sound held an agony so pure it seemed to stain the very air.
Lan xueyao raised her weapon, the protective talismans bound to its hilt beginning to glow with soft light. The fog moved with unnatural purpose, circling them like a living predator testing its prey.
The attack came without warning.
Dark shapes lunged from the mist—twisted spirit forms that had once been human but were now nothing more than concentrated malice and rage. Lan xueyao met them with steel and grace, her blade weaving patterns of light through the darkness, each strike singing with righteous fury.
Rou Rou drew her own sword with shaking hands, the weapon trembling like a leaf in her grip.
One of the spirits broke through Lan xueyao's guard, reaching for the younger girl with claws that dripped shadow—
Until a figure burst through the fog, his blade cleaving the phantom in two with surgical precision.
"Qingze!" Lan xueyao's voice carried relief she rarely allowed herself to show.
"Are you unharmed?" Qingze asked, his eyes already scanning for new threats as he scattered more spirits with expertly thrown talismans.
Rou Rou's heart performed an elaborate dance against her ribs.
"Qingze gege... if not for you, I would have joined the ranks of the vengeful dead," she whispered, her lashes fluttering with shameless adoration.
Lan exhaled slowly. "She's fine. Regrettably."
---
On the far edge of the farm, Shen Yao and Yan Zheng stood back to back, their movements synchronized through years of fighting side by side.
"These things are endless," Shen Yao muttered, his war fan singing as it blocked another phantom blade that materialized from nowhere.
"They aren't truly alive—they're sustained by lingering resentment," Yan zheng replied, his sword blazing with spiritual energy that painted the fog in silver light. "We must locate the source feeding them."
Another spirit surged toward Shen Yao from his blind spot, claws extended to rend flesh from bone.
Yan zheng moved faster than thought—his blade intercepting the attack with the precision of someone who had made protecting others into an art form.
Shen Yao's eyes widened with something that might have been surprise or gratitude or both.
"My thanks, Yan-ge."
"Stay alert," Yan zheng said quietly, though his tone carried warmth that his words didn't.
Shen Yao chuckled, the sound breathless but genuine. "Perhaps our master was correct. I do require more practice..."
---
Alone now, Hua Ling walked through the slowly thinning fog with Xinyu's unconscious form secure on his back. The mist retreated before them like a living thing recognizing superior power.
Above, the moon had emerged from its shroud of clouds, watching their progress with the patient eye of eternity itself.
He glanced down at Xinyu's sleeping face, still damp with tears that caught the moonlight like scattered diamonds.
For a long moment, the prince of ice and shadow simply walked in silence, his expression unreadable as carved stone.
But deep within his chest, something shifted and stirred—a warmth he had thought long dead, kindled by the trust of someone who grabbed his sleeve when the world turned dark.