The moon hung like a pearl suspended in black silk, its light filtered through restless clouds that drifted across the heavens like the souls of the restless dead. The ruined farm lay beneath this celestial vigil, wrapped in fog thick as burial shrouds, the very earth seeming to hold its breath in anticipation of sorrows yet to unfold.
Shadows moved with purpose through the mist—not cast by any living thing, but born from the weight of accumulated grief that pressed down upon this cursed ground like the palm of a vengeful god.
Chen Xinyu lay unconscious in this theater of the damned, his body cradled against something warm and solid and achingly familiar.
Not something. Someone.
His head rested in Hua Ling's lap like an offering placed before an altar of ice and starlight.
The prince sat with the stillness of carved marble, his spine straight as a sword blade, dark eyes sweeping the ethereal battlefield that surrounded them. Every line of his body spoke of coiled readiness—fingers flexed at his side, prepared to weave destruction from moonbeams and shadow. Yet his gaze kept drifting downward, drawn by some invisible thread to the young man who slept so trustingly against him.
Xinyu's face in sleep held a peace that seemed almost blasphemous in this place of ancient sorrows. But tear tracks still gleamed on his cheeks like silver rivers, the dried salt catching moonlight and throwing it back in fragments of broken dreams.
Hua Ling's brow furrowed—a crack in the perfect mask he wore like armor against the world.
This was unfamiliar territory, treacherous as quicksand beneath his feet.
The Chen Xinyu he knew blazed like summer sun—loud, foolishly brave, wearing smiles even when facing his harshest reprimands. That Xinyu cracked jokes at funeral ceremonies and laughed in the face of impossible odds. He was infuriatingly bright, annoyingly persistent, like sunlight finding every crack in a carefully constructed wall of shadow.
But this Xinyu—this quiet, trembling creature with tears that fell even in the sanctuary of sleep—this version spoke to something deep and dangerous in Hua Ling's carefully guarded heart.
Why? The question carved itself into his thoughts like a blade drawn across stone. Why did I reach for him without thinking? Why did I shelter him from the illusion as though...
His hand, which had been hovering above Xinyu's tear-stained cheek, clenched into a fist and dropped to his side just as dark lashes began to flutter.
Xinyu stirred like a butterfly emerging from its cocoon, consciousness returning in waves that brought first confusion, then dawning awareness of his surroundings.
The first thing he saw was Hua Ling above him, moonlight carving the prince's features into something both beautiful and terrible, like a statue of some ancient god of winter and war.
Then realization struck like lightning.
And with it came panic pure as molten silver.
"AH—!" The sound tore from his throat as he scrambled upright, knees hitting the cold earth with enough force to bruise. "Y-Your Highness! Forgive me! I didn't mean to—I never intended—!"
"There is no need," Hua Ling said, his voice carrying the flat authority of imperial decree.
But Xinyu froze, caught by something in that tone—not the expected irritation, but a strange restraint, as though the prince himself walked on uncertain ground.
Silence stretched between them like a held breath while Xinyu's heart performed elaborate acrobatics against his ribs. He scrubbed at his cheeks with desperate efficiency, mortification burning through his veins like poison.
*Shit. He witnessed my tears. The Demon Prince of the cultivation world saw me weeping like an abandoned child. Surely now he thinks me even more pathetic than before.*
Meanwhile, Hua Ling's gaze fell to his own hand—the same one that had moved of its own accord, reaching out to offer comfort he had no name for. He flexed his fingers once before hiding them within his sleeve like shameful secrets.
"Rise," he commanded coolly. "The others will be searching for us."
---
The group had reformed like fragments of a broken mirror finding their proper places—Rou Rou clinging to Lan Xueyao's sleeve with the tenacity of ivy, Shen Yao tending a shallow wound on Yan Zheng's forearm with gentle efficiency, Qingze standing sentinel with blade drawn and senses spread wide. But the very air around them thrummed with wrongness, heavy with anticipation that made their skin crawl.
Then came the weeping.
It rose from the cursed earth like smoke from a funeral pyre—a sound so fragile and broken that it could shatter souls like fine porcelain dropped on stone.
They followed that lamentation deeper into the heart of darkness, weapons at the ready, hearts pressed tight against their ribs like caged birds sensing the approach of the hawk.
They found her beneath the skeletal remains of what had once been a peach tree.
She knelt there like a broken doll, draped in silks that time and death had faded from vibrant colors to the gray of old bones. Her hair spilled around her like spilled ink, and her fingers clawed at the earth as though trying to dig graves for sorrows too large to bury.
"Why..." she whispered to the uncaring night. "Why did you abandon me in this place..."
Rou Rou stumbled backward, terror strangling her voice. "T-That's... that's her..."
Lan Xueyao raised a hand, her gesture freezing them all in place like a master sculptor commanding clay. "Do not speak."
But the ghost turned with the fluid grace of water flowing uphill.
Her face might have been beautiful once, before grief had carved itself into every line and hollow. Now her eyes were twin voids where endless sorrow pooled like black water, and her burial robes clung to her form like the embrace of the grave itself.
Those empty eyes fixed upon Xinyu with the hunger of the damned recognizing salvation.
"Wu'er...?" Her voice trembled like autumn leaves before the storm.
Xinyu felt ice crystallize in his veins.
"I told you not to linger past sunset," she whispered, stepping closer with movements that defied the laws of the living world. Mist coiled around her ankles like serpents of memory made manifest. "You promised your mother you would return before the evening star appeared. I prepared your favorite sweet rice cakes..."
Her hands shook as she reached toward him, and for a moment she was not a creature of nightmare but simply a mother calling her child home to dinner.
"Come, wash your hands before we eat..."
Hua Ling moved like striking lightning, placing himself between Xinyu and the specter with fluid grace. "He is not your son."
The words hit her like physical blows. Her pupils dilated, consciousness flickering like a candle in the wind. Then came a scream—not loud, but sharp and raw as the sound of a heart breaking in real time.
The mist exploded outward like the breath of dying gods.
Dark tendrils erupted from beneath the dead tree, and the very ground shrieked as memories long buried clawed their way to the surface. The air itself became a canvas upon which the past painted itself in blood and tears.
The village materialized around them like a fever dream made flesh.
Once it had been paradise—golden fields stretching toward horizons painted in hope, children's laughter ringing like temple bells in the clean air. The woman before them had been Madam Su then, radiant with the particular beauty that comes from contentment, her husband's fields the most prosperous for miles, their son Wu'er bright as a newly minted coin.
"Mother! I practiced my sword forms today!" the phantom child cried, racing through their door with muddy cheeks and eyes like captured stars.
"Wash your hands before eating, little one," she laughed, smoothing his hair with infinite tenderness. "Did you thank your teacher properly?"
"Yes, Mother!"
But prosperity breeds envy as surely as spring brings flowers.
Bitter neighbors came to their door one evening, faces twisted with resentment that had fermented into something poisonous.
"You profit while we struggle. Share your good fortune."
Madam Su's husband stood firm, his integrity unbending as mountain stone. "I worked for everything we have with these hands. I owe no man what I've earned through honest labor."
They spat in his doorway like serpents marking territory. "You will regret those words."
That very night, the air turned foul with malevolent intent.
Unnatural fog slithered across the land like the breath of hell itself, carrying with it the stench of corruption and broken oaths. The family had barely finished their evening meal when the earth began to tremble with unnatural rhythm.
"They have cursed the land," Madam Su's husband realized, his face draining of color. "We must flee. Now."
Then came the scream.
Wu'er hung suspended in the air like a marionette in the hands of a mad puppeteer, his small body writhing as demonic energy coiled around him like living smoke. His eyes had rolled back to show only white, and his limbs moved with the jerky motions of the possessed.
"No—Wu'er!" His mother's cry could have shattered mountains.
"Take him and run!" her husband commanded, drawing his blade as dark shapes materialized from the cursed mist. "I will hold them back!"
But Wu'er's eyes cleared.
He stood with unnatural stillness, his child's hands trembling around a blade that materialized from shadow and malice.
"Wu'er, no..."
Tears streamed down his young face like rain on stones. "I cannot... I cannot stop myself..."
The blade found his father's heart with surgical precision.
His mother's scream split the night as her husband collapsed before her, life draining from his eyes like water from a broken vessel. "Live... wife... live..."
Wu'er turned to her, his face a mask of anguish that no child should ever wear.
"Forgive me, Mother."
She opened her arms, love conquering horror even in that moment of ultimate darkness. "Come here... it is not your fault... it was never your fault..."
But the blade found her heart as well.
As her blood watered the roots of their home, Wu'er screamed once more—a sound that could wake the dead and make angels weep—before turning the cursed weapon upon himself.
From the shadows stepped their true destroyer.
Pei, a demonic cultivator whose eyes burned with the cold fire of the damned, surveyed his handiwork with the satisfaction of an artist completing his masterpiece.
"How beautifully humans shatter," he laughed, the sound like breaking glass in the wind.
He turned his attention to the greedy villagers who celebrated in the distance, believing themselves victorious in their petty revenge.
They never saw death coming until their throats opened like crimson flowers blooming in the night.
"You desired land so desperately," Pei chuckled as he painted the earth red with their blood. "Now you may rest beneath it for eternity."
The entire village died that night, their screams feeding the curse that would poison this ground for generations to come.
The vision dissolved like smoke on the wind, leaving only the present and its burden of accumulated sorrow.
Madam Su's spectral form convulsed as ancient anguish ripped through her like physical wounds. Her wail cracked the very sky, and the earth responded to her pain by vomiting forth the restless dead—blackened corpses clawing free from their dirt prisons, forced to relive their final moments in an endless loop of suffering.
"Stand ready!" Hua Ling's command cut through the chaos like a blade through silk.
Qingze stepped forward, his hands weaving seals that pushed back the tide of vengeful spirits with walls of purified light.
Shen Yao danced through the melee, his blade carving silver arcs through curses made manifest.
Yan Zheng positioned himself protectively before Rou Rou and Lan Xueyao as the very ground cracked open beneath their feet.
But Madam Su was beyond their reach now, lost in the maelstrom of her own shattered sanity.
She rose into the air like a dark angel of retribution, arms spread wide, her voice no longer human but something primal and terrible.
"You will all DIE—as they did! DIE! DIE!"
"Madam Su!" Xinyu's cry carried across the battlefield, raw with desperate compassion. "Your son's actions were not his choice! The fault was never yours!"
But she could no longer hear words of comfort over the roar of her own breaking heart.
Her eyes blazed crimson as she raised her hand to weave a curse that would drag them all into the hell of her making—
Only to freeze as a single tear traced its way down her ravaged cheek.
"...Wu'er..."
For one precious moment, clarity pierced the madness like sunlight through storm clouds.
"Now," Qingze whispered.
Hua Ling stepped forward with the grace of inevitability itself, his hands weaving the Purification Seal—not to destroy, but to release. Light gathered around his fingers like captured starlight, growing until it encompassed the broken spirit in its gentle embrace.
She screamed then, not in rage but in release—all her accumulated sorrow and guilt pouring out like blood from a lanced wound.
The light grew until her form began to dissolve into petals of luminous smoke that drifted upward like prayers finally answered.
And just before she faded entirely from this world of pain—
She smiled at Xinyu with the tenderness of a mother blessing her child.
"Thank you... for having his face..."
Then she was gone, carried away on winds that smelled of peach blossoms and forgiveness.
Silence returned to the cursed ground like a benediction.
Only the whisper of clean wind remained, and beneath their feet, the first green shoots of new life pushed through soil that had finally been cleansed of its ancient poison.