The snowfield was terrifyingly quiet.
It wasn't the absence of sound, but a silence as if the entire world had been swaddled in thick layers of cotton batting, one that swallowed even the sound of breathing. The crunching footsteps of the four figures trudging through the deep snow were the only noise in this dead stillness.
Shen Yuzhu's fingertips unconsciously pressed against his temples. The aftershocks of the Heart's Vow were stirring a stormy sea within his mind. The smell of blood from Chu Hongying's battlefield, the grief of Gu Changfeng losing his comrades, the intense focus of Lu Wanning applying her needles—shards of memories not his own churned uncontrollably within his consciousness.
"The Heart's Vow is recalibrating," Lu Wanning said softly, the silver needles within her sleeves emitting a faint hum. "I can hear the fear in your heartbeats, and... desire."
Chu Hongying gazed at the boundless snowfield ahead, the Hunter's Wind Spear feeling unusually heavy in her hand. "We need to find a place to rest," her voice was laced with fatigue. "If this continues, we'll drown in each other's desires long before the Mirrorguard kills us."
As she spoke, a memory not her own suddenly surged forth—Shen Yuzhu alone in a deep-night study, his fingertips gently tracing a broken jade pendant, his eyes holding a vulnerability she had never seen. The memory left a faint, persistent heat behind her ribs, refusing to fade no matter how forcefully she shook her head. Chu Hongying shuddered, trying to dispel the overly intimate image, but it clung like a brand.
Gu Changfeng suddenly halted, a strange expression flashing across his rugged face. He brushed aside the heavy snow, revealing a half-rotten wooden door with a faintly visible wolf-head carving. "We're here."
The Canglang Outpost stood silently in the wind and snow, like a dying great beast. Frost had condensed on its walls into strange spiral patterns, resembling some ancient sigil. When Gu Changfeng pushed open the creaking wooden door, a smell assailed them—a mix of mildew and a peculiar, faint, clean fragrance.
"This place..." Chu Hongying's words caught in her throat. The moment the firelight flared, she distinctly saw a shadow in the corner shift slightly, a movement not born of the flickering flames.
Shen Yuzhu's gaze swept the interior of the outpost, his heterochromatic eyes glinting coldly in the gloom. "The defensive structures are intact, but the energy flow here is... unnatural." His fingertips traced lightly through the air, stirring subtle ripples of energy. "It feels as if it's been... altered by something."
Lu Wanning's silver needles circulated with an eerie sheen in the firelight. "The air smells purified. Too clean. It's unsettling."
Just then, a crisp sound of a crossbow being cocked came from the shadows. A figure emerged slowly from the darkness—a veteran soldier, his hair graying at the temples, the wrinkles on his face deep as knife cuts. But the most heart-stopping thing was his eyes—they were sharp, unnaturally so, the pupils contracting eerily in the firelight.
Gu Changfeng's breath hitched audibly. "Uncle Shi?!" he blurted out.
The old soldier's crossbow remained steady as a rock. His voice was hoarse, like sandpaper grating. "The passphrase."
"Northern Wolf Howls at the Moon."
The sound of the bolt dropping to the ground was starkly clear in the silence. Shi Jian's eyes reddened. "Changfeng... you brat, you're still alive..."
The two men embraced tightly. For a single, fleeting heartbeat, as he looked at the young man he'd once helped raise, Shi Jian's eyes softened, brimming with a human, profound relief that was heartbreaking in its fragility. Then, just as swiftly, the black patterns on his neck seemed to constrict, and the moment shattered, his gaze hardening back into that unnerving sharpness. Chu Hongying noticed his right hand twitching slightly, the knuckles an unnatural bluish-white. What made her heart pound harder was that Shen Yuzhu remained on guard, his heterochromatic eyes fixed intently on the faint, shifting black patterns lurking on the back of the old soldier's neck.
Shi Jian led them into a hidden chamber, its walls covered with maps and notes. He spread out a stack of yellowed papers, his fingertips trembling. "Project Purge—the Empire's 'Emotional Redaction' technology in the Northern Frontier." He pointed to several villages circled in red on the map. "They're creating Hollow Ones, turning living people into emotionless puppets."
Lu Wanning stepped forward quietly, a silver needle slipping into her fingers. "Uncle Shi, let me examine your injury." She knelt to check his pulse, and the silver needle suddenly vibrated violently, as if bitten by some invisible force. "This is no ordinary wound..." Her voice held undisguised shock. "These are the marks left behind when emotions are torn out alive. He... has been Ordered."
Shi Jian smiled bitterly and rolled up his sleeve, revealing the vicious black patterns on his arm. "They couldn't rip it all out. This old bones still have some use. I took some... souvenirs when I escaped."
Shen Yuzhu picked up a fragment of an experimental record, the paper stained with strange black crystals. His tone was cold, almost inhuman. "After seventy percent emotional extraction, these solidified crystals form... They're using human suffering as a fuel for order." A cold wind blew through, scattering a few black crystalline fragments from the paper. They turned into wisps of green smoke the moment they touched the ground.
Chu Hongying noticed Gu Changfeng displaying a rare vulnerability before Shi Jian. The man who always stood straight, now had a tremor in his voice. "Uncle Shi, I thought... I'd never see any of you again."
Just then, the silver needle Lu Wanning was using on Shi Jian emitted a sharp, resonant sound. Shi Jian's body convulsed violently, a low, bestial growl rumbling in his throat. "It's coming again... those voices... they're calling me back..."
Shen Yuzhu quickly flipped through the intelligence Shi Jian had gathered, speaking in low tones with the old soldier. Suddenly, Shi Jian frowned, staring at him. "You, kid... your aura is like those Empire scholars, but your eyes are different." Shen Yuzhu, unusually, didn't retort, merely lowering his head slightly. Watching his rare moment of awkwardness, Chu Hongying felt that strange heat behind her ribs stir again—a feeling both unfamiliar and familiar, a lingering brand from the Heart's Vow.
Shi Jian pushed open a hidden door, revealing well-stocked supplies and coded messages behind it. "Canglang Outpost is at your service." His voice suddenly became abnormally calm, but his pupils contracted unnaturally into slits in the firelight. "The Northern Frontier... hasn't given up yet."
Chu Hongying climbed the watchtower alone, the Hunter's Wind Spear gleaming with a ghostly light under the moonlight. Gazing at the endless snowfield, she murmured to herself, "This isn't the end... It's the beginning of our counterattack."
Just as she turned to leave, Gu Changfeng's shocked cry came from below. His face had lost its composure for the first time as he pointed at a line of bizarre footprints in the snow. "These footprints... they're not an Imperial soldier's gait. Too light... light as if not human..."
Chu Hongying crouched down, touching the traces in the snow. Her brow furrowed sharply—the footprints vanished abruptly five steps from the outpost door, as if the person had simply dissolved into thin air. More eerily, the edges of each footprint were coated with a thin layer of black ice crystals, identical to the ones on the experimental records.
Shen Yuzhu looked towards the distance, his heterochromatic eyes gleaming coldly in the night. "Or perhaps... he's been watching us all along."
As his words faded, a deep, low reverberation came from the depths of the snowfield, like something gently tapping against the seam between two worlds. Simultaneously, within the chests of all four vow-bound individuals, the Heart's Vow throbbed once—a sharp, cold, and utterly alien pang, as if it had recognized the presence, and found it familiar. On a distant snowdrift, a blurred figure flashed past—its posture reminding Chu Hongying of Situ Ming, yet carrying a certain unnatural, sinister quality.
The night was still long, and the secrets of the Northern Frontier had only just begun to unveil themselves.