Chapter fifteen: The Loop of ‘An Jie’

  Grig was left behind. The last memory they had of him was his grim face and determination in his aura. Han felt guilty; he looked over his shoulder once, twice. He opened his mouth to speak, but no word came out. Han remembered Feng’s face, a cowardly man who wanted to live as a person who feared dying.

  Han’s face was solemn, but his heart was worse, leaving behind Feng and now Grig, not knowing what would happen next. Han clenched his fist tight and finally decided to let go of what he couldn't control.

  Elara was quiet; she was thankful to Grig for his help but she didn't persuade him to follow them, knowing well she had to respect his own decisions. Elara walked with a mountain on her heart, a heavy weight on her shoulder

  As they left Vraalk behind, there was a profound silence between them. As they walked into the frozen jaw of the mountains, the wind was a blade. Mo Fei stumbled as they walked, sustained by sheer will and the grim determination of Jian Yue carrying him.

  Jian Yue was leading them with an unerring sense of direction, occasionally looking at the page floating beside him, perhaps a map. The air grew so thin, almost choking. As for Mo Fei’s wounds, they were aching from the cold.

  Just as the sun began to bleed away behind the peaks of the mountains, the hue shifted to orange, fading. Between them stood a vast mountain rooted on the earth like a primordial tree. It looked normal, reflecting the light from the corner.

  “Here,” Jian Yue said as he placed his palm against the ice. Symbols floated around him, the sigils of chants as the snow turned into a gate.

  “This is ‘Still Point,’ a temporary hideout,” Jian Yue explained. “This is made by one of us; she is the ‘Ascended’ of the ‘Keybearer’. As for its maintenance… a cost is needed.”

  With a sound of a crystal sighing, a vertical slit appeared in the ice, widening into a doorway. A warm, dry air, smelling of stone, herbs, and hot water, wafted out, hitting Mo Fei’s senses.

  Inside was not a cave, but a small house with five rooms and one garden inside the house the soft soil held a bittersweet scent of the roots, planted there were some unusual looking herbs the light green veins grew around a pillar beside it another faint yellow colour herb grew the thorns weren't embedded just for protection but for a different kind of beauty and they worked as a flower leaking that bittersweet scent.

  Standing there was a lady with dark hair streaked with silver strands. She was wearing a flower-shaped hairpin. She looked around, twenty years old, then her head tilted to look up. Her eyes were light green as she examined the situation. Her gaze turned wary instantly. She was wearing a flowing Hanfu, and on her waist was wrapped a fenghua xueyue pearl belt.

  On the other side a young boy, barely more than a boy, hunched over a slate covered in frantic chalk diagrams, he started at their sudden entrance. He was wearing a baldrick and sash on his waist, wrapped a belt with a sheath for a blade.

  “Jian Yue,” the lady said in an exhausted tone, as she set aside her work. Her eyes scanned their group with quick efficiency as they landed on Mo Fei’s bloody form. “You brought strays again, ugh! you know we don't have a place here unless we ascend to world nine”

  Jian Yue nodded to the woman. “Don't worry. Only one of them will stay with us… Anyways Lin. He is Mo Fei from the Architect's Authority...”

  The name ‘Lin’ cut through Mo Fei’s haze. He had heard it. She had left the clue in world three. Thanks to her, he survived there.

  Mo Fei suddenly remembered something as his eyes held a small irritation.

  “So you are Lin, do you know that your hint in the previous world wasn't complete. That almost killed me there!”

  Lin snapped back coldly.

  “Be quiet, I don't even know you! If you needed a complete guide, you'd not have survived.”

  Mo Fei restlessly argued back: “Yes, exactly, ‘I'd not have survived’ what was that ‘Find the next step yourself’!?”

  “You found the rest.”

  “I almost didn't.”

  Stolen story; please report.

  “You are seriously pissing me off, kid,” Lin said, annoyance clearly visible in her voice.

  “Next time, try giving hints that don't show the way to a grave.” Mo Fei said it intentionally with his witty nature as a student, acting as if he didn't survive world three.

  “You are half dead already, mind me to silence that ‘Half’.” Mo Fei went silent, not because of the warning but because he was too exhausted to argue further.

  Lin stood, her clothing fluttered, and then she approached them. Her gaze was not kind; it was observing. She examined Mo Fei’s side, his ear, and his ribbon. “The wounds are deep, and touched by ‘Authority’. Did you perhaps fight an entity?”

  “Fight… In a way against Kholkis and Suture Worm,” Mo Fei answered in his muffled voice.

  “Kholkis and Suture Worm…” She stared at Mo Fei, a flicker of surprise in her eyes.

  “And you survived it…”

  “That's why I'm standing here.”

  “Standing? Hmph, you will fall if Jian Yue lets you go, dumbass,” Lin stated the obvious truth. Mo Fei looked away. It was true.

  Lin looked at Jian Yue and said, “The wounds are deep; ascension could cleanse them. Though before that, they can get infected if not healed.

  “He will stay,” Jian Yue said. “He has chosen to learn.”

  Lin grumbled and muttered. “Stubborn… Like the rest of us.” She turned to the young boy. “Zhuo, get the red moss paste and the silverleaf bandages.” The young boy Zhuo scurried away to a room filled with the scent of herbs.

  As Zhuo returned with supplies, Lin set to work. Her hands were swift and sure. The red moss paste burned like fire when applied, but almost instantly the bleeding stopped and a numbing coolness spread.

  Mo Fei whimpered slightly from the burn. “Tch, are you supposedly taking revenge?”

  Mo Fei’s voice cut off when she pressed the silverleaf bandage on his palm. It seemed to shimmer as they bound his wounds, holding a faint, soothing light against his skin.

  Her eyes lay on Mo Fei’s ear and his sides again as she sighed. “You keep fighting even with these wounds. Reckless.”

  Then, for his ear, she gave him bitter-tasting tea. “It won’t fix the damage,” she said, her voice finally reaching his good ear clearly. “But it will keep your pain in check.”

  As she worked, the group settled down on the ground. Han and Elara were given blankets and bowls of a thin, hearty stew. They ate in exhausted silence, absorbing the reality of this strange haven. It was far better than the cold scraps thrown by guards for breakfast and better than meals measured in lashes.

  Mo Fei, set near the bonfire. Finally, he felt his pain start to recede, his expression slightly relieved now after so long fighting for his life. He looked around at the faces of the ‘Epilogue’. Lin a valkyrie. Zhuo seemed like a teenager, but Mo Fei knew he had survived longer than him so he couldn't underestimate Zhuo. Jian Yue a recruiter and then the raw recruits themselves.

  “How many?” Mo Fei asked, his voice curious.

  “Of us? Here, now? Well, six, with you three,” Jian Yue said. “If you mean total across the worlds? Perhaps hundreds, but they are scattered, hiding, surviving. Some have created their own cult. Some become… Royals. Like Xue Lan.”

  “Xue Lan is one of you?” Han asked, his face surprised.

  “No,” Jian Yue said sharply. “But if you ask me, he is truly not one of them either. Jian Yue looked around and then continued

  “As for us… I can't call it a ‘Cult’ because it usually has twenty-two members.” He explained, and they got it that having a lowest limit of twenty-two was to stabilize. But why specifically twenty-two?

  Mo Fei thought about this as he finally spoke.

  “So it's just a group of some random powerful ascenders.”

  “Call it what you want,” Lin answered

  “It's for survival,” Jian Yue said.

  Mo Fei collected the pieces. The truth was falling into a terrible, complex picture. This wasn’t a simple survival. It was a desperate war of ‘Godhood’, against each other; these were worlds with politics and betrayals as worse and lethal as any monster.

  Han spoke once again: “... Xue Lan is a void spawn like you, an ascender?”

  Jian Yue answered bluntly, taking no time to think. “Yes, he is an ‘Ascended’.” He paused for a moment and said.

  “As I said, ‘Ascenders’ survive through creating ‘Cults’ or joining others, just like the church or the ‘Honorable Court’ of the ‘Overseer,’ and Xue Lan joined his cult.”

  Lin joined, her voice now more serious than before.

  “Xue Lan plays his own game. His ‘Elevation’ in the Dream-Weaver’s ‘Honorable Court’ grants him privileges. His curiosity is his one redeeming trait. He can trade information for novelty if he feels like.”

  Jian Yue’s hand gestured at Lin: “She was alone for only two weeks before we found her. That was two weeks of sleeping with one eye open, never staying in one world for more than three days. That's the alternative… She was the ‘Ascended’ of the same time as me and that was also the one year later when Xue Lan was Ascended.”

  “Xue Lan,” Lin's face tightened after saying the name: “He could have killed me in World 3. He was there for the ritual of seventh ‘Descent’ thus he found me hiding, and just... walked away. Smiling instead of helping. He's not loyal to the ‘Overseer’. He's loyal to his own entertainment.” Lin was quite frustrated from the things which she finally let out.

  After the confrontation for three days, Mo Fei rested. His body was bruised, but it began the slow process of healing. In these three days he didn't just lay down. To know the truth further and understand the worlds he practiced with his ‘Apprentice’s Eyes’ in the safe, controlled environment. He could see the threads of connection between the members of the ‘Epilogue,’ thin lines of wary trust, of shared trauma, of fragile hope.

  He learned more through Lin and Jian Yue. Lin taught him about how the patterns of the world work, and the known cost of triggers, and told him about the recorded entities they had faced, their weakness and power.

  Zhuo, the young boy, showed him mad, beautiful maps of the inter-world spaces, the ‘static’ between layers. He was a young warrior, a prodigy for sure, Although sometimes Zhuo's childish traits come across as his na?ve self and also question Mo Fei about the suture Worm, and Kholkis. He was Mo Fei who had a different ideal but with the same survival instincts. Mo Fei felt comfort around them; it had been a while since he was not running from terror, fighting madness.

  Han helped Lin’s catalog supplies, his practical mind finding purpose. Elara tended the small fungal garden they cultivated in a warm crevice, her touch gentle, her eyes slowly losing their perpetual fear, her face was in peace, there was a hint of happiness.

  She was tending the garden when Mo Fei found her. She didn't look up but spoke in a murmur. "I always wanted a garden. Back home. Before..." She trailed off. This was the first time that she voluntarily mentioned her past and herself. It was not a speech, but rather a moment of vulnerability. Mo Fei recognized that he did not need to speak; simply being present with her sufficed. The silence conveyed enough meaning.

  On the fourth evening, as they sat around the bonfire, Jian Yue took out a brittle, jagged-looking old page. There was a diagram of the Box. Mo Fei instantly realized it was the same shape as the one from the antique shop.

  “The key isn’t just surviving eleven worlds,” Jian Yue said, his finger tracing the twelve holes and eleven spots. “But it is reaching the center of An Jie, World ‘Twelve’.”

  Mo Fei’s eyes calculated and understood the depth of the worlds; there were not just eleven worlds. “Twelve…?”

  “Yes, the world of the current ‘Architect’, but when we reach world eleven…”

  Mo Fei’s ears perked up by the mention of reaching world eleven; he was anticipating the answer; he had been questioning this to himself. “Then what?”

  Jian Yue sighs, his face faltered into resignation as he answered it. “We… Reach back to world one…”