Qian Yu was panting hard, her lungs burning. She clutched Qian Duoduo and spun in circles through the woods, but every single time, that crooked tree materialized in front of her like a curse that wouldn't die.
"Are we doing this forever?!" she growled, near breakdown, and tipped her head back toward the sky.
The last thread of light had been swallowed by the forest. A lead-gray sky pressed down, the surrounding trees twisted into strange silhouettes. Cold seeped up from the ground, soaking into her trousers like ice water and crawling up her spine. The air stank of rotting leaves and damp earth, with a faint thread of rust underneath.
Qian Yu shivered and hugged the baby tighter.
She remembered what the Immortal Master had said: "Reach the hut before dark."
Despairing, she could only rage powerlessly, throwing her head back to yell at nothing: "Stop messing with me! I'm out of ideas—just let me out!"
"Waaah." The only answer was Qian Duoduo in her arms.
After that first crying fit, the baby had stopped fussing. He just kept staring at something. At first he stared at Qian Yu's face, and she would feel the cold air, hear that sound. Sometimes he stared just past her shoulder—and then her face would warm up a little.
"You've got to be kidding me."
The old folks always said babies' heavenly eyes hadn't closed yet. They could see unclean things.
"Don't scare me. I'm begging you."
"Wah?" Qian Duoduo tilted his head.
"Where is it now? No—no, don't tell me that. Just tell me where we're going."
"Wah-oo." Qian Duoduo kicked his feet, babbling things no human could parse.
"Aiya, seriously—can you talk like a person or not?"
"Mama."
"Nobody asked you to say that!"
"Qian Yu."
"There we go, keep going—which way?"
"Qian Yu—"
The voice drifted out from deep in the tree shadows, thick and stretched, like a busted tape grinding on a loop.
Qian Yu froze all over. That build, that voice... A-Ling?
A figure surfaced slowly from the darkness. It wore A-Ling's clothes, but it moved like a marionette, joints grinding out a "krrk, krrk" with every step.
"Qian Yu, it's me. I'm A-Ling." It lifted a hand and waved—and the arm twisted at an impossible angle, something squirming beneath the skin. The wave stuttered; the whole arm flopped a hundred and eighty degrees the wrong way, like a snapped branch.
Qian Yu's breath caught. Its face—it wasn't a face at all. The features had melted into wax, sagging into a blur; the eye sockets were two black holes with a faint red glow flickering deep inside.
"You... stay back!" Qian Yu's voice shook.
Done for. The life-claimer had come.
She was about to faint. At this point they should award her a Guinness record for World's Most Scare-Resistant Person.
"I didn't kill you."
"Qian Yu, it's me. I'm A-Ling."
It repeated its earlier movements and words, exactly.
"If you're here to claim a life, claim my kid's—just don't take mine." Qian Yu wailed silently, despairing, inside her own head.
"Qian Yu. It's. Me. I'm. A-Ling."
Qian Duoduo squirmed in her arms, cooing urgently, reaching out to point behind them.
Run backward, or was something back there? Qian Yu couldn't tell, and didn't dare look. The thing ahead kept coming; one more second and it would be pressed against her face.
A thin sheen of sweat broke out down her back. Prosperity, democracy, civility, harmony... Think, brain, think. Do something!
"Qian. Yu. It's. Me. I'm. A. Ling."
A beast-like growl—and in a blink the thing was right in front of her. "No—"
Qian Yu whipped around to flee—and found herself staring into a pair of hollow eyes.
Somewhere along the way, they had been caught in a pincer.
The thing behind them radiated visible cold, its body translucent, like frozen smoke with warped bones dimly visible inside. Wherever it passed, frost spread across the ground and the grass withered black in an instant.
At the sight of it, Qian Duoduo exploded into a shrieking wail, tiny fists clutching Qian Yu's collar.
And the thing ahead was closing in. Each step came with a wet, sticky sound. Its rotting face gleamed green-black in the moonlight, bone showing through the decay, mouth split to the ears in a grin of jagged black teeth. The stench of rusty blood rolled over her.
When it reached out its claws, Qian Yu screamed and shut her eyes.
But she was not torn apart between the two ghosts.
Golden light flared around her. The protective talisman Immortal Master Zizai had given her back at the hut had kicked in—the ghost that grazed her hem scattered with a shrill howl.
The ghost behind them saw the golden light, made no move to advance, and let out a confused, whining sound.
A quarter of an hour.
Qian Yu estimated: one quarter-hour was fifteen minutes. Fifteen minutes to run out of here. But they'd been ghost-walled—led in circles by a ghost. And where there was a ghost wall, there had to be a way out, right? Where, where...
She did her best to ignore the ghost circling her. It showed no intent to attack, but she knew it was just waiting for the talisman to wear off.
"Mama."
Once it drifted away, Qian Duoduo stopped crying. He blinked his tear-soaked eyes and pointed at the tree they kept seeing.
Qian Yu followed his finger. Maybe because of that thing, the woods were darker than before—which made it easy to see thin threads of red-glowing light flowing across the tree.
"Is that the way out?" Qian Yu wasn't sure. But it was a tree. What was she supposed to do, charge it and die on impact?
"Waaah."
Qian Duoduo kicked his legs, both hands grasping at the golden threads floating around Qian Yu.
Oh. So that was it.
The answer hit her.
In cultivation novels, you break a formation by smashing the formation, right? She couldn't chop the tree down, but she had a cheat code, didn't she?
No more hesitation. Qian Yu sprinted for the tree.
The thing had been shadowing her every move; seeing her charge the tree, it scrambled anxiously to cut her off.
But Immortal Master Zizai's protective talisman was simply overbearing: nothing could come within half a meter of her—everything that tried got scorched.
Wailing pursued her from behind.
Run!
There was only one word left in her head. The golden light burned around her, driving the monster back with sizzling crackles and shrieks.
She crashed to a stop in front of the dead tree, cradled Qian Duoduo on one arm, and slammed her other hand flat against the trunk.
The golden threads surged down her arm and poured into the tree like living things. The red-glowing patterns writhed violently, like veins catching fire, popping and crackling.
Rot stink, blood-rust, bone-deep cold—every sensation peaked at once.
Behind her, the monster's claws were a hand's width from her back.
Qian Duoduo, riding on her back, suddenly lifted his head and stared straight at the thing.
"Waaaah—!!"
The monster let out an inhuman shriek. Black mist poured out of its body in torrents—and was swallowed, bit by bit, by Qian Duoduo.
"Mmph." Qian Yu, oblivious to everything behind her, felt a stab of pain in her head—and when she blinked, the world was bright again.
So at some point, they had been inside that thing's formation all along.
The sky hung at mid-afternoon. A deer burst from the grass and bounded away into the depths of the woods. Birds started calling, so crisp her ears rang.
"Oh my god... what even was that."
A brand-new life experience, that much was certain. Had that counted as a near-death escape just now?
She looked down. Qian Duoduo was asleep again, tear tracks still on his cheeks—proof that all of it had been real. There seemed to be something smeared on his face; Qian Yu wiped at it, and there was nothing. She told herself her eyes had played tricks, didn't dare linger, got her bearings, and bolted downhill.