Jian Yue sighed, his face faltered into resignation as he answered it. "We... Reach back to world one..."
Jian Yue stopped speaking. The bonfire flared up, devouring the words between them.
Mo Fei watched the fire silently. He spoke nothing, he simply couldn’t. His hands were resting on his knees and began to tremble with a controllable shaking. Mo Fei held them back, thinking if they were the same hands that cut his throat, held the Glaive and stabbed his palm.
Why he faltered?
Jian Yue said nothing further. He knew that would happen; he had lived the same moment before... Many times with different people.
With a low voice, Mo Fei finally spoke. His voice was raw and scraped clean of emotions. "So every time I thought I was getting closer, it was a lie... I was just... running in places." With that, he looked at Jian Yue with a hollow curiosity.
"How many times? How many times have you been through this loop?" Mo Fei paused and took a few seconds break before speaking again. "How many times have you sat in a safe room and told someone like me that the door doesn’t exist?" His voice went slightly louder.
Jian Yue closed his eyes for one or two moments before meeting Mo Fei’s gaze. "Four times... I don’t know when I will forget the counting and keep my track in this madness." He paused to answer the next question. "I’ve told this to nine people, and five have already died." There was a regret in Jian Yue’s eyes.
Mo Fei couldn’t accept it. "If I keep moving forward, if I learn more and don’t fall back, maybe I can find a way out... Or maybe I die trying."
Elara and Han watched silently as they were born here. They knew about the existence of another world, but this world was home for them.
"Elara and Han, I owe you. If I find a way better for you somewhere safe and out of the reach of the Overseer, then I’ll be free from the owe. That is not the same as going back home, but it’s something more than what the world gives you." Mo Fei stopped.
Elara shook her head and said slowly. "No one ever promise something to a slave... even if you failed, I’d still be thankful for that."
Han put a heavy hand on Mo Fei’s shoulder, as if saying that it didn’t matter, he had already done more than enough.
"I spent my twenty years just being a slave with no dream of escaping. You’re already ahead of me, Mo Fei." Han pressed the shoulder, a presence of silent reassurance.
Mo Fei looked at Lin and Jian Yue. He remembered something. "Jian Yue, Lin, do you think any ascenders could be living in World 0?"
Lin’s face showed that she was clearly looking at him like, "Is he stupid?"
"That’s impossible. Why did you even ask?" She answered anyway.
"I know that no one had returned from An Jie, but that shop with that box. It couldn’t be just a random item created out of imagination." That was an obvious and simple question, yet it was valid.
Some people had known about An Jie in World 0, and the box was weird, and well weird things could be sold at good prices so they didn’t think of it too much.
Jian Yue leaned against the wall. "We’ve wondered the same thing. Some thought it was related to ’Sundering’. Some think it was sent back deliberately, and became a myth. No one knows. But no Ascended have ever returned to World 0, which you had heard from the shopkeeper."
The same shopkeer, and same shop...
Mo Fei’s thoughts were interrupted by Elara’s voice.
"What are you going to do now?".
"It’s pointless now, I’ll get to the world twelve and find the creator. He must answer me." He clinched the Glaive lying near him. "He will."
Lin sighed and said. "For a moment, let’s say if you find ’Him’, what makes you think He will answer? Bold of you to assume that."
Mo Fei met her gaze. "There should be a right way to reach there?"
"How? And why do you think this?"
A pause. Longer than comfortable. "... I don’t know yet."
Lin face-palmed. "Knowing what you don’t know is sometimes the first step to actually learning."
Lin stared at Mo Fei in skepticism, but there was a small respect that she didn’t show. "Sigh, you are either the bravest idiot or the stupidest brave person I’ve ever met. Either way, I highly doubt your decision will stay longer than one or two months." She paused before adding another line, a hint of curiosity.
"Though I’ll admit that I’ve never seen someone choosing Lightless. What do you actually see with those eyes?"
"Some useful threads for arts."
Lin snickered at his casual words.
Zhuo stayed silent; he had already been told everything, yet he felt oddly happier to have a new member of what he naively considered his family. His small hopeful smile curled at his lips, which he hid quickly.
He quietly stepped in, his hands holding glasses of water on a plate. He offered it to them, a simple action to wash away the heaviness. "We can’t stay serious all the time... Won’t that exhaust you?" He softly said with a light grin tugging at his face, trying to lift the tension.
Surprisingly the tension loosened.
Mo Fei took the glass, and the corner of his mouth twitched slightly despite himself. They were amused not because the tension had lifted, but because of how Zhuo constantly tried to lighten the mood but somehow ended up making it awkward instead. Elara stifled a chuckle in the background and went quiet again.
A week passed.
On the third day of learning, Mo Fei set out to lift the Glaive to use it. His hand slipped, and it hit the floor with a clang that made Lin wince from disappointment.
"Again," said she without looking up from her herbs. She plucked off the leaves and put them in her bag.
Mo Fei tried again; he gripped the haft. The weapon was lighter than it looked.
"Well, Glaive is usually harder to master, stay in patience." Lin assured him, but Mo Fei’s muscles only remembered textbooks, and library stairs. Just the weight of a backpack; war was simply not in his muscle memories.
Then
SWING... CLANG.
"... Again."
On the fourth day, Mo Fei tried to use his eyes while holding the Glaive. He saw the threads even in the things that weren’t alive. His eyes saw them connecting Lin to a faded scar on her wrist, and threads covering her half-hand that were attached to her ribbon. It was an old wound. He flinched, his eyes got blurry, and he quickly closed them, hoping the sensation would pass.
The Glaive clattered and fell.
Lin grabbed a fruit and bit it, while warning him. "Don’t look at us with those eyes. Not unless you’re ready to carry what you see. If you don’t know what they can do. That way, you’re only inviting madness."
By evening, his palms were blistered in the place of his old wound. By the fifth day, the blisters had healed faster than they should have.
Mo Fei was washing his hands when he noticed it. The cuts on his forearm from practice were already sealing, edges knitting together overnight.
He stared down at his hands. They were still his hands, but they healed as if they belonged to someone else. It was a good thing, but at the same time...
"Why do the Ascenders get this?" But he had no answer.
Once again, they found themselves sitting together for their next plan. It was finally the moment when they had to move forward.
They began to create a strategy. Lin had notes on World 5, pieced together from fragments left by the previous ascenders. It was called "The Longing Heaven," a place where desire manifested, then was harvested. A realm of addictive beauty and soul-crushing consumption.
Jian Yue’s voice cut through the silence. "We can slip through that and gather information, then find the exit."
Lin gave another reason to prevent any reckless act. "Stealth doesn’t matter if we don’t know what we’re looking for there. The Longing Heaven can easily suppress our Authority once we get there."
Mo Fei Suggested. "What if we don’t resist desire? Can’t we use it against it?"
Jian Yue heard Lin’s logical reasoning as he looked at Mo Fei and spoke. "No, she is right, that can weaken our Authority. We have to gather the information for the next city."
Mo Fei rubbed his chin. "Then why are we going there?"
"To collect the pages of the ’Severed Record’ book," Lin answered.
Jian Yue continued. "It’s a book that contains rituals to advance to the next Ordinal. To ascend further we need them."
Lin revealed. "And what Jian Yue told me is that Xue Lan was one Ordinal above us. That means indubitably he possesses one of his own Authority’s pages."
Before they could talk further.
Zhou, who was on watch at the door, suddenly saw something. Zhuo’s cup slipped from his fingers, cracking from the handle. Water spilled across the floor, darkening the dust. He stared at the door, at the flickering sigils. Mo Fei, for the first time, saw how young he really was. Fifteen maybe. A child wearing a warrior’s facade.
Zhuo called out quietly.
"Jian Yue!"
Everyone fell silent. Jian Yue didn’t waste a second. He appeared at the door and placed his hand there. The sigils shimmered, showing the outside world: the moonlit, wind-scoured pass. It was empty with a hailstorm.
"Zhuo... What did you see?" Jian Yue whispered.
"A... a shadow. It wasn’t an animal. It moved against the wind. Then it was gone."
Elara moved closer to Han and Mo Fei The garden girl and the stonemason.
The hail struck harder against the walls.
And that time, none of them believed it was just the weather. The sigils started to flicker, as if whatever stood outside had noticed them. The sigil’s blue glow turned faint grey.
"It’s not trying to break in," Jian Yue whispered. "It’s asking the door to open." Then, from outside, a voice said a single word, spoken in perfect, patient Mandarin:
"Please..."
Jian Yue turned to them. His hand didn’t move from the gate, and he warned.
"It’s too late to run."