"Bah!" Mo Fei woke up with a shout, his own voice startling him. His hand twitched as the hot ribbon cooled down slowly. He lifted his trembling hand toward his throat, a few drops of blood stuck to his fingers.
He had survived...
Then the skin knit together and regenerated almost instantly.
"My wounds are closed." He heaved a sigh of relief. In world two, ascension became active.
Mo Fei sat in the middle of a road made of warm, fused black glass. Above him was a dull, pitch-black, and polluted sky with heavy clouds of dust.
There was no sun, only a little twilight made things slightly visible. The entire world seemed to be silent.
He forced himself up and walked; his leg tripped against a jagged crystal, nearly sending him crashing down.
In front of him, buildings lined the glass road, looming ahead. They weren’t even built, but grown as if the stone simply decided to rise. There were structures of petrified wood and smooth, towering stone in nonsensical shapes. There were arches that led to solid rock, doorways that opened onto blank walls, and buildings with three floors but no stairs.
"So, were you supposed to jump to reach the next floor?" He scoffed.
He saw the mismatched windows, some filled with what looked like burnt wood and some with just ash.
That world had drowned in its own silence, his footsteps making no sound. The ribbon’s light, 叁, was the only vibrant color in that monotonous world.
"The black and white television. Even those movies had more colour than this piece of–"
Mo Fei’s eyes shifted to a corner, and he froze. In the middle of an intersection stood a figure completely motionless, a Ji Tang, flesh shaped for listening. It had no eyes. Where they should have been, two horns had been driven through the flesh. It stood near a vast tree; blood dripped from its leaves.
"... This is the thing I died to see?"
Humanoid but utterly silent. The skin had the same texture as petrified wood, one arm slightly raised in a pose, its face a little tilted upward, trying to mimic a statue, but it wasn’t one. More like a person who had been turned into one.
The expression on its face was a deep, profound listening. A sudden warning shivered down his spine. ’Don’t make a sound!’ He took five cautious steps back when his ankle hit a piece of wood.
SCRITCH.
The figure moved with a sudden, jerking reorientation. Its stone head snapped down from the sky to look directly at Mo Fei. Its raised arm pivoted, a finger now pointing at his chest.
In the span of a blink, Ji Tang closed the distance. Its finger went through his chest. It slowly sank deeper. Mo Fei stared at the finger in fear.
His eyes frozen at the flowing blood.
He could not respond immediately. Then, with a few steps back, he maintained his distance and looked at its motionless hand, which remained at the same angle as before.
"I... I’m not dying. Why?" Mo Fei clenched his chest, feeling all the pain. He looked at the figure again; its horns seemed to see through his soul.
Instead of death, he had to suffer the pain. The wound wouldn’t kill him. He stepped back and took a long breath, then moved slowly.
Ascend to world 4, yes. That was the way to survive.
"Grgh, how long do I have to keep hiding?" Die... Should he die? "The next world won’t be soothing either... At least the wounds would heal." Ascending to the next world meant reaching for another horror, certainly more terrifying. He moved slowly, forgetting the pain, and found an isolated place.
Mo Fei saw a lamp standing tall there. His gaze shifted to a tree in an open field, there, someone stared at a black bird, black as a moonless night.
Its eyes glowed purple. Its wings were made of feathers, but not only of feathers. The wings were decorated with jewelry, as if it were someone’s pet.
The bird’s humming was the only sound, holding back the silence that wanted to devour the world. On the ground beneath it, there was a figure: a lean thing wearing black clothes and a cap with five corners and a long, dangling tip.
Mo Fei’s gaze fell upon the figure’s hands. There were none to begin with. That might have been the only weird thing, but no, that wasn’t... then it turned. Its face held a long grin, its nose half-crushed.
"What horror have I fallen into?" Mo Fei thought and moved as quickly as possible.
He looked into a low archway of bulbous stone; he pressed his back against a cold, vibrating membrane. The pain in his chest had stopped, but the wound was still there.
On the amber pane of a nearby window was written something.
"The Conductor hears, but not carefully enough. Its singing bird is the key. To move forward, you must first silence it. Then move to the well in the south. There, you will find your next step." ----Lin Shouxing.
A person. Someone who had been here understood this and left a message for whoever came next. The script was fresh, the condensation still beading on the glass.
As Mo Fei’s shadow fell over the script, the humming in the membrane behind him changed pitch, flattening into a warning.
The conductor hears, but not carefully enough...
"I can’t understand at all. You could have written that more simply..."
Mo Fei scanned the rest of the pane. In the very corner, almost invisible, was a second, smaller mark: a star, identical to the one on the locket. Create silence? How?
His eyes drifted back to the intersection, to the grinning Conductor and its adorned Bird.
The bird’s purple eyes glowed faintly. It was a live tuning fork, the source of the sound.
To create silence, just steal the singer: he needed that bird. So he waited until the Conductor got distracted.
Mo Fei came behind the Conductor who was staring at a scarecrow, a weird-looking doll, almost alive... No, there were more of these dolls in that open field.
They had the same wide grin filled with false emotions. Mo Fei’s neck tilted upward, and there. The bird was still humming the same song.
He grabbed the bird from the tree. The soft, airy flesh felt unnaturally warm in his hand. The bird made a soft chirping sound, pure, clear, and flat, that vibrated through his bones. A song that was the most beautiful, yet terrible, given where it was sung.
The bird didn’t struggle. Its beautiful purple eyes stared deeper at Mo Fei’s soul, and in them, there was no fear of prey. There was a glimpse of sad, exaggerated twinkles. It was a sacred object, and he was a defiler; his hands trembled.
The Conductor went still. Then, it turned its head, rotating farther than any joint should allow, the long grin fixed on Mo Fei directly.
Mo Fei hesitated; his hands trembled as he looked at the bird. He closed his eyes and twisted its neck.
The perfect song shattered.
Those scarecrows... The Silent Listeners convulsed. Cracks webbed across their stone forms, and the Conductor’s body twitched.
The Conductor’s neck cracked, and it let out a sharp shriek. The petrified wood of the nearby buildings scattered with sounds like gunshots. The glass path beneath Mo Fei began to shatter.
His true form revealed, shedding skin like a snake. The silly cap was consumed by the two vortex eyes that emerged where his face had been.
"THIEF!" The word hit his ears. "MURDERER. YOU HAVE BROKEN THE RHYTHM."
Mo Fei flinched; instead of walking, the conductor retuned the space between them. The ground harmonized into a wave that carried it forward. The dead bird in Mo Fei’s hands crumbled into ash, leaving his hands empty.
Mo Fei pulled the lamp nearby, and when he appeared, he flung it in the path of the advancing being. The hit briefly stunned the conductor.
It bought him two seconds. He turned and ran with desperate human speed, his lungs burning. He sprinted towards the south, according to Lin’s note.
There was a well, different from the world two. It was crafted with mismatched stone, adorned with amber. Smoke was rising from the well. There, he saw the next words.
"Go to the hollow blood tree 30 paces away... The next thing you have to find out yourself."
Mo Fei’s eye twitched; for once he doubted whether the person was really guiding or just having fun messing with him. Like, what the fuck do you mean, Find out yourself? This was what he had been doing before your stupid note.
He remembered the Ji Tang, the tree was there...
Suddenly, a shudder passed through the dead air. ’It was coming.’ The Conductor.
Mo Fei tried to move, but before he could, the Conductor-entity loomed over him–a standing wave of grief and fury, raising a limb that was now a blade of focus. He noticed instantly those hands were not its! A past victim? They were unmatched, one long, the other shorter.
His eyes flared up, the threads he had seen in the world two... They were here now. His hand burnt, the chopped ribbon threatened to pierce through his hand.