The rocky crevice became their temporary camp.
It wasn’t that they didn’t want to leave; they simply couldn’t.
That night, Alice came down with a fever.
The wound on her left shoulder had healed long ago, so it definitely wasn’t an infection, but she was burning up anyway.
Her body was scorching hot, cobweb-like pale-gold veins surfaced beneath her skin, and her breathing was rapid and shallow.
Most bizarre of all, in her delirium, she would unconsciously reach out to grab at something invisible in the air.
Every time her fingers drew close to Luo Xun, those golden veins would visibly brighten.
At first, Luo Xun kept his distance.
With an arrow notched to his bowstring, he stood at the deepest end of the crevice.
But Alice showed no signs of aggression.
She merely writhed in agony, occasionally letting out suppressed whimpers that carried a trace of…
longing.
In the dead of night, Luo Xun finally walked over to her.
He brought his canteen to her lips, and Alice took a few unconscious sips.
Just as he was about to pull back, her hand suddenly clamped onto his wrist.
It was that feeling again—being drained, being plundered.
But this time, it was slightly different.
It was no longer a one-sided plundering, but more like…
an exchange?
Luo Xun couldn’t quite put it into words.
He only felt his exhaustion intensify as a dull ache throbbed in his head.
Meanwhile, the golden veins beneath Alice’s skin rapidly receded, and her breathing stabilized.
A few seconds later, she let go of his hand and fell into a deep sleep.
Luo Xun stared at his wrist for a long time.
There were no marks, but the sensation of being connected lingered like an invisible brand.
The next morning, Alice woke up.
The first thing she did was make a complex gesture to him, placing her right hand over her chest and bowing her head slightly.
Luo Xun didn’t understand its meaning, but he could feel the apology and gratitude behind it.
Then, she began to teach him her language.
Over the next three days, starting with the most basic nouns, they moved on to constructing sentences.
Soon, they were able to communicate a great deal.
By the fourth day, Luo Xun realized his strength had increased yet again.
When moving a boulder blocking their path—one that would have normally required both hands and considerable effort—he lifted it with a single hand.
He had noticed his strength growing ever since he first crossed over to this world, though he had no idea what was causing it.
Next, in his downtime between language lessons, he began practicing his unique visual ability.
If he stared at Alice long enough, he could discern the direction in which the golden aura flowed within her body.
Every time she had an episode, the aura on her would dim.
Her condition fluctuated over the next few days, delaying their departure from the crevice.
It wasn’t until the seventh day that Alice had recovered enough to finally stand on her own.
A day later, they left the rocky crevice.
Luo Xun walked ahead, his bow partially drawn in his hand.
Alice followed three paces behind.
Her steps were steadier than before, but her face remained pale.
“Direction?” Luo Xun looked back and asked, using one of the words he had just learned while pointing toward the dense forest ahead.
Alice raised her hand.
A faint speck of golden light flickered at her fingertip for an instant, pointing toward the northeast like a compass.
“Home.
Three days,” she said, using two words before adding, “If…
no…
battle.” Home.
Luo Xun committed the word to memory.
For someone who could casually summon light spears and wore robes embroidered with silver thread, her “home” was likely an extraordinary place.
That was fine by him.
He needed information.
He needed to understand what kind of place this hellhole was, and more importantly, he needed to figure out what exactly was “wrong” with his own body.
“You,” Alice suddenly spoke up, stepping forward to walk beside him.
Her golden eyes locked onto him.
“Recently…
thanks to you…
for providing…
mana.” Luo Xun stopped in his tracks and turned to face her.
The morning light filtered through the leaves, casting a pale gold glow on the edge of her white veil.
At this distance, he could see the curve of her eyelashes and the clear sincerity shining in her golden eyes.
“Mana?” he asked in a stiff, halting tone, while pointing to his own eyes.
“I…
see…
colors.
Many.
Yours…
gold.
Undead…
gray.
Trees…
green.
Water…
blue.
This…
what is it?” He chose to reveal a portion of his secret.
Traveling together for the past few days had at least proven she harbored no immediate ill intent.
Besides, he needed answers.
Alice was visibly stunned.
Her lips parted slightly beneath the white veil, and it took her several seconds to ask, “You…
see?
The flow of the cosmic forces?” “The cosmic forces?” “The powers…
of the world,” Alice attempted to explain, tracing a few arcs in the air with her finger.
“Six kinds.
Order, Life, Light, Shadow, Fel, Death.
Different…
colors.” She pointed to herself.
“Me…
Order…
gold.” Then she pointed toward the faint, grayish-black smudge of corrupted earth in the distance.
“There…
Death…
gray.” Luo Xun nodded, only half-understanding.
There were still several words he couldn’t comprehend, but this explained a great deal.
Those glowing auras were actually the manifestation of different cosmic forces.
Then, what Alice had drained from him…
“You…
need…
mana?” he asked directly.
Alice’s body stiffened almost imperceptibly.
The apology in her golden eyes was replaced by a deeper exhaustion.
“Our…
energy source…
was destroyed.” Her voice was very low and her vocabulary simple, but Luo Xun understood.
Their race’s power bank was gone.
“We are…
thirsty.
Always.” She pressed her hand against her chest, where an extremely faint golden aura pulsed sluggishly.
Luo Xun recalled the sensation of being drained, and his tone cooled.
“So…
you…
drain me?” “No!” Alice shook her head immediately, her tone turning frantic with anxiety.
“Not…
drain.
It is…
resonance.” She gestured with her fingers.
“Your…
body…
is like…
like the sun.
Close to you…
I feel warm.
Direct contact…
more, but…” At this point, a clear sense of apology and fatigue flooded her golden eyes.
“For you…
not good.
I know.
I am sorry.” Luo Xun stared at her for a long time.
Alice did not look away.
In those golden eyes, aside from apology, there was a trace of…
fear?
Not of him, but of being abandoned by him, of falling back into that abyss of endless hunger.
He recalled how he had felt when he went without food for three days in the wild—that clawing, agonizing hunger, the urge to bite into anything in sight.
Her “hunger” was likely several times worse than that.
At the thought of this, his heart softened slightly, but he still said coldly, “Don’t touch me again.” The light in Alice’s eyes dimmed for a brief moment, but she immediately nodded solemnly.
“I…
promise.” Their brief exchange ended.
The two resumed their journey.
The atmosphere grew slightly more nuanced than before, with less pure vigilance and more of a complex dynamic—somewhere between “temporary allies” and “potential hazard.” Around noon, they crossed a relatively open forest clearing.
The trees here had been cleanly severed by some sort of force, their stumps blackened and charred, and the ground retained the gray aura of death energy.
Suddenly, footsteps echoed from the forest ahead to their right.
It wasn’t the sluggish, dragging sound of the undead, but light, agile footsteps.
The newcomer was fast, reaching the edge of their vision within a few breaths.
Another pointy-eared elf.
A male, wearing a fitted dark red robe with gold trim.
His long golden hair was neatly bound behind his head, and his face was handsome to the point of aggressiveness.
He looked somewhat older than Alice, with fine lines at the corners of his eyes, but his posture was upright and his movements elegant.
Most importantly, he radiated a clear golden aura—the same “Order” energy as Alice.
Though it was thin, it was far more stable than hers.
The elf noticed them as well.
He froze for a second, but then a delighted smile spread across his face.
Calling out something in a tone far more fluent and rapid than Alice’s, he quickly walked over to meet them.
Alice clearly recognized him too.
She stopped walking.
While her expression beneath the white veil remained obscured, her posture relaxed slightly, and she raised her hand to return the greeting.
They spoke rapidly, and Luo Xun could only catch a few words: “Kaelen”, “pleasure”, “return journey”.
The elf named Kaelen drew near.
His gaze lingered for a moment on Alice’s bloodstained, torn robes.
Frowning slightly, he spoke a few words of concern.
Then, his gaze shifted to Luo Xun.
In that instant, Luo Xun saw something.
Beneath the stable layer of gold surrounding Kaelen, hugging his skin, clung an extremely thin, almost imperceptible film of gray.
The gray was flowing and shifting.
Sometimes it seeped slightly into the golden light, and other times it retracted back to the surface of his skin.
It was deeply hidden.
Had Luo Xun not spent the past few days staring at Alice and learning the flow of her golden light inside out, he wouldn’t have noticed it at all.
It was death energy.
It shared the same origin as the undead, yet it was far more subtle, far more…
elusive.
Luo Xun’s pupils constricted slightly, and his fingers instinctively shifted half an inch closer to his bowstring.