The mist deep in the forest was unusually heavy today.
Bai Lin still felt the aftershock of sliding down the broken slope in his bones; each step he took was so heavy it was as though something were dragging him backward by the ankles.
The corpse veins inside his body writhed restlessly, urging him to hurry, yet his pace grew slower and slower—because the sight ahead made him pause.
It was neither a mountain village nor an outer sentry post of a sect.
It was… a corner the world had forgotten.
Shelters pieced together from broken timber, roofs held up by tattered cloth, a fire built from damp wood that spat gray-black smoke.
The people sat around the fire, quiet in a way that made them seem already dead.
Some were missing a leg; some had spines sunken as though crushed; some had clouded, lifeless pupils.
Many more were like children born without spirit roots, huddled against the wall clutching thin blankets.
A small settlement of a hundred or so souls—so silent it felt as though even breathing might wake the world.
Bai Lin stood in the tree shadows for a long time.
This place… was not of the same world as the blessed lands of the sects.
There, immortal companions crowded together, spirit qi was rich and full, dao patterns layered upon one another, disciples and spirit beasts filled the air with noise.
Here—only discarded fragments.
Bai Lin knew places like this.
The underbelly of the cultivation world.
Those without spirit roots, the crippled, the frail, the exiled, those deemed unworthy of resources…
They were all thrown here.
Yet this place was even more ruined than he had imagined—more… forgotten.
He did not step inside.
He only watched in silence.
Had it not been for the black mist, he would have taken a wide detour.
He did not belong here. He did not want ties with anyone.
His very existence was calamity.
But suddenly the corpse veins twisted tight.
Countless fine threads squirmed beneath his skin.
Bai Lin's eyelid twitched—the black mist was coming.
He turned to look toward the dense forest beyond the cliff.
First the leaves went still; then the wind reversed. The mountain wind that should have blown east was sucked backward, pouring into the deep shadows of the trees.
The next instant, the darkness soaked through like spilled ink, rolling forward without a sound.
That was the black mist.
It was sniffing him.
It was hunting him.
Like some ancient beast tracking a scent.
Bai Lin held his breath. He knew he could not outrun it, and he could not lead calamity into this tiny settlement.
—He owed these people nothing.
—Yet these people had done nothing wrong.
He clenched his molars.
In that moment something tore inside his bones. A decision he had never made before was wrenched out of his flesh and blood.
He turned and walked into the settlement.
＊＊＊
The commotion inside the settlement was faint.
At first the people were wary, then afraid.
Because Bai Lin… did not look like someone who meant well.
Dried blood crusts clung to his body; the scorch marks left by the Heart-Slicing Mirror on his shoulder had not yet healed; his hair hung in disarray; a layer of unnatural shadow lay in the depths of his eyes.
His footsteps were heavy, like a dangerous beast barely restraining itself.
A one-eyed elder leaning on a wooden staff stood by the fire and spoke in a raspy voice:
"Young man, outsiders… are not welcome here."
Bai Lin did not approach. He stopped ten paces from the fire.
He had only intended to say one thing: Run.
But before the words left his mouth, frantic coughing came from the far side of the settlement.
A mother clutched a baby so thin it looked like kindling; panic filled her eyes.
The children nearby shrank into a clump, clutching rags and hiding in the corner.
Their fear was not of him—it was the fear of people long accustomed to being hurt.
The words stuck in Bai Lin's throat.
No matter how he looked at it, these people were not the sort who would draw calamity upon themselves.
"…I won't stay long," he said in a low voice.
The elder frowned. "Then why have you come?"
Bai Lin pointed toward the sea of trees behind him.
"Something is following me."
Every face in the settlement went white.
"Did you lead bandits here? Or the sect?"
Bai Lin did not answer.
Because he knew—it was not human. It was something even the sects dared not name.
Panic instantly swept through the settlement. People began gathering their rags and dried rations, preparing to flee.
Children started crying—one, then another—as if trying to wake the whole world.
Pain surfaced on the elder's face.
Bai Lin closed his eyes; his fingertips trembled faintly.
The black mist was closing in.
In ten breaths it would crash against the settlement's edge.
There were no runes here, no arrays, and many did not even have legs strong enough to run.
The black mist needed only an instant to "rewrite" this place beyond recognition.
For a moment Bai Lin's body wanted to flee.
He had every right to flee.
Yet something kept him rooted to the spot.
It was not kindness. It was not duty.
Certainly not the heart of a hero.
It was… watching their terror made the thing inside him—mingled with corpse veins and the lingering shadows of living sacrifice—twist uncomfortably.
As though—
If he did nothing, he would feel wrong.
In a low voice he said:
"No need to run."
The elder froze. "What?"
Bai Lin raised his hand and pointed to the path outside the settlement.
The gesture was gentle, as if touching a sheet of fragile paper.
—It was the first time he had ever voluntarily said to the world:
"Follow me with the calamity."
Everyone stood stunned.
Those words were too foreign, too heavy.
The elder's voice shook. "…Young man, you…"
Bai Lin did not reply. He had already turned away.
He walked toward the edge of the settlement. His back was thin and solitary, yet his footsteps were like iron growing from a crack in stone.
The black mist was now less than ten zhang away.
Bai Lin stood between it and the settlement.
For the first time, he deliberately exposed himself to the black mist.
The corpse veins shuddered; patterns bulged beneath his skin as if about to tear through.
His whole body felt grabbed by hundreds of hands, dragged forward against his will.
The black mist saw him.
In that instant the mist stretched as though pulled by invisible eyes; black threads wound toward him.
Bai Lin drew a deep breath.
"The calamity has come."
He whispered.
He raised his arm. Dead crust formed over his skin; death qi condensed at his fingertips.
The next moment the black mist lunged like a beast.
It was not mist—it was a swarm of cold tentacles that seized his shadow, his divine sense, his skin, his flesh, burrowing layer by layer deeper.
Blood instantly poured from Bai Lin's right eye.
The corpse veins inside him fought back frantically.
For the first time he did not flee—he blocked.
The black mist parted before him, as though unable to tell which "version" he was.
At that moment the world was like a canvas torn open with a hole.
From behind came a child's cry: "Mama! That big brother… he…"
The elder stood at the settlement's edge; his staff shook so violently it nearly fell.
They watched the black mist crash into Bai Lin. The youth's entire body seemed swallowed by shadow—
Yet the shadow did not cross him by even half a step.
He held it back.
He held it back with sheer force.
The black mist, displeased at being blocked, began contracting wildly, trying to tear Bai Lin into fragments.
His vision shook; a roaring filled his ears.
Bai Lin wanted to use the third form of the corpse veins, but he knew—that would expose even more of his aberration.
Yet if he did not, he would die.
He raised his right hand. Corpse qi gathered in his palm, dense as a black star.
"—Corpse Veins · Withered Engraving."
His fingertips swept through the air.
A faint crack burned into the black mist.
Though faint, the mist recoiled half a cun.
Half a cun was enough to keep the settlement safe.
Bai Lin clenched his teeth. The mist dragged him backward; his legs slid across the ground. His whole body felt as though it were being pulled into the earth; his shinbones emitted the faintest cracking sound.
Something stirred inside the mist.
A murmur, as though something whispered:
[Anomalous entity…]
Bai Lin's pupils shrank.
The voice was not human speech, nor the Demon Emperor's.
It was cold, dry, emotionless.
As if the world itself were speaking.
[Confirmed… contact.]
Abruptly the black mist contracted and retreated into the distance.
Bai Lin collapsed heavily to his knees.
Blood spilled from the corners of his eyes; his breathing was chaos.
He braced himself against the ground and stood, swaying like grass in the wind.
The settlement was untouched.
The elder rushed over and caught him with one arm.
"Young man! How could you… how dared you…"
Bai Lin pushed him away—not rejecting, not accepting, merely steadying himself.
"It… won't come again."
The elder stared blankly. "What did you do?"
Bai Lin's throat was so hoarse it sounded shredded.
"I let it… see me."
The elder understood a little, though not everything.
More children and frail folk gathered at a distance, watching him.
Their gazes held no fear—
For the first time, someone had stood in front of them and blocked.
Bai Lin was unaccustomed to it.
He had never been looked at that way before.
He turned.
"I have to go."
The elder hurriedly said, "Young man! At least stay the night—"
Bai Lin did not look back. He did not glance at anyone again.
He was afraid he would regret it.
He was afraid he would think he could stay.
He knew—
The black mist would seek him again, not the settlement.
Calamity followed the "anomalous entity."
Not ordinary mortals.
When he stepped across the settlement's boundary, the elder's throat choked:
"…Why did you save us?"
Bai Lin halted; his back stiffened for a moment.
His voice was low, like wind in the night:
"…I don't know."
He walked away.
Before stepping into the mountain mist, he added one more sentence:
"But I didn't want to watch you die."
The elder raised his head; tears glistened in his eyes.
Beneath the tattered shelters, the children softly asked:
"Was that big brother a good person?"
The elder shook his head.
"No…"
He gazed at Bai Lin's figure gradually vanishing.
"He is not a good person."
"But… he chose not to be bad."
When Bai Lin left the settlement, his shinbones still trembled faintly.
The corpse veins beneath his skin writhed like awakened serpents—coiling, contracting, then sinking back into the depths of his bones. He knew that was the reaction left by the black mist's touch.
The words "anomalous entity" clung to his ears like a curse.
He walked deeper into the mountains until the settlement's firelight disappeared completely, until there were no more children's cries or the elder's trembling calls behind him. Only then did he stop.
A fallen tree lay across the rocks, covered in moss like a sleeping beast.
Bai Lin leaned against it and sat.
He closed his eyes. The whole world seemed submerged in black water.
The whisper of the mist, the restlessness of the corpse veins, the lingering echo of the Demon Emperor… all fought an endless war inside his flesh.
What had the black mist said?
[Confirmed… contact.]
[Anomalous entity…]
Anomalous entity.
He had never heard the term.
But he was certain—the sect did not know it.
The Demon Emperor knew—yet the Demon Emperor would never explain.
And the black mist… merely observed.
The relationship between the three was like three different kinds of hunters.
And he was the same prey clutched in all three hands.
＊＊＊
The sky grew darker.
Clouds pressed low like slabs of stone about to fall.
Mountain wind poured into his ears, damp and cold.
Bai Lin leaned against the fallen tree; his wounds ached in waves.
But that was not what troubled him most—
It was the look in the settlement children's eyes.
He should not have saved them.
Reason told him so.
Yet feeling denied it.
That was the first time he had voluntarily blocked calamity for others.
Not out of pity, not out of goodness, and certainly not because he was asked.
Simply… he did not want to see them die.
The reason was absurd.
He was not a compassionate person.
In his previous life, if he had encountered such a settlement he would have passed by with cold indifference.
Yet after the living sacrifice, his choices had begun to change.
Every emotion seemed rewritten.
It was not becoming a good person.
It was becoming… less cold.
Or perhaps—
What he had carried back from the living sacrifice was not only calamity.
There was also something faint and nameless…
A desire to prove he was still alive.
Bai Lin gave a low, self-mocking laugh; his throat felt as though it had been scoured with gravel.
"How laughable."
He rested against the fallen tree until moonlight fell and rain began to drift on the wind.
He prepared to leave these mountains.
But before he could rise, a sudden disturbance pierced his senses.
A faint strand of spiritual pressure came from deep in the forest to the southeast.
Not the black mist.
Not a sect disciple.
The spiritual pressure flickered on and off, like the lingering breath-trail of someone gravely wounded yet still walking.
Bai Lin frowned.
How could there still be a cultivator in this area?
He followed the trace for several dozen steps. The closer he got, the weaker the pressure became.
At last, in a patch of sodden grass, he saw a figure collapsed in the mud.
A female cultivator, about twenty years old, her sect's standard outer robe torn to shreds, her shoulders and back crisscrossed with wounds from sharp blades.
She clutched tightly a jade box engraved with strange patterns.
Bai Lin stopped three zhang away.
He was not the sort to approach strangers lightly—especially not someone from a sect.
The female cultivator's breathing was extremely faint.
Yet when she sensed someone near, she forced her eyes open and gripped the jade box as though trying to hide it inside her very bones.
Her voice trembled beyond human:
"…Don't come closer… you… you're one of them too…"
Her pupils were scattered, filled with terror.
But the next instant, she saw Bai Lin's face clearly.
For some reason her pupils suddenly contracted.
"You… you are…"
Bai Lin's gaze darkened.
"You know me?"
The female cultivator shook as though about to shatter. From her throat squeezed a few words:
"…You… are… the one from… the Heaven-Sacrificing Platform…"
Bai Lin's heart lurched violently.
Before she could finish, a black line suddenly tore open across her chest—as though ripped from the inside.
Her heart meridians seemed crushed by an invisible hand; her whole body convulsed.
Bai Lin sucked in a cold breath.
He had not lifted a finger.
It was some kind of…
Tracking.
Assassination.
Silencing.
With her last strength the female cultivator grabbed his sleeve; her fingertips were covered in blood.
"…Don't… go back… to the sect… they… they know… you… still…"
She never finished the last word.
Her heart stopped.
Her divine sense collapsed.
Her body fell heavily, as though the thread of life had been yanked away.
Bai Lin stared at the black mark on her back, his expression ice-cold.
It was neither a talisman nor a technique.
It was—
The trace of being erased.
As if the world had "deleted" her in a single instant.
Bai Lin slowly straightened.
Rain began to fall, striking his face like knife edges.
He did not close her eyes for her.
He did not take her jade box.
He simply stood there, still for a very long time.
A very long time.
Until the rain washed away the blood on the ground.
Only then did he ask in a low voice:
"…Why did she know me?"
No one answered.
The mountain forest was quiet.
Only the faint flicker of firelight from the distant settlement.
Bai Lin turned, walked back to the fallen tree, and braced himself against the trunk to stand.
A growing unease spread wider and wider in his heart.
The black mist hunted him; the sect silenced witnesses; for the first time a crack had flashed across the eye beyond the sky; the broken boundary layer had begun recording him—
The entire world seemed pushed in the same direction by some immense force.
And he was merely…
The first one shoved to the edge.
＊＊＊
The rain grew heavier.
Bai Lin stepped once more into the thick mist, walking toward even deeper mountain paths.
The people of the settlement would no longer be troubled by the black mist.
At least not because of him.
The world was vast, and the road he had to take was more remote, deeper, more perilous.
The corpse veins pulsed inside him, as though reminding him:
—The farther you walk, the tighter calamity follows.
He did not look back.
Yet through the rain he heard…
From the direction of the settlement, a faint call.
"Big brother…"
A child's voice.
He stiffened for an instant.
But he did not answer.
The mountain mist swallowed the voice, and the night swallowed his silhouette.
There was no path in the direction Bai Lin walked.
He was heading into the unknown depths.
The cracks in the world waited for him there.