"…Where am I?"
Her voice came out hoarse, barely louder than a whisper.
Above her stretched a ceiling of black stone carved with countless faint lines — formation inscriptions, though weathered to the point of near invisibility. They glimmered faintly, like dying stars, pulsing once every few breaths.
Bai She scanned her surroundings more carefully.
Stone floor and stone walls.
No obvious doors and no visible exits.
The space felt… wide, yet closed, like standing inside the ribcage of an ancient beast.
She remembered Elder Su's solemn warning. "Time flows differently there. Seven times slower than the outside world. A day here equals seven days inside."
Her heart skipped. "Seven times…"
Then her eye narrowed thoughtfully.
She had been thrown out of the illusion violently.
How long had she been inside that illusion before being expelled?
"…How much time has passed outside?" Her uncertain voice came out as a whisper."
An uneasy chill crept into her chest.
Had days passed? Weeks? Months?
Had her so-called best friend realized she was missing?
Or were they still inside the Sacred Ground?
The others had entered with a token to exit them after two days in the real world but she had entered the Sacred Ground without a token.
"Yes…I have no token." She chuckled at the realization as she recalled another function of the token which was to identify the different palaces.
No token, no anchor and no guide.
"Great."
She exhaled slowly, steadying herself.
Panic was useless.
She had survived worse.
Her gaze sharpened as she surveyed her surroundings, every sense stretching outward, brushing against the spiritual pressure saturating the air.
It was… dense and ancient, thick, like mist that had accumulated for countless years without ever dispersing.
"That Fox Elder said the Sacred Ground has existed since the great war." Her mind raced. "Could I have been thrown into some hidden subspace inside it?"
Her gaze drifted upward again, lingering on the faintly glowing inscriptions overhead. "These formations…they look familiar."
The realization excited her as her bloodthirst hunger for cracking formation aroused but a familiar and irritating weakness choose this time to strike her.
Without warning, her limbs trembled and her vision blurred. A familiar, crushing heaviness surged through her body.
"…Damn it."
She barely managed to mutter the curse before her legs buckled beneath her.
Her body collapsed back onto the cold stone floor.
Her breathing turned shallow. She tried to circulate qi instinctively, but the flow stuttered, clogged, then dispersed entirely, as if her meridians refused to respond.
"…Not now…"
But her fox body had its own will.
Unlike her human form, which could be forced into motion through sheer discipline, this body followed instinct and biology. When pushed too far, it shut down entirely, entering a deep healing state that no amount of stubbornness could interrupt.
Her eyelids drooped and the darkness rushed back.
"I take back my comment about being grateful."
The last thought that flickered through her fading consciousness was bitter.
"Why must this body go into deep sleep to recover?"
Then silence swallowed her.
—
Time passed.
She did not know how long.
There were no dreams. Only silence.
When she awoke again, the first thing she noticed was warmth.
Not physical warmth, the stone beneath her remained cool but internal warmth, a gentle, flowing sensation that pulsed through her limbs, her meridians, her bones.
Her consciousness felt clearer, sharper and lighter. Her breathing was steady and her heart beat strong.
"…Mn…"
She stirred, then slowly pushed herself upright. This time, her limbs responded smoothly. Her vision was crisp and her senses expanded outward with ease.
"Am healed?" She blinked astonished.
There was no lingering pain, no sluggish qi and no tearing sensation in her meridians.
"This fox body indeed have an insane healing capacity…"
"Wait.." Her ears twitched sharply.
"…How long was I unconscious?"
Her stomach sank slightly. "Please don't tell me I slept for so long just to recover."
She closed her eyes, extending her spiritual sense outward. It stretched far, farther than she expected brushing against layers of spatial folds, and ancient seals.
Nothing have changed in her surroundings but she noticed something different.
Her soul.
It felt stronger.
Her soul pressure, though concealed, was noticeably denser than before. Her perception of spiritual fluctuations was sharper. Even the ambient qi of this strange place felt more vivid, like colors suddenly brightening after a long winter.
"What changed?" She frowned slightly.
She drew a slow breath and turned her awareness inward toward her soul.
At first, she felt nothing unusual.
Her soul sea was calm — a vast, shimmering expanse of light where spiritual energy drifted like stars in a night sky. At its center floated her soul core, bright and stable, pulsing with steady rhythm.
Then she saw it.
A mark.
Etched into the outer surface of her soul core — engraved with such subtle precision that it seemed to belong there naturally, as though it had always existed and she had only just noticed it.
Her breath caught.
"…What is that?"
The glyph was strange.
It was… abstract. Curved lines intersected at impossible angles, spiraling inward, yet never touching.
"Why does it look incomplete?" Bai Shuo muttered softly staring at the new mark on her soul.
Each stroke seemed incomplete as if part of a greater pattern that had been interrupted mid-formation.
And yet, despite its incompleteness, it radiated a deep pressure.
"This must be from the illusion." Her mind raced. "Is it from From the Ancestral Fox Prince? Or is this the inheritance?"
The thought sent a ripple through her chest.
She had entered the Sacred Ground despite Elder Su's warning hoping for resources, techniques, maybe a cultivation opportunity that would assist her in this completely unfamiliar world and body— but not something like this.
Was it just a glyph imprint?
A mighty soul imprint?
Or an inheritance?
Well, she couldn't wait to find out. Excitedly, she studied the glyph carefully, probing with her Spiritual sense but she was disappointed.
It didn't transmit knowledge nor revealed cultivation methods. It didn't resonate with any Dao principles she recognized.
No insights flooded her mind. No epiphanies and no enlightenment.
It simply existed.
Quietly. Stubbornly and incomplete.
Her brows furrowed.
"…Then what is its function? Is it because it's incomplete?"
That possibility seemed likely.
She studied the glyph again.
Each curve, each stroke, felt deliberate but incomplete, as if part of a greater formation diagram, a cultivation map, or a Dao circuit that required additional components to activate.
"…Maybe because I didn't complete the illusion?" The realization hit her hard.
She had been expelled forcibly, not because the trial was finished, but because her fox body had collapsed under the strain.
Meaning she hadn't received the full inheritance, only a fragment.
Her lips pressed together.
"…Tch."
She didn't know whether to laugh or curse.
She had been thrown out of the Sacred Ground because of her weak body but even she didn't know if she would have survived the rest of the trial when she had almost lost control of her emotions or if she would be like how Elder Su said.
"Enamored and tempted by the Sacred Ground."
She took a deep breath and her gaze locked onto the inscriptions lining the stone beneath her paws.
"This formation," Her eyes lit up. "…I've seen this before."
She had encountered it in the Lingli Sect's inner library — buried among dusty formation manuals few disciples ever touched. Tomes describing ancient array systems, pre-Great War constructs, and legendary formations lost to time.
After creating her first formation array, the Mimic Mayfly, she had fallen deeply in love with formations.
Both setting them and cracking them.
She especially loved cracking difficult arrays– the more ancient, the more complex, the better. She had once studied the hardest formations recorded from ancient times purely out of obsession.
And this was one of them but it had been incomplete.
"So this is how the complete one looks like." Her heartbeat thundered.
"An ancient formation like this couldn't be placed in an ordinary palace.." She slowly lifted her gaze. "Which means that this must be an Ancestral Prince's palace. But which one?"
"…An Ancestral Prince's palace."
The words left her lips softly and her eyes shone with fervent light ."It's going to be challenging but… I love it."
She knew it was going to be dangerous considering her current weak body but either way, she had no intention of turning back.
Her fox ears flattened and she stepped forward.
The moment her paw crossed the boundary of the formation's core region, the air changed.
__________
Somewhere deep within the palace…
Something stirred.
In a chamber layered behind countless spatial folds and illusion seals, a pair of ancient eyes fluttered open.
They glowed faintly with consciousness, hunger and anticipation.
"…Mm?" A voice echoed softly through the chamber, neither male nor female, neither young nor old — but carrying the weight of ages long past.
"How long has it been…"
Dust drifted through the air, stirred by the faint ripple of awakening energy.
"I was beginning to think that no one would ever come again."
The voice chuckled softly. It's voice dry and cracked like wind scraping against dead leaves.
"…Let me see…"
Within the chamber, a massive, translucent figure slowly coalesced — vaguely humanoid in shape, yet composed entirely of shifting formation lines and spiritual light.
His eyes glimmered with excitement as his perception extended outward, threading through countless formations, slipping through layered barriers, brushing against the intrusion that had just entered the palace core.
"…Oh?" His pupils constricted slightly."…A fox."