The Moon should have been dead.
That was what Li Xiao Bai remembered from his first life. A lifeless rock. A pale companion circling Earth in silence, reflecting borrowed light, carrying nothing but dust and old footprints.
But the Moon in front of him did not feel dead.
It felt watched.
He drifted closer in cautious increments, letting momentum do most of the work. Every adjustment cost essence. Every technique risked drawing the wrong kind of attention. He had learned that lesson in the void with blood and missing flesh.
The lunar surface grew clearer, a gray sphere turning slowly beneath the sunlight. Craters and ridges emerged as faint shadows. The horizon curved gently, like the edge of a bowl holding secrets.
Then he saw it again.
Mist.
Not dust. Not vapor. Not something that should exist in vacuum.
A thin veil clung to a region of the Moon like a stain that refused to disperse. It moved without wind. It curled and folded in slow, deliberate shapes, as if someone was breathing beneath the regolith.
Li Xiao Bai slowed even more.
His remaining eye narrowed, and his thoughts tightened into a clean line.
The void had taught him that when something violated basic rules, it was never an accident. It was either a trap, a creature, or a law.
He did not like any of those options.
Yet he still approached.
Not because of curiosity. Not because of bravery. Because the Solar System was already a cage of laws, and this Moon was part of the path to Earth. If there was a predator here, it was better to see its outline now than stumble into its maw later.
He adjusted his angle, drifting above the fogged region. The surface beneath looked ordinary at first glance. Dust. Rock. Craters carved by impacts that belonged to ancient time.
Then something moved.
At first, he thought it was his perception shifting. A trick of distance.
But the movement repeated, subtle and undeniable.
A silhouette stood inside the mist.
Human shaped.
Still.
Li Xiao Bai did not immediately react.
He did not rush to attack. He did not rush to flee. He did not even reach for a Gu.
In the Gu world, a human figure could mean a fellow Gu Immortal, a mortal, a beastman, an illusion, a puppet, or bait. Here, in this foreign system of laws, it could be something worse.
His cold judgment produced a single conclusion.
Impossible.
A living human on the Moon made no sense. A corpse would not stand upright. A machine could, but machines did not create mist in vacuum.
Unless the mist was not physical.
Unless it was a domain.
Unless it was a mind.
Li Xiao Bai let his body drift, almost motionless now, maintaining distance. He forced his breathing into silence and kept his essence sealed. Concealment remained thin and carefully layered, less like a cloak and more like a lie whispered into the fabric of space.
He watched.
The silhouette did not move for a long time.
It simply existed.
Then, slowly, it tilted its head.
A simple motion.
The kind a man might make when he noticed a sound behind him.
Except there was no sound in vacuum, and Li Xiao Bai had made no movement that could justify being noticed.
His heart beat once, heavier than it had a moment ago.
The chain around his soul tightened in response, cold pressure licking the inside of his spirit. It was weaker than before, no longer pressing like a set of hands shaping him, but still present. Still real. Still a collar that reminded him he could not afford mistakes.
The silhouette stepped forward.
One step.
Its boot sank slightly into dust.
The motion was slow and calm, with none of the hesitation of someone testing an alien surface. It moved like someone who had always belonged there.
The mist parted around it.
And Li Xiao Bai saw the suit.
A spacesuit.
Bulky and layered, with a domed helmet that reflected the pale sunlight. Tubes and packs clung to the back like a life support system. The material looked worn, but not ancient. Not something left behind by a forgotten mission.
Something being worn right now.
A man.
Or something pretending to be one.
The visor turned toward the darkness above the Moon.
Toward him.
Li Xiao Bai did not move.
He had survived by refusing to give predators the reaction they wanted.
He waited.
The astronaut raised a hand, almost lazily, and touched the side of the helmet as if adjusting a communicator.
Then a voice spoke.
Not through sound.
Inside his mind.
It entered like a hand slipping into water, gentle at first, testing. A pressure that did not carry malice, only certainty.
'You are not from here.'
Li Xiao Bai's expression did not change, but his thoughts sharpened.
A mental intrusion.
A mind reading.
He had prepared for enemies with blades, schemes, formations, and poison. He had fought wisdom path experts who tried to twist thought into chains.
But this felt different.
It did not feel like a technique.
It felt like a natural function.
Like breathing.
Like gravity.
Asterion did not need to force his way in. He simply reached, and the world agreed.
Li Xiao Bai did not respond.
He tightened his will, compressing thought into a narrow point. He did not try to build a barrier through Gu. That would only invite the law to erase more of his remaining tools. Instead, he used something older.
His nature.
His refusal.
His mind became still.
The invisible touch pressed deeper.
Then it paused.
For the first time, the astronaut's posture changed. The head tilted slightly, as if in curiosity.
'Strange,' the voice said inside his skull. 'A mind that has been sharpened for centuries, yet it is not the owner of the body. A borrowed blade.'
Li Xiao Bai's pupil contracted.
He had not revealed that. Not through words. Not through action.
It was being pulled straight from his memories.
He felt the touch slide across the surface of his experiences, brushing images that belonged to another world.
Blood red skies.
Immortal apertures.
Gu crawling like living tools.
Schemes layered on schemes, spanning decades.
A man smiling while the world burned.
Fang Yuan.
Li Xiao Bai's will clenched.
The chain around his soul tightened again, and for a heartbeat, the intrusion stalled as if it had encountered something sharp and cold.
The astronaut stopped walking.
He stood in the mist with one arm lowered, the other hanging loosely, and the voice sounded almost amused.
'Ah. So there is a chain.'
Li Xiao Bai did not answer.
The astronaut raised his head, visor reflecting starlight, and the voice continued, soft and clear.
'It does not bind you the way it used to. The hand that held it is no longer touching you. Yet it still bites.'
Li Xiao Bai's throat tightened slightly.
So it had been real.
The pressure he felt in earlier days was not merely injury or erosion. Something had been controlling and correcting his soul. And now, that controlling force was gone.
But the collar remained.
The astronaut took another step, and the mist curled around his boots like obedient smoke.
'You drifted through a place that removes meaning. You lost pieces of yourself. Eye. Leg. Hand. Tools. Attainment. You should be dead.'
A simple statement.
No cruelty.
No pity.
Only the calm acknowledgement of a fact.
Li Xiao Bai forced a thought to the surface, letting it form into a response without emotion.
'Who are you?'
His mental voice was cold, precise, and short. He did not give the astronaut more than necessary.
For a moment, there was silence.
Then the astronaut laughed.
It was not sound. It was a sensation, a ripple through thought. A faint warmth that did not belong on the Moon.
'Am I not obvious?' the voice asked. 'A man in a suit, standing where no man should stand. A thought given shape. A thing that survived because people could not stop imagining it.'
Li Xiao Bai's mind tightened further.
The answer was not an answer.
It was a description.
A warning wrapped in poetry.
He measured the distance.
Measured his options.
His remaining immortal Gu were precious. His mortal Gu had been butchered. His aperture was a scarred shell. Any prolonged conflict here could end him.
And this entity, whatever it was, had already placed a hand inside his mind.
Li Xiao Bai's instinct screamed one word, quiet and absolute.
Leave.
But he did not move yet.
Because leaving without understanding could be worse.
The astronaut took another step and stopped. The mist shifted, and for a heartbeat Li Xiao Bai thought he saw something behind the visor.
Not a face.
A depth.
Like looking into a tunnel and realizing the tunnel was looking back.
'I have not seen something like you in a very long time,' the voice said. 'A mind that carries a different world's weight. A will that refuses to accept its place.'
Li Xiao Bai did not give him the satisfaction of reacting.
He kept his thoughts still.
But inside, calculation spun.
This entity was not just strong.
It was connected to law.
To concept.
To the rules that kept the Solar System quiet.
Maybe this was why the void beasts did not approach. Maybe this was what hunted incoming things.
And if that was true, then he was standing before the gatekeeper of this system.
Or the owner.
The astronaut lifted his hand, palm open, and the mist rose slightly as if responding.
'Do you know what you are doing?' the voice asked. 'You are trying to return to a world that is not truly yours anymore. You are trying to enter a system that will weigh you, judge you, and either reshape you or erase you. Yet you still come.'
Li Xiao Bai answered with honest coldness.
'I need a stable environment.'
The astronaut paused, then the voice smiled inside his skull.
'Practical. That is good. Most people lie to themselves. They call it destiny. They call it hope. They call it duty. You call it what it is.'
The touch in Li Xiao Bai's mind pressed again, sharper this time, and he felt it slide toward something deeper.
Toward the core where Fang Yuan's will had been engraved over five hundred years.
Li Xiao Bai's soul shuddered.
The chain tightened.
The intrusion slowed, then stopped again, as if it had met a wall that was not built by technique but by nature.
The astronaut's head tilted.
'You resist me,' the voice said, with faint surprise. 'Not with a shield. Not with force. With refusal.'
Li Xiao Bai did not respond.
He did not know if resistance pleased the thing or annoyed it. Either reaction could be fatal.
The astronaut lowered his hand.
The mist settled.
Then the voice said something that made Li Xiao Bai's remaining eye narrow.
'I can taste the hunger in you.'
Li Xiao Bai remained still.
The astronaut continued, voice soft as a whisper in a dark room.
'Not hunger for food. Not hunger for survival. Hunger for something permanent. The kind that does not fade, even when you lose everything else.'
Li Xiao Bai did not deny it.
Denial would be useless.
He had learned long ago that the truth was a blade. If used correctly, it could cut a path. If hidden, it could cut its owner.
'I am moving forward,' he replied. 'That is all.'
The astronaut stood in silence for a long time.
Then he spoke again, and this time the voice carried a faint weight, like the beginning of a storm.
'Be careful what you look at, wanderer.'
Li Xiao Bai's mind tightened.
The warning echoed the lesson he had learned in the void. Sight was a rope. Awareness was a line. If you looked too deeply at something, it would look back.
But this warning came from something that hunted through thought.
That made it worse.
The astronaut took a single step closer, and the mist moved with him like a living cloak.
'I could erase you,' the voice said calmly. 'I could open your mind and wear it the way one wears a mask. I could let the system chew you into nothing and never think of you again.'
Li Xiao Bai did not react.
He did not beg.
He did not threaten.
He simply waited.
The astronaut's visor angled upward, reflecting the distant blue of Earth.
'But you are interesting,' the voice continued. 'You are a mistake the system has not accounted for. You carry a different pattern. A different history. A different hunger.'
The words were not friendly.
They were not hostile.
They were the tone of someone examining a rare insect.
Li Xiao Bai did not like being examined.
Yet he could not afford to refuse.
Because refusal might trigger the other option.
The astronaut lifted a finger and tapped the helmet once, as if making a decision.
Then he spoke a single name.
'Asterion.'
The name did not arrive as sound.
It arrived as an idea.
And the moment it touched Li Xiao Bai's mind, something shifted.
It was subtle at first, like a seed pressing into soil.
A faint pressure that did not hurt, did not threaten, did not demand.
It simply existed inside his thoughts, clean and quiet, as if it had always been there.
Li Xiao Bai's will tightened instantly.
The chain around his soul bit down.
The seed did not vanish.
It remained.
Asterion's voice carried a trace of amusement.
'Now you will remember.'
Li Xiao Bai stared at the astronaut in the lunar mist.
He did not move.
He did not speak.
Inside, he felt the name settle deeper, trying to become a part of him.
Trying to become something he might repeat without realizing.
Li Xiao Bai's expression stayed calm, but his mind turned colder than it had been in a long time.
Because this was not a fight of fists.
This was a fight of thought.
And thought was where monsters like Asterion hunted best.
The astronaut in the mist stood quietly, watching him.
Waiting to see whether the foreign will drifting into the Solar System would become prey, or become something worth keeping.
And far away, Earth turned in silence, unaware that something had just spoken a name on the Moon.