Inside the trial area.
I stood staring up at the sky. Or what I could call the sky.
Even underground, the ceiling imitated the heavens. Faint stars were scattered across the dark surface, cold and distant, as if the cavern itself had learned to mimic the sky.
I lowered my gaze and turned around.
Chen Wu's group had already settled the camp. A fire burned at the center, its light moved across the stone while the disciples sat around it in silence.
I found a place at the edge of the firelight, slightly apart from the main group, and sat down.
Most of the disciples looked exhausted. They had done the majority of the work since the beginning.
Still, I reached beside me and picked up the small beast already skewered on a branch. The meat had finished cooking over the edge of the fire. I tore off a piece and began to eat.
Then I looked at the disciple sitting nearest my position, I held the skewer out toward him.
"Want some?"
His eyes moved at the skewer. His expression didn't commit to anything immediately. Around the fire, heads turned one by one and the low conversations stopped.
"Wei Peng." Hou Zi's voice came from across the fire. "Come sit over here."
Wei Peng snorted towards me and walked to where Hou Zi sat, dropping down beside him without looking back.
I exhaled and pulled the skewer back."It's Not poisoned," I said, to no one and everyone simultaneously. "But your hearts are."
Silence held for a breath.
After a moment the group's attention moved away from me.
Chen Wu had the manual open across his knees, Su Ling beside him, Hou Zi on his other side.
Several other core disciples had arranged themselves in the same loose cluster, their own manuals out, the discussion between them low and intermittent.
"What we have so far." Chen Wu's voice was quiet, addressed to the group. He looked down at the manual. "Flesh Binding Grass."
Su Ling held up a section of the material they had collected.
"Heaviness Iron Ore and the Coldsteel Essence." Chen Wu gestured toward a sealed container near the fire, a simple ceramic jar plugged with cloth.
Through the cloth, something inside shifted faintly. The dark metallic liquid we had found earlier moved slowly within the jar, flowing with the steady rhythm
Three materials collection, only two remaining.
Hou Zi leaned forward slightly, his elbows on his knees. "Cave Bee Stings are next. The material itself is straightforward, the sting from a cave bee, nothing complicated about identifying it."
A disciple across from him nodded. "Should be simple enough. How hard can bees be? Haha."
Hou Zi shifted his gaze to him. "Cave bees live in colonies. Not ten. Not twenty." He paused. "Hundreds or maybe more. And these have been living underground for hundreds of years with no predators large enough to control them."
His eyes went back to the fire. "Whatever a cave bee is above ground and what's down here will not be the same thing."
The disciple said nothing.
Chen Wu turned another page of the manual without reacting to the exchange. "The Soul Suppression Crystal."
His eyes moved across the page for a moment.
"The manual describes it. Appearance. Properties and how it will be used during refinement."
He paused slightly. "But it says nothing about where to actually find one."
Every other material at least hinted at a location.
The ore formed near rock formations. The grass appeared where the boundary between organic and inorganic matter had weakened.
Each one left traces. Something that pointed a cultivator in the right direction, even if the manual never named the place outright.
But the crystal had nothing.
"It can be rare," Wei Peng offered. " And HIDDEN."
"Maybe not," Su Ling said.
The group's attention settled on her.
She also had the manual open in her hands, her eyes still on the page describing the crystal.
"The materials we found grew somewhere or formed somewhere." Her fingers rested lightly against the page.
Hou Zi frowned. "So?"
Su Ling lifted her gaze from the manual.
"It might mean the location isn't fixed."
"What!?"
She hesitated, thinking.
Her eyes drifted toward the fire for a moment.
"Maybe this crystal isn't something you can just find… but something that appears under certain conditions. That's what I think."
Wei Peng frowned. "At least, don't talk in riddles."
Su Ling closed the manual.
"I don't know," she exhaled and admitted. "But it feels like we're looking for the wrong kind of place."
The group went quiet around the fire.
Chen Wu looked back at the manual, his thumb holding the page in place. He neither confirmed nor denied what Su Ling had said.
..
On my side of the fire I had finished eating.
I wiped my hands on the cloth beside me and leaned back, watching the flames shift while the crystal problem lingered in my mind for less than a breath.
I considered it from the same angle Su Ling had, then from another.
But in the end, why should I even care about this crystal? Whatever it was, wherever it was, it would eventually appear for Chen Wu.
That was how the world worked around people like him. And I had no argument with the world's decisions. I simply intended to be nearby when they arrived.
I set the cloth aside and stood.
No one bothered to look up.
The firelight moved across their faces. Hou Zi was saying something to Wei Peng in a low voice. The others had their heads down.
I walked past the edge of the firelight and into the dark.
The field stretched in all directions, faintly lit by the false stars. My steps made almost no sound on the stone.
I moved through the outer belt of rocky terrain until the warmth of the campfire behind me faded completely. Only the cool underground air remained.
The terrain dipped until a narrow stream appeared between the rocks, feeding a shallow basin ahead where the water settled.
A pond.
It was small. Barely larger than a courtyard. The water lay flat and dark, perfectly still. I stopped at the edge and examined the pond for a moment.
Then I set down what I carried and began removing my outer robe.
The fabric fell away layer by layer. Dust from the field had settled deep into it.
I set each piece aside carefully, folding them without much thought. The underground cold reached my skin immediately and I let it. There was nothing unpleasant about it.
Then my hands moved last.
The cloth around the lower half of my face had been there since after I left the Spring Pavilion.
And now it had become something I no longer noticed.
I unwound it slowly.
The scarf came away. I folded it over the rest of my clothes and stepped to the pond's edge.
The dark surface held still for a moment. Then faint ripples spread outward, bending the reflection before settling again.
I stepped into the water.
It reached just above my waist when I stopped. The cold closed around me slowly, clean and quiet.
I crouched and cupped my hands, bringing water up over my shoulders and neck.
Then I remained where I was, the pond still around me while underground silence settled back in.
The false stars were visible even here, reflected faintly. My eyes moved across them for a moment without settling on anything. Then I lowered my gaze.
The water at the center of the pond was still enough to act as a mirror.
There, I saw myself in it.
The face that looked back was not one I had chosen.
Silver hair fell loosely around pale skin that caught the cold underground light. The bone structure sat at angles the eye followed without quite knowing why.
I let the reflection remain there for a moment.
Then I raised one hand and rested it along my jaw, the fingers covering part of my face and breaking the reflection.
"Cursed," I said quietly, thinking about beauty.
People treated it as though it had value of its own. But.. it simply existed.
They spoke of it as if it were a virtue.
But virtue had never cared about appearances.
This face was the same.
Sigh….
"So Cold."