Hearing my master's voice, the scene before me blurred and eventually disappeared, replaced by my master's familiar, vibrant face.
I jolted awake, sitting up with a start. My hands instinctively flew to my chest—intact and unharmed. Glancing around, I realized I was still lying on the small hill where I had rested earlier. The only difference was that the sunny afternoon had turned into night. It hit me then: everything I had just experienced was nothing but a nightmare.
The relief was overwhelming. Being alive feels amazing.
My master stood nearby, watching my flurry of movements with a calm, knowing gaze, but he said nothing.
Once I had calmed down, I noticed his unusual expression. His gaze sent a chill down my spine. I couldn't help but ask nervously, "Master, why are you looking at me like that?"
"I never expected you to have such nerve," he said bluntly.
I blinked in confusion. My master, who had always berated me for being timid, was now praising my courage? It made no sense, and his words filled me with unease.
"Master, why are you suddenly saying that?"
He pointed at me with a single finger. Following his gaze, I looked down at where I had been lying. It didn't seem like anything out of the ordinary—just a small mound of earth.
"This is someone's burial mound," he said casually.
"What?!" I leapt three feet into the air and scrambled to hide behind my master. "I-I didn't know it was a grave!"
I was so scared that my words tumbled out incoherently.
My master rolled his eyes at me. "Judging by your reaction, you must've had a nightmare."
Still trembling, I tried to put some distance between myself and the grave as I recounted everything I had experienced in the dream. Of course, I left out the part where Ning Manwan saved me—I didn't want my master to know about that.
After listening, my master fell silent for a long time before finally saying, "Sleeping on someone's grave and dreaming about their life is perfectly normal."
"But the woman in my dream—I saw her on the bus earlier. Does that mean I saw a ghost in broad daylight?"
I thought back carefully. When I'd taken my phone from that woman, her hand had felt warm. Could she really have been a ghost?
"That's easy to explain. To make the dream seem more believable, the ghost probably used someone from your memory to take on that woman's face. Now think—did that supposed brother and sister even look alike?"
Thinking about it now, Mo Yun and Mo Xiangqi didn't resemble each other at all. One was plain, while the other was stunningly beautiful.
I sighed in frustration. I had failed to remain calm in the face of danger. If I had been more composed, I might've realized the inconsistencies earlier. Maybe I wouldn't have ended up lying there, feeling every agonizing moment of being butchered alive. Even if it was just a dream, the pain had felt excruciatingly real.
I had always wanted to live, yet in that moment, I'd almost welcomed death.
"Let's rest here for the night," my master said. "Tomorrow, I'll take you to meet someone. Hopefully, they'll have a way to make you normal again."
That night, my master fell asleep quickly, but I couldn't rest at all. Maybe it was because I had already napped in the afternoon, or maybe it was the lingering unease from my dream. Either way, I spent the night sitting by the fire, listening to the occasional chirping of insects and my master's steady snores.
Absentmindedly, I reached for the jade pendant around my neck. My thoughts drifted to Ye Cha. In the dream, I had allowed her to possess me. Her power had been terrifyingly immense.
Since meeting her, I had always thought of her as a particularly strong ghost. But in the dream, she had claimed to be something even more powerful than that.
"Ye Cha," I asked silently, "how much of what I experienced in the dream was real?"
I waited for a long time, but she didn't respond. Eventually, I gave up.
The next morning, still groggy, I was shaken awake by my master. Together, we descended to the bottom of the cliff. It was nothing like what I had imagined—it turned out to be an enormous valley, lush and vibrant. Walking through the countryside, breathing in the pure scent of nature, I felt my exhaustion melt away.
"This feels like a paradise hidden within the mountains," I said, marveling at the sight. "Who would've thought such a place existed at the bottom of a cliff?"
"Once you enter this world, you'll find many things you didn't expect," my master replied. "The most unassuming places often hold the greatest mysteries. What seems simple can be deceptively complex. And the people you underestimate might be those you'll one day look up to."
His words felt like a lesson, and I nodded solemnly.
We arrived at the entrance to a village, marked by a towering two-meter statue of a black pixiu carved from a massive black stone. However, the statue had been split open, its eyes shattered and hollow.
In Chinese folklore, the pixiu is a mythical beast believed to bring good fortune and ward off evil. Statues of it are common, often used for protection. But this broken, eyeless pixiu was unlike anything I had ever seen, and it filled me with unease.
My master's expression darkened. He handed me a strip of cloth and tied it around my right wrist. "No matter what happens, don't lose this cloth. If it disappears, you'll never find your way out."
Hearing his warning, I tied the cloth into a double knot for extra security. "Master, what happened here? Why is the pixiu like this?"
"I haven't been here in years. Something must've happened. Let's go inside and see if the person we're looking for is still here."
We entered the village, but it was eerily empty. Not a single person was in sight. When we reached the house of the person my master was seeking, the door wasn't locked. Pushing it open, a cloud of dust fell, making me cough uncontrollably.
"Looks like they've been gone a long time," I said between coughs.
My master's face was grim, his brow deeply furrowed. "We exchanged letters not long ago. He said he was still living here. Something's wrong—very wrong. We need to leave. Now."
Without another word, he grabbed my arm and pulled me toward the window.