Chapter 22: Continent of Misfortune

  The city of ‘South Cleveland’ looked less like a city but more like a cage that was open, but the humans couldn't dare to escape; in the entrance, a large gate was covered in mantras with papers glued to the walls.

  Zhuo’s eyes widened. “Look at the gate-”

  Lin followed his gaze, mantra, and paper talismans, layers of spiritual protection built up over years like a torn tissue, like something had been scratching them. “They're just afraid.” She murmured.

  A stale scent of flour with some rice water filled the air. The sound of shuffling in the streets and the echoes of footsteps showed a large crowd. People walked: merchants, mothers, and children, but no one's feet moved outside the gate, not even slightly.

  A city filled with a population where hope was buried under the landscape. The tower seemed like a large tombstone thrusting into the sunless sky.

  The air was heavy with the wrong kind of pressure, a pressure of 'authorities,' even outside the city. The nervousness in the air was tainted; Jian Yue's hairs on the neck straightened from the feeling of cold.

  Then from a temple of a god a bell rang, signifying the beginning of the day, a way of ignorance to any terror. The bell rang again and again. Zhuo counted it; his eyes shifted to the direction.

  “Why is it taking so long?” Zhuo’s voice, a little worried now, followed Jian Yue.

  “He should have been here by now.” Jian Yue's eyes narrowed, looking for any signs of Mo Fei. “Zhuo, can you see his motion?”

  Zhuo shook his head; he focused but saw no lines of familiar motion. Lin's fingers traced the fabric of her Hanfu.

  “Lin,” Zhuo whispered with another small yawn. “Uhm, so why don't you use your 'authority'? We can take Mo Fei here.” Lin stared down at the ribbon on her wrist; her voice came as a sigh.

  “2 hours are left for my scar to heal." Zhuo tilted his head, confused. “Using it now would tear the wound open again, or worse.”

  Her eyes fixated on the gate, Jian Yue took two steps ahead, his hand resting on his blade.

  “I'll go and find him.”

  Lin's hand raised, Jian Yue paused to hear her. “No, if you are thinking of going to the continent of Misfortune.”

  Zhuo ran his hands through his hair. Lin’s eyes snapped to him. “Stop that, Zhuo. Manners.” Zhuo froze. “Sorry.” He scratched his head once, and Zhuo remembered his mother, who used to say the same thing.

  Jian Yue cast a brief glance his way once and then continued. “You mean wait for the confirmation of the pages?” His hand casually moved away from the hilt of his blade.

  “But you know that Mo Fei can be there.”

  “But what if he isn't?” She said flatly.

  “Something must have happened to him, Lin."

  “Oh yeah, that stupid probably got killed saving someone.”

  “The border of Misfortune isn't somewhere you get 'lost'; you either find a way in hours or never.” Jian Yue's voice got serious now.

  “You don't have to say that; I know that.” She said, crossing her arms.

  “What if he can't use his eyes and there are no monsters but gho-”

  Lin cut Zhuo off in the middle of the sentence and pinched the bridge of her nose.

  “Zhuo, stop; you aren't making it any better.”

  Jian Yue sighed at her words, her voice trying to sound calm, almost trying to reassure herself.

  “As for checking up, just in case… I'll go too.” Said she.

  Jian Yue appeared to understand that if they fell in danger, they could use her 'authority' for escape.

  “... Can I… come too?” Zhuo whispered, expecting her to accept, but he soon got his hope vanished like a retreating wave.

  “No,” Lin said without hesitation, but this time Zhuo felt that this no was softer this time. “You'll stay here; don't move from here.”

  Lin said and Zhuo nodded. Behind him the city waited, but ahead of him the forest didn't.

  Lin and Jian Yue disappeared from his sight.

  Zhuo watched them go. And for a long moment, there was nothing but the rustle of leaves, the distant chime of the bell, and the weight of a city that refused to look at what lived beyond its walls.

  He turned back to the gate. To the talismans. To the people who walked and talked and never, ever looked this way.

  Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  Somewhere out there, Mo Fei was running. Zhuo hoped he was running toward them.

  ***

  In the forest Mo Fei was still running. A dull thread in front of Mo Fei, his feet changed direction before suddenly something snapped, a few drops of blood from his nose and mouth.

  “It's already 19 minutes, damn it… DAMN IT!”

  He closed his eyes. His hand clenched the temple; using it more would lead to another heavy loss, another memory that Mo Fei didn't want.

  The boy tugged Mo Fei’s sleeve. “Are you okay? There is blood.” Mo Fei wiped his mouth. “Fine enough to run.” The girl didn't say anything; she just stared.

  “Kids, you can see them right?” Both of their fear-tainted faces looked at me, and their heads nodded. “Then you have to tell me where they are.”

  The girl didn't say anything; just for a few seconds she stared at the tree at something crawling. “We… have been here before.” She said, Mo Fei's good eye looked around. He noticed the crawling termites on the tree, and behind him the church loomed.

  The time… 6:26. Time had moved further, but Mo Fei didn't.

  He was circling around.

  “How can I escape it? It's an illusion.” His stomach turned; the church was behind him again, the same termites crawling. He hadn't moved at all; he'd been running in place for twenty minutes that gave no return.

  Mo Fei's thoughts flickered as he realized… Those spirits didn't kill me because they couldn't. I wasn't in their territory.

  A few screams came out and jolted Mo Fei's bones. Not the children's screams but something else… something that had been screaming for hours, maybe days or years, and now one came to help.

  He stared at the direction of the scream; it wasn't from the church but from the garden of another house some meters away. Both of the kids gripped Mo Fei tightly.

  “... One or two memories can't be that bad to lose.” He remembered a few things: the name of his pet hamster that had died when he was a kid and the moments when his father helped him learn to ride a bicycle.

  Thinking, what if it became the last time he knew about those memories?

  He tapped his temple, and the choice was decided: survival over memories. Another 19 minutes he had now; he couldn't waste any seconds of it now.

  He saw seven dull threads around him; above him wandered spirits. One half-eaten through its stomach, another had no sides, and one had a broken spine. Mo Fei’s hand cut through the dull threads. With a clean strike, his hand severed two of them.

  Both spirits screamed out of their throats, and then other spirits disappeared from sight. His eyes narrowed; the threads were still there before his ankle tightened. His feet smashed down on the hand of the spirit.

  He jumped back, and then those spirits caught the kids who clung to Mo Fei desperately with watery eyes, but the spirits couldn't move more than two feet.

  Mo Fei clenched the dull thread tightly; they suffocated under that pressure, their jaws opening, letting out a guttural moan.

  “I don't want to waste my time!” His Glaive moved, slashing the threads his other hand held. Kids. The spirits' form unraveled edges, dissolving into mist.

  Mo Fei’s hand trembled from the feedback through the glaive, a shudder that traveled through his arm. The children closed their eyes, and they could see it happening. Someone was fighting for them.

  “They're gone?” Both of them spoke with hope returning to their faces.

  Mo Fei nodded. Three threads, three souls. The Glaive drank them all; for a moment the wind stopped, and the forest itself held its breath.

  “Lightless path…” The same mixed voice of children and the spirit came from behind him; the copy of the kids stared at him.

  “You are walking on a road with no destination.”

  “What do you mean?” Hearing his words, the spirit wearing the faces of kids went silent.

  “M-Mei, where is Mei-" The girl spoke from behind me in a staccato manner. The faces of the spirits tilted at the kids.

  “Mei? You mean your older sister. She is dead… in a few minutes.” Her hand held Mo Fei’s sleeve tightly, quivering.

  The third thread, it was Mei. ‘I might have failed… Not everyone can be saved.’

  Mo Fei's stare hardened.

  “You have no connections with this world any longer; why does this place even exist?”

  “I wonder that too.” It shrugged, a human gesture that seemed horribly out of place.

  Mo Fei glared at the thread of the spirit, his hand raised to chop it off, but his hand suddenly stopped by the same intestine, holding his wrist. The same sticky, wet a warm feeling.

  “Many ascenders come here for the scattered pages of 'Authority,' but you had different reasons.” Both replicas raised their voices and said in a raspy tone.

  “You must be an amateur.”

  “You talk too much for someone that should be sleeping in a grave.” Mo Fei pulled his hand harder, and the intestine stretched, same as before.

  “Try running then.” The spirit whispered there was no reason to run now. The replica of the boy's body stretched; the spine lengthened abruptly. It reached for the kids; Mo Fei moved without thinking.

  The Glaive came up and caught the wrist of spirits; the impact shuddered through his arm, teeth, and skull.

  “Fast…”

  Mo Fei's vision flickered. Three minutes had passed and sixteen minutes left. But at this moment thinking about it was worthless.

  With a push, Mo Fei shoved back the spirit, buying a second. His free hand touched his temple, and the kids held him tight, trying not to fall from the movements.

  The world turned silver.

  Threads scattered everywhere, a web of spiders that seemed to catch him. Between them he saw the bright thread, but it was slowly dimming. The spirit followed his gaze.

  “Yes,” it whispered. “She is still there.” The replica's hands moved toward the church's garden. “But even if you make it, there is no saving.”

  Mo Fei ran toward it. The replicas didn't just merge. They collapsed into each other, skin folding into another, faces wrinkled. When it stopped, an old man stood there. Half his teeth were gone. The rest were broken; it made a clattering noise like someone whimpering in the cold. He looked at Mo Fei with eyes that had stopped being human centuries ago.

  It didn't walk; it simply was where it wanted to be, as if the forest itself carried it.

  The air curdled. One moment the path was clear; the next, the spirit stood there, its nerves knitting together with the sound of a snapping dry branch in front and with the stretched body, like a trampoline base.

  It blocked the path.

  Four minutes… thirty seconds.

  The ground trembled. A small hand grabbed his ankle; his eye quickly stared down. It was a child's hand, then another, then another. Dozens of small hands reaching up to pull him down. Mo Fei's eyes darted between them.

  “They all wanted to be saved.” Another whisper from the spirit. “They all thought someone would come… their hope died with them.”

  Mo Fei almost sank to his knees. The girl held the glaive before it could fall from his grip. Mo Fei’s hand found Glaive. The threads were dull; they had died but didn't move on.

  He swung, bringing the glaive down at the ground with a crushing force; he aimed the devastating blow at the ground beneath them. The glaive bit deep; he cut off the hands before stumbling back.

  A heavy silence occurred; the spirits didn't scream. They were simply gone, disappearing from sight. Behind the spirit, Mo Fei saw the thread connecting to someone.

  His eyes saw a clear vision: another girl wearing the same colored ribbon as the smaller one. Mo Fei found his throat getting bitter from the sight.

  Her head had a big cut that was bleeding, and her one leg was missing, breathing barely. His hand rose to touch his own chest, but he understood it.

  ‘You can't save three people drowning with just two hands.’

  His glare hardened at the spirit. What could be the motivation of the spirit to be this cruel?

  Mo Fei channeled all his strength into a horizontal slash, aiming to take the spirit's leg out. The spirit was amused by the sudden attack and disappeared inside the trees.

  Then the face appeared in the tree: first the skull, then it formed nerves, then muscle made of wood.

  “You're already too late,” it said, not cruel but tired… Tired of existing for who knows how long. “She's gone.”

  The spirit wasn't taunting him; it was warning him. Not out of kindness but from the habit. The dead knew how hope felt, and it knew better than anyone that hope was the cruelest thing.

  But Mo Fei already knew it… The thread had gone dull a few seconds ago. Mo Fei looked at the kids behind him, at their faces streaked with tears waiting for the news that they already knew.

  8 more minutes left to escape now… Only 8 minutes. He had two children to lead out of the terror to stop them from getting swallowed by darkness.

  Damn it.

  He held the kids on his sides. Then He ran, but with observation this time, he memorized the path.He turned left at the twisted oak. Then right at the stone that looked like a kneeling woman, a statue that went in such a terrible state to even be recognized… Then he rushed straight through the place where the trees didn't grow.

  When the familiar sight of the haunted town came, he breathed relief; he was close to escape now.

  Behind him, something breathed. No longer trying to follow. But just... aware.

  The girl stumbled from his hand. Mo Fei caught her without stopping. The boy's grip on his sleeve was not loosening at all.

  And then.

  A small weight fell from his pocket. The locket. The one he'd carried since World War 2, since the empty room, since before he understood what any of this meant, he had almost forgotten the locket.

  It hit the ground with a soft thud.

  “Wait-”

  But the boy was already there. Quicker than Mo Fei could react, the child scooped it up and clutched it to his chest.

  “Pretty,”

  the boy whispered. His eyes, still wet with tears, looked at the locket like it was the first beautiful thing he'd seen in years.Mo Fei should have taken it back. Should have grabbed the kid again and kept running.

  Instead, he said, “Keep it. For now. But if anything falls again, don't even look back to see.” The boy nodded. And held it tighter.

  The threads of Jian Yue and Lin blazed at the edge of the forest… close now, so close. He followed them, dragging the children through the underbrush, through the grasping hands of roots that tried to trip them, and through the whispers that promised rest if they'd only stop running.

  Mo Fei counted second: twenty, ten, five, one.

  Another thing snapped in his head; he knew he had forgotten something…

  Something that wasn't as important but important enough to know who he was. He tried to remember his moments of high school when he hung out with friends; he had forgotten two of their names…