There it was.
A corpse.
Lying beside the bridge like discarded clothing, pale as milk left too long in moonlight, untouched by weather's cruelty or beast's hunger. Its eyes stared upward with glassy intensity, wide and unseeing, mouth slightly parted as if death had stolen the final word from its tongue.
But what struck them all—what rooted even Hua Ling in place like a sword driven through stone—was the absence of shadow.
No matter how light filtered through fog's thick veil, the body remained curiously flat against the ground, as if it didn't exist fully in this world. As if it occupied the space between reality and nightmare.
Qingze crouched beside it with scholarly precision, brows furrowing with deep concern. "No signs of struggle. No blood pooling. No scent of decay whatsoever."
Yan Zheng lowered his voice to near-whisper. "Something's profoundly wrong. I don't believe this person died by natural means."
Mochen stared hard at the corpse with eyes that had seen too much darkness. "This place... it's steeped in death qi thick enough to choke on."
Rourou inched behind Lingque's protective presence. "What does that mean?"
Lan Xueyao shot her a sharp look. "Shush."
Rourou immediately clamped both hands over her mouth like a scolded child.
Xinyu stepped closer and instantly shivered—not from cold, but from something deeper. Something beneath his skin, as if his very soul had flinched away from an invisible touch.
"The fog is thicker here," he murmured, voice barely carrying. "I cannot see the bridge's end."
Shen Yao narrowed his eyes with calculating wariness. "We should cross with all haste."
"No," Hua Ling said, finally breaking his silence like ice cracking. "Look again. Carefully."
They turned as one.
The corpse was no longer lying on the bridge's left side.
It had moved to the right.
"...It moved," Xinyu whispered, voice trembling like plucked string.
"I didn't witness it move," Lingque said with divine wariness.
"Neither did I," Qingze muttered, hand tightening on his weapon. "Yet it did."
A gust of wind rushed across the bridge with unnatural force—and the fog parted for only a heartbeat's duration.
In that fleeting instant, they saw something crawling along the bridge's underside like a nightmare given flesh.
It didn't possess a face. Or legs. Or arms in any conventional sense.
But it had too many fingers—long and twitching like centipede legs, pulling itself slowly, silently across stone with obscene patience. Clinging to the shadowless corpse with possessive hunger.
Mochen unsheathed his sword with ringing clarity. "It's feeding on the body."
"No..." Yan Zheng murmured with dawning horror. "It *is* the body."
Suddenly, impossibly, the corpse sat up.
Everyone stumbled backward with instinctive terror.
Its head lolled unnaturally to one side, neck bones grinding audibly, and from its mouth spilled a thick strand of black mist—like smoke, but alive and writhing. Its eyes remained open, weeping dark tears that stained pale cheeks like ink on paper.
Then it spoke. But the voice didn't match the mouth's movements—it came from everywhere and nowhere.
"Whose name... shall I take next?" it rasped with hunger eternal.
Before anyone could react, the black mist lashed out like a striking serpent.
It passed directly through Lingque—who screamed with primal terror, clutching her head as her knees buckled. Her form shimmered dangerously, wings flaring halfway in defensive instinct—but too late, always too late.
"Lingque!" Rourou cried out, catching her by the shoulders before she could collapse completely.
Lingque's eyes glazed over like frost on glass. Her lips moved mechanically, whispering in a language none of them understood—ancient, wrong, forbidden. Dark veins spread across her neck like poisonous roots seeking purchase.
"She's being possessed!" Mochen shouted, racing forward with desperate urgency.
He sliced a talisman with his nail, activating a purifying seal that glowed with righteous light, and pressed it against her back between the shoulder blades where spirit meets flesh.
A low hiss sounded—followed by a strangled, inhuman shriek from Lingque's throat that hurt to hear.
The black mist burst from her mouth like vomited poison, flailing like a wounded serpent, then dispersed into the fog's hungry embrace.
Lingque collapsed into Rourou's arms, gasping for air like a drowning woman surfacing. "It's cold... something was... inside me..."
"She needs rest immediately," Xinyu said, kneeling beside her with gentle concern.
But the mist wasn't vanquished.
Instead, it sank into the bridge itself with ominous purpose.
For a long moment stretched like eternity, nothing happened.
Then the bridge beneath their feet groaned—stone grinding against stone with the sound of ancient suffering.
Cracks spiderwebbed along the path like lightning frozen in rock.
The fog pulsed with living heartbeat.
And out of that fog came a boy.
No older than fifteen summers, pale-faced and desperate, running toward them with terror painting his features. "Help—please! My grandfather—he—"
He stepped into the clearing's dim light.
And he cast no shadow upon the earth.
Hua Ling raised one commanding hand. "Don't allow him any closer."
The boy froze mid-stride. His eyes changed in an instant.
They darkened like stormclouds gathering. Then widened impossibly. And then—he smiled.
Too wide.
Far too wide for any human face.
His neck snapped sideways with bone-breaking sound, jaw unhinging like it possessed no skeletal structure, and from his mouth poured that same black mist like a waterfall of condensed despair.
"No more running," the boy rasped in a voice doubled and tripled over itself. "No more names to steal."
Mochen threw another talisman with practiced precision.
The body exploded into smoke—but the mist didn't vanish into nothingness. It sank deeper into the ground beneath their feet.
And the air around them transformed completely.
The light dimmed to perpetual twilight.
The trees vanished as if they'd never existed.
Their feet no longer touched solid stone—they stood in a realm of fog and absolute silence, where even their breaths didn't echo against anything real.
"...Where are we?" Rourou whispered with childlike fear.
Xinyu looked around wildly, heart pounding like war drums. "This isn't the mountain anymore."
Lingque, pale but upright again through sheer will, murmured with divine knowledge, "An illusion realm... or something far worse."
"No," said Hua Ling grimly, voice cutting through despair like drawn steel. "This is its nest. Its hunting ground."
Figures began to materialize in the mist like memories given form.
Faint shadows, like the afterimage of photographs burned into retinas.
One of them bore the face of Xinyu's deceased Shixiong.
Another wore Qingze's features with perfect accuracy.
Xinyu stumbled backward, breath catching. "What is this nightmare..."
"Don't look, Yu-ge," Mochen said sharply, voice cracking with urgency. "Whatever you see—it isn't real. None of it is real."
But warning came too late.
One of the phantoms took the shape of Rourou's late brother—and she rushed toward it without thinking, without breathing, driven by grief and desperate hope.
"No—!"
The figure latched onto her with spectral fingers, and black mist began creeping into her skin like poison through veins.
This time, it was Shen Yao who grabbed her roughly and yanked her back from death's embrace.
Mochen flung a seal with desperate strength. "Scatter!"
Light burst from the talisman like a small sun born. The fog screamed with voices stolen from a thousand throats.
The illusion cracked like glass under hammer.
And for one precious moment, the real bridge flashed into view—shaking violently under their feet like a dying animal, but whole, still real, still there.
"We're not free yet," Yan Zheng said, drawing his blade with ringing determination.
Above them, the fog began to twist and writhe—taking terrible form.
A massive centipede-like spirit coiled into the air, constructed from shadow and smoke and stolen souls, hundreds of glimmering eyes blinking across its formless face like stars in a corrupted sky.
It had no body in any conventional sense.
Only mouths.
Countless mouths opening and closing in silent hunger.
And it was starving for their names, their shadows, their very existence.
The hunt had only just begun.