Xīng Hé woke with a start.
*When did I fall asleep?*
The thought surfaced through layers of exhaustion, her mind struggling to piece together the fragments of recent memory. She remembered sitting against the wall. Remembered the weight of the pocket watch against her hip, the twenty-seven rings it contained pressing against her consciousness like stones. Remembered the barrier holding firm around them, her Preservation concept working without her direction to keep them safe from what waited outside.
She remembered closing her eyes.
Just for a moment. Just to rest.
But the light filtering through the ancient windows had changed. Hours had passed—maybe more. And something else had changed too.
The barrier was gone.
She felt its absence before she consciously recognized it. That subtle pressure that had surrounded the Main Hall, the invisible membrane that had kept them trapped but alive—it had dissipated. Faded. Vanished as completely as if it had never existed.
Her concept had stopped.
Xīng Hé sat up slowly, her body protesting the movement. She wasn't upset about what her concept had done—the barrier had been their only protection, the only thing standing between them and the contaminated disciples who would transform the moment they saw intruders. If Preservation hadn't activated unconsciously, they would all be dead.
She looked around the hall, counting faces.
Eight people. Including herself.
Her heart stuttered.
There should have been nine. Eight others plus herself—the survivors of the cooking pavilion massacre, the remnants of a team that had started with thirty. But one of them was missing.
"Where—" Her voice came out rough, scraped raw by sleep and thirst. She swallowed and tried again. "Where is everyone else?"
One of the remaining survivors looked up. A girl whose name Xīng Hé should remember but couldn't quite grasp—four months of death had blurred too many faces together.
"Two left," the girl said. Her voice was flat. Empty. "While you were asleep. Said they were going to the outer area. To look for a way out. And food."
"Food?" Xīng Hé frowned. "There's nothing edible in the outer area. We checked."
"The supplies from the cooking pavilion are almost gone."
The words landed with weight that made Xīng Hé's stomach clench.
*Almost gone.*
They had risked everything for those supplies. Had lost six people in the cooking pavilion, had barely escaped with their lives, had retreated behind a barrier that had kept them imprisoned for... she didn't know how long. Days, at least. Maybe longer.
And now the food was almost gone.
"How long was I asleep?"
"Two days. Maybe more." The girl shrugged—a small, defeated motion. "We stopped counting."
Two days.
Xīng Hé pressed her palms against her eyes, fighting the urge to scream. Two days of unconsciousness while her concept drained her to maintain the barrier. Two days while their supplies dwindled and their options narrowed and two of their remaining teammates decided to venture out on their own.
*They might not come back,* she thought. *If they went to the outer area, if they encountered anything...*
But she couldn't think like that. Couldn't afford to assume the worst when assumption would only paralyze her.
"We wait. They might come back."
No one argued.
No one had the energy to argue anymore.
---
The hours crawled past.
Xīng Hé sat near the entrance to the Main Hall, watching the space where the barrier had been. It hadn't returned. Her concept remained dormant, apparently satisfied that whatever danger had prompted its activation was no longer immediate.
Or perhaps it simply couldn't sustain itself any longer.
She didn't understand how it worked—how any of her concepts worked, really. They responded to her will sometimes, activated on their own at other times, drained her in ways she couldn't predict or control. Preservation had kept them alive for days, had held a barrier in place while she slept, had exhausted itself into dormancy.
Now they were exposed.
If the contaminated found them—if anyone from the inner disciple residence came to investigate the Core Sect district—they would die. Simple as that. No barrier to protect them. No strength left to run.
*We need to get out of here.*
The thought had become a constant refrain, a drumbeat beneath every other consideration. But getting out was easier said than done.
This entire place was one massive building.
She had realized that early in their mission—had pieced it together from the layout, from the way districts connected to each other, from the architecture that suggested a single unified structure rather than separate buildings. The Sect wasn't a compound or a campus. It was a singular edifice, vast beyond comprehension, containing everything its inhabitants had needed to live and train and die.
And beyond its walls?
Water.
Xīng Hé had seen it during their initial exploration—an endless expanse stretching toward a horizon that never seemed to get closer. Not an ocean, exactly. Something stranger. Something that refused to let them pass, that pushed back against any attempt to cross it.
They had tried to escape that way first.
Before the mission consumed them. Before twenty-seven people died. Before they understood exactly how trapped they really were.
The water had stopped them.
Invisible barriers. Currents that defied physics. A boundary that made it clear: the only way out was the way they had come in.
Which meant the concept stone.
Xīng Hé's hand drifted to the pouch at her waist, where the teleportation stone waited. One use. One chance to return to the training compound, to escape this nightmare, to see familiar faces again.
But returning without completing the mission meant death.
She had witnessed it herself. A team had come back early—had arrived at the main hall with terror in their eyes and stories of beasts too powerful to fight. They had thought the mentors would understand. Had thought failure would be met with reassignment, with additional training, with anything other than what actually happened.
The mentors had killed them.
Every single one. Without hesitation. Without discussion. Without even the pretense of a trial or explanation.
*You don't come back empty-handed. You succeed or you die trying. Those are the only options.*
So the concept stone wasn't really an escape. It was just a different kind of death—one that happened in familiar surroundings rather than foreign ones.
*There has to be another way.*
Xīng Hé's mind turned to the layout she had mapped over four months of exploration. The hierarchy of the Sect. The districts they had cleared or avoided. The buildings they hadn't yet entered.
The Sect Master's peak.
It rose above everything else—a structure at the highest point of this impossible building, visible from almost anywhere within the complex. They hadn't approached it. Hadn't dared to, not after the massacres in the inner disciple residence. Whatever waited at the top would be stronger than anything they had faced.
But it was also where the leader had lived.
And leaders needed ways to leave.
Private exits. Emergency passages. Methods of departure that didn't require walking through the lower districts. If there was any hope of escape—any path out of this place that didn't involve the concept stone or the impassable water—it would be there.
At the very top.
Where the most powerful contaminated almost certainly waited.
*Assuming there's anything left up there at all. Assuming the Sect Master didn't flee when whatever happened here began. Assuming, assuming, assuming.*
Too many unknowns. Too many variables she couldn't control.
But it was something.
A possibility, however slim.
*If the others come back. If we can regroup, recover, plan properly... we might be able to make it.*
*And if they don't come back...*
She didn't finish the thought.
---
The hours stretched into evening.
The wrong-colored light filtering through the windows began to fade, shadows lengthening across the Main Hall, darkness creeping in from corners that had been bright just hours before.
The two teammates hadn't returned.
Xīng Hé sat in the gathering gloom, her back against the wall, her eyes fixed on the entrance. The others had drifted into uneasy sleep around her—exhaustion claiming them despite the danger, their bodies demanding rest that their minds couldn't deny.
She should sleep too.
But she couldn't.
*They're not coming back,* she realized. The thought arrived without emotion—just a cold fact, settling into her consciousness like a stone dropping into still water. *Something happened. They're trapped or dead or both.*
Seven survivors now.
Seven out of thirty.
And they were trapped in a place designed to kill them, running out of food, running out of options, running out of time.
The Sect Master's peak.
The thought circled back, persistent as a vulture.
*That's the only way out. The only chance we have.*
But to get there, they'd have to go through the inner disciple residence. Through the elders' quarters, probably. Through whatever defenses a Sect Master would have placed around their private sanctum.
*We'd lose more people. Maybe everyone.*
*Maybe ourselves.*
She closed her eyes, feeling the weight of the pocket watch against her hip. Twenty-seven rings. Twenty-seven deaths she carried with her, would carry with her however this ended.
*Is escape worth dying for?*
The question had no answer.
Or rather, it had an answer she didn't want to face: that escape might not be possible at all. That they might have been sent here to die from the very beginning. That the mission was never meant to be completed—just attempted, the survivors used as data points for future operations.
*Expendable.*
*We were always expendable.*
The darkness deepened around her.
Somewhere in the distance, she could hear the faint sounds of the inner disciple residence—voices carrying through the still air, the contaminated going about their daily lives, unaware of their own corruption.
Unaware that they were already dead.
*Just like us. We just haven't stopped moving yet.*
She sat in the darkness, waiting for dawn, waiting for answers that refused to come.
The barrier didn't return.
Her concept remained silent.
And the Sect Master's peak loomed in the distance, a shadow against shadows, holding whatever secrets—or horrors—waited at the very top of this impossible, inescapable place.
---
**End of Chapter 54**