“I… I didn’t think he was like that,” Lei Chonglin whimpered as he slumped down against the wall. “He seemed nice.” He had. Wu Jianzhu was friendly, charismatic, and though you could argue it was impolite he’d only invited Lei Chonglin to call him by his birth name, he’d never actually been rude without a good reason.

“He’s usually pretty defensive, and oftentimes violent, though generally not on the behalf of other people, but we didn’t really think so either,” Guo Qiuyue replied, still cradling Luo Yanmei in his arms.

“Bloody bitch,” Luo Yanmei coughed out, the sobs wracking her body slowly dying down and becoming an endless stream of hiccups instead. Ai Mingxia was glad despite herself. “Should — hic — should shut the fuck up more often.” 

“I didn’t want him to, uh, punch people for me. I mean, ah, it sounds good in stories, right? But it wasn’t even like you were saying anything bad. I mean, uh, I guess he cares about me a lot…?” Too much. Given this, Ai Mingxia was surprised that he hadn’t attacked her when she'd stabbed Lei Chonglin. Maybe it was because Guo Qiuyue was actually ‘criticising’ him.

“Doesn’t — hic — doesn’t mean you have to care — hic — about him even if he does,” Luo Yanmei grumbled, her grip on Guo Qiuyue’s robes loosening. “Shithead.” 

Ai Mingxia sat back down, uneasily digging a thumb into her palm. She wasn’t really part of this, so there wasn’t really anything she had to say, but it felt strange despite herself to go back to rummaging through the shelves. 

“Yeah, but…” Lei Chonglin sighed. “I don’t know. I just met him but I, ah, really liked him.” 

Luo Yanmei and Guo Qiuyue disentangled from each other and sat down as well, hands still knotted together. “You’re better off without him,” Luo Yanmei snorted, rubbing at her nose. Guo Qiuyue pulled a napkin out of a qiankun bag and handed it to her, which she accepted gratefully.

“Yeah. I know.” Still, he seemed slightly unhappy. Understandably so. “It’s just… ah, never mind.”

Not sure where to look, Ai Mingxia turned her attention to the sabre in her lap. It was of decent quality with a minimalistic handle, the words ‘Huisheng’ engraved onto it. She should be able to get through the second part of the test with the sabre, albeit with some difficulty, but she wasn’t feeling particularly optimistic about her chances in the third. She still had her knives and she was alright at using the sabre , but she was far better at using the spear. Even a staff would’ve been preferable to a sabre. 

It was her fault though, for panicking and losing Taoyun.

Her initial disappointment for not being able to have a spear aside, it was … as if she had … failed Yang Yun and Lan Tao yet again. It was a silly thought. They were dead, they had been for centuries, and she had failed them enough times that if they were alive they wouldn’t be surprised. 

And she had let them, and everybody else, go a long time ago. 

Ai Mingxia sighed and continued to root around the shelves for the next hour, the only special thing she found being a tattered paper detailing part of the instructions for some sort of ritual behind a stack of wood. She squinted at it: as she suspected, it didn’t seem to be the soul-sacrificing ritual, but there was something familiar about it. Something crooked.

She stiffened. The Summoning of Ashen Lilies…! 

Why was this here? How had the Qi Sect gotten its hands on even a page of the instructions? Why were there instructions in the first place? It should’ve died with them as they intended.

Instantly, Ai Mingxia stuffed the paper into her interspatial ring, hoping the other disciples didn’t notice. Digging a thumb into her palm, she continued to search the shelves, hoping her rapidly beating heart would calm.

How — When had Lan Tao even made instructions in the first place? If there was a sheet of it here, what if there were more in the archives of the Qi Sect, or worse, in this room? If the Qi Sect had the instructions, why would they keep the sheet here?

She exhaled slowly. She had to think about it rationally. The Qi Sect probably hadn’t realised it was the Summoning of Ashen Lilies. If they had, they wouldn’t have kept it here: it was dangerous. The ritual was infamous, but none had known how it worked except Ai Mingxia and Lan Tao. 

And Lan Tao had joined Yang Yun long, long ago. Ai Mingxia swallowed.

The page was scattered with Lan Tao’s messy and barely decipherable but indistinct handwriting. Ai Mingxia had only barely recognized it, and she had watched Lan Tao work on it for countless hours. The Qi Sect wouldn’t have recognized it. This page in particular looked incredibly similar to the instructions of other, less forbidden rituals. Still, she couldn’t stop her nerves from rolling at record speed. 

If the Qi Sect even had the instructions to the Summoning of Ashen Lilies, albeit unknowingly, Ai Mingxia suddenly didn’t think it as strange that Liu Xiuying had managed to cobble together the instructions for the soul-sacrificing ritual. Regardless, it was still incredibly odd. The Summoning of Ashen Lilies far outclassed the soul-sacrificing ritual in terms of infamy, but the Qi elders could surely recognize the instructions of the soul-sacrificing ritual, and would’ve destroyed them instantly.

She should destroy this page of the instructions for the Summoning of Ashen Lilies. She should. She should. 

And yet…

Ai Mingxia sighed, fiddling with the ring. The cloth she had tied around her wrist to hide the rot in the lack of long enough sleeves was beginning to undo, so she discreetly pulled it tighter and smoothed it out. It had looked slightly conspicuous before, but covered with blood and grime like the rest of her, it didn’t anymore. She’d switch the cloth out for gauze if the others weren’t in the room. 

The rot had slowed its growth again. It was as erratic as one would expect a curse of its nature to be, but she hadn’t thought it’d be so … slow. Though perhaps it was only because of the magnitude of the sixth wish.

Ai Mingxia sighed. As soon as the test was over, she would return to Changhou to investigate more about the traffickers. To go two days in a row was too conspicuous, but to visit after a major test wasn’t as much. Everything in her wanted to believe the three people she had slaughtered had been the traffickers, but it was never really that easy. If her investigation was null, she’d just have to rely on nothing but hope.

…Hope. She’d subsisted on that and that alone often throughout her life. Had it ever really been enough to nourish her then? Was it enough now?

Uneasily, she tore her gaze away from the shelves. Guo Qiuyue and Luo Yanmei were whispering to each other as they searched the shelves. Lei Chonglin was fiddling with his sword uncertainly in the corner of the room, a pensive look on his face. Ai Mingxia would say something to him if she knew what to say.

No. No, she wouldn’t. She wasn’t a part of this, and she didn’t want to be. 

She’d finished searching the shelves on this side of the room, and she wouldn’t want Guo Qiuyue and Luo Yanmei’s wrath sicced upon her if she offended them by trying to search their shelves as well. Ai Mingxia sat down in a lotus position. She’d meditate until the test was finally over.

Luo Yanmei turned around.

And her tear-stained face morphed a few shades lighter, her ponytail falling away, her lips quivering, her eyes lighter but wracked with tears again.

Ai Mingxia stiffened.

… Lan Tao … Hadn’t her spirit become ashes? Shouldn’t she not be able to possess … 

“She’s dead, Ai Yue, dead, and it’s all your fault,” she said, voice eerie, cold, disembodied, taut. Guo Qiuyue fell to the ground, braid falling apart and becoming white, lying in a sea of flowers. Luo Yanmei — no, Lan Tao — dipped her head so low that her hair touched the body lying stiffly, silent tears falling down her face. “She’s dead. Yang Yun’s dead.”

Ai Mingxia was stuck to the ground, unable to pull herself up, unable to get away, unable to run like she always had —

It was just a hallucination, just a hallucination, just a hallucination —

Lei Chonglin turned to her, his hair falling into a messy mane, black circles underlying his eyes that were amber no more, blood staining his face as he smiled wanly.“So I’m dying too.”

Ai Mingxia shut her eyes tight and hugged herself close, nails digging so hard into her arm she could feel her grip draw blood, but there was no Lian Guang, no Fei Yuan or Ti Shuang, and there was no Qi Niao to shout the world away and comfort her when she didn’t deserve it, and there was nobody —

It was just a hallucination, just a hallucination, just a hallucination, and it wasn’t real —

Ai Mingxia willed with all her might for the flame inside her to burn her alive just like all those years ago.

It obliged, and the world fell away.

Watch the test arc end up being half of the first volume.

(I'll try to make that not happen, I swear.)