Chapter 378: A Game of Steps |
I spent over a dozen hours testing the phenomenon before finally returning to where Tingfeng and Jiang Yeming were waiting.
They had started a fire by drying the grass around them and using wood from the few trees scattered nearby.
Even though we were stuck here, when I returned, there was a strange smile on my lips. I couldn’t even find it in myself to be too angry at Jiang Yeming for likely leading us here or doing something to attract the attention of whatever creature existed within this place.
It had been a while since I’d encountered something this challenging.
“We can only move along the outskirts,” I told them, staring at Jiang Yeming. “For now, we shouldn’t go any deeper.”
Tingfeng nodded and added, “I’ve been practicing to try cutting the mist, but it only leaves a strange smog of water clinging to the blade.”
“Don’t try that again tomorrow,” I said. “From what I’ve discovered, the mist seems to be both an array and a type of living creature.”
Jiang Yeming looked at me and nodded.
“Also, teacher,” Tingfeng said casually, pointing his thumb at Jiang Yeming, “should we cut down this traitor or what?”
“What?” Jiang Yeming’s eyes widened in disbelief. “I brought you here! I saved you from being cut down by those bandits!”
Tingfeng shrugged. “Sure. But you’ve always had ulterior motives. I didn’t mind, until you pulled something like this.”
If I had to guess, I’d say Tingfeng became someone very important in the future.
Jiang Yeming might have realized that and gotten the bright idea to recruit him early, while he was still weak. Perhaps she imagined she could turn him into a subordinate. Or, at best, a loyal friend who would stand by her side no matter what.
But reality was rarely that simple.
Tingfeng didn’t speak much, but he was far from inattentive or stupid. He had noticed her behavior, her intentions, the way she moved through situations with hidden goals. Even if she had saved him from an injury or defeat, in his eyes she was still someone suspicious.
“So what if you saved me?” Tingfeng shrugged again, no longer bothering to elaborate.
He hadn’t reached the conclusion that Jiang Yeming was a regressor. In his mind, the situation was far simpler: she was the one who had led us here, into what looked suspiciously like a death trap.
“Nobody is killing anyone under my watch,” I told them firmly. “And besides, I have other things we need to discuss.”
“There have been reports of people entering the outskirts of this place and seeing strange things,” I continued. “But some of them managed to come out relatively fine.”
I didn’t bother mentioning how rare those reports actually were.
“Either way,” I said, “it’s obvious something strange is happening here.”
Was this place somehow connected to me in the future?
It would be interesting to find out how and why.
A sudden tremor ran through the ground beneath our feet.
Before I could explain anything further to them, an explosion thundered in the distance, somewhere outside the mist.
Even though we were trapped here, we hadn’t entered the thickest parts of it. With our enhanced sight, we could still make out vague shapes and disturbances beyond the fog.
Another shockwave followed.
The impact shook loose chunks of rubble Jiang Yeming had left behind after carving up the ground earlier.
Then a third shockwave arrived, stronger than the others. The force slammed into us, snuffing out the campfire and pushing us a few steps back. The wind from the blast shoved the mist aside slightly, though not nearly enough to clear our view.
I turned toward the direction the shockwave had come from.
I saw nothing.
I sensed nothing.
Someone was fighting out there, and they were clearly trying to hide the signs of their battle. Their Qi was invisible. Though I couldn’t be sure whether that was because of the techniques they were using or because the mist was interfering with our perception.
I doubted it was the mist alone. The creature inside had sensed us earlier while we were still outside.
Then again, perhaps it had privileges we didn’t.
Though that theory had its own problems. Even if something was sealed inside an array, that didn’t mean it could freely manipulate the entire structure. Arrays often became stronger precisely because of the rules and limitations of whatever was trapped within them.
“It feels like Core Formation cultivators have begun fighting,” Jiang Yeming said. “Maybe someone from our side is clashing with someone from theirs.”
Huh.
It seemed she could sense the situation much more clearly than we could. Those future sensory techniques of hers really were impressive.
“We shouldn’t stay near the edge,” she added. “If the mist drags them inside, we might suffer the aftermath.”
I nodded and decided to follow her advice.
Even though we weren’t moving deeper into the mist, we still had to circle along the mountain range’s outskirts.
As we walked, I began counting my steps again, making sure we didn’t drift deeper into the array’s domain.
When we moved sideways, the array didn’t drag us back to the original spot.
Wait…
If our so-called starting point wasn’t fixed and we were allowed to move sideways, then could the starting point reset once we established a new resting place?
I would have to test that later.
If that was the case, then escaping might actually be possible.
All I would have to do was walk forty-seven steps outward, set up camp there, then move the camp half a step forward every day. Slowly shift the reference point. Confuse the array’s conditions.
Eventually, it might register us as being outside its boundary.
Still… for now it was safer to remain here.
Who knew who those people fighting outside were, or what they were doing.
The safest assumption was that a Core Formation cultivator from the Blazing Sun Sect was fighting someone from the Titanic Blade Sect.
There was a decent chance the cultivator from our side was Song San.
And Song San’s poison techniques were… indiscriminate.
Though it was also possible that another Core Formation elder had been sent here to investigate the situation.
Either way, it wasn’t something we wanted to be caught in the middle of.
I briefly considered going to help if one of the Core Formation cultivators entered the mist. I couldn’t defeat someone at that level, but I could slow them down long enough to tilt the battle, depending on their rank.
But the thought was discarded immediately.
Even if the person from our side wasn’t Song San, there was still a chance the Core Formation cultivator could be a spy. This entire situation could easily be a ruse meant to draw me out.
That was a risk I wasn’t willing to take for someone I didn’t know beyond perhaps their name.
As for revealing that I controlled a Core Formation beast, that was completely out of the question; it was my greatest trump card. Aside from Song Song and perhaps her annoyingly perceptive brother, nobody else knew.
The mud beneath our feet shifted.
It was subtle, like something large was moving underground.
Tingfeng frowned and glanced around.
Jiang Yeming, however, didn’t react at all.
Wait.
Didn’t they notice the thing moving beneath us?
Tingfeng sensed that something was wrong, that was his ridiculous instincts at work, but he couldn’t pinpoint where the danger was coming from.
Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.
Jiang Yeming, on the other hand, was unusually slow to react. Normally she was quick to move and sometimes quicker to decide.
So I grabbed her by the scruff of her robe like a cat and yanked her backward.
The ground exploded an instant later.
Mud blasted upward, showering us in thick clumps of sludge. Tingfeng’s blade flashed as he cut down the chunks flying toward him. At the same time, I erected a jade barrier around Jiang Yeming and myself.
“Huh?” she frowned.
Two massive pincers burst from the ground where we had just been standing.
Judging by the swirling patterns along their tips, it was a Mud Crab.
Likely around twenty years old.
“How?” Jiang Yeming asked, staring at the creature.
It seemed things weren’t unfolding according to whatever future she was relying on.
I may have been supposed to learn something here on the Titanic Blade Sect battlefield, some experience that would define my path. Like Jiang Yeming assumed.
But I hadn’t.
And honestly, I wasn’t too worried about it.
A nearby rock suddenly shattered as a scorpion-like tail burst through it.
I dodged aside while a jade barrier expanded around us, stopping the stone splinters from striking us. Tingfeng’s sword flashed again, and he smiled slightly as he treated the flying fragments like a personal challenge, cutting every piece that came his way.
Damn.
If it weren’t for my personal bias toward Wu Yan and how much I cared about her, this guy would have been my favorite student without question.
He was so unbothered by things beyond his control. The kind of person who simply ignored the chaos around him and focused entirely on the one thing he cared about.
In some ways… he was exactly the kind of person I wanted to become one day.
“Teacher,” Tingfeng asked calmly, “what should we do? Engage or retreat?”
His tone carried no emotion.
He knew I understood arrays and beasts better than he did, so he left the decision to me. No ego. Just logic running through his head.
“Other beasts in here? That should be impossible,” Jiang Yeming murmured. “The mist is a digestive system.”
Wait.
That last part sounded very fucking dangerous.
Despite the revelation, I forced myself not to panic and instead tried to think clearly.
“You need to come to your senses,” I told Jiang Yeming, giving her a light slap on the back of the head.
She jolted, her eyes widening as she looked at me with a strangely guilty expression.
“Sorry,” she said quietly. “Because of me, everything is going wrong.”
I sighed and slapped her on the back of the head again.
“Don’t worry about silly things,” I told her.
“This isn’t silly,” she protested.
“It is when I see you acting this incompetent,” I replied. “Now relax, calm down, and watch the show. And if you try something like this again, I’ll kick you out as my disciple.”
She sighed and shook her head. “Sorry. This won’t happen next time.”
Next time?
What did she mean next time?
Girl, I’ll kick you in your pretty face if you pull something this reckless again.
“The entity inside the mist is often whimsical,” she said.
Inside the mist?
What exactly did that entail?
I sighed again.
It wasn’t that Jiang Yeming was stupid or incompetent. The problem was that she constantly tried to align everything with the future she remembered. Whenever events drifted away from that timeline, she panicked and started making reckless decisions to push things back onto the path she expected.
“Just calm down and take things easy,” I told her. “You’re smarter than this.”
“I will try my best to help you from now on,” she declared.
“Then start by telling me about the enemy in the mist,” I said.
She nodded and began, “I learned about it from my clan’s ancient—”
“No need for the backstory unless it’s important,” I interrupted.
We didn’t have time for fake explanations about where she supposedly learned something.
“Technically,” she continued, “the thing sealed here exists in another dimension. But it can appear every twelve, twenty-four, thirty-six, forty-eight, and so on in increments of twelve steps walked within its zone.”
…
She went on to explain it in her usual calm manner, but I had to reconstruct the idea in my own head to truly understand it.
The thing sealed here wasn’t inside the array.
It existed beside it, folded into a neighboring layer of space that brushed against this one at fixed intervals.
The array wasn’t a cage.
It was more like a metronome.
Every twelve acknowledged steps brought the two layers closer.
At twelve, the boundary thinned.
At twenty-four, it wavered.
At thirty-six, the layers overlapped.
At forty-eight, the sealed thing could touch this side.
The array didn’t care where you walked or why. Forward, backward, in circles, it all counted. Meaning the creature was actively observing when we walked sideways so as not to have the array target us.
What mattered was whether the array recognized the movement as a step.
That was another trap.
A stride counted as one. A leap counted as one. Turning sharply with intent counted as one. Even shifting your weight could count, if the array believed you meant to move.
The array wasn’t measuring motion.
It was measuring intent made physical, and the creature could only deduce whether the array should count the steps, not what it counted as a step.
That was why panic killed people here. Fear made every movement deliberate. By the time someone realized the pattern, they had already completed multiple cycles without knowing it.
Breaking the rhythm was the only way to survive.
Irregular movements, such as prime numbers and stutters, followed by long pauses should confuse the count. But confusion alone wasn’t enough. The array remembered the last completed cycle. If someone died at forty-seven, the next person started at zero.
But the place itself never forgot.
And the worst part?
The array wasn’t watching constantly. Something else was.
Once I understood that, the solution seemed straightforward.
The array only counted self-initiated steps, and movement caused by the environment didn’t register.
Falling didn’t count, being pushed didn’t count, and sliding didn’t count.
So the solution wasn’t to find an exit.
It was to stop being a participant.
We walked to the new camp as Jiang Yeming finished explaining everything. In the end, the entire system felt like a game, just one with far too many rules.
A complicated game someone might design just to sound clever. But still a game.
Jiang Yeming set up the camp herself, clearly taking responsibility for bringing us here. Though she could probably also tell that whatever friendship she once had with Tingfeng was now permanently fractured.
“I’m going to try escaping for a bit,” I told them. “Both of you stay here in camp. Sit down. Don’t take any steps.”
Jiang Yeming nodded.
So did Tingfeng.
“Alright,” I muttered. “Here we go.”
I walked forward until I reached what counted as the eleventh step of this cycle.
Then I stopped moving entirely.
Not freezing in place, only abandoning the idea of movement altogether.
No preparation. No anticipation.
I let my body become an object rather than a decision, and let it lean forward as if it were about to fall.
The ground ahead gave way just enough for gravity to take over.
I didn’t jump, and I didn’t brace.
I let myself fall and roll, carried by momentum instead of intent.
For a brief moment, it felt like the array lost me.
As I tumbled through the mud like a fool, the thin mist around me cleared slightly. The pressure vanished. The counting stopped. The space itself loosened, like a knot halfway untied.
A thin line appeared, though it almost felt like it was part of my imagination.
I crossed it, like passing through a curtain.
And that was when it failed.
My body made it through.
As I stood up, bathing in soft moonlight under a chilly spring wind, I glanced down and noticed something strange.
Huh.
Would you look at that?
The shadow beneath my feet stretched behind me, clinging to the inside of the array like spilled ink that refused to be wiped away.
I stopped instantly, still calm, watching the situation unfold.
I had made it through.
But my shadow hadn’t.
That shouldn’t have happened.
The array had no rule for shadows. At least, none Jiang Yeming had mentioned.
Something shifted.
The shadow beneath my feet no longer resembled my body. It grew darker and felt heavier as if it had acquired weight.
It felt denser too.
Then I understood what I had missed.
The array didn’t count steps.
It counted recognized presence.
Until now, I had never been recognized.
My shadow had.
“This is cheating, you know,” I told the shadow beneath my feet.
“You also cheated by knowing the rules beforehand,” a voice replied.
It sounded eerily similar to mine.
“None knew the rules when they came inside without first experiencing them. The girl ruined the game. And you were already beginning to learn them on your own," it said.
The shadow rippled once.
I could somehow feel something within my own shadow, like someone holding an invisible third hand I hadn’t known existed.
“While you can leave, your shadow cannot,” it continued. “But how can someone leave without their shadow?”
I clapped my hands.
A dark array formed instantly, converging around me and swallowing the area in complete darkness.
There was no light.
Nothing to cast a shadow.
“Now there is no shadow,” I said calmly.
For a moment, I sensed the spatial stitching behind me snap shut, like a wound rejecting a foreign object.
Then my feet jerked violently.
Something yanked me backward, dragging me fully back into the array as if I had never left at all.
I landed on solid ground.
Breathing steady. Mind clear.
But the air felt different now, like a room that knew it was no longer empty.
I hadn’t broken the rules.
“Ha, you cheated,” I said, chuckling. “I escaped, and you dragged me back here.”
Honestly…
Now that I had actually communicated with the creature behind this place, I was starting to have fun.