Her lungs burned, and her legs felt like they had been beaten with a meat tenderizer.

"Is everyone alive?" Ji’an wheezed.

"Alive, Boss," Tang Bo groaned, pulling a leech off his neck.

"I... I am unharmed, thanks to the bravery of these Senior Brothers," Mo Wuchen’s soft, melodic voice chimed in.

He was sitting delicately on a log, looking perfectly composed despite the mud, not a single hair out of place.

Ji’an shot him a glare that could have melted steel. Wuchen simply offered his gentle, angelic smile in return.

’I am going to put laxatives in his tea,’ Ji’an vowed silently. ’I don’t care if he’s an assassin. He is getting the spicy oil!’

Ji’an sat up, pulling out her green jade Lifeline Token. 𝐟𝐫𝕖𝗲𝘄𝚎𝗯𝕟𝐨𝕧𝐞𝚕.𝕔𝕠𝐦

She swiped to the holographic map. The glowing blue dot representing their squad was currently sitting in the middle of a massive, dark "fog of war" zone.

"Well, the good news is, we lost the turtle," Ji’an announced, tapping the screen to try to reorient the compass. "The bad news is, in our frantic, blind panic, we have run completely off the charted perimeter. I have no idea where we are."

"Look! Smoke!" Liu Liu pointed a muddy finger toward the horizon.

Ji’an followed her gaze.

Rising above the dense canopy, cutting through the encroaching gray fog of the unfamiliar territory, was a thin, steady plume of gray smoke.

"Smoke means fire. Fire means people," Ji’an muttered, standing up and adjusting her spatial bag. "Let’s go see who else is dumb enough to get lost in this sector."

They trekked for another twenty minutes, pushing through a thick, unnatural layer of mist that clung to the forest floor.

The spiritual energy here felt different; it was stagnant, heavy, and cold.

As they pushed through a final wall of dead, hanging vines, they stumbled into a clearing.

"Who goes there?!" a sharp, panicked voice yelled.

Standing in a defensive circle were ten disciples wearing the brown robes of Class 7.

They looked terrible, their robes were torn, their faces were gaunt, and several of them were sporting hastily bandaged wounds.

"Stand down, we’re Class 9 and 6," Ji’an called out, raising her hands peacefully. "We just outran a Mountain-Crag Turtle. We saw your smoke."

The Class 7 leader, a tall, severe-looking boy with a nasty scratch across his cheek, lowered his sword with a sigh of relief. "Thank the Heavens. We thought it was the Shadow-Wolves coming back. I’m Zhang Min. We... we got separated from our main group on day one. We’ve been hiding out here."

"Here?" Ji’an looked around.

Behind the Class 7 disciples, partially obscured by the creeping, unnatural fog, was a village.

It was a desolate, chilling sight. The village was ancient, its architecture completely out of place in the wild Lower Realm.

The wooden huts were sagging, their thatched roofs rotting away.

Strange, thorny vines choked the cobblestone streets. There were no sounds of wildlife, no crickets, no birds, absolutely nothing.

The silence was deafening. Faded, tattered yellow warding talismans fluttered weakly on the doorframes of the broken houses, their red ink long since washed away by time.

"You guys are camping in a deserted ghost town?" Ji’an asked, her eyebrows rising to her hairline. "Have none of you ever read a horror scroll? This is literally the definition of a death trap."

"It’s the only place the wolves won’t enter," Zhang Min defended, gesturing to the perimeter. "The beasts avoid this village like the plague. It’s safe. Mostly."

"Mostly?" Ji’an repeated, not liking the sound of that at all.

She looked at Princess Ling’er. The bumpy, frantic piggyback ride had taken a toll on her body; Ji’an could tell that from seeing how Ling’er was extremely pale, shivering slightly, and her bandaged ankle had swollen again.

Ji’an sighed. "Fine. We need to rest, and Her Highness needs her leg elevated. But we keep our guard up."

The mega-squad moved into the deserted village. The air here was freezing, entirely devoid of the Luminous Jade River’s warmth.

Almost immediately, Mo Wuchen went to work.

While the others were setting down their packs and shivering, the assassin moved effortlessly through the ranks of the Class 7 disciples.

He offered a gentle smile to Zhang Min, commending him on his leadership. He handed a clean cloth to a wounded Class 7 girl, his amber eyes full of deep, manufactured sympathy.

Within ten minutes, he had completely charmed the suspicious group, securing a spot near their fire and an offer of extra rations.

Ji’an watched him from the shadows of a dilapidated hut, her eyes narrowed.

’He is terrifyingly efficient,’ she observed. ’He integrates into any group like a virus. He learns their weaknesses, gains their trust, and positions himself in the center. I need to keep my people away from him.’

"Senior Brother?" Su Wan asked softly, stepping into the hut. "I brought some fresh water from the rain barrel outside."

"Thanks, Junior Sister," Ji’an took the waterskin, turning her attention back to the interior of the hut.

It was a mess of broken furniture and dust that smelled distinctly of mildew and dried blood. Ji’an quickly swept a corner clean with her Qi, laying down a thick, dry mat.

She carefully lowered Ling’er onto the mat, propping her injured leg onto a rolled-up blanket.

"Drink," Ji’an ordered, handing the waterskin to the Princess.

Ling’er took it, her fingers brushing Ji’an’s. The Princess looked around the creepy, shadowed hut, pulling her knees to her chest. "Senior Brother... this place feels wrong. It feels cold."

"I know," Ji’an said, pulling her Black Iron Spatula from her belt and driving it directly into the wooden floorboards near the door, establishing a makeshift warning ward.

Ji’an stood up, peering out the broken window into the fog-drenched streets of the abandoned village.

The hairs on the back of her neck were standing up. Her Five-Grain Constitution, deeply attuned to the natural flow of life and energy, felt absolutely nothing here.