Hao woke to the starless sky. Three moons bright and blue shine down like the ocean under the sun.

  He felt like shit, worse. He felt like a corpse waking for the first time after an eternal slumber.

  The event from hours ago was a blur. It was his third time waking; the two times before, he had tied more bandages and rubbed medicines all over his body before passing out. Each time he woke, more memories faded.

  Most of the moments escape his mind. Some never seemed to fade; it was the most human blood he had seen spilled purely by the hands of other people, streaks of red under sunlight, and mud turned to rust. He made a few of the puddles left behind.

  The first thing he did this time was check the Spirit-Holding bag. There were plenty of things inside that he had trouble recognizing — A dozen weapons, still stained. He ignored most of them. Sending his mind straight to the holding bags he took, there were fewer than he thought, but five of them didn’t matter as much as Meng Hongyu’s.

  It was easy to identify. There was a short strap wrapped around it, stitched to the material every holding bag was made of. At the end of it, a spot for something to fit. Yet in that small clasp, there was just a shard of what looked like colored glass. It reminded Hao a little of the Spirit-Holding Bag—it may have been unique in a similar way. This contributed to the bad taste left in Hao’s mouth, initially left by Hongyu’s strange death.

  Hao checked the bag thoroughly. It was truly empty, which made that taste sour worse, until he started to laugh. He now knew how much of a fool he was. He knew before—the world insisted on teaching and teaching the same less, but this just proves he knew less than he assumed.

  A cog acting, not only that. Just one of many, all moving and reacting to each other to make things happen, and not the result he wanted.

  Hao thought he was ready for the Secret Realm. Not once, but twice, and to be for the Secret Realm alone, perhaps. All went well with the Realm alone, natural treasures in the form of herbs and fruits, the Yellow-Yellow grass, goals he set before entering and completed in weeks.

  Then there was the central zone, where it all started to spin out of control. His largest ambitions turned to sand, and he got wounds instead of the polarity flower and didn’t avenge Grandpa He.

  He made a few allies and friends, at least. “You don’t even know if they are alive,” Hao whispered to himself in the night.

  The sound of his wilted laughter was beaten out by the sound of his teeth grinding together; he thought he could pull everything that happened back together and beat both of them alone.

  “Take out Hongyu and Bangcai alone…”

  Hao thought that if he could do that, it would chase away some of the helplessness and humiliation he faced inside the Peach-Takers Trail. Other than Day-Night Amethysts, he left with injuries covering him. Everything that led up to the moment he arrived on the battlefield seemed to fall away.

  Hao sat up, putting away the empty holding bag. He knew a little about medical treatment from Zhengqi; if she were here, he would thank her on his knees for the few lessons. With minimal movement, he treated himself.

  Simple cuts were easy to deal with; he was familiar with tidying them up. The giant hole through his arm was a puzzle he didn’t have many solutions for. At best, he could follow his intuition.

  He took out some herbs he had gathered and that had grown in the bag and chewed them down into a paste. He smeared the paste on his wounds, the pain hardly a bother. The plants numbed what pain he felt, but the buzz and burn in his mouth from chewing the various strange plants was worse.

  The sting on his tongue was a reminder he was still alive. He wrapped and re-wrapped all his wounds, every one coated with the herbs.

  “It’s not over yet, is it? None of this is over.” Hao forced himself to sit up and meditate, cultivate, and heal.

  *

  Before the night was over, Hao wandered back to the central zone. There, he got a clear view of the sky, the fading night showing the third moon ready to merge in full and announce the end of fall. And with it, the Secret Realm would remove its invaders.

  Hao stumbled forward. Seeing the central mountain did nothing but make his neck itch, but he stood where a camp once lay. The grass grew, taking away the tent shadows, but memories remained.

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  He wrapped his mind around the large seed in his bag. Thinking of that vile story, he suffered listening to all for a broken shard of a tree seed. It might be of some use. Dead, yet something wanted the seed safe, and he benefited from that.

  Why would something with enough power to resist that ghost, even if just for a moment, save the seed and use me as a shuttle to take it away?

  The thought provided a momentary distraction. One of many mysteries from this haunted Secret Realm, similar to the humanoid monster bones he found, though he found the mystery of the seed more endearing.

  The passes that led to the place where the seed gestated. The smell of peach still lingered in the air, floating off the passes scattered around.

  “A sickening aroma…” Hao muttered as he stepped forward, picking one of the many abandoned soft wooden tiles. There was still a mental pull he had to resist. It was easier now, much easier. He took all the ones he could find, stacking them into a single pile and starting a large fire.

  The flint he had was no longer than his thumbnail. And that was shattered and broken down flat against his skin. His hands were weak, so he could barely strike them, but he got them lit before the continuation of unexpected rains and storms.

  The world washed Hao as he watched the tiles burn.

  His vitality slowly restored as he madly tried everything he could, bringing himself back to a state of comfort, an impossibility he knew, but he could try. He ate anything he had. Rations, new and old, all of them taken, made him wonder where the main ration bag that Bangcai’s hunting group had was hidden.

  I should have taken that pack back then. Next time, I’ll just take what I can while it’s there in front of me. The thought came and passed. His head shaking as he changed his mind, of all the cruelties he could inflict, starvation on another would not be one of them. He would never want to feel that way again. The taste of rotten, washed-up fish that had long been sitting in the sun was a taste he would never forget.

  If I had to…

  As the morning came and a day passed, so did the people. Most of them ignored Hao. Every so often, a few lingered nearby, commenting on the smell lingering around. They were unaware the smell was the bloody, rotten scent of wounds under his robe.

  Hao would occasionally burst into a short laugh, which happened to be just enough to send them away every time. He wasn’t sure why he laughed. Self-mockery. Joy in simply surviving, perhaps there was another reason, because if it was joy, there was no happiness behind it. Neither was he unhappy; such a thing he long buried.

  Not all of them left, as always, the yellow-robed fools of Two River Fort lingered longer than they had to, burnishing their unwieldy sabers like walking sticks to point. They laughed back, of course, making comments.

  “See, this is why Cultivation is not for the faint-hearted. The fool went and lost his mind.”

  It wasn’t the first time someone threw some jokes his way, but most strayed far after saying anything, hiding behind their pointed weapons.

  To Hao, it was the faint-hearted who still wondered about this place with mirth. They didn’t see horror or wonder. Sticking in groups and lingering at the edges of battles, hiding in camps, and drinking and laughing, avoiding anything they had nothing to do with and ignoring what they didn’t want or need. They were smart, but had as few treasures as scars.

  Hao knew it was hardly worth turning for them; what their entire group would have together would be less valuable than half of one random holding bag from someone from a group like Mo Bangcai’s.

  His line of thought wasn’t arrogant. And each time, his thoughts were reinforced; if a laugh chased them away, a sigh would make them scurry like starving rodents looking for some mold to chew on.

  When he wasn’t sitting, cultivating, or making people run off to the sound of wind, he was collecting any passes he missed.

  Each time he picked one up, that hellish story rang in his ears. The two voices are now warped. “What role do you play in all this, ghost of the cave?” Hao asked, staring at the mountain.

  He didn’t have any interest in the ghost, truly, only in its downfall if it remained, and how much of the story told in the trial pass was real was a question in itself. Another thing he didn’t bother guessing at. It was something that fit in the mythological tale told in the past, invisible with the power to control Hao and rob him of his free will.

  “It’s the second time that has happened…” Hao spoke as he blew into a fire, footsteps of passing people behind him, their lips moving without sound.

  But the control the ghost had on him—it was all coming back now that he didn’t have Bangcai or Hongyu to focus on—the complete control it had on him was far greater than whichever Elder compelled him to speak when he was a mortal. In that moment, he knew what it was to be truly helpless, bodiless, just a soul in a vessel.

  *

  A sudden chill tickled Hao.

  The First of the three moons was reaching the center of the night sky. Winter’s arrival was nearly here, spelling the end of his adventure in the Secret Realm.

  In the whisper of the last days, Hao tried to make himself appear the same way he had the day he entered the Secret Realm. There wasn’t much to do. He was noticed as a beggar then; now, his clothes were dirtier. Still, he had to find brown dust, not gray, to hide his hair color—A simple task.

  Hao left the central zone. He returned to where he had landed in this place, which seemed a lifetime ago, to that soft, peaceful glade. Where small creatures shared their frozen nights in his hovel, just a short visit before he found himself outside, his appearance changed, but safety, far from guaranteed.