Chapter Twenty-Five: Escape in the Night

"Wait for my return."

Four words, hoarse and cold, like icicles shattered on the filthy ground. Zhou Xiaoxiao's figure disappeared into the swirling fog beyond the door, leaving the sprawling dormitory silent as a grave. Only two nightsoil buckets, reeking and foul, remained, like a pair of frigid eyes fixed unblinkingly on Lin Mo, who lay on his straw mat, barely clinging to life.

The fog seemed to grow heavier, pressing down on the dilapidated roof, swallowing the last traces of dim daylight seeping in from outside and plunging the room into thick gloom. In the corner, the corpses of the laborers killed by the recent shockwave began to emit a faint, nauseating stench of decay, mingling with the sour rot of the nightsoil and the acrid tang of urine from survivors who'd lost control of their bladders, creating a suffocating miasma of death.

Lin Mo lay sprawled in the cold filth and blood, each ragged breath tearing through him with searing pain and the taste of metal and sweetness. Zhou Xiaoxiao's final words were no comfort; they were a freezing chain, gripping what little remained of his spirit. Wait for him to return? To do what? Dispose of him? Interrogate him? Or… eliminate him completely?

A massive terror gnawed at Lin Mo's will, wormlike and unrelenting. He could not wait! He could not just sit here and die! Whether Zhou Xiaoxiao was foe or friend, whether this 'Reversed Seed' was a blessing or a curse, staying here meant certain death. The unrest at the Burial Abyss, the wrath of Ancestor Qingmu, the chaos within the inner sect… this tiny laborers' compound was already a lone boat in the eye of the storm, ready to be torn apart at any moment!

Escape! He had to escape!

The thought flared within him, a spark in the darkness, igniting his primal urge to survive. He struggled, mustering every last shred of strength, trying to move his body. Agony lanced from the torn wounds on his back, and the tight bandages around his chest squeezed him like a boulder. Every tiny motion pulled at his injuries, sending waves of dizziness and suffocation through him.

A stifled groan forced its way between his clenched teeth. Sweat mixed with blood soaked his thin clothes again. But he didn't stop! The will to survive overwhelmed all fear and pain. Like an earthworm writhing in mud, he used his shoulder and the only arm that could still move, inching forward, painfully, desperately—across the filthy straw mat—toward the door.

The ground beneath him was cold, muddy, and sticky with blood; each movement left a dark red trail. His wounds scraped against the rough edge of the straw mat, bringing fresh agony. His motions were slow and clumsy, heavy with the despair of the dying. In the corner, a surviving laborer was startled by the faint sounds, lifting his head in terror. Catching sight of Lin Mo's blood-soaked, writhing form in the gloom, he gave a strangled whimper, then clamped his hands over his mouth and buried his head deeper in the straw, shivering like a leaf in a storm.

Lin Mo paid him no heed. His entire focus was fixed on the swirling gray-white at the door. Closer… closer… the cold threshold brushed his blood- and mud-stained fingertips.

Just as he summoned the last ounce of his strength to push himself over the low threshold—

Woooo—!!!

The deep, distant humming—like the earth itself groaning—suddenly rose to a piercing, urgent shriek, like the final wail of a dying behemoth!

And then—

Boom! Boom-boom-boom—!!!

A series of deafening explosions, so thunderous they seemed to burst the heart, erupted without warning from the forbidden area deep behind the mountain! The sound was not from a single point, but as if countless dormant volcanoes were erupting at once! The entire peak of the Qingmu Sect shook and quaked madly, as if gripped and shaken by some invisible giant hand!

The dormitory shuddered like a candle in the wind. The beams groaned under the strain; dust, tiles, and rotting wood rained down. Cracks like spiderwebs raced across the walls. In the corner, the corpses of the laborers rolled with the tremors.

"Ah—!" The few living souls left screamed, voices twisted to a pitch like fowl being strangled.

Lin Mo felt an irresistible force smash into him. The body he had barely managed to lift was flung like a broken kite, slamming hard into the icy wall opposite.

"Pfaugh!" He coughed up a mouthful of hot blood. The wounds on his back tore open completely. Pain, like a tidal wave, drowned his fading consciousness. Darkness and the color of blood swallowed his vision.

And as he teetered on the brink of oblivion—

Hummm!!!

A surge of unprecedented, ice-cold, savage power erupted from deep within the 'stone' in his chest—the fragment of the Void Heaven Scripture. Not resistance, but destruction; not submission, but a roar of fury! It seemed to sense the awakening of a force it loathed and rejected.

At the same moment—

The eerie green 'Reversed Seed' attached to it burst forth with a blinding emerald light! A torrent of chilling yet vital energy, brimming with both life and an unholy coldness, flooded from the core, scouring Lin Mo's nearly shattered meridians. It brought splitting pain, but forcibly kept his last breath of life from fading.

Crack! Cra-cra-crack—!!!

A hair-raising, glass-shattering sound, as if a colossal crystal dome was being torn and smashed by overwhelming force, exploded from the direction of the rear mountain—thunder rolling across the sky, ripping through the fog, shattering the eardrums of all who heard!

The mountain-guarding array… was broken!

In Lin Mo's unfocused pupils, he saw through the split roof to a sky suddenly turned "clear"—no longer the faintly blue, glowing dome, but a massive, chaotic, twisted void, like shattered glass! Beyond the void, black mist as thick as ink, seething and sticky, radiated boundless death and cold malice. That mist, like a breached flood, was pouring madly through the broken array!

The Death Aura of the Burial Immortal Abyss! The real, all-devouring miasma of death had broken free!

The entire Qingmu Sect was like a naked body tossed into an ice pit. The biting, corpse-tainted cold swept through instantly—hundreds, thousands of times thicker than the fog at the mountain's edge. Wherever it passed, grass and trees withered and died in moments; even hard stone sizzled as if being corroded.

"Ah—!!!"

Screams, no longer even human, erupted from inside the dormitory, throughout the laborers' compound, from the mountain gate itself! It was the hopeless wail of flesh and soul being consumed and dissolved in an instant by death miasma.

The wooden door exploded under the onslaught, splintering into a cloud of fragments. The black, viscous miasma, roaring like a hungry serpent, surged inside!

In the corner, the few surviving laborers were instantly engulfed. Their bodies, like wax thrown into strong acid, twisted and dissolved, flesh and muscle melting into black sludge, bones crunching as they shattered—within the blink of an eye, nothing remained but foul, bubbling liquid. Not even a scream lasted to its end.

Death. True, instant, annihilating death.

The stench of death stabbed into Lin Mo's mind like an ice pick. The freezing claws of oblivion already coiled around his ankles.

At that desperate, inescapable moment—

Boom!

The cracked mud wall at the side of the dormitory, already riddled with fissures, was hammered open from without as if by a siege ram. Gravel and clods of earth blasted inward.

Bursting through the dust and carnage came a figure, huge and bloodied, reeking of blood and killing intent, like a demon crawling from hell.

It was Zhou Xiaoxiao.

His clothes were in tatters, soaked with near-black blood and sticky black mud. His left arm hung at an unnatural angle, clearly broken. His face was cut and smeared with blood, his eyes, deep as a well, now burning red as if with the fires of hell. In his right hand was not the usual hatchet, but a short, black, jagged bone sickle, its serrated edge dripping with hot, dark red fluid, exuding a feral, unearthly stench.

"Go!!!"

His roar, wounded and wild, exploded through the deathly silent dormitory like thunder. Without a glance at the bubbling sludge on the floor, his bloodshot gaze locked instantly onto Lin Mo, limp and gasping beneath the wall.

He crossed the ruined floor in a single ghostlike stride. His uninjured right hand, strong as an iron vice, seized the filthy bandages around Lin Mo’s chest and yanked him from the pool of blood and the very edge of death, as if he weighed nothing more than a sack of rags.

"Ah—!" The agony of being so roughly hauled made Lin Mo shriek, his body feeling as though torn apart.

Zhou Xiaoxiao paid no heed. His eyes saw only the maelstrom of death beyond the door. Dragging Lin Mo like dead weight, he charged toward the entrance, now entirely swallowed by black death miasma.

"No—!" Lin Mo's waning consciousness screamed in despair. That was the path to death!

At the instant the two were to be engulfed by the swirling, ink-thick miasma—

Hummm!!!

A surge of savage, icy power, laced with a strange, cold vitality, erupted from Lin Mo’s chest. The fragment of the Void Heaven Scripture and the ‘Reversed Seed’, driven by mortal peril, fused their powers into a thin, yet unyielding, gray-green glow, enveloping both Lin Mo and Zhou Xiaoxiao.

Sizzle, sizzle—

The dense death miasma struck that fragile radiance like a living thing, hissing and seething as it tried to corrode it. The black mist writhed, clawing with a thousand hateful hands. The gray-green aura flickered and quaked, on the verge of collapse.

"Get out of my way!" Zhou Xiaoxiao roared, bestial in his rage. Instead of slowing, he moved even faster, his grip tightening on Lin Mo. With his good hand, he swung the jagged bone sickle before him.

A blade of pure black, condensed to the extreme and brimming with death, slashed through the air like lightning, splitting the seething miasma open with a narrow gash.

Rippp—!

It was as if fabric were torn apart by force. The thick black mist was cleaved, a narrow gap opening to the outside—the compound’s muddy yard, equally shrouded in miasma, but thinner, more diffuse.

Dragging Lin Mo, Zhou Xiaoxiao shot through the rapidly closing gap like a loosed arrow.

The freezing, corpse-tainted death instantly enveloped them. The weak gray-green shield barely held, but the chill and the eroding touch of death stabbed into every inch of their flesh like a million icy needles. Lin Mo felt his consciousness freeze, even pain receding into numbness.

As they burst through the door, Zhou Xiaoxiao kicked off hard, sprinting madly toward the jagged, rocky slope behind the compound, right to the edge of the cliff. Each step drove deep holes into the muddy ground, splattering blood and muck.

Behind them, the cleft in the miasma sealed in an instant, swallowing the entire dormitory in a single gulp. From within came a few brief, bubbling noises—then utter silence.

The compound was a ghost domain now: collapsed shacks, blackened, withered vegetation, bubbles and dissolving filth everywhere, the miasma flowing slowly in the low places with a serpent’s hiss. Farther off, from the inner sect, came the crashing of battle, screams, the thunder of clashing spiritual power—all chaos and terror.

Zhou Xiaoxiao seemed oblivious to the hell behind him. He dragged Lin Mo like a battered satchel, weaving between fallen stones and ruined huts at a desperate, breakneck pace. His movements were fast but awkward, hampered by injury; his left arm hung limp, and each jarring motion made blood well at his lips. But his eyes burned, red as coals, fixed only on the mist-shrouded cliff ahead.

"Zhou… Zhou…" Lin Mo, shaken to his core, could only utter a gasp, trying to ask where they were going. But the cold wind and death miasma choked him, wracking him with coughs that spattered blood.

Zhou Xiaoxiao gave no answer. He mounted a huge black boulder, slick with moss. Below, the abyss yawned, lost to the mists. Cold wind, laced with death, howled up from the depths like the cries of vengeful ghosts.

"Jump!" Zhou Xiaoxiao's voice was hoarse, broken, and absolute. His uninjured hand tensed, ready to hurl Lin Mo into the churning abyss.

Lin Mo's pupils shrank in terror. What was below? Was it the Burial Immortal Abyss, more fearsome than all this death?

And in that final, critical instant—

Hummm!!!

A will so vast as to defy imagination, filled with the chill of utter death, swept from the forbidden rear mountain like the end of days, locking instantly onto this place.

Ancestor Qingmu!

Amid chaos, he had found them—the source of all this upheaval!

The crushing pressure descended like a glacier, freezing Lin Mo’s blood, making his very soul shriek. The fragment of the Void Heaven Scripture and the ‘Reversed Seed’ in his chest both flared with terror and defiance.

Zhou Xiaoxiao’s body went rigid, as if gripped by an invisible giant. The hand poised to throw Lin Mo froze midair. Whirling, his bloodshot eyes fixed on the twisted sky above the rear mountain, burning with hate—and a flicker of desperate madness.

"Go—!!!" he bellowed, inhuman, and instead of throwing Lin Mo away, mustered all his strength and shoved him hard toward the abyss below.

Lin Mo’s body, weightless as a broken kite, plunged downward into the endless, misty chasm. The cold wind and death miasma slashed at his skin like icy knives. As he fell, his consciousness blurred entirely.

In the final instant before he was swallowed by the fog, his fading vision caught a glimpse—

Above the cliff, Zhou Xiaoxiao turned away from the abyss. His right hand gripped that blood-dripping, jagged bone sickle across his chest, his left arm still limp. Facing the oncoming, annihilating will, his battered figure stood straight against the storm, like an ancient, scarred rock at the edge of the world.

A hoarse, icy voice, like steel chilled for ten thousand years, cut through the howling wind and the roar of death, reaching Lin Mo’s ears as he fell:

"Go… to the Burial Immortal Abyss!"