The night smelled of freshly cut fern. Between the trunks, the white spark zigzagged as if she knew every root by heart. The vixen did not look back; she only listened: three human breaths, one step heavier than the others, a fourth pant hiding laughter. The forest repeated that pulse in the crackle of leaves parted by disciplined hands.
When a blade of steel sliced the air, she pivoted sharply. The dagger hissed through the place she had been; the tree behind took the wound and bled a sweet scent of sap.
"A spirit beast?" Xie Moran spat. "Don't waste time."
The men obeyed. Their stride was so clean it left almost no trace; but the fox did: a fresh print stamped beside two older ones sat. The trail said: this way… and this way before. The men grinned. They followed.
The fox let herself be seen for an instant—moonlight on moss—and led them to a clearing of upturned roots. There she stopped and showed her small teeth. Behind her yawned a seemingly narrow gap; in truth a root-pit that dropped like the neck of a vessel.
"Back," Xie Moran ordered.
The ash-and-thorn sigil on his sleeve drank the night's light. His eyes returned a cruel calm.
"Sir," one whispered, "if Prince Li Jiutian lives, he won't be far."
Xie Moran neither denied nor confirmed. He bent, brushed the fresh print with his fingertips, then the rim of the pit.
"The jade first," he said. "Don't damage it."
The fox let them see her jump… and the earth swallowed her.
Behind the curtain of water, the young man clutched the amulet until the crack bit his thumb. He tried to breathe as he'd been taught: bowl, sphere, river. Pain turned each image to sawdust.
"Don't close," he told himself. "Not now."
In the dark, the cave spoke the language of drops. A white flash shot in like an arrow. The fox was back. Leaves clung to her fur and mud to her paws. She shook once, and the spray drew brief arcs in the air.
"You came back," he murmured, surprised to hear himself alive.
She touched his wrist with her nose. A thread of Qi ran across their skin like a tuned string. The jade answered with a pale pulse; the amulet's crack seemed to breathe.
"I have nothing to give you," he said, "except…"
He set his jaw. With a trembling hand, he formed a tiny seal. His voice was almost air:
"Lunar Bridge."
The thread between them became a filament. The filament, a ribbon. The ribbon, a bond. The fox closed her eyes as if someone were cradling a bone for her. The bond passed through the jade's crack and crossed the cave as if the cave itself had a heart. Through that bridge, the young man offered the only thing he could: rhythm. His heartbeat, split in two.
Pain returned, but now it had shape. The fox pushed with her small, insistent Qi. As she did, a fine arc shone at the tip of her tail; beneath her skin a second sprout felt at the air, shy. The young man saw it and thought it fever. Then he heard his own name as if spoken by water.
"Jiutian…"
"That is my name: Li Jiutian," he confirmed, and for the first time he smiled without a grimace.
"Moon," he added, looking at her. "If you're with me, I can breathe."
The word settled behind the fox's eyes, round and warm. The bond tightened, refined, and a distant sound slipped into the grotto: a song that tasted of salt and foam. The melody did not come from the cave, nor from any throat present. Jiutian knew it without remembering it. In his mind, a courtyard of shells; a sea-eyed girl singing notes that seemed to remember in his stead.
"Who…?" he began, but the footsteps returned.
The waterfall faltered. A palm-strike split the water in two, rigid as a broken mirror. The cultivator of the Demonic Realm crossed first; the ash-mark seemed to move upon his shoulder. His gaze swept wet stone, a dead fire, the small heap of crushed herbs.
The three men entered behind him. One pointed to tiny marks on the ground: two parallel lines and a dot.
"Small paws," he mocked. "Nothing with human weight passed here."
Xie Moran silenced him with a look.
"The jade breathes," he announced. He closed his eyes and let his Qi brush the walls. The echo returned a double note: a heartbeat split… and joined. Xie Moran opened his eyes with a spark of greed.
"Separate the cavities," he ordered. "And no Qi on the water. It'll break on me."
Jiutian pressed himself to the rock at the far end of the right-hand tunnel. Beside him, the fox felt each vibration arrive as if the stone were skin. The bond between them thinned, cautious. A drop fell between them like a pendulum.
"When I tell you," he whispered, "you'll bite the jade. It won't hurt you."
The fox cocked her head. He brought the amulet close to her nose; the pale pulse greeted her.
"Trust me," he asked.
The word lodged in the little den of the fox's heart like a sweet stake. She nodded with her whole body.
A blade of light ran along the tunnel. It did not come from torchlight; it was Qi licking stone. Xie Moran was close. Jiutian closed his eyes.
"Breath of Nine Stars," he said to himself.
The delayed stars in his chest took their places one by one, like beads in a strand. Two were missing; it didn't matter. In the salty air of the distant song, he could begin.
"Now."
The fox bit the jade. Her tongue tasted ancient rain. The bond flared. A fine click, like nails on shell, sounded inside the amulet.
The floor answered. Not a collapse: a tilt. As if the tunnel were a vessel and someone had tipped it. Jiutian and the fox fell not downward but toward a chamber that should have been above them.
They landed together upon a stone circle coated in moondust. Around them, squat columns showed inscriptions gnawed by water; in the center, the incomplete figure of a fox with nine tails.
"Sanctuary…" Jiutian breathed, "of the Ninth Tail."
The fox felt as if someone stroked her spine from within. The second light flared under her skin and, at last, she dared: a second tuft sprouted, small and steady, beside the first. It did not add weight; it added direction. When she moved, the two tails sketched the sign of nine half-moons in the dust.
"Moon," Jiutian said, with a joy that sounded like relief. "You did it."
She blinked slowly. The bond thrummed like a well-tuned string.
The joy lasted only as long as an echo takes to die. The rear wall breathed, and the nine half-moons on the floor lit from within. Not only by their Qi: something answered from above, where Xie Moran and his men were touching the right stone.
"They've found us," he said without fear, and looked at the fox. "I won't hand you over."
The fox touched him with her nose, and the gesture was a vow.
Above, Xie Moran watched as the stone circle opened just enough to betray a pale glow.
"Do not descend," he told his men. "I'll enter."
"Sir, the orders—"
"I know the orders better than you," he cut in. "I'll open it."
He crouched, traced a seal over the stone, and the ash-mark on his sleeve throbbed.
"If you're breathing, Prince Li Jiutian," he murmured with disdain, "you won't save anyone today."
He saw a tuft of fur trapped in a crack. He took it between two fingers.
"A lunar beast…" he said, greedy. "They'll pay well for your core."
The sanctuary smelled of ancient dust and stored water. Jiutian peered through an arch etched with eroded symbols. The air returned that earlier song of salt, as if the sea lay on the other side.
"If we can cross," he said, "there'll be an underground lake. I can hide our Qi there."
The fox listened with her skin. The taut bond traced a path. They advanced. At each step, the inscriptions underfoot lit pale and dimmed behind, as if the sanctuary weighed them and let them pass out of temporary courtesy.
"When we get out," he promised, not knowing why he promised it, "I'll give you a name that's yours."
The echo brought them the rumor of waves and a syllable that was not yet a word: Xin.
The fox lifted her face. Her two tails drew a ring of silver. Jiutian, wounded, rearranged his stars, and together they crossed the threshold toward the lake that sang.
Behind them, with the patience of water, Xie Moran set his palm upon the first step.