Bing Di's voice changed as she drew closer.
Up close, the edge of the scorpion's tone, the cold authority Cheng Yang had expected, softened into something almost girlish, like the chime of a bell trapped in ice.
"Me scared? Of course I am. I was the one about to be eaten, not you," Cheng Yang blurted, shameless and panicked all at once.
"Then hurry up and take me to the treasure," Bing Di replied, impatience prickling through the words.
Cheng Yang waved his stubby forelegs.
The pose was pitiful and absurd, and it only made him feel smaller.
He had no compass, no clue, and, worse, he couldn't even shape his spirit power properly.
He hadn't inherited Tianmeng's memories; he was a noob, new, and terrified.
Bing Di cut him off with a snort that sounded like a splash of broken glass.
In a blur of emerald light, her massive, armored form melted away and reassembled, impossibly, into a human.
Twin ponytails gradiented from blue to green bobbed as she stamped a foot.
She wore a green dress trimmed in ice-blue lace, and despite the absurdity of it, her expression carried the same predator's calculation.
Cheng Yang gaped.
"You can do that?"
"Of course."
She preened, clearly delighted at her own fancy.
The transformation was effortless, an expression of soul power refined over hundreds of thousands of years.
"I can assume whatever appearance I like. Don't be stupid."
Cheng Yang was too bewildered to be insulted.
Before he could think of anything worthwhile to say, Bing Di reached out and pressed a cool palm to his head.
A tiny shock, more like a memory seed, slid into him: the basic sensation of spirit power, a hint of how to flex it, a flash of how she had once changed shape with practiced elegance.
It was enough to make his colors run, enough that, for a beat, he felt less like a raw transmigrant and more like a creature learning its first breath.
If anyone had watched, they would have seen something ridiculous and oddly tender: a scorpion turned woman, clasping a lanky, awkward silkworm now scrambling to remember how to be anything other than prey.
"Finish your change, then move," Bing Di ordered, tapping her foot.
Impatience was the one thing she could not hide.
Cheng Yang tried to steady himself.
"Right. But which way is south?"
"Don't be a fool," she snapped, then, softer, "I'm not stupid. I can sense human settlements."
With a flick of her wrist, she pointed toward the horizon and then, without waiting for consent, hauled Cheng Yang by the scruff of his neck.
They took to the sky, the cold wind flattening his segmented back as she propelled them southward.
The next moments were a blur of new sensations: the color of fields, the smell of smoke and coal, the rhythm of carriage wheels below.
Cheng Yang's internal monologue raced a hundred thoughts per second.
Keep your head down.
Don't eat anything glittery. Don't.
But the human world offered strange comforts: warm breath from markets, the tang of roasted candied haws, the unfamiliar shape of clothing.
He watched the people below with the distracted awe of someone who had just learned to read.
They arrived in Heaven Dou Empire, Tiandou City, where the air was thick with spices and the streets crowded with vendors.
Bing Di, in human form, took a candied haw from a stall and nibbled at it as if she had always done so.
Cheng Yang, awkward and half-scuttling, was led by her to an antique lane lined with lacquered signboards.
The pair looked incongruous: a handsome young man in a blue windbreaker holding the hand of a beautiful woman with an amused, almost domineering expression.
Cheng Yang had not requested the human coat; the image arrived like a meme stuck to his soul: smooth jaw, tall posture, the cosmetic armor of masculinity that made people trust him at a glance.
He stumbled into it like an actor into a role he hadn't rehearsed for.
Bing Di's POV was small and sharp.
She was ninety percent curiosity, ten percent arrogance, and a sliver of something older, the dull ache of long time.
Meeting human eyes felt like hearing a foreign instrument perfectly tuned.
Cheng Yang, despite the clumsy exterior, had managed one valuable thing: he had offered her entertainment.
Loneliness, she knew, could turn a predator cruel; she would rather be amused.
Cheng Yang's POV was frantic and practical.
Every human detail contained potential danger or advantage.
Caravans. Maps.
People who bartered in runes and coin rather than soul power.
If he could steer Bing Di's appetite toward treasure-hunting, toward labor that required brains instead of a quick swallow, he might buy himself time, maybe even a friend.
They found the caravan meeting point amid suspicious glances and outright stares.
Travelers recoiled at the sight of the girl who was clearly not just a girl, and at the near-man who seemed too composed for the grime and dust around him.
The caravan's director, a rotund man with oil on his hands and kindness in his eyes, fussed over the two as if they were eccentric nobility.
For a fee, he arranged a cargo carriage for them; the thought of a private seat made Cheng Yang giddy with the smallest relief.
Inside the rattling carriage, boredom and the absence of screen glow made Cheng Yang slump into a sprawl.
He fell asleep the way exhausted people do: at once, heavy and shallow, dreams invading with the momentum of a snowball.
Bing Di watched him with a complicated expression she could not easily name.
She muttered to herself, half-complaint, half-amusement, "Really, a fool with no defensive sense. How did you live nine hundred thousand years and not realize you were food?"
She curled her small form against Cheng Yang's side, not in warmth but in the peculiar possessiveness of a soul beast who'd decided this goofy silkworm was worth the trouble.
Even if he was a walking meal ticket, he was her walking meal ticket, and she liked the idea of having someone to boss around.
A sudden commotion outside jerked both of them awake.
The caravan director's panicked face pressed through the narrow window; sweat streaked the grime on his brow.
"Two employers, come down!" he cried.
"Something's wrong, trouble at the pass. We can only send you part of the way!"
"Everyone, get down, surrender everything you own."
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