For a moment, they both stayed silent.
The nightingale birds were singing sharp yet soft on the other side of Fukaki which lay in Xuè Gusu—the bridge taking them to Huīxiě Village.
Lìngxiāo also focused on feeling the energy. He was still nervous because he had just learned it yesterday.
He was about to turn to the other side to search.
'Focus. We can do it.'
"Wait wait wait." Suddenly Mō Qīn called, tone analyzing. His posture stiff on the thin air. The dark orange fog around him pulsed with quiet attention.
Lìngxiāo paused and turned around, the rims of his eyes had flicker of both hope and fear of any bad news.
"I think I have felt..that thing," Mō Qīn almost whispered as he slowly looked towards the Huīxiě Village. "It is still around. That soul feels familiar too. But..fading quickly."
'F-fading?'
Lìngxiāo's gaze met with Mō Qīn's, almost horrified.
"You did?" He swallowed, throat too dry. Then added, "Is that mean shù fù is in danger since last night?"
"It is possible," Mō Qīn muttered thoughtfully.
Lìngxiāo looked around once before quickly binding his horse at a spot full of rich grasses so his horse could eat.
'But..I hope nothing would be like that in real.''
Then something small but sharp and powerful rushed past—sharp enough to scratch the edge of its wings, drawing a tiny cut over Lìngxiāo's cheek.
Lìngxiāo's hand moved to his cheek, his eyes silently widening as he found a thin drop of blood at his cheek too.
'What could be this sharp yet small and alive at this same time??'
He looked over at the way the source went.
Mō Qīn sharply looked towards it too, his eyes both dark and burning with determination. "Interesting."
It was a charcoal black lunar moth which had dark shadows floating around it—even the smoke looked like tiny moths were around it. Its wings had deep red marks patterned like blood sliding down from them. The wings had that wild striking edges—something his uncle's hood's edges had.
He blinked to himself with a light shake of head.
'I must be..also overthinking. I am getting sick of my own mind since that day..of my life.'
But he also couldn't deny that he felt that similar energy here already—as Mō Qīn had—and also from this tiny creature too.
"We may follow this moth." Mō Qīn fully crossed the bridge already, tangling up to a tree. "This is demonic. High-ranked curses mostly have rare insect symbols. This might show who he is behind."
His tail lightly moved to his own chest—or perhaps the upper body, because as a worm he had no chest. "Such as me. I know I am spotless too even if humans find me as a disgusting insect."
Lìngxiāo couldn't help but faintly roll his eyes like an annoyed teenager and without thinking twice, he crossed the boundary between Yínglòu Chéng and Xuè Gusu while his horse stayed out.
"Could you stop speaking extra and move?" Lìngxiāo pressed, his gaze on the moth which was fading from their sight much faster.
"You are no fun. But fine for now." Mō Qīn muttered and lowered his tail to him, offering.
Lìngxiāo hadn't ridden him much before. Not alone without his uncle who had made sure to keep this curse under his feet to even try to betray. And now here, he was alone, his guards were down—so even believing it was hard.
But he stepped up, while he was still new to standing on a floating creature without any harness.
Mō Qīn's mouth bubbled up with something white which he threw up, turning it into a tough short-time harness. "You better hold tight. Your teeth would fly away by my speed."
Lìngxiāo grabbed it quickly, just like any other new learner, his nose wincing at this thing without his will, though it was not disgusting actually, turned into a thin rope made of a thin layer of candle.
Mō Qīn started to fly sharply upwards, twisting and turning like a dragon as he followed the moth—which had gone upwards as well instead of moving through the insides of the forest.
Lìngxiāo's heart jumped and his breath actually caught by the speed.
His other free hand gripping his hat in its place while the other tightened around the harness. His hood flying behind like it would lose from his neck and fly away.
'Lord. He really flies too fast..'
"Told you~ I cannot move slow. So you should adjust to my pace too, just as I needed to adjust into that tiny necklace." Mō Qīn almost teased, having fun at Lìngxiāo's early stage of this.
Lìngxiāo blinked twice, his eyes felt like water would even dry out by the wind, but he didn't miss the chance to give a light kick to Mō Qīn. "Shut up."
Mō Qīn only laughed like a broken glass. But he kept firm focus over the moth.
The moth moved gracefully. Its wings fluttering really fast and powerfully as they flew above the village and headed towards the capital of Xuè Gusu. Those cultivators were another dangerous type of beast with the most excellently carved human faces—too beautiful to be true.
But another layer of danger for him.
They wouldn't let him go easily or alive if they caught him crossing from here—with a curse, a core which who knows how many cultivation field's key—and his life.
The risk was high and the determination was even higher for the teenage heart which is as reckless as the composed one he would be at the age of twenty-five.
But his thoughts melted away into a silent cold way when he saw more same-looking moths raising upwards like a big flock, joining the first one which seemed to be leading the others. The flying pattern was the same as those tiny guardian birds of the Hàngwō clan—Yìng Yùe.
The difference was they would have been gleaming royal violet, carrying positive energy and protecting the Hàngwō clan.
But this was..dark.
Some of the leaves had burned away by the lowest edge of their wings when they brushed against them. They carried dark energy and stole souls of common people of this land by just lightly hopping over their heads.
Even creepier was—a few bodies fell lifelessly on the ground by the effect the moths held, yet the common people of the village just stared, then coldly pulled the bodies away, dropping them into a large hole they had dug—no emotions or sorrow at all.
Some lower-class clan members of the Gù Yùe clan took the bodies out and sent them to their clan for investigation of the death.
"Oh no." Lìngxiāo swallowed hard at this scene.
'Those moths seem..too dangerous.'
'Just by the brush of their wings and..?'
'Perhaps..the cut I got was not from that side of the wings...luckily.'
'And those people..they really feel like carved from stone.'
He lowered himself behind Mō Qīn's back, trying to hide himself once they were crossing the two powerful clans standing side by side at two different mountains—Bài Yīlíng and Gù Yùe clan.
Their cold, professionally singing their thematic song—'Mind comes first. Emotions do not belong where we stand.'—with hollow, deliberate drumbeats made a shiver run down his spine.
He didn't want to hear the lyrics or he might feel more frustrated.
They were all outside their clan—lotus green and black-violet robes painted the different clan fields. They sang in a slow way and moved their swords with each drumbeat which came after five seconds of pause.
They were all facing their sect leaders who stood tall and still at the middle of the front door of their clan, singing too but with the most straight faces which betrayed nothing.
Those two young leaders were holding their swords—which they had been given from their formal sect leader five months ago at the coronation. They held them in their right hands and their left hands held something round which had their own clan symbols carved into them like the most valuable showpiece.
Totally annoyingly printed images of what he had read in his textbooks.
'Even the Zhèng clan is not this..hollow and boring. No wonder they have made their place somewhere in Yínglòu Chéng.'
'We Yínglòu cultivators at least have this much emotion to be called human.'
After lightly insulting their culture, he couldn't help but think again, almost awkwardly.
'But still..we should have some boundaries.'
His breath almost caught again when he saw the curtain heir of the Bài Yīlíng clan tilt his head and notice them. Also the moths—that no reaction was even creepy.
The song ended, so everyone lowered their swords back into covers and also looked up where their leader was looking.
The leader said something to his disciples with a sharp move of his hand—the crimson sleeve floated like heavy blood. And then the next moment, the large group nodded once, parted into three and went out like they were starting another liberation war or something.
Lìngxiāo felt his already sucked away blood now feeling like skins of peanut, laying in his veins.