"What was that?" he asked in a hoarse voice, speaking to the empty air at the bottom of the abyss. "Who was speaking in my head?" Silence. There was only the sound of rain soaking the canopy of giant trees atop the cliff. Xinghe pressed the watch with his still-dirty fingers. "I know there is something inside there. Grandpa told me to carry this for a reason, right? You saved me. Come out. Show yourself."
Silence. Not a single ray of light emerged from the bronze pocket watch. The sound of raindrops hitting the broad purple leaves dominated his hearing. Chu Xinghe tapped the glass surface of the pocket watch with his knuckles. The sound was soft—tap, tap, tap. "Hello?" Xinghe whispered, pressing the rusted bronze object to his ear. "Grandpa? Or... whoever you are? You spoke just now, didn't you? 'Heaven and Earth, Eternal Star'... what was the rest of it? Come out. Don't play games with me."
Still silence. Xinghe turned the watch over and over. The hands did not move at all; it was dead as usual, and even its temperature had returned to being as cold as the rainwater wetting him. Suddenly, the valley wind blew hard, carrying an eerie whistling sound from between the steep rock cliffs. The hair on Xinghe's neck immediately stood on end.
His eyes widened. He had just realized a fact that had escaped his heavily stressed brain: he was at the bottom of a godforsaken abyss, surrounded by darkness, having just been thrown by the corpse of a one-eyed beast, and... a disembodied hoarse voice had just spoken directly inside his skull.
"Ghost!" Xinghe cursed loudly. His face, which was previously pale from the cold and near-death, now paled from a completely different horror. "It is a ghost! A ghost haunting the bronze cauldron! Or the ghost of this mountain!"
A truly embarrassing panic exploded in his chest. The youth who minutes ago was lamenting his fate as a sacrificial vessel of heaven now jumped backward, staring at his pocket watch as if it were a live grenade ready to blow his head off. "Damn it! This world is full of gods flying on swords; it's no wonder the ghosts can possess antiques too!"
Xinghe turned his head right and left with jerky movements. Dark. Extremely dark. The shadows of the giant trees at the bottom of the canyon looked like massive tentacles ready to strangle him. He stuffed the pocket watch haphazardly into his pants pocket, not daring to keep it near his chest anymore. He turned and immediately bolted. His foot tripped over a mossy tree root protruding from the ground. His body lurched forward, he tumbled, rolled twice over the wet mud, and then frantically crawled up and started running aimlessly again.
He ran through thorny bushes in the valley, kicking gravel and jumping over puddles. His breath came in gasps, he continued to run through the rain, but there was one strange thing he didn't realize until he had run hundreds of meters. He didn't feel any pain at all.
Xinghe braked his steps suddenly. His shoes skidded on the muddy soil, making him nearly crash into a dead tree trunk in front of him. He panted, holding onto the tree trunk while catching his breath.
"Wait," he muttered, his eyes blinking rapidly in the darkness. He looked down at his own body.
His clothes were badly torn. His shirt was covered in blood that was beginning to dry and blacken under the raindrops. His jacket was ruined. However, as he felt his own palm—the one he had used to stab the beast's eye—the skin was smooth. He reflexively felt his right shoulder.
There were no holes from fangs. The skin of his shoulder responded with a normal sense of touch. He twisted his body, feeling his back which had been shredded by claws. There were no scratches. He pressed his ribs which had clearly cracked and broken when he fell from the cliff. Everything was intact.
"I am... healthy?" Xinghe rotated his right shoulder. The joint moved perfectly, even feeling lighter than before he was bitten. He took a small hop. His feet landed firmly on the muddy ground; his body felt in prime condition, as if he had just woken up from a very long sleep in a soft bed. Chu Xinghe leaned his back against the tree trunk.
"How is it possible?" Xinghe murmured, staring at his own palm which was still covered in stains of his own mortal blood. "Lady Lian said I am a dead vessel. A completely crippled mortal. That sharp-tongued bitch Su said there are rusted chains in my heart, a heavenly curse that rejects all external essence."
He remembered the brutal pain when Su Wan's two fingers pierced his chest, trying to inject pure essence. Su Wan's energy had burned away, rejected by whatever resided in his heart.
"That arrogant woman of the red lotus said even a pig can absorb natural essence, but not me. My body rejects everything. Then..." Xinghe reached into his pants pocket again, slowly taking out the bronze watch. The object was now silent.
"Then what was that blue light?" Xinghe asked the inanimate object, holding it up in front of his face. "That obsolete mantra... 'Heaven and Earth, Eternal Star'... when I said it, that blue light appeared from everywhere. It wrapped around me, seeped into my muscles, and healed wounds that should have killed me."
He frowned deeply. "If I truly cannot absorb external essence as they said, why wasn't that blue light rejected by the cursed chains in my heart? Was that blue light not essence? Or..."
Xinghe's eyes narrowed. His horror-filled panic began to recede. "Or those fake god-cultivators actually know nothing about this body of mine," he whispered softly. A thin smirk appeared at the corner of his lips. "They read dusty ancient scrolls, see that cheap Star Stone fail to light up, and immediately jump to an absolute conclusion. Lady Lian babbles about 'the truth of the world' and a sacrificial fate that cannot transcend mortality."
Xinghe kicked a pebble near his foot. "Truth of the world my foot. If I were truly destined to rot as a mortal with no future, this instant recovery would not have happened! If not a single essence can heal the wounds of a mortal human, then what was that blue light? Devil magic? That light was clearly magical energy, and my body accepted it very hungrily. That means this Ancient Emperor Body isn't rejecting essence... it only rejects their trash energy! This body is picky!"
A soft laugh escaped Xinghe's throat. The despair that had gnawed at his soul earlier began to be replaced by curiosity and determination. "Do you hear that, Elder cat Xie Kun?" Xinghe threatened the empty air. "I will find out how to shatter these rusted chains, and then I will visit your ridiculous sect."
The rainwater began to feel more piercing. The valley wind blew through his badly torn shirt. Xinghe pulled his arms tight. He needed shelter. This miraculous recovery had stitched his flesh, but the cold could still freeze him, and his stomach was starting to ache from being empty. He walked along the base of the rocky cliff, his eyes sweeping the surroundings for a niche or shallow cave.
"False Immortal Path..." Xinghe muttered while watching his steps so as not to fall. "Lady Su mentioned that term when testing Han Dong and the others. Blood Transformation... that is their first step."
Xinghe found a mound of giant tree roots protruding from the earthen wall, forming a sort of deep natural tent or umbrella. He immediately crawled inside under it. The place was dry and shielded from the wind. He sat cross-legged, wiped a bit of dirt from his face, and then placed his bronze pocket watch on the mossy ground in front of him.
"False Immortal Path..." He repeated the words slowly. The term suddenly triggered a memory in his head. A memory of the events on the blue planet near the Eridanus Supervoid. "The records and images there..." Xinghe whispered, racking his brain hard. "It was like cheating immortality, and at that time we felt it was strange and crazy because there was a drawing of a lotus in the stomach. The name... Immortal Lotus... Yes! Immortal Lotus!"
He exhaled softly and his voice lowered, his memory spinning on the voice that spoke of the Great Way. "Great Dao... it's the same as what Laozi said. The Dao is heartless toward all creatures; when heaven and earth were first created, good and evil were not yet determined." Chu Xinghe exhaled again. "Are my friends okay in their sects? Have they practiced to become those false immortals?"
Chu Xinghe leaned his head against the damp earthen wall behind the giant root. "Han Dong, Li Wei, Xin Yan..." He said their names one by one. His voice sounded foreign to his own ears, hoarse and trembling. "Where are you now? Are you sitting on silk chairs drinking divine potions, or are you terrified in a dungeon because you are considered looted property?"
He imagined Xin Yan's face crying as she was pulled onto the blood lotus. That girl was always afraid of the dark, and now she was in a place far more terrifying than any darkness on Earth.
"Heavenly Cloud Sect, Blood Lotus Valley, Iron Tiger Sect, and Bone Shadow Sect," Xinghe hissed, trying to memorize every syllable of those names. "They took you as if you were livestock just bought at a market. They talk about talent, about root seeds, as if humans are just test tubes for their energy."
He remembered Lu Changkong's eyes, clear yet empty. There was no hatred there, only an absolute indifference. To him, a mortal human without the allure of energy was no more valuable than a grain of dust under his shoe. Chu Xinghe clenched his fists tight, his jaw tightening.
"I will not stop here," he whispered sharply, remembering his friends who so badly wanted to return to Earth. "Returning to Earth requires something as strong as that to pierce this universe; I must find it." Chu Xinghe looked out of the root hole. "Yes, I will find it. Life and Death, I must be able to return to Earth by whatever means."
Chu Xinghe took a long breath, a thin mist coming out of his mouth as the cold valley air bit into his lungs. He looked at the pocket watch on the ground with a gaze hard to interpret. He tried to close his eyes, but sleep wouldn't come. His mind was filled with the faces of those cultivators earlier. Their gazes, the way they spoke, and how they looked at mortals.
"You consider this world yours because you can fly?" Xinghe murmured to the darkness. "If I can find a way to move that blue energy earlier... if I can find out what exactly is locked inside my heart..." He fell silent, listening to the sound of the rain beginning to subside, replaced by the sound of foreign night insects. In the distance, occasionally a roar of a creature was heard that made his hair stand on end. This world would not give him time to lament.
"Tomorrow," Xinghe said to himself. "Tomorrow I must get out of this abyss. I must get out of here, go find out everything in this world. Even if it means having to walk closer to death many times." He pulled the pocket watch, gripping it tightly in his palm, and tried to force himself to rest his miraculously recovered body.
The pale golden glow of dawn began to seep through the gaps in the canopy of the Forest of a Thousand Purple Leaves. Morning dew dripped from the tips of giant leaves, falling on Chu Xinghe's cheek and waking him from an uneasy sleep. The youth opened his eyes with a gasp. His breath came in short gasps. His hand reflexively gripped the pile of mossy soil beneath him.
He looked toward the tree root gap where he had sheltered overnight; the rain had stopped completely. Chu Xinghe felt around him and found that his grandfather's pocket watch was still near him. He crawled out from the tree roots while gripping his grandfather's watch again, standing up slowly. His body felt light, but his stomach twisted painfully, voicing a torturous hunger.
"I have to move," he murmured softly, his voice nearly swallowed by the sound of the forest. He stepped out from the protection of the giant tree roots. He looked up at the gap of sky between the trees. The color of the sky looked bluer than Earth, clear without clouds, but that was what made him feel very threatened.
"If those gods can fly across the sky using a steel sword," Xinghe thought, his eyes sweeping sharply toward the forest slope above him, "then walking in the open is the same as lighting a death flare."
He began to walk along the bottom of the valley. His route was not straight. Every time he saw a wide gap in the trees or flat land unprotected by a leaf canopy, Xinghe shifted his path, choosing to break through thorny bushes or climb slippery rocks on the edge of the cliff as long as his body was covered by shadows. He kept his head down, crawling under fallen tree trunks, hiding like a hunted animal.
Time passed without him being able to count it exactly. Cold sweat began to wet his temples due to exhaustion and accumulated hunger. Until finally, his ears caught the sound of a fairly heavy water flow from ahead. "Another river?" he thought. He slowed his steps. The sound of that water was different from the shallow gurgling from the edge of the river where he and his friends were tested last night; this was a wider and deeper flow.
Chu Xinghe crawled forward, pushing aside the broad-leafed bushes with great care. The forest aroma that was previously filled with the scent of wet soil suddenly changed. The very thick smell of blood forced its way into his nose. Xinghe's hand trembled as he held back the last branch of the bush.