Grimacing, I searched through the robes of the fox-man where he bled out on the ground. Deep in my heart, I felt an unsettling fear. This liminal space was a nightmare to me, a thought that couldn’t be real. I had to confirm it.

He had pockets full of trash. At first I hoped they were spirit stones or treasures containing Qi. Instead, he had mundane medicinal herbs and shiny rocks, little trinkets, and animal bones. Maybe some kind of currency.

None of those things were important. Near his chest he kept a book, which I pulled free from his robes. I couldn’t read the writing, but I didn’t have to. I could see the images, the depictions of meridians and forms that filled a manual. A cultivation manual.

This was a cultivator.

I had been lucky — if he was in the 4th realm, he might have shrugged off the neck wound. I might not have broken his skin.

Maybe it was just a world that was close to earth, for whatever reason. The fox-men living here had been isolated. Maybe a disaster struck here, and they cut this small world off from their sect, and it floated through reality until it attached to earth.

I probably wouldn’t get lucky twice in one day. I pocketed the rocks, the bird skulls and the trash that had filled his pockets. Who knew if it would be valuable here, somewhere? And who knew how long we would be stuck here? That is to say, if I wasn’t stuck here alone. If Kim didn’t find her own way out and leave. And if she didn’t die somewhere in the gate.

I checked the houses one at a time, my dagger ready. In most of them there was nothing left but rotten wooden furniture, rotten to nothingness. No windows decorated the small and ascetic buildings; all that remained were rotten scraps of wood and cloth, presumably from blankets. I found the building the fox-man occupied.

Piles of leather and blanket scrap filled one little corner of the room, a makeshift bed of scrap. Clothes draped over the roof outside and a leather blanket covering the entrance made a makeshift door. There was a bag inside, containing another copy of a cultivation manual, as well as hard tack rations of bread and jerky.

There was nothing else — no sign of someone fighting, like a confiscated spear or food or human clothing or backpacks.

The road continued past the town, reaching through it and moving onwards.

But should I really follow it? If I stayed here, I could cultivate all the way to the beginning of the Fourth realm in only days. I had food, and — I walked to the well, pulling up the bucket within. Crystal clear water filled it, seeming to almost hum, glowing with a silver-white aura.

Food. And mana infused water.

What would Kim be doing?

Not cultivating further. She would probably look for a way out. Or look for me. These worlds are dangerous places. More dangerous than a gate. Monsters might kill you, but the path you can walk here can do things worse than destroy you. You can become someone else, molded by your path into a vehicle of destruction. I should know.

I had to find her.

I dropped the backpack on my shoulders to the ground, drinking one water bottle and emptying the rest. I loaded up the shining rocks and skulls into the backpack and filled every bottle with the glowing water.

Zipping the backpack back up, I dismissed the Qi circulating in my eyes. The light could be conspicuous. Finally, I dragged the fox-man’s body into the hut he had been staying in. Maybe it would buy me time if anyone came to check on him.

Then I was back on the road, heading deeper into the woods.

I ran for another 30 minutes before I stopped, chancing upon footprints disturbing the gravel path. The plants were thinner here, but the foliage still managed to cover the road. Here, though, the plants were pushed low, like someone had just been here. I leaned down, examining the steps. Mud tracked in the pattern of the rubber sole of shoes.

Was Kim here? Just ahead?

Wait, no. These were tracked in the pattern of my shoes. Kim wore boots.

And there was only one reason for my own footsteps to appear in front of me. A formation just trapped me. But that didn’t make any damn sense — why would there be a formation stopping me from leaving the cultivation grounds but not one preventing me from entering?

That wouldn’t make any sense. Especially if they had points to capture people who were entering the small world — why wouldn’t they install their defenses there, as well? Unless they did, and I moved through it without noticing. What did I do differently there?

I stopped, pulling out the cultivation manual I looted from the fox-man and paging through it. I couldn’t read the text or instructions, of course, but I could see and recognize the meridians. They were different for their species, but close enough. Strangely so. It was almost as if they had changed their meridians to match ours, too. I paged through the techniques, each one so similar to the techniques recorded in the path of Silver Light that they had to share the same origin. Perhaps this path was a descendent of that one.

And eventually, written down as almost a note in the margins, I saw what I was looking for — the Moonlight Eyes, or at least a version. That was the difference — I had been maintaining the technique on my way to the town. I cycled the technique in my eyes.

The world seemed to unfold in my vision, a complex web of space revealing itself. The path my foot prints led down curved, leading to the right and into the woods, before folding back onto the main path behind me. It was a loop that sucked you in, lying to your senses and forcing you into circles. Breaking free from the loop, I headed deeper in, hoping Kim had found a way out of the formations.