The blood mist’s howling cut off abruptly. Utter silence replaced it, so sudden Hui’s ears rang. His feet echoed hollowly as he stumbled forward a few steps, kicking up dust.

He stood in a vast stone chamber. Torches lit ahead of him, illuminating the center of the chamber. Its walls vanished into the darkness, torches unable to cast their light to the edges. Understated and simple, no decoration nor strange apparitions spread around. If not for the self-lighting torches and his method of arrival, he might have thought it was no magical space at all.

Cautious, Hui strode down the chamber, following the torches as they lit ahead of him. His steps rattled around the room, reverberating off the unseen walls. No sign of the blood-mist boy remained, but the gem fairly shivered now, full of anticipation. It urged him onward, deeper into the space. Warily, Hui followed its urgings. He watched around him, ready to run at the first sign of trouble.

Laughter sounded out ahead of him. Light footsteps echoed over the stone from an invisible child.

“You’re still here?” Hui asked aloud.

Unlike his footsteps, the space swallowed his voice. As if in answer, the laughter came again. It bounced off the walls, reverberating loudly toward him. The laughter and footsteps came closer and closer. Hui braced for impact, raising a barrier talisman.

A step before the footsteps impacted him, they stopped.

Frowning, Hui proceeded, stowing the barrier talisman in his robes once more.

He walked on. The chamber seemed endless, torches lighting one by one ahead of him. Hui paused and glanced over his shoulder, only to find the torches dark behind him. He swallowed.

This isn’t… an illusion, is it?

An illusion… like that estate…

Hui plopped down suddenly and assumed the lotus pose. Circulating his qi, he focused on the way it flowed. Finding the flow regular, he furrowed his brows and pushed deeper, narrowing his gaze. Along his qi passages, into his dantian, out and up, into his head…

There! Hui reached out, pinching the air. Internally, he caught a strand of red qi between a pincher of his own blue and drew it out of his mental qi passages. Carefully, he extricated it, then drew the death qi up toward the red strand.

Before he could corrupt it, a pink duck lunged out of the black and gobbled up the red strand.

Hui blinked. Eh. I hope that doesn’t corrupt the ducks… Oh, well. They’ve been resilient so far.

He opened his eyes.

Instead of an endless chamber with distant walls, he sat in a small, humble space. Stone-brick walls curved upward, closing him into a narrow room.

A low stone shelf sat before him. On it, three red gems awaited. Released from the illusion, their pull felt like ice on his skin, sucking at the qi inside of him. Hui immediately killed it away to almost nothing, fear like acid in his stomach. Much longer, and they would have eaten me!

Two notches sat open on the shelf. In his ring, the gem shuddered immensely. It pulled toward the notches, desperately desiring to join its fellows. Hui held it back, putting a hand atop the ring to restrain it.

Across from the gems, a set of shallow basins had been carved into the shelf. Hui stood and approached cautiously, taking a circuitous route to avoid drawing too close to the gems. A round basin sat near the gems, then a shallower one stretched wide, a short gap between them. Two shallower-yet basins laid parallel along the sides of a deeper, bifurcated basin.

Hui furrowed his brows. This…almost… looks like the shape of a person! The head, shoulders, two arms, the hips…

His eyes travelled to the gems. Then… is this where these gems are filled? But—who would come down here and lie willingly on the shelf? Neither did the illusion guide me to lay down.

No, that can’t be right. There’s something else going on here.

Hui reached for the basins. His hand passed through.

Startled, he retracted his hand and inspected it. A second later, he peered closer at the shelf and the gems, then reached out again, this time for the gems. His hand passed through them. The gems are… partially illusory? Or maybe… not on this plane?

And the shelf too, including the basins, but then… Is it an illusion? Is it not?

Hui shook his head. The persistent feeling of the truth hovering just out of his reach welled up again. It shimmered in his head, not fully formed, frustratingly unclear-yet-clear.

This… all of this… I feel like it’s all leading to one thing. Gu Tian. The gems. Yunxu and Erlan. Even the lotus in Bai Clan and the mess with the Mysterious Heavenly Forest Sect…

Hui rubbed his forehead. If only I could see it clearly…

The shelf and the gem shimmered, then vanished. In their place, a stone wall stood, a vertical seam down its length. As he watched, the seam began to split open. An archaic air spilled out, as if this seam had not opened in a great long time. Red light colored the seam as it opened, growing brighter until the entire small room filled with red light. Hui lifted his hands to guard his eyes, squinting into the light.

An ancient voice echoed directly in his mind. “You, who wishes to see clearly, open your eyes.”

Hui lowered his hands, completely taken aback. Eh? They’re already open, senior…

The red light bathed his eyes in blood tones. His pupils dilated. His eyes began to glow, reflecting the red light of the cleft.

The cleft opened wide. Startlingly, a pupil gazed out from the cleft! It wasn’t a seam in the rock wall, but a sideways-turned eye, brilliant red from edge to edge, even the pupil only a darker shade of maroon. Hui’s mind shook. Veins stood out on his forehead, and blood ran down from his eyes. Desperately, he circulated his qi to compensate for the power bearing down on him. He tried to tear his eyes away, but found he couldn’t. The massive eye trapped his, forcing him to gaze deeper and deeper into itself. Waves of cultivation power assailed him from a cultivation base high above his, so high he couldn’t guess at its true power.

A vertical slash split Hui’s forehead. Blood ran down, joining his bloody tears. Hui gritted his teeth, forcing himself to stand up against the assault. He fell to a knee. His consciousness flaked away, beaten down by the force of the eye’s power. Still, he fought back, refusing to close his eyes or bow his head.

Suddenly, his soul burst out of his body. His soul’s forehead seared with pain, a pain he’d never felt before—a pain of the very soul.

Black blood rolled down his soul’s forehead as a gash appeared, identical to the gash on his body. Not truly blood at all, the drops formed from death qi, death qi that rolled down his forehead and evaporated. Three drops formed and evaporated away, and then the gash opened, revealing a pitch black eye! It rolled about frighteningly, aching the whole while.

The second the eye opened, the black and white world of Hui’s soul gained color. The red light permeated into his soul’s world, touching the black eye of Hui’s soul. It pushed against his eye, invading it with red. A faint red spark burst out in the depths of Hui’s new eye. Slowly, the red grew. As it grew, Hui felt a power pushing against his consciousness. Something much more powerful than him slowly shoved him out of the way.

No! Jolted from his haze, Hui scrambled mentally, afraid. This power, this crimson light—if it overtakes me, I’ll be gone forever! I—there’s only one thing for me to do!

Leaping back into his body, Hui killed his qi entirely. This time, he even killed his death qi, his life qi, coiling everything down as tiny and tightly as he could manage. Like a puppet with its strings cut, his body drooped. His eyes slumped half-shut. The red light still shimmered in them for a moment, but without any of his qi to feed the light, it slowly died away.

The crimson light beamed from the eye in the wall for another few seconds, then faded as well. A stone eye stared out where the light had been, gazing blankly down at Hui.

A few breaths passed. The stone eye stared dully, and Hui stared dully back.

At last, Hui shook his head and sat up, releasing his qi. Reaching up, he touched his forehead. His fingers came away bloody, but no third eye opened between his brows. It cut straight through the refined ghoul skin to cut me beneath. That light wasn’t affected by my armor at all!

What was that? What is this space?