Chapter 11

Chapter 11: The Fog Rises

At midnight, Bai Meng Jin jolted awake.

For a long moment she lay still, staring at the bed curtains, listening.

Nothing.

The matron the family had sent to watch her always snored like thunder once she fell asleep. Tonight, there wasn’t even the smallest rasp of breathing.

This courtyard sat at the edge of the manor. Usually the night wind moaned through the trees like a hungry ghost.

Now there was only silence—heavy, unnatural, wrong.

Bai Meng Jin slid out of bed and pulled on her robe without lighting a lamp. Her fingers went to her sleeve. The talismans she’d drawn days ago were still there.

Good.

That small certainty steadied her.

She pushed open the door.

Cold damp rushed in.

Fog.

Thick fog rolled across the courtyard, swallowing everything. She couldn’t see more than ten feet.

Bai Meng Jin turned back, grabbed the ornamental sword from the wall, then shoved open the side room.

Empty.

The matron was gone. The servant girl was gone.

She didn’t need more proof.

It was the Bai Manor—and it wasn’t.

She’d been dragged into another layer of space, a sealed pocket realm laid over the real world like skin over bone.

Great-Uncle.

No doubt about it. He’d already realized his secret was exposed.

Bai Meng Jin exhaled silently, the breath tasting bitter.

Back then, when the Bai Family was wiped out, she’d wondered why. But every clue had been severed. The truth had been buried so cleanly it might as well not have existed.

She’d never expected the Reincarnation Mirror to drag her back into the past—only for her to discover that the root of the disaster had been hiding under her own roof all along.

Maybe Great-Uncle had seen no hope left on the orthodox path and turned to crooked methods. Maybe he’d decided to use an entire city to feed sinister devils and push his cultivation higher by force.

Devil Creatures raided everywhere. Evil gods bewitched hearts. And all that filth gathered beneath the Yellow Springs Tree through the Yin-Yang Umbrella, refined into his nourishment.

In the original timeline, without her hint, Huo Chong Xiao likely would have tracked the trail to the farm and stopped there. He would have assumed the mission complete and returned to report.

Azure Cloud City wasn’t important enough for the Cinnabar Cloud Palace to dig deeper. The matter would’ve been filed away.

And so the rot would spread in silence for decades—until it finally brewed into catastrophe.

Bai Meng Jin left the courtyard, oriented herself by memory, and headed toward the Clear Lotus Courtyard.

The fog carried a heavy, sinister aura. It gnawed at the spirit, trying to sink its teeth into the mind.

A normal cultivator would be weakened. Some would even crack.

But Bai Meng Jin wasn’t normal.

As a great devil fiend, she had her own method. She circulated her power, opened a pocket world within her inner palace, and drew the fog’s sinister aura into it.

The more she absorbed, the lighter her body felt.

Instead of being eroded, her cultivation began to swell—quietly, greedily. She felt more at home than she had in days.

She let out a slow breath.

When she’d defected from the Cinnabar Cloud Palace, her Dao Arts foundation had been destroyed. Later, she’d had no choice but to switch to Devil Arts.

Now, suddenly returned to her youth, her cultivation was shallow. Worse, her foundation didn’t match her old methods, making everything clumsy.

But with this aura beneath her feet, she could borrow the shape of her former strength again.

A scream tore through the fog.

“Help! Help!”

Bai Meng Jin turned toward the sound.

Someone burst out of a nearby courtyard, stumbling into the corridor with frantic, uneven steps. Several clumps of black flame chased behind him, snapping like hungry mouths.

“Dad! Mom! Save me!”

Bai Meng Xing ran with his head down. When he spotted a figure in the corridor, he lunged toward it like a drowning man toward a plank.

“Save me! Save me!”

Bai Meng Jin didn’t flinch. She drew her sword.

Steel sang.

Spiritual light gathered along the blade, and with one clean slash she split the black flames in half.

They hit the ground and guttered out, dying like embers smothered by mud.

Bai Meng Xing stumbled to a stop, panting. He turned and saw her.

His expression froze. “Why is it you?”

Bai Meng Jin didn’t bother with a mask. “Why wouldn’t it be?”

Even an idiot knew how to bend in front of death. Bai Meng Xing swallowed whatever insult rose to his tongue and slid behind her at once.

“What happened?” he demanded, voice shaking. “When I woke up, everyone was gone.”

Bai Meng Jin reached out and caught his wrist.

Bai Meng Xing jumped. “What are you doing?”

“Shut up.”

He swallowed, neck shrinking. “Okay…”

Bai Meng Jin checked his pulse.

His cultivation was pitiful—barely a thread. He’d drawn qi into his body once and then treated cultivation like homework: something to avoid, something to cheat.

But because of that, his meridians were clean. The sinister aura hadn’t found anything to cling to yet.

“Uncle and Aunt aren’t here?” Bai Meng Jin asked.

Bai Meng Xing nodded quickly. “Yeah. I didn’t see them when I woke up.”

Bai Meng Jin frowned.

Both she and Bai Meng Xing had been pulled in, which meant this space was targeting people with cultivation.

Uncle was at the Foundation Establishment Stage. Aunt had taken pills to draw qi into her body as well.

So why weren’t they here?

“I-is something wrong?” Bai Meng Xing asked, voice small. “Where did my parents go?”

“I don’t know,” Bai Meng Jin said flatly.

She didn’t have time to soothe him. She started walking toward the Clear Lotus Courtyard again.

Bai Meng Xing didn’t dare let her out of his sight. He hurried after her.

“Where are you going?”

“What’s it to you?”

He grimaced. “Hey—You…”

He wanted to snap, but the fog pressed in from every side, and the memory of black flames made his courage evaporate. He lowered his voice instead. “Is someone trying to come after our family? Then we should find Great-Uncle, right?”

He wasn’t completely stupid.

Bai Meng Jin’s eyes narrowed. “This is a maze formation. I’m going to find someone who can break it.

“You can stay inside a house. At worst, a few little devils will come sniffing around. If you bar the door, you’ll survive.”

Bai Meng Xing shook his head so hard it looked like it might fly off. “No! I’m coming with you!”

“Following me will be dangerous.”

She tried, once, to warn him. He was blood—useless, cruel, but still blood. She wasn’t eager to see him die.

But Bai Meng Xing’s fear was louder than her logic. “The ‘little devils’ you mentioned were those things just now, right? I can’t handle them!”

Bai Meng Jin stared at him for a second.

Then she gave up.

“Fine,” she muttered, and kept moving.