Beneath The Surface

Bai Lu moved with purpose, her thoughts sharp, her senses alert. The figures from the night before had vanished, but their presence lingered in the air like the fading scent of incense.

They had not attacked. They had not even confronted her.

That was what unsettled her the most.

If they had wanted a fight, she would have understood. If they had spoken more, she could have gleaned their motives. But instead, they had watched. Tested. Withdrawn.

As if they had all the time in the world.

She stopped at the base of a towering ridge, her fingers brushing against the cool stone. The energy here was faint, but not gone. If she was right, there was something beneath the surface—something she wasn't seeing.

Closing her eyes, she steadied her breath, reaching out with her senses.

Silence.

Then, a whisper of something old. Faint. Hidden.

A presence beneath the earth.

Bai Lu's eyes snapped open. Whatever had drawn those figures here, it was still lingering—waiting.

She had to find out why.

---

Bai Lu pressed her palm against the rock, focusing. The disturbance was faint, almost imperceptible, but it was there.

She let her spiritual sense spread, sinking past the surface, reaching for the hidden flow beneath.

There.

A thin thread of energy, ancient and slow-moving, buried deep below. Not hostile, but not natural either. As if something had been sealed away long ago, its presence forgotten by time—until now.

She withdrew her hand, her expression unreadable.

The figures from the night before hadn't come for her.

They had come for this.

The question was: Did they find what they were looking for?

Bai Lu exhaled, glancing toward the horizon. If this presence was truly as deep as it felt, she wouldn't be able to uncover it alone—not yet.

She had two choices. She could keep pressing forward, risking exposure to an unknown force. Or she could step back, gather information, and return better prepared.

A rustling in the distance pulled her from her thoughts.

She turned sharply, hand on her sword.

Nothing.

Yet she knew she wasn't alone.

For now, she would retreat. But this wasn't over.

As she disappeared into the forest, she knew one thing for certain—whatever lay beneath the surface, it had been disturbed.

And sooner or later, it would rise.

Bai Lu moved swiftly through the dense forest, her thoughts sharp and measured. The presence she had sensed beneath the earth—ancient, lingering—was no ordinary remnant of forgotten power. Someone had disturbed it.

But who? And why now?

She stepped lightly between the trees, her breath steady. The night before, the cloaked figures had withdrawn without a fight. That in itself was unsettling. Cultivators who practiced in the shadows rarely abandoned their objectives without reason.

Had they already found what they sought?

The wind shifted, carrying a faint trace of something unnatural—metallic, tinged with an eerie stillness. She halted.

Blood.

Bai Lu veered off the main path, following the scent to a clearing where the moonlight revealed a sight that made her eyes narrow.

A corpse lay sprawled across the ground, its robes tattered and stained dark. The body belonged to one of the figures from last night. His face was obscured by a shattered mask, and his hands—pale and rigid—were curled as if he had tried to grasp something in his final moments.

She crouched beside him, carefully inspecting his wounds. No external injuries. No visible signs of a battle. Yet the life had been utterly drained from his body, leaving behind an empty husk.

A silent death.

Bai Lu touched the ground beside him, extending her spiritual sense. The energy here felt... wrong. Disrupted. As if something had been forcefully pulled away from this place.

Her fingers brushed against the soil, and a whisper of foreign energy curled around her own, like the fading echoes of a presence that had once been here but was now gone.

This wasn't an ordinary killing.

This was a sacrifice.

Bai Lu straightened, her expression unreadable. If someone had performed a ritual here, it meant one of two things: Either they had failed and paid the price… or they had succeeded.

She exhaled slowly. Whatever had been buried beneath the surface had not gone unnoticed.

And if it had already begun to awaken…

Then time was running short.

She turned away from the body and vanished into the trees. There were still answers to uncover.

And she intended to find them.

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