Fang Lin and Feng Jiu'er did not take the path to Red Smoke Ridge.
After leaving the hollow space beneath the collapsed stone arch, they moved along the lower side of the dead valley, keeping away from the open passage where footprints, red smoke, and broken stones made the route too easy to follow.
The eighth day inside the Rivercloud Demon Sealing Ruins had already begun, yet the sky above the valley never truly brightened. A dull red glow hung between the black ridges, and the coldness in the air seemed to rise from underground rather than fall from above.
Feng Jiu'er walked beside him with her sword in hand. Her flame Qi stayed hidden beneath her sleeves, compressed and silent. In this place, even fire had to be careful. A bright flame could burn roots and poison dust, but it could also tell every hidden cultivator where they were.
Fang Lin moved steadily, though his eyes kept shifting across the terrain. Now and then, his divine sense brushed the nearby ground and withdrew almost immediately. He did not scan far. Some cracks swallowed perception. Some roots carried cold pulses. In several places, his soul sense touched empty space where solid stone should have been.
By evening, the red smoke behind them had thinned.
What replaced it was worse.
The path ahead dropped into a narrow ravine where the stones curved inward like black ribs. Cold mist gathered between them, so dense that even Feng Jiu'er's gaze sharpened. The mist carried Yin energy, Darkness energy, and a deathly stillness that made ordinary breathing feel heavy. It did not attack them. It waited.
Feng Jiu'er stopped at the edge. "This place is not normal."
Fang Lin looked down into the ravine. The darkness below did not sway with the wind. It stayed layered and deep, as if the night itself had settled there for years. "No. It is suitable."
"For your method?"
"For the method I cultivated earlier."
She asked nothing further. After guarding him once, she already knew that whatever Shen Mo cultivated was not ordinary. Asking too much in the Rivercloud Demon Sealing Ruins was not always wise.
"How long?" she asked.
Fang Lin looked at the ravine, then at the faint traces left by passing cultivators behind them. "Several days, if the place is as suitable as it feels."
Feng Jiu'er's brows tightened. "The fifteenth day is close."
"That is why I need several days."
She watched him for a moment before turning back toward the ravine. "Find a place with one entrance. If you choose a death pit with three openings and hidden roots under the floor, I will drag you out before you even sit down."
Fang Lin gave a faint smile. "Then I will choose carefully."
They descended before night fully settled. The lower they went, the heavier the darkness became. Feng Jiu'er's fire Qi stirred several times, not from fear, but from resistance. Her path was fire, and fire disliked being pressed into silence. Yet she controlled it well. When pale roots reached from the stone walls, she burned only their tips. When black insects crawled from cracks, she killed them with thin lines of heat instead of open flame.
Fang Lin finally chose a stone chamber behind a curtain of cold mist. It had one entrance, a low ceiling, and a thin crack at the back too narrow for a person to pass through. The Yin-darkness energy there was extreme. It sank into the skin like cold rain and gathered around Night Burial Sword without being summoned.
Feng Jiu'er checked the entrance herself before nodding. "This place can be defended."
Fang Lin sat down inside. "Then I will trouble you again."
"You already have."
He almost laughed, but the mood did not allow it. He placed Night Burial Sword beside his knee, swallowed a recovery pill from his storage treasure, and closed his eyes.
The first day within the ravine passed slowly. He did not force everything at once. The three Shadow Dewdrops near his Spirit Foundation were still small, but they had already proven that the method's restriction could be bent. Fang Lin circulated Dew of Ten Thousand Shadows carefully, drawing the Yin-darkness into his body strand by strand. The hidden energy he never dared speak of moved only when his soul sealed the fluctuation inward, and even then he used it sparingly. It did not replace cultivation. It only opened a narrow crack in the wall that bound the method to midnight.
By the end of the first night, he had condensed twelve more Shadow Dewdrops.
His face became pale, but his breathing stayed steady.
Feng Jiu'er noticed both changes.
On the ninth day inside the Rivercloud Demon Sealing Ruins, three groups passed along the upper ravine. One group belonged to Red Smoke Ridge. Another wore mixed robes from smaller powers that clearly moved under stronger backing. The last group had no sect markings, but their steps were too orderly to be ordinary rogue cultivators. Feng Jiu'er did not fight them. She hid near the mist curtain with her flame Qi pressed down until it became no brighter than a coal beneath ash.
One Red Smoke Ridge disciple paused above the chamber and muttered, "There is Yin energy below."
Another laughed. "Then go down and marry it. We are late enough already."
The first disciple cursed, but he did not descend.
Only after their footsteps faded did Feng Jiu'er loosen her grip on the sword hilt.
Inside the chamber, Fang Lin did not open his eyes. Sweat had gathered on his forehead despite the cold. The Shadow Dewdrops inside him had reached twenty-nine.
On the tenth day, the ravine wind rose from underground. It carried no warmth, no scent of soil, and no living breath. When it passed through the stone chamber, the mist curtain froze into thin black threads. Feng Jiu'er cut them before they touched the ground. The threads shattered like glass, then melted into dark water that hissed against the stone.
Fang Lin's body trembled once.
Feng Jiu'er turned her head. "Shen Mo."
"I am fine," he said without opening his eyes.
"You do not sound fine."
"This method has an unfortunate temper."
"This method has been causing trouble for days."
"It is improving."
"Your idea of improving is strange."
Fang Lin did not answer again. His soul had already sunk fully into circulation. The Shadow Lotus Mark near his Spirit Foundation had become clearer, and the gathered dewdrops moved around it like silent black stars. Alone, each one was small. Together, they had begun to change the weight of his darkness.
By midnight, he reached forty-seven.
On the eleventh day, something came from the lower ravine. It was not a beast of flesh. It looked like roots twisted around a lump of black stone, dragging itself with four uneven limbs. A red lump pulsed inside its chest, and every time it moved, the mist around it grew darker.
Feng Jiu'er waited until it entered the narrowest part of the passage, then stepped out.
Her sword burned with a thin green-gold flame.
The creature opened its mouth, and root threads spilled out like wet hair. Feng Jiu'er cut once. The flame did not explode. It entered the root creature through the wound and burned from the inside. The red lump in its chest brightened, cracked, and collapsed into ash. The creature fell without a cry.
She did not collect anything. Its remains carried too much ruin miasma, and not every dead creature was treasure. Some things were only better left dead.
Inside the chamber, Fang Lin reached sixty-three Shadow Dewdrops.
On the twelfth day, his body began to reject the strain. His meridians were strong, his soul was steady, and the Nine Nether Phantom Body could endure far more than an ordinary Spirit Foundation cultivator, but Dew of Ten Thousand Shadows was not gentle. Condensing so many Shadow Dewdrops in a short time demanded precision from his Qi, soul, and body at once. The hidden energy could bend the restriction, yet it could not remove the price.
A thin line of blood appeared at the corner of his mouth.
Feng Jiu'er saw it immediately. "Stop for half a day."
Fang Lin opened his eyes. They were darker than usual, but clear. "If I stop now, the rhythm breaks."
"If you continue like this, you may break with it."
He wiped the blood away with his thumb and looked at the dark stain for a moment. Then he gave a tired smile. "That would be embarrassing after making you guard me for so long."
Feng Jiu'er's expression turned cold. "This is not funny."
His smile faded.
Fang Lin looked at her properly. Her face was calm, but there was exhaustion beneath her eyes. For several days, she had guarded the entrance, killed ruin creatures, avoided passing cultivators, suppressed her fire in an environment that rejected it, and slept only in short fragments. She had not complained once.
He lowered his gaze slightly. "Give me two hours to recover."
Feng Jiu'er watched him for a moment. "Two hours. If you lie, I will interrupt you myself."
"You are becoming very hard to fool."
"I was never easy to fool."
"That explains many things."
Her eyes narrowed, and Fang Lin wisely closed his mouth.
Two hours later, he resumed.
On the thirteenth day, the chamber became too dark for ordinary sight. Feng Jiu'er could still see by flame sense, but she no longer allowed fire to rise freely. The darkness inside the chamber was not attacking her. It was gathering around Fang Lin, folding inward with each breath he took. Night Burial Sword lay beside him like a piece of the same darkness, and several times its dark-red veins stirred as if something inside the blade was listening.
Fang Lin suppressed every fluctuation.
He did not want the sword, the chamber, the ravine, or even Feng Jiu'er to see too much.
The Shadow Dewdrops reached eighty-one, then eighty-seven, then ninety-three.
Each drop after that became harder. The Shadow Lotus Mark no longer accepted loose Yin-darkness. It demanded refinement. It demanded control. Every new dewdrop had to align with the others, or the entire rhythm would shake. Fang Lin's soul tightened again and again, holding the structure in place while the hidden energy moved through him like a silent thread beneath deep water.
Near dawn of the fourteenth day, the ninety-ninth Shadow Dewdrop formed.
The stone chamber went completely still.
Feng Jiu'er stood at the entrance and looked back.
Fang Lin sat in the center of the darkness. His robe was damp with cold sweat, his face was pale, and his breathing had slowed until it was almost impossible to hear. Yet the pressure around him had changed. It was no longer the scattered heaviness of a method being forced forward. It had become quiet, gathered, and dangerous.
The hundredth Shadow Dewdrop condensed without sound.
For a brief moment, nothing happened.
Then all one hundred Shadow Dewdrops moved at the same time. They gathered near the Shadow Lotus Mark, circling faster and faster until the darkness around Fang Lin folded inward. It did not explode outward. It did not shake the ravine or announce itself to the world. It collapsed into a single point inside him, dense and silent, like night closing its fist.
A small black bud appeared near his Spirit Foundation.
Volume 1: Dark Bud.
Fang Lin's eyes opened.
For an instant, Feng Jiu'er felt as if the darkness behind him had looked at her. Her flame Qi stirred sharply, but Fang Lin raised his hand at once. The pressure vanished before it could touch her. The chamber returned to its former gloom, though the air still felt colder than before.
Feng Jiu'er's fingers loosened around her sword. "You succeeded."
Fang Lin slowly exhaled. "Barely."
"That did not look like barely."
"It felt like barely."
She looked at his pale face and the dried blood near his collar. "Then remember that before trying it again."
Fang Lin stood slowly. His legs were stiff, and his soul felt as if it had been pulled thin and folded back into place. Inside him, the Dark Bud remained quiet. It gave him no free vision, no endless power, and no miraculous strength without cost. But when he deliberately touched it with his cultivation, the darkness in his body answered with a depth it had never possessed before.
Among his current hidden methods, this had become his sharpest edge.
He did not test it. Not here, not in front of Feng Jiu'er, and not without knowing how much of its aura would leak.
A sound came from above the ravine.
Both of them looked up.
Several cultivators were moving along the upper path, their voices low but urgent. Fang Lin and Feng Jiu'er stood inside the mist curtain and listened.
"The Green Bamboo Sect people are still holding near Broken Ravine," one voice said. "That Su Wanqing and Li Shan refuses to hand over the marked disciples."
Another voice sneered. "Let them refuse. Red Smoke Ridge and those Scarlet Sun-backed groups have blocked two exits already. Thousand Leaf Immortal Sect disciples interfered twice, but they cannot protect every scattered group inside the Rivercloud Demon Sealing Ruins."
"What about Feng Jiu'er?"
"No one has seen her for days. Some say she was separated during the city scattering. Some say she died."
A brief laugh followed. "If she is dead, the Green Bamboo Sect's Alliance side has lost its sharpest blade."
The voices moved farther away.
Feng Jiu'er's expression became cold.
The exhaustion on her face did not disappear, but something sharper rose beneath it. Fang Lin glanced at her once, then picked up Night Burial Sword.
"It is the fourteenth day," he said.
Feng Jiu'er looked toward the upper path. "Then we have little time."
Fang Lin stepped out of the mist curtain. The Dark Bud inside him remained silent, but the darkness around his body seemed to settle more obediently than before.
"Enough time," he said.
Feng Jiu'er did not ask what he meant. But she knew that there would be a storm.
Together, they left the chamber and headed toward Broken Ravine.
By now, Shen Mo was already being considered as one of her very close aide.
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