The inn's interior was immaculate despite being supposedly understaffed. Fires burned in every hearth. Fresh tea waited on tables. Everything was perfect.
Except for the bloodstains someone had tried to scrub from the floorboards.
"Make yourselves comfortable," the old woman said, moving with surprising grace to the main hearth. "I'll prepare supper. Though I recommend the young cultivator"—she looked directly at Hanxi—"join me in the kitchen. I could use help carrying supplies from the cellar."
It wasn't a request.
Wei Feng started to object, but Hanxi shook his head. "I'll help, grandmother. It's the least I can do."
He followed her through the common room, his senses screaming warnings. The cultivator hiding in the main hall was watching—a woman, her qi signature pulsing with anticipation. The one upstairs was male, patient, calculating. The one in the kitchen was the most dangerous—his energy pattern suggested Foundation Establishment realm, not just Qi Condensation.
They'd lied about their cultivation levels. Or brought reinforcements.
The old woman led him through the kitchen—where the third cultivator crouched in the shadows, his presence suddenly obvious and unsubtle—and down a narrow staircase into the cellar.
The moment the door closed behind them, her entire bearing changed. The bent, frail grandmother disappeared, replaced by a cultivator whose presence filled the space like pressure before a storm.
"Sit, moon-child," she commanded, and Hanxi found himself obeying instinctively.
She poured tea with practiced efficiency, her movements precise, economical. "You have questions. Ask them quickly. We have perhaps ten minutes before the Dusk Codex upstairs decides to attack."
"Who are you?"
"I have many names. You may call me Grandmother Willow, as that's the identity I'm currently using." She sipped her tea. "But if you've studied the jade slip that clever merchant girl gave you, you know who I really am."
Hanxi's heart hammered. "The Third Moon."
"One of her students, anyway. The Third Moon herself is... elsewhere. Waiting." Grandmother Willow's gray eyes studied him with uncomfortable intensity. "She sent me to watch the roads. To see if anyone worthy would appear. And here you are—a boy who shouldn't exist, carrying energies that should kill him, walking a path that was forbidden for excellent reasons."
"Are you going to stop me?"
"Stop you?" She laughed, and the sound held no warmth. "Child, I'm going to test you. Right now. Tonight. Because the Dusk Codex upstairs are going to attack in—" she glanced at a clock on the shelf "—approximately eight minutes. And how you handle that fight will determine whether you're worth teaching or just another corpse."
"You're going to let them attack? There are innocent people upstairs!"
"The guards can handle themselves. The merchant lord has more tricks than he shows. And that girl..." Grandmother Willow smiled. "That girl is far more dangerous than anyone suspects. No, moon-child. The question is: can you survive three Dusk Codex practitioners without losing yourself to the beast?"
She stood, moving to the far side of the cellar. "They'll come for you first. Try to separate you from your companions. Their leader is Foundation Establishment third level—far above your current ability. Under normal circumstances, you'd die in seconds."
"And under abnormal circumstances?"
"You embrace what you are. Solar and lunar. Human and beast. Cultivator and predator." Her eyes gleamed. "You stop trying to balance the energies and instead let them war. Use the chaos. Become the storm they fear."
"That sounds like what the Dusk Codex does. Forced imbalance."
"No. The Dusk Codex tries to control the chaos, to harness it through absorption and corruption. I'm telling you to become it. To embody the contradiction." She gestured at the ceiling, where footsteps could be heard moving with purpose. "They're coming. Remember: the twilight path isn't about peace between opposites. It's about dancing in the space where they meet. Where summer touches winter. Where dawn kisses dusk."
"That makes no sense!"
"Then you'll die not understanding. Or you'll survive and gain wisdom." Grandmother Willow pulled out a small vial of dark liquid. "Drink this. It will amplify both your solar and lunar energies simultaneously. They'll try to tear you apart from the inside. If you can't handle the strain, your meridians will explode and you'll die screaming. If you can..."
She left the alternative hanging.
Hanxi took the vial with trembling hands. "Why are you helping me?"
"Because three hundred years ago, I failed the Third Moon's tests. I was too weak, too afraid to embrace the full contradiction of the twilight path. I became this instead—a half-measure, a shadow of what I could have been. Powerful enough to hide, not powerful enough to matter." Her voice held centuries of regret. "You remind me of what I could have been. Don't make my mistakes, moon-child. Be brave enough to let the storm consume you."
Above, a scream cut through the air.
The attack had begun.
Hanxi downed the vial in one swallow, and his world became fire and ice.
The potion hit his system like lightning striking frozen ground.
Solar energy exploded through his meridians, golden and burning. Simultaneously, lunar energy crashed like an avalanche, silver and freezing. The two forces met in his dantian and immediately began trying to annihilate each other.
Hanxi screamed, falling to his knees. It felt like his body was tearing apart from the inside. Blood vessels burst under his skin. Frost formed on his arms while his chest felt like it was cooking from within.
"Stand up," Grandmother Willow commanded, her voice cutting through the agony. "Stand up or die. Those are your only options."
Above, more screams. The sound of combat. Yue Lian calling his name.
Pack needs you, the wolf's voice snarled. STAND UP.
Hanxi's hand shot out, grabbed the cellar shelf, pulled himself upright despite every nerve screaming. The pain didn't diminish—if anything, it got worse—but his mind cleared.
This wasn't random chaos. It was a pattern. The energies were fighting, yes, but they were also creating something at each point of collision. Where fire met ice, steam. Where gold met silver, gray. Where light met darkness, twilight.
"Stop trying to separate them," Grandmother Willow said. "The energy wants to merge. You're the one stopping it."
"But if they merge completely—"
"Then you become something new. Something the Heavens never intended. Something that defies the natural order." Her smile was sharp. "Isn't that what you wanted? To be more than a second son? To shine with your own light?"
Above, an explosion rocked the building. Someone—Wei Feng, by the voice—shouted a warning.
Hanxi stopped fighting.
He let the energies collide. Let the fire and ice spiral around each other faster and faster, the gold and silver bleeding together, the solar warmth and lunar cold creating something that was neither and both.
The pain didn't stop. But it changed. Became purposeful. Became power.
When he opened his eyes, Grandmother Willow took a step back.
"There," she whispered. "There it is. The Twilight State. Your eyes are gray, child. Perfect, beautiful gray."
Hanxi looked at his hands. His qi aura had changed. Not flickering between gold and silver anymore, but a steady, pulsing gray that seemed to absorb light and shadow equally.
"How long will this last?"
"Minutes. Maybe an hour if you're lucky. Your foundation isn't stable enough for longer." Grandmother Willow pointed at the stairs. "But it's enough. Go. Save your pack. Show the Dusk Codex why their forced corruption is nothing compared to natural twilight."
Hanxi ran.
The main hall was chaos.
Wei Feng and three guards fought desperately against two Dusk Codex cultivators—the woman from the main hall and the man who'd been upstairs. Both were Qi Condensation sixth level, and their techniques were exactly as Wei Feng had described: designed to counter both solar and lunar cultivation.
When Wei Feng tried to use a fire technique, the woman absorbed it, feeding on the solar energy. When one of the guards attempted a basic ice sword, the male cultivator redirected it, turning defense into offense.
They were losing.
Yue Lian and Xiaohua had retreated to the far corner, protecting Yue Chen. The merchant lord held a talisman that glowed with defensive qi, creating a barrier. But it was cracking under pressure from a third attacker—the Foundation Establishment cultivator Hanxi had sensed in the kitchen.
He was massive, easily seven feet tall, wearing armor made from what looked like human bones. His face was hidden behind a red demon mask, and his aura pulsed with that same twisted, corrupted energy all Dusk Codex practitioners carried.
"Found you, moon-child," Red Mask said, his voice echoing unnaturally. "We've been searching so long. And here you are, walking right into our hands."
"Funny," Hanxi replied, his voice coming out steady despite the maelstrom of energy churning inside him. "I was going to say the same thing."
He didn't give them time to react. The wolf instincts combined with his new twilight state created something unexpected—strategy. Pack hunting strategy, translated to human combat.
First: separate the weak from the strong.
Hanxi blurred forward, moving with speed that surprised even him. His sword flashed out—not at Red Mask, but at the female cultivator fighting Wei Feng.
She tried to absorb his energy like she'd done with Wei Feng's techniques. But twilight energy wasn't purely solar or lunar. It was both. Her absorption technique, designed to counter one or the other, couldn't handle the contradiction.
The energy fed into her meridians and immediately went to war with itself inside her body. She screamed, her carefully maintained balance of corrupted forces shattering.
Hanxi's follow-up strike took her in the chest. His blade, wrapped in gray twilight qi, punched through her defense like it wasn't there. She fell, blood spreading across the floorboards, her eyes wide with shock.
He'd killed her in less than three seconds.
"SISTER!" The male cultivator abandoned Wei Feng, charging at Hanxi with a roar of fury.
Second principle of pack hunting: use emotions against prey.
Hanxi dodged the wild, angry strikes easily. The cultivator was stronger, more experienced, but grief made him sloppy. Hanxi didn't try to match strength with strength. Instead, he moved like water—or like a wolf harrying a larger opponent, waiting for the perfect opening.
When it came, he struck with the Fang Strike technique, but enhanced by twilight energy. The frost that exploded from his blade wasn't pure cold anymore—it was cold carrying heat, ice that burned. The male cultivator's arm froze solid, then shattered as the conflicting energies tore through his meridians.
He fell to his knees, screaming, and Hanxi's blade found his throat.
Two down.
Wei Feng stared at him in horror and awe. "Kid... what did you do to yourself?"
"Embraced the chaos," Hanxi said. His voice sounded strange even to his own ears—layered, as if two people spoke simultaneously. Human and beast. Solar and lunar. Cultivator and predator.
Red Mask laughed, slow and mocking. "Impressive. You've achieved a temporary twilight state. But temporary is the key word, isn't it? You can feel it already—the strain. Your meridians burning and freezing simultaneously. How long can you maintain this? Five minutes? Ten?"
He was right. The power was eating Hanxi alive from the inside. He could feel his foundation cracking under the strain.
"Long enough," Hanxi managed.
"We'll see." Red Mask drew his weapon—a blade that seemed made of congealed shadow, dripping corruption with every movement. "I'm Foundation Establishment third level, boy. Temporary power-ups don't change the fundamental difference between our realms. You're an ant challenging a dragon."
"Then let's see if this ant has teeth."
They clashed.
Fighting Red Mask was like fighting a natural disaster.
Every strike the Foundation Establishment cultivator made carried enough force to shatter stone. His corrupted twilight techniques were refined, perfected over decades of practice. Where Hanxi's twilight energy was raw chaos, Red Mask's was controlled devastation.
Within seconds, Hanxi was losing ground.
A strike caught his shoulder, and only a desperate dodge turned what should have been a killing blow into a glancing hit. But even glancing, it sent him flying into a support pillar hard enough to crack the wood.
You're thinking like a human, the wolf's voice snarled. Stop trying to match his strength!
Red Mask advanced, confident, raising his shadow blade for a finishing strike—
Hanxi rolled sideways, going low, moving on all fours in a way no human swordsman would. The blade struck where he'd been, cratering the floor.
Then he lunged, not upward at Red Mask's body, but at his legs. A wolf's attack pattern—hamstring the prey, bring them down to your level.
His twilight-wreathed blade cut deep into Red Mask's thigh. The cultivator roared, staggering, and for just a moment, he was off-balance.
That's when Wei Feng struck.
The guard captain had been waiting for an opening, and he took it without hesitation. His sword, glowing with pure solar energy, slammed into Red Mask's side, punching through armor.
"TAG TEAM, YOU BASTARD!" Wei Feng shouted.
Red Mask backhanded him, sending the guard captain flying, but the damage was done. The combined twilight and solar energies were now warring inside the Dusk Codex cultivator's body, disrupting his carefully maintained corruption.
"You think this changes anything?" Red Mask snarled, but Hanxi could smell his fear. Could hear his heartbeat accelerating. Could see the way his corrupted qi was starting to unravel. "Even wounded, I'm still—"
Hanxi didn't let him finish.
He channeled everything he had left—all the solar energy, all the lunar energy, all the twilight chaos ripping through his meridians—into a single, desperate strike.
"TWILIGHT FANG!"
The technique came from instinct, from the wolf memories, from the fragments of understanding Grandmother Willow had given him. It wasn't elegant. It wasn't refined. It was pure, raw contradiction given physical form.
His blade struck Red Mask's chest, and where it connected, reality seemed to crack. Gold and silver lightning exploded outward. Frost and flame spiraled together. Light and shadow merged and annihilated each other, creating a burst of gray energy that consumed everything in its path.
When the light faded, Red Mask's armor was shattered. His chest bore a wound that was simultaneously frozen and burned, the edges blackened and covered in ice crystals.
He fell to his knees, blood pouring from his mouth. "Impossible... no one... the technique... we've been searching for this..."
His red mask fell away, revealing a man who'd once been handsome but was now scarred by decades of corrupted cultivation. His eyes, in his final moments, held something that might have been relief.
"The Crimson Moon... must not rise..." he whispered. "Stop them... stop the ritual... six months... at the eclipse..."
Then he fell forward and moved no more.
Hanxi stood over the corpse, his entire body shaking. The twilight state was collapsing, the energies beginning to separate again. Pain crashed over him in waves as his meridians, pushed far beyond their limits, began to tear.
He felt himself falling.
Strong hands caught him before he hit the ground. Wei Feng, injured but alive, lowered him gently.
"I've got you, kid. You did good. You did real good."
"Is everyone—" Hanxi managed.
"Safe. Everyone's safe. You saved us." Wei Feng's voice was thick with emotion. "But you're a mess. Your meridians are shredded. You need immediate treatment or you'll—"
"I'll help him," Grandmother Willow's voice cut in. She descended from the cellar, moving with her true cultivator's grace now, the frail grandmother act completely abandoned. "Take him to the room upstairs. I'll need privacy to work."
Yue Lian appeared, her face pale. "Is he going to die?"
"That depends entirely on him," Grandmother Willow said. "But if he survives what comes next, he'll be ready for the Third Moon's true trials."
As Wei Feng carried him up the stairs, Hanxi's consciousness faded. But before everything went black, he heard Red Mask's final words echoing: The Crimson Moon must not rise.
What ritual? What eclipse?
And why did he have the terrible feeling that killing three Dusk Codex cultivators had only made the real threat worse?