The pressure returned.
Not stronger, just nearer, as if something had finally decided to stop watching from a distance and begin reading him from the inside.
Li Xiao Bai held position above the lunar haze and did nothing that could be mistaken for an invitation. No surge of essence. No probing. No sudden turn of his gaze. Inside this shell, power was an announcement, and announcements were answered.
Below, the mist clung to the Moon like a stain that should not exist. It did not drift. It did not thin. It folded on itself in slow, deliberate curls, more like a thought given shape than weather.
The figure within it had been motionless for so long that it felt like part of the terrain.
Then it moved.
One step, calm and certain. Lunar dust accepted the boot as if it had always belonged there. The haze parted around the suit, obedient, and the helmet caught the pale light and threw it back toward the dark above.
Toward him.
Li Xiao Bai did not flinch. He let the moment pass through him the way he let cold pass through bone. Reaction was a rope. He had learned what pulled on ropes.
The helmet turned anyway, unhurried, as if sight was optional.
And then the voice arrived.
Not through sound.
Inside his mind.
It entered with the ease of something that did not need permission, gentle at first, testing the surface of his thoughts like fingers on still water. Then it pressed deeper with quiet certainty.
You are not from here.
It was not a question. It was a verdict delivered as casually as breathing.
Li Xiao Bai narrowed his mind into stillness. He did not build a wall with Gu. Gu were loud here. Loud things were corrected. Instead, he refused to present anything worth tasting. Emotion stayed buried. Impulse stayed sealed. His thoughts became a single cold point.
The touch lingered.
Then it paused, faintly amused.
Centuries of sharpening, it observed. Yet you are not the owner of this blade.
Li Xiao Bai's pupil tightened.
So it recognized him for what he was, not from hints or mistakes, but from structure. A copy. A shaped fragment. A life built on borrowed foundations.
The astronaut stepped again, mist curling around the boots like obedient smoke. The voice did not rise or fall. It did not threaten. It defined.
A thing that wears a human face, it said, as if reciting a definition. More idea than flesh. A demon of thought, not of fire. Born of two worlds, belonging to neither.
Li Xiao Bai understood the implication with clean clarity.
This was not a man standing on the Moon.
This was a concept wearing a suit because concepts frightened people less when they had hands.
As long as the idea of me lives in minds, the voice continued, I cannot be destroyed.
A chill slid across Li Xiao Bai's spine, not fear, but recognition of a specific kind of danger. A predator that reproduced through attention. A hunter that did not need paper or sound or symbols carved into stone, because thought itself was its medium.
The restraint around his soul tightened by a fraction. Cold pressure kissed the core of his spirit. Not comfort. Not protection. A boundary reacting to another boundary.
The astronaut's visor angled slightly, as if pleased.
Ah, it said. So there is a restraint.
Li Xiao Bai kept his face blank. Inside, he counted options.
Two immortal Gu remained reliable. His aperture was wounded. A prolonged struggle here would not be decided by force, but by who made the first mistake and offered a clean handle to pull.
And this thing was already pulling.
The voice slid along the surface of his memories without hurry, like a scholar turning pages it believed belonged to it.
Blood-red skies. Cultivation. Living tools. Wars of intent. A man smiling while the world burned.
Fang Yuan.
The intrusion hesitated when it brushed the chain again, as if the restraint cut the fingers that touched it. The pause lasted only a heartbeat.
That was enough.
Li Xiao Bai used the heartbeat to form a response, careful and small.
Who are you.
His thought was short, flat, unadorned. No emotion to taste. No extra words to cling to.
The astronaut laughed.
Not as noise. As a ripple of amusement sliding through his skull.
Names matter, it said. Names are handles. You are careful. That is why you survived.
The gloved hand rose and touched the side of the helmet, as if adjusting a communicator that did not exist.
Then it pressed.
A single word tried to settle inside Li Xiao Bai's mind, not as sound, but as planted certainty. A seed, clean and quiet, insisting it had always belonged there.
A name.
Li Xiao Bai felt it immediately. He had lived too long to miss the taste of a trap that pretended to be harmless.
He clamped down with will alone.
Not with Gu.
Not with a barrier.
With refusal.
The seed did not vanish.
It remained, lodged like a splinter in a place that should have been his alone.
The astronaut's voice softened with satisfaction.
Now you will remember.
Li Xiao Bai's expression did not change. Inside, calculation sharpened into something surgical.
A seed was a tether.
A tether could be a leash.
A tether could also be exploited.
He did not repeat the name. He did not let it roll across his inner tongue. He treated it as toxin and quarantined it the way he quarantined contamination inside his aperture.
Partition. Isolate. Deny access.
He turned his mind into compartments and forced the seed into the smallest one, where it could exist without spreading.
The effort cost him more than essence. It cost focus, strain, the quiet pain of holding a door shut while something on the other side smiled.
The astronaut watched.
The mist curled, attentive.
You understand, it said. You do not wrestle the thought. You cage it. Interesting.
Li Xiao Bai refused to answer. Every answer was a gift.
The astronaut took one more step, then stopped. The visor reflected a faint smear of blue, distant and calm.
Earth.
You want that world, the voice said. Not as home. As shelter. As resources. As time.
Li Xiao Bai remained still.
Practical, it continued, almost approving. Most lie to themselves. They call it destiny. They call it redemption. You call it a stable environment.
He allowed one truthful thought to surface, because truth sometimes cut cleaner than denial.
I need somewhere the rules will not strip me faster than I can adapt.
Silence lingered for a moment.
Then the voice pressed closer, not by force, but by intimacy, like a whisper shared between conspirators.
This system will weigh you again, it said. It will decide what you are allowed to be. If you reach Earth unchanged, you will be noticed. If you are noticed, you will be processed.
Li Xiao Bai did not ask how. He did not ask why. He asked the only question that mattered.
What do you want.
The helmet tilted. Behind the visor there was no face, only depth, like a tunnel that looked back.
A carrier, the voice said softly. A doorway. A mind that can cross where mine cannot.
Li Xiao Bai understood in one cold breath.
This was not a meeting.
It was an interception.
A gatekeeper reaching for a passing blade.
The name-seed was not merely a mark. It was an attempt to make him into a vector.
He made no sudden movement. Fleeing would confirm fear and offer the predator a clean line to pull. Fighting here would be worse. Fighting here would be giving it exactly what it wanted: attention, strain, openings.
So he went still.
Stillness was his language.
Stillness was also a threat, because it denied feedback.
The astronaut waited.
Waiting was a threat too, because it implied confidence.
Li Xiao Bai measured distance, resources, consequences. Then he made a decision that did not come from courage.
It came from Fang Yuan's logic, polished through a different life.
He would not fight the concept here, on the Moon, under laws he did not own.
He would survive, gather information, and turn the enemy's method into a tool.
He let one thought slip free, controlled, offered like a coin across a table.
I will not speak your name.
Amusement rippled again.
You think that saves you.
Li Xiao Bai did not answer, because he did not believe it saved him.
He believed it bought time.
Time to reach Earth. Time to rebuild. Time to learn what kind of rules could be bent without breaking him.
He began to drift backward, slowly, not retreating in panic, simply changing vector like debris redirected by a gentle current. He kept his gaze off the visor. He refused to search for eyes that might not exist.
The mist did not chase.
The astronaut did not move.
But inside Li Xiao Bai's mind, the seed remained quiet and patient, a clock that did not tick and still counted.
As the Moon fell behind him, he tightened the partitions again. He felt the chain around his soul press once, cold and deliberate, as if reminding him that restraints could be shared by more than one master.
Li Xiao Bai continued toward Earth in controlled silence, carrying a quarantined name like contraband in the deepest pocket of his mind.
He had not escaped the void to find safety.
He had entered a territory where ideas hunted.