The North Quarry looked abandoned.
It did not feel abandoned.
Chen Xueyin stopped at the ridge.
"No birds."
The forest behind them still carried birdsong, but nothing flew above the quarry. No insects hovered over the stagnant pools. No small animals disturbed the weeds growing between the old stone rails.
Chen Yiru unfolded the mission map.
"Tracks were first reported near the eastern excavation."
Beside her, Chen Lanyue held the Verdant Listening Vessel against her palm.
The bowl trembled faintly.
"Something is moving below."
Chen Gao grinned.
"Then we're going the right way."
Yiru glanced at him.
"Investigating."
"I know."
"Not hunting."
"I know."
Nobody believed him.
They descended.
The first tracks were easy to find.
Too easy.
Large pawprints crossed an old transport road. Three-toed tracks disappeared behind a collapsed shed. Near an abandoned rail line, hoofprints cut through the dirt.
Xueyin crouched.
"Different animals."
"At least three," Yiru said.
"Four."
Lanyue pointed toward another set half-buried beneath loose stone.
Long claws.
Heavy body.
Chen Gao frowned.
"The report made it sound like one creature."
That was the first problem.
The second came minutes later.
Every trail led toward the same place.
The eastern excavation.
They followed.
A narrow tunnel opened behind a collapsed loading platform.
Rotting supports still held its entrance upright.
Xueyin raised one hand.
Cold, stale air brushed past her fingers.
"The tunnel goes deep."
Lanyue lowered her bowl.
The vibration strengthened.
Yiru studied the ground.
Many tracks entered.
Almost none returned.
"We found the likely origin."
Chen Gao looked inside.
"We found a tunnel."
"Which is where the tracks lead."
"Something brought them here."
Yiru frowned.
"We don't know that."
"Exactly."
He drew the Earthcleaver.
"Let's find out."
Lanyue hesitated.
"I don't like this."
Chen Gao glanced at her bowl.
"Can you sense danger?"
"Movement."
"How much?"
"I can't tell."
Yiru exhaled.
"A little deeper. That's all."
Chen Gao nodded.
They entered.
The first corpse lay less than a hundred paces inside.
A mountain hare.
Its neck was broken.
Farther in, they found a fox.
Then a deer.
A dried wound split the deer's abdomen.
Lanyue tightened her grip on the bowl.
"Why are they all in here?"
A scrape sounded behind them.
Xueyin turned.
The fox was standing.
Its broken head hung at an impossible angle.
Grey eyes stared without life.
"Move!"
It lunged.
Xueyin shifted aside with Phantom Wind Dodge.
The jaws missed her throat.
Chen Gao's axe came down.
The corpse struck the floor.
Still.
He stared at it.
"That thing was dead."
Yiru crouched cautiously.
Cold flesh.
No breathing.
No pulse.
"It still is."
Silence.
Lanyue whispered, "Then how did it move?"
No one answered.
They should have turned back.
Yiru said so immediately.
"This is already beyond the mission."
Xueyin agreed.
"We have enough to report."
Chen Gao stared at the corpse.
"But we don't know what caused it."
"We don't need to."
"We were sent to investigate."
"Achievement Points aren't worth dying for."
"I'm not talking about the points."
Chen Gao faced the darkness ahead.
"If we only report that dead animals are walking, the clan still has to send someone back in blind."
Yiru disliked the argument.
Mostly because it made sense.
"Just a little farther," he said.
She looked at Xueyin and Lanyue.
Neither wanted to continue.
Finally, Yiru said, "The moment it gets worse, we leave."
Chen Gao nodded.
It got worse almost immediately.
The tunnel widened.
More corpses appeared.
Some lay still.
Others moved.
A dead mountain dog dragged a useless rear leg behind it.
Two birds flapped against the ground despite broken wings.
Then a horned creature crawled from behind an overturned mining cart.
Xueyin did not recognize it.
Neither did Yiru.
A faint residue clung to the corpse.
Monster bloodline.
Chen Gao raised the Earthcleaver.
"Monster?"
The creature charged.
Yiru slipped aside, Echoless Ghost Drift erasing her footsteps for a breath.
It turned toward the wrong sound.
Chen Gao struck its shoulder.
The bone broke.
It rose again.
No hesitation.
No pain.
Lanyue thrust out her hand.
Stone gathered.
Her Golem Invocation could not yet form a complete guardian, but a thick stone arm erupted from the ground and pinned the creature.
Xueyin kicked loose a support wedge.
The timber above dropped.
Crack!
The corpse stopped moving.
Chen Gao lowered his axe.
"That counts as worse."
"Yes," Yiru said.
"Much worse," Lanyue added.
They turned back.
Then Xueyin saw the blood.
A dark streak marked the tunnel wall.
Below it lay a broken lantern.
A woodcutter's axe.
A torn belt bearing the Chen Clan's outer territory mark.
"Workers," Xueyin said.
No bodies.
Only blood and drag marks leading deeper.
Yiru's expression hardened.
"We leave now."
Chen Gao did not argue.
Then someone stepped around the bend ahead.
Human.
For an instant, Lanyue almost relaxed.
Then she saw its throat.
Torn open.
Grey skin.
A broken arm hanging at the wrong angle.
A quarry worker's tag still tied at the waist.
Another appeared behind it.
Then another.
Chen Gao went pale.
"They're dead."
The first corpse rushed them.
Far faster than its shambling steps suggested.
Xueyin pulled Lanyue aside.
Yiru slipped past it and struck behind the knee.
The leg folded.
It did not scream.
Chen Gao hesitated.
Human face.
Dead eyes.
"Chen Gao!"
Yiru's shout snapped him awake.
The corpse reached for him.
Ninefold Tyrant Breaker.
First stage.
The Earthcleaver crashed into its chest and hurled it into the other two.
"Run!"
They retreated.
Twenty paces.
Thirty.
Lanyue suddenly stopped.
Her bowl shook violently.
"Wait."
Yiru spun around.
"What?"
Lanyue faced a side passage they had nearly missed.
Cold air flowed from within.
Cold enough to mist their breath.
And beneath it—
Pressure.
Xueyin stiffened.
Yiru's instincts screamed at her to leave.
Even Chen Gao's face had changed.
Yet he stared into the passage.
"The source."
"We're leaving," Yiru said.
"If that's where they're coming from—"
"We have enough."
"We don't know what's there."
"Exactly!"
Chen Gao's grip tightened around his axe.
"One look."
"No."
"One look. We don't go close."
"Chen Gao—"
"If we see what's causing this, the clan won't have to send another group in blind."
Yiru fell silent.
This was no longer about Achievement Points.
That made refusing harder.
Xueyin studied the passage.
"One look."
Lanyue reluctantly nodded.
Yiru closed her eyes.
"This is a terrible idea."
Chen Gao gave a weak smile.
"You say that about most of my ideas."
"This one is worse."
They went.
The passage descended.
With every step, the pressure grew heavier.
Dead creatures lined the walls.
A boar with half its skull missing.
A scaled beast larger than a horse.
Something six-limbed with a shattered horn.
Monsters.
Some they did not recognize.
Some still moved.
When possible, the four avoided them.
When they could not, they fought only long enough to pass.
Xueyin detected movement.
Yiru misdirected it.
Lanyue blocked passages with crude stone constructs.
Chen Gao broke whatever reached them.
Every encounter cost Qi.
Every encounter cost nerve.
Ahead, the aura thickened.
Not cultivation pressure they understood.
Something colder.
Killing intent mixed with decay.
Lanyue's bowl had trembled continuously since entering.
Then it stopped.
Completely.
She stared down.
"I can't sense anything."
Chen Gao whispered, "Why?"
"I don't know."
Ahead, dim red-grey light appeared.
The tunnel opened.
An enormous cavern stretched beneath them.
Dozens of dead creatures wandered below.
Animals.
Wild beasts.
Monsters.
Some dragged broken limbs.
Others stood motionless.
None of them mattered.
Something enormous occupied the far side of the cavern.
They could see only its back.
Even crouched, it towered above the dead around it.
Pale, bone-like plates covered its spine. Long arms rested near the ground.
Black mist leaked between the plates and sank around its body.
They could not see its face.
Could not identify its species.
Could not measure its cultivation.
They did not need to.
The aura told them enough.
Death.
Killing.
Not directed at them.
Simply present.
Yiru's mouth went dry.
Xueyin struggled to keep her breathing quiet.
Lanyue's fingers whitened around the silent bowl.
Then Chen Gao saw something else.
A shape sat upon the creature's back.
Tiny by comparison.
Upright.
Human-shaped.
Maybe.
The distance was too great.
The cavern too dark.
Chen Gao narrowed his eyes.
"Is that—"
The giant creature moved.
One shoulder shifted.
Its head began to turn.
Chen Gao's face emptied of colour.
Something deeper than thought seized him.
Something inherited.
Something that recognized danger before his mind did.
His axe almost slipped from his hand.
"RUN!"
He fled.
No plan.
No formation.
Pure panic.
The other three followed instantly.
Behind them, the creature's head shifted another fraction.
The distant figure seemed to move.
Then stopped.
Below, the cavern remained filled with shambling dead.
Four Qi Initiate Level Three cultivators carried almost no presence among them.
Their Qi was too weak.
Their movement too brief.
They vanished before either presence paid them real attention.
Their weakness saved them.
They did not stop until they reached the forest beyond the quarry.
Chen Gao collapsed against a tree.
His hands shook.
Yiru had never seen him afraid before.
"What happened to you?"
Chen Gao stared back toward the quarry.
"I don't know."
He truly didn't.
The moment that creature began turning, his body had made the decision for him.
Run.
Xueyin spoke quietly.
"We were never supposed to handle that."
No one disagreed.
Lanyue looked down at her bowl.
It had begun trembling again.
She had never been so relieved.
"We failed," she said.
Chen Gao gave a humourless laugh.
"Completely."
They had not identified the creature.
They had not discovered what controlled the dead.
They had not mapped the deeper tunnels.
They had run.
The original one hundred and fifty points no longer mattered.
Yiru stood.
"We report everything."
"Immediately."
They were the last of the six newcomers to return to the Outer Court.
The sun was already low.
Chen Gao noticed first.
"No Chen Ba."
Lanyue scanned the courtyard.
No Black Pole.
Chen Shun was missing too.
"They're still out?" Gao asked.
They had no time to find out.
The Achievement Hall clerk saw their condition and summoned Elder Chen Zhaolin before they finished half the report.
Zhaolin arrived with two other elders.
"Start again."
They did.
The tracks.
The corpses.
The moving dead.
The unknown Monsters.
The missing workers.
The reanimated humans.
The cavern.
The giant creature.
The aura.
Then the figure on its back.
"There may have been someone sitting on it," Xueyin said.
Zhaolin's eyes sharpened.
"Someone?"
"We can't confirm it," Yiru said. "Too far."
"Human?"
"Human-shaped."
"Did it move?"
Chen Gao nodded.
"I think so."
Silence.
Zhaolin asked, "Did the creature notice you?"
"Maybe," Yiru said.
"It started turning."
"But we ran immediately."
Zhaolin was silent for several breaths.
Then he turned.
"Seal the entire northern quarry sector."
An attendant stiffened.
"Immediately?"
"Immediately."
"Recall every woodcutter, hunter and gatherer north of Stone Ridge."
"Cancel all Outer Court missions in the northern sector."
"No disciple enters."
He faced another elder.
"Inform the Clan Leader and the Senior Elders."
The Achievement Hall erupted into motion.
Chen Gao glanced at the Yellow mission slip lying on the counter.
One hundred and fifty points.
Yellow-grade.
It now looked absurd.
Zhaolin picked it up.
Tore it in half.
"Reclassify it."
The clerk reached for a red-bordered notice.
No one mentioned rewards.
None of the four cared.
Lanyue suddenly looked toward the entrance.
"Elder."
Zhaolin turned.
"What about Chen Ba and Chen Shun?"
The others realized it at the same moment.
They had returned last.
Neither boy was here.
With the northern region being sealed—
Chen Gao stepped forward.
"They haven't returned?"
"They have."
The four relaxed.
For one second.
"Where are they?"
"The emergency healing and recovery area."
Silence.
Lanyue tightened her grip around the Verdant Listening Vessel.
"Both?"
"Both."
Zhaolin offered nothing more.
"Go clean yourselves. Eat. Rest."
"You will be questioned again later."
The four left quietly.
Behind them, red notices were being prepared.
Messengers were already running toward the inner compound.
The North Quarry was being sealed.
And somewhere inside the recovery hall...
Chen Ba and Chen Shun had apparently discovered that their own first missions had not remained simple either.