Taotie watched from the side, his heart pounding in fear. He felt that Hong Xiu was in a terrible mood today, and it was best not to provoke her.
He certainly didn't want to be flayed by that old witch.
“Let's go,” Chen Zhou said. “Let's not delay too long here. The formation eye should be nearby.”
The group continued forward.
Hong Xiu remained at the rear of the group, maintaining the net of emotion to continuously suppress the counterattacks of those beasts. At the same time, she diverted a portion of her energy to tighten her emotional defenses.
She layered them up, one by one—apathy, detachment, and utter indifference.
As Chen Zhou walked, he spread out his perception, covering the entire graveyard and scanning it inch by inch.
Like the initial palace, this space was not very large.
Chen Zhou quickly searched every corner. There was nothing—no original light-points of the Mansions, no special energy fluctuations. Aside from the beasts, it was completely empty.
Above his head, the auspicious cloud—visible only to himself—was still slowly rotating, its direction stable, pointing straight down at his feet.
Chen Zhou walked one lap with a furrowed brow, then another.
“Young Palace Master?” Shen Liang asked softly.
“Logically, this place should also be the core of a formation, but even with my perception spread out, I haven't found anything.”
Shen Liang fell silent for a moment before speaking tentatively, “Could it be... like the previous space?”
Chen Zhou looked up at him.
Shen Liang continued, “I mean, back in the rainy alley, we couldn't see where the next layer of space was either. It was only after I touched that pile of paper money that we were pulled in.”
“Could this place also have several layers nested inside it?”
“Another nested space?” Plague Rat rubbed his nose. “Then how do we get in? Last time, we got in just by touching some paper ash, but this time there isn't even anything to touch.”
Chen Zhou looked around once more.
Indeed, though this graveyard was physical, it didn't have any obvious triggers like the previous fragmented spaces.
“Spread out and search,” Chen Zhou said.
“Don't go too far. Call me if you find anything unusual.”
The group dispersed in different directions.
Hong Xiu let out a breath and retracted a portion of the net of emotion, shrinking the coverage of the crimson threads to a few zhang around her. Then, she looked around in boredom, spinning the circular fan in her palm over and over.
Her perception was actually sharper than the others'.
The emotions here were too dense. Even though she deliberately guarded her mind, wisps of them still constantly slipped into her sea of consciousness.
She didn't examine those emotions closely, but her intuition told her that the closer she got to the southeastern corner of the graveyard, the heavier the grief became.
She walked in that direction and came to a stop before an extremely inconspicuous little dirt mound.
The mound was lower than any of the surrounding graves, so low that it was almost swallowed by weeds and dirt.
There was no tombstone, nor any wooden plaque. Only a small, smoothly worn stone pressed down on the top of the grave.
Driven by some unknown thought, she bent down and reached out to touch the stone.
The instant her fingertip made contact, the dirt mound warped violently, like a piece of cloth rippled by the wind.
Then, the light dimmed from a certain direction, and all sounds receded in an instant. The surrounding graveyard, broken pillars, and crooked tombstones all faded into a blurry background.
Only a three-foot-square area directly in front of Hong Xiu continued to shift and change.
Her gaze landed upon it.
A thin, weak boy curled up on the ground, half-naked and covered in mud, crawling like a wild dog.
His back was crisscrossed with old and new whip scars, and his ribs were clearly visible. Yet, he desperately protected something beneath him, his body arched into a tight ball, doing everything he could to shield it behind him.
Before him stood several blurry figures. Their bodies were translucent, and their faces were indistinguishable, save for their wide, grinning mouths that emitted piercing, mocking laughter as they surrounded him.
They reached out with translucent hands to tear at his hair, pinch his ears, and kick and beat him.
The boy didn't make a sound. He only shielded the object in his arms even tighter, his thin, skeletal arms squeezing so hard they turned pale, his lips pressed into a tight line.
Hong Xiu's breath hitched.
She recognized that boy.
It was from a very, very long time ago.
So long ago that she thought she had completely forgotten it.
What the boy was protecting behind him was a crude dirt grave, dug out with bare hands—as simple and rudimentary as a grave could be.
Hong Xiu calmed herself down. She didn't know what had caused this sudden change in the formation, nor was she sure if this was the trigger Chen Zhou had mentioned, but she didn't need to make the decision on her own.
“Young Palace Master, I have found something on my end!”
Hong Xiu spoke calmly, her voice steady and completely devoid of emotion.
Chen Zhou immediately led the others over.
Upon seeing the scene, Plague Rat let out a whistle. “Not bad, Little Hong! You found it so quickly!”
“Shut up.”
Hong Xiu cut him off.
She turned her head to look at Chen Zhou.
Her expression was calm—unusually so. There was absolutely no emotion in her alluring peach-blossom eyes right now.
“Young Palace Master.”
“Should I kill him?”
She was referring to the boy.
Chen Zhou walked over, squatting down to observe the scene closely for a moment.
The boy and the dark figures in the scene were both translucent with slightly blurry edges. As expected, it was a memory fragment preserved by the formation.
“Give it a try,” Chen Zhou said.
“This should also be a memory fragment. See if you can use him to enter the next layer of space.”
Hong Xiu nodded.
She didn't ask questions or say anything more. Moving swiftly, her fingertips were already at the side of the boy's neck.
The boy lifted his head and finally looked at Hong Xiu.
There was no emotion in his clear black-and-white eyes. Even though he was merely an illusion born of a memory, he seemed to recognize her.
He quietly curled himself up even tighter and tilted his head up, completely exposing his neck.
He looked nothing like he did when facing the malicious spirits just now. He was incredibly quiet, meekly offering his neck for slaughter.
Hong Xiu's fingertips paused for a fraction of a second.
Facing someone from her past life, she thought she would hesitate, but she did not.
Her nails sliced into the boy's skin, clean and decisive.
Blood trickled down through her fingers. The boy's body shuddered for a brief moment before going limp and collapsing.
As he fell, the hand protecting the dirt grave loosened.
The dirt mound began to cave in, soil cascading down to reveal a pitch-black crevice.
A warm, dim yellow light seeped through the crevice, completely different from the bleak, gray hue of the surrounding graveyard.
The space suddenly sank. The ground beneath their feet seemed to lose all support, and the entire graveyard plunged downward at a rapid speed.
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