Mo Feng suddenly coughed hard and jerked upright. It felt as though his throat were clogged with sand, every breath bringing a stabbing pain. He raised a hand to wipe his face, his fingers brushing the blood at the corner of his mouth, yet his gaze remained fixed straight ahead.
Hearing the movement, Chen Wuya immediately turned his head. He leaned against a reef, one hand still resting on Bai Zhi's chest, feeling the faint but steady rise and fall. At Mo Feng's cough, he did not move, merely fixed his eyes on him.
"You're awake?" His voice was hoarse, like a whetstone scraping across iron.
Mo Feng did not answer. Instead, he lowered his head to look into his own arms. A jade talisman lay against his chest, faintly warm. He pulled it out. It was a palm-sized jade talisman engraved with a star map, its surface covered in dense trails of stars. At that moment, the third star among the Big Dipper at its center glimmered with a faint blue light, as though it had been soaked in water.
"I saw it." Mo Feng suddenly spoke, his voice quiet but steady. "Beyond the rift wasn't nothingness. It was a snowfield."
Chen Wuya frowned. "What did you say?"
"When I passed out... I entered a door." Mo Feng caught his breath, his fingertips pressing against the jade talisman. "Behind it was snow everywhere. The sky was white, and so was the ground. There was a mountain in the distance, with a black stele planted at its peak. That place... was the far north."
He raised the jade talisman and turned it over. A line of tiny words surfaced on its back: "Stars guide the way home; fate is bound to mystic ice."
Chen Wuya stared at the words for