The two nuns held their breath, staring unblinkingly at the stone platform.
But at that very moment, a backlash erupted from the Blue Knight and Brunkel without warning, slamming back into them.
The lead nun's hand jolted. In her palm, the golden light formed from the feather shattered with a crash, its fragments flaring before fading away.
Above the cave, the enormous phantom eye dissolved along with the golden apparition piercing the blizzard, leaving nothing behind.
The frozen space, dozens of meters across, loosened again. The blizzard flooded back in, and the wind resumed its howling outside the cave.
On the stone platform, neither woman woke. Neither had been pulled out of that strange world.
Yet the pain etched between their brows vanished completely in that instant. Their faces grew peaceful again, and their breathing steadied.
That brief instant of golden light entering their bodies had healed all their injuries and restored all the sanity they had lost.
The lead nun opened her hand. Only a scattering of golden fragments remained in her palm. Wind poured through the cave entrance, and the fragments slipped through her fingers, little by little.
She stared at her palm for a long time.
Their last resort had been used, but the two women had not been brought back.
The three nuns sat around the stone platform without a word. Inside the cave, only the wind outside could be heard.
Thick fog shrouded the Land of the Dead Silence.
Lu Yuan and his companions raced after the Wanderer across the dark-red earth. Fog streamed past them, and rotten flesh and splintered bones crunched beneath their feet.
The terrain rose and fell along the way. Bones from unknown creatures lay half-buried in the flesh, emerging from the fog before being left behind in it.
The Wanderer