Shadow Moon (1)

When his consciousness fully cleared, Chu Shihan found himself standing upon a boundless wasteland.

The sky was an eerie dark purple, with no sun, moon, or stars in sight. Only ghostly light like drifting clouds flowed slowly across the horizon, shrouding the entire land in a hazy, sinister glow.

He instinctively tightened his grip on the longsword in his hand. Coldness seeped into his palm, and the first thing that surged into his mind was unbearable self-reproach.

"To think I was deceived by such a trick..."

He muttered under his breath, his knuckles turning white from the force of his grip. Those demonic beasts had clearly planned this long ago, carefully setting a trap baited with illusions of fellow disciples. Yet he had failed to see through it at once, allowing his junior brothers and sisters to be separated from him and dragged into an unknown danger.

It felt as though a red-hot iron lay against his chest, painful and suffocating. He drew a deep breath and forcibly suppressed his regret—now was not the time for self-reproach. His junior brothers and sisters might still be somewhere in this strange place, waiting for him to find them.

Chu Shihan chose a direction where the ghostly light was denser and strode forward with his sword in hand. The ground beneath his feet was as hard as fired pottery shards. With every step, cracks spread several inches from beneath his soles, giving off faint, brittle clicks.

There was no wind on the wasteland, yet he constantly felt cold air drilling into the gaps between his bones. The dark-purple clouds flowed slowly overhead, their shadows falling upon the ground like writhing vines, tightening one's heart at the sight.

From time to time, he saw several withered trees. Their trunks twisted like arms forcibly wrung