Chapter 78: Chapter 78: The Red Horizon
The darkness broke apart like wet paper.
Lin Yue’s first sensation was weight, the sudden, disorienting return of gravity after a stretch of nothing, his knees buckling before his mind had finished catching up to his body. He caught himself on one hand against cold stone, breathing in air that tasted wrong before he even opened his eyes.
Incense. Thick, cloying, the kind burned in bulk rather than offering, layered beneath it, something damp and old, the particular smell of soil that had absorbed too many things it shouldn’t have.
He opened his eyes.
The first thing he registered was the sky.
It hung low and bruised, purple bleeding into a deep, arterial red at the horizon, as though something vast had been wounded just beyond the treeline and left to bleed out slowly, forever, without ever finishing. A moon sat behind the clouds, dim and swollen, motionless in a way that made Lin Yue’s analytical mind immediately flag it as wrong, not obscured by drifting cloud, but held there, deliberately, like a held breath.
No wind moved the clouds. No wind moved anything.
Lin Yue rose to his feet slowly, cataloguing the scene with the same detached precision he brought to everything.
A massive wooden gate stood before them, weathered gray-black with age, tall enough that its upper edge disappeared into shadow before it met the ruined sky. A stone pathway stretched from the gate’s threshold into darkness on either side, flanked by dense forest so still it looked painted rather than grown, no rustle of leaves, no shifting branches, nothing.
No birds called.
No insects hummed.
No wind stirred the trees.
The silence wasn’t merely absence. It was presence. A held, deliberate thing, thick enough to press against the eardrums.
This isn’t the quiet of an empty place, Lin Yue thought, turning slowly to take in the full scope of it. It’s the quiet of somewhere holding its breath and waiting for something.
The mark beneath his skin pulsed once, faint and warm, then settled into stillness, as if it, too, were listening.
Around him, the rest of the group was beginning to stir, bodies rising unsteadily from the stone path, voices thick with the particular disorientation of instance transition. Lin Yue counted them without meaning to, the same reflexive habit that had kept him alive through three instances already. Nine others. Ten total, matching the number the System had promised.
"Okay." A man’s voice, low and even, cut through the groggy murmur before panic had the chance to take root. "Everyone stay where you are for a second. Get your bearings before you start moving."
Lin Yue turned toward the voice.
The man speaking looked to be in his late thirties, solidly built, already on his feet with the easy balance of someone who’d done this exact thing, waking up somewhere impossible, more than once before. His eyes moved across the group with quick, assessing sweeps, counting heads the same way Lin Yue had.
"Anyone hurt?" the man asked.
"I think I bit my tongue," someone muttered.
"That’s not what I asked, but I’ll take it as a no." The man’s mouth twitched, something almost like humor beneath the tension. "Alright. On your feet, everyone. We don’t know what’s watching yet."
A young woman near the back let out a small, sharp breath at that, hugging her arms around herself as she scanned the treeline with wide, darting eyes. "Watching? What do you mean watching? Is something already—"
"I didn’t say something is," the man said, gentler now. "I said we don’t know yet. Big difference. Breathe."
She nodded quickly, though her breathing didn’t slow much.
Lin Yue observed the exchange without joining it, letting his attention drift instead across the wider scene, the gate, the pathway, the wall of silent trees before it settled, on a figure seated cross-legged near the base of the gate.
Bai Wuyin.
Sketchbook already open across his knees, pencil moving in slow, unhurried strokes, as though the transition into a new nightmare hadn’t so much as interrupted his focus.
He looked, to anyone watching from a distance, exactly like what his profile suggested, a boy no older than twelve, small and slight with mismatched eyes a little too wide for his narrow face, entirely absorbed in his drawing the way a child might be absorbed in anything that let him ignore his surroundings. Nothing about his posture suggested the deliberate, careful control Lin Yue knew lived beneath it.
He’s already performing, Lin Yue thought, watching without watching, the way he’d learned to observe things without drawing attention to the fact he was observing them. Small. Distracted. Harmless. A child clinging to something familiar in an unfamiliar place.
It was, Lin Yue knew, an excellent performance. Convincing enough that not a single other player had so much as glanced toward him twice.
He let his gaze linger a moment longer on the sketchbook itself, close enough now to catch a glimpse of the page.
The gate. Rendered in careful, patient lines, the wood grain and iron fittings reproduced with an accuracy that suggested Bai Wuyin had looked at the actual structure for perhaps four seconds total.
And near the top edge, tucked into the carved wooden lattice above the gate’s threshold, small enough to miss entirely if you weren’t looking for it, a single eye.
Lin Yue looked up at the actual gate.
Nothing.
Weathered wood, dark carvings, age-cracked lacquer. No eye. No mark resembling one, not in the grain, not in the shadow, not anywhere his careful, methodical scan could locate it.
He looked back down at the sketch.
The eye remained, drawn with the same unhurried confidence as everything else on the page, as though its subject had been sitting directly in front of Bai Wuyin the entire time.
Neither of them said anything. Lin Yue noted the detail away, silent, the way he’d learned to note away everything Bai Wuyin’s drawings revealed that reality itself declined to show him.
Another motif, he thought. The same pattern that followed us through Mirrorhaven. Whatever he’s seeing isn’t limited to a single instance.
His attention was pulled away before he could examine the thought further.
[GLOBAL SYSTEM ANNOUNCEMENT]
[INSTANCE: THE VILLAGE BENEATH THE MOURNING MOON]
[RULE 1: RETURN TO THE REST COURTYARD BEFORE SUNSET.]
[FAILURE WILL RESULT IN: INTEGRATION.]
The words bled into existence in front of every player at once, rendered in a deep, saturated red that looked less like text and more like something written in a substance that had once been alive. The final word, Integration, flickered as it appeared, its letters briefly warping, stretching, folding in on themselves before snapping back into place, stable and final and offering no explanation whatsoever for what it meant.
For a moment, nobody spoke.
"Integration," the nervous young woman repeated slowly, testing the word as it might bite her. "That’s... that doesn’t sound like it means dying."
"Sometimes the ones that don’t sound like dying," said a new voice, older, edged with dry cynicism, "are worse than the ones that do."
Lin Yue turned toward the speaker, a man somewhere in his early thirties, arms crossed, expression already settled into the particular flatness of someone who trusted nothing and no one on principle. He hadn’t moved from where he’d landed, watching the rest of the group with narrowed, assessing eyes.
"That’s helpful," the younger woman said, a little sharply, panic sharpening into irritation.
"I’m not here to be helpful. I’m here to survive." The man shrugged, unbothered by her tone. "Those aren’t always the same job."
"Alright." The organizer, the man who’d spoken first, raised both hands slightly, a small, placating gesture. "Let’s not start tearing into each other before we’ve even introduced ourselves. That’s usually how people miss something important." He looked around the group, settling the matter with quiet authority. "Since we’re apparently doing this together, names. Skills, if you’ve got something relevant. Instance count, if you don’t mind sharing. I’ll start."
He inclined his head slightly.
"He Jian. Survived four instances before this one. No particular combat specialty; I’m better at keeping people organized than I am at fighting anything directly." A faint, humorless smile. "Turns out that’s its own kind of survival skill."
He looked to his left, prompting.
The cynical man answered next, still with arms crossed. "Luo Ming. Three instances. I don’t trust easily, and I’m not going to pretend otherwise for anyone’s comfort." His eyes flicked briefly toward the treeline, then back. "Better you know that now than later."
"Noted," He Jian said dryly. "Next."
A woman with sharp, watchful eyes and a posture that suggested she’d rather be listening than speaking answered next. "Fang Yao. Seven instances." She offered nothing further, no elaboration, no softening, and the silence that followed her name carried its own particular weight, the kind reserved for someone whose survival record alone demanded a certain caution.
Nobody pressed her for more.
"Xu Ran," said a lean, quiet man near the back, adjusting a satchel slung over one shoulder. "Five instances. I know more folklore than I’d like to admit is useful, which usually means it’s about to become extremely useful." A faint, tired smile. "This looks like exactly the kind of instance where that happens."
"Comforting," Luo Ming muttered.
"I didn’t say it would be comfortable. I said it would be useful."
A young man, maybe early twenties, gave an awkward half-wave. "Zhou Ke. Two instances. I’m mostly good at not dying, if that counts as a skill." He laughed, short and nervous. "It’s gotten me this far."
"It counts," He Jian said, not unkindly. "Next."
A woman with a softer, more openly compassionate face spoke up gently. "Mu Qingge. This is my second instance. I’m not much for combat, but I notice things about people others tend to miss." Her gaze drifted, briefly, toward the sealed gate, something like unease crossing her features before she pulled it back. "I have a feeling that’s going to matter here."
The nervous younger woman went next, words tumbling out slightly too fast. "Tang Xiaoxiao. This is... this is my first instance, actually. I don’t know what’s going on; I was just in the subway on my way home, then the next thing I was already here." She stopped herself, visibly forcing a breath. "Sorry. I’m trying not to panic."
"You’re allowed to be scared," Mu Qingge said gently. "Just don’t let it make your decisions for you."
"I’m working on it."
He Jian’s eyes moved next toward Bai Wuyin, still seated with his sketchbook, and softened slightly at the sight of him, a child, alone, in the middle of a folk horror nightmare. "And you?"
Bai Wuyin looked up slowly, blinking, the picture of a frightened kid caught off guard. "B-Bai Wuyin," he said, voice smaller than Lin Yue had heard it in weeks, threaded with a tremor that hadn’t been there an hour ago in the Game Hall. "Fourth instance. I don’t... I’m not very strong. I mostly just try to stay out of the way."
"That’s alright," He Jian said, gentler now, the protective instinct in him plainly stirred by the sight of a survivor so young. "Stay close to the group. We’ll look out for you."
"Okay," Bai Wuyin said quietly, dropping his gaze back to the sketchbook, small and unassuming and entirely unremarkable.
Lin Yue watched the exchange without a flicker of visible reaction; he was establishing a role. Fragile. Overlooked. Exactly the kind of survivor no one watches closely. It was, he thought, a genuinely useful strategy, in an instance built on tradition and social ritual. Being underestimated had its own currency here.
He Jian’s attention finally settled on Lin Yue, the last uncounted voice in the circle.
"And you?"
Every eye in the group turned toward him at once, and Lin Yue noted with the same clinical distance he noted everything, the particular quality of the attention. Not simple curiosity. Something closer to recognition, the kind that came from rumor rather than firsthand knowledge.
"Lin Yue," he said. "Third instance survived."
A ripple moved through the group at that, not obvious, not dramatic, but present. Zhou Ke’s eyes widened slightly. Xu Ran’s gaze sharpened with open interest. Even Fang Yao, silent and unreadable through every other introduction, allowed her attention to settle more fully on him.
"You’re the irregular Mirrorhaven survivor," Zhou Ke said, half question, half statement, something between awe and unease in his tone. "I heard rumors in the Hall. Nobody had details, just that something happened in there that wasn’t supposed to happen."
"Rumors tend to grow past what actually occurred," Lin Yue said evenly.
"That’s not a no," Luo Ming observed, watching him with narrowed, calculating eyes.
"It’s not a yes, either," Lin Yue said. "It’s an accurate statement about rumors."
A short, surprised laugh escaped Zhou Ke before he could stop it. Even Luo Ming’s mouth twitched, something grudgingly close to approval in the expression.
"Fair enough," He Jian said, satisfied, and clapped his hands together once, decisive. "Now that we all know each other, or at least know names, let’s figure out how we’re getting through that gate before the sky finishes doing whatever it’s building toward."
—————————————————
The gate did not open easily.
Up close, its scale was even more oppressive, easily three times the height of the tallest among them, dark wood scarred by centuries of weather, iron fittings rusted into brittle orange lace. He Jian tested it first, planting both hands against the surface and pushing with his full weight.
Nothing. Not so much as a groan of shifting timber.
"Locked," he said, stepping back, breathing slightly harder. "From the inside, by the feel of it. There’s no give at all."
"Let me try," Luo Ming said, and threw his shoulder into it beside He Jian’s next attempt, the two of them pushing together.
The gate held, immovable as stone.
"It’s not going to open by force," Xu Ran said quietly, studying the surface with the focused attention of a man reading a language only he recognized. "Look at the carvings."
Lin Yue stepped closer, following his gaze.
The wood panels bore rows of carved figures, women, kneeling, heads tilted upward toward a carved moon positioned above the gate’s central seam. Their expressions, worn by centuries of weather but still legible, were fixed in identical postures of grief, mouths open in silent, eternal weeping.
"Old," Xu Ran murmured. "Older than the village probably wants us to think. This kind of imagery—kneeling women, weeping toward the moon, it’s usually tied to sacrifice iconography. Mourning rites. Something offered, and something lost."
"Comforting," Luo Ming said again, flatly.
"I told you. I didn’t say comforting. I said useful."
Tang Xiaoxiao hugged herself tighter, eyes fixed on the carved faces. "Why would they carve something like that on the front gate? Wouldn’t you want to... I don’t know, hide it?"
"Not if you wanted every outsider who saw it to already understand what kind of place they were walking into," Mu Qingge said quietly. "Some warnings aren’t meant to be subtle. They’re meant to be ignored, and later remembered."
The observation settled over the group with an uncomfortable weight, and for a moment, nobody spoke at all.
Lin Yue used the silence to step back from the gate itself, letting his attention sweep the wider treeline, a habit, more than a decision, the same reflexive scan he performed in every unfamiliar space.
The forest remained motionless. Silent.
Deep among the trees, at a distance too far for ordinary eyes to resolve clearly, something held still in a way the surrounding stillness did not quite match. Not a shape exactly. A presence, folded into shadow with the same deliberate patience Lin Yue had learned to recognize without needing to see a face.
The mark beneath his skin warmed, faint and steady, an acknowledgment rather than a warning.
You’re here again.
He didn’t turn his head fully toward it, didn’t allow his expression to shift, only let his gaze rest there a fraction of a second longer than casual observation required before returning his attention to the group, the way a man might glance at something unremarkable and move on.
No one else had noticed. Bai Wuyin, seated nearby with his sketchbook, gave no outward sign either, though Lin Yue caught, in his periphery, the faintest pause in the boy’s pencil strokes before they resumed.
He felt it too.
"Someone’s coming," Fang Yao said suddenly, low and even, eyes fixed on the gate.
A sound, the heavy, grinding scrape of an iron bolt drawing back, cut through the silence from somewhere behind the wood, and the entire group went still, watching as the massive gate shuddered, groaned, and began, slowly, to part.
It opened only a narrow width. Enough for a single figure to step through.
An elderly man emerged into the gap, dressed in faded traditional robes the color of dried blood, hands folded neatly in front of him, his face arranged into an expression of warm, practiced welcome.
"Ah," he said, voice soft and courteous, bowing his head slightly toward the assembled group. "Travelers. Forgive the delay; we so rarely receive guests before the moon rises fully."
"You knew we were coming?" He Jian asked, careful, measured.
"The village always knows when guests arrive," the old man said, smiling wider. "I am Chen Guosheng. Chief of Qingmu Village, for whatever that title is worth these days." His eyes moved across the group, lingering a half-second longer on each face than seemed strictly necessary, before he added, almost as an afterthought, "You’ve chosen an unusual time to visit."
"We didn’t exactly choose it," Zhou Ke muttered.
"No," Chief Chen agreed, something flickering briefly behind his warm expression, gone before it could be fully read. "I suppose you didn’t."
His gaze drifted, almost involuntarily, toward the sky, toward the bruised purple bleeding slowly into deeper red, and for the space of one unguarded breath, the practiced hospitality slipped from his features entirely. What remained beneath it, however brief, was unmistakably fear.
He caught himself quickly, smile sliding back into place like a mask readjusted, but Lin Yue had already seen it, and noted it away with the same silent precision as everything else.
Whatever he’s afraid of, it isn’t us.
"Please," Chief Chen said, gesturing toward the narrow gap in the gate. "Come inside. It grows late, and there is much to explain before—"
"Wait." Xu Ran’s voice, quiet but firm, cut through the invitation before it could finish. "The gate hasn’t opened any further."
Chief Chen paused, hand still extended toward the threshold, and something almost like approval crossed his face. "You’ve traveled before. Good. Yes, you’re correct. A village does not simply open itself to strangers." His smile settled into something more formal, more ritualized. "Guests should not enter a home without invitation. It is discourteous. And in Qingmu Village, discourtesy is... unwise."
"So invite us," Luo Ming said flatly. "That’s what you’re here for, isn’t it?"
"It isn’t so simple as words alone," Chief Chen said, mild reproach in his tone, as though Luo Ming had suggested something faintly obscene. "An invitation carries weight only when it is properly given, and properly received. Tell me your names. Acknowledge the village as host. Then, and only then, will the gate accept you as guests rather than trespassers."
A brief, uncertain silence passed through the group before He Jian, ever the organizer, stepped forward.
"He Jian," he said, with the careful formality of a man reciting words he didn’t fully understand but trusted to matter. "We accept your hospitality, and thank you for it."
The gate shuddered, barely, the movement so slight it might have been imagined, except that everyone felt it.
Chief Chen’s smile widened, satisfied. "One by one, if you would. The village prefers to hear each of you clearly."
One by one, they did, Luo Ming with visible reluctance, Fang Yao with unreadable composure, Tang Xiaoxiao stumbling slightly over the formal phrasing before Mu Qingge gently helped her through it. Each time, the gate shuddered faintly wider, the ancient hinges groaning as though the wood itself were slowly, grudgingly, accepting the weight of ten strangers’ names.
When it came to Bai Wuyin’s turn, his voice emerged small and uncertain, exactly as it had during introductions, and Chief Chen’s expression softened toward him with the particular gentleness adults reserved for children. "Such a young one, so far from home. Welcome, little one."
"Thank you," Bai Wuyin murmured, eyes downcast, giving nothing away.
Lin Yue went last.
"Lin Yue," he said, voice even, offering nothing beyond the required words. "We accept your hospitality."
For the briefest moment, Chief Chen’s gaze lingered on him, not with suspicion exactly, but with something closer to careful, deliberate attention, as though recalibrating an assessment made only seconds earlier. "Lin Yue," he repeated softly, testing the name. "Yes. I believe the village will remember that name."
Before Lin Yue could weigh the strangeness of the remark, the gate groaned one final time and swung fully open, revealing the pathway beyond narrow stone streets winding between dark, silent houses, red paper lanterns hanging unlit from eaves that seemed to lean inward, watching.
"Welcome," Chief Chen said, stepping back to allow them passage, "to Qingmu Village."
The group went through the gate in loose formation, He Jian and Luo Ming near the front, Tang Xiaoxiao close against Mu Qingge’s side for whatever comfort proximity could offer. Lin Yue held back deliberately, letting the others move ahead until only Bai Wuyin remained near him, sketchbook now tucked beneath one arm, small and quiet and utterly unremarkable to anyone still watching.
"You’re doing well," Lin Yue said quietly, pitched low enough that only Bai Wuyin would catch it. "The role suits you."
Bai Wuyin’s expression shifted instantly, the tremor bleeding out of his posture, the wide, frightened eyes sharpening into their usual watchful calm. "It’s useful," he murmured back, matching Lin Yue’s tone. "Nobody watches the scared kid closely. Nobody expects him to notice anything."
"Except me."
"Except you." A faint, genuine smile flickered at the corner of his mouth before smoothing away again. "You always were the exception."
Lin Yue let the observation pass without comment, though something in it settled, briefly, somewhere he chose not to examine.
"The eye in your sketch," he said instead. "It wasn’t on the gate. I checked."
"I know it wasn’t." Bai Wuyin’s voice dropped further, barely audible over the soft crunch of their footsteps on stone. "It’s never actually there, the way you’d expect something to be there. It’s more like an impression left behind. Something that was watching, once, from that exact spot, long enough to leave a mark only I can see."
"You think something has been watching this gate for a long time."
"I think," Bai Wuyin said carefully, "that this village has been watched by a great many things, for a very long time. And I don’t think all of them are watching from outside it."
Lin Yue absorbed that in silence, noting it alongside everything else, the Chief’s fear of the sky, the ritual weight of invitation, the ancient carvings of weeping women, a growing collection of fragments that hadn’t yet resolved into a shape, but were beginning, unmistakably, to suggest one.
"Stay close to me," he said finally. "Whatever role you’re playing for the others, I’d prefer not to lose track of you in here."
Bai Wuyin glanced sideways at him, something warmer than mere strategy flickering behind the words before he tucked it away again. "That’s oddly protective, coming from you."
"It’s practical," Lin Yue said. "Surviving Mirrorhaven with Shen Rui always beside me, I’ve grown accustomed to the arrangement."
"Mm." Bai Wuyin’s mouth curved, small and private. "Accustomed. Sure."
They walked on in silence after that, the village unfolding around them in narrow stone streets and shuttered windows, and it was several minutes before Chief Chen, leading the group toward a walled courtyard near the village’s center, paused to address them once more.
"This will be the Rest Courtyard," he announced, gesturing toward a modest compound ringed with faded protective talismans, paper charms fluttering despite the windless air from the eaves. "You will sleep here. Rooms are limited, so you may need to share. I suggest you decide quickly." His gaze drifted, once again, involuntarily, toward the darkening horizon. "Sunset is not far now."
The group began sorting itself into pairs with the awkward efficiency of strangers assigning logistics, and Lin Yue used the moment to step toward Bai Wuyin before anyone else could.
"Share a room with me," he said, quiet enough that it passed for practical arrangement rather than anything more. "I’d rather know exactly where you are once the sun goes down."
Bai Wuyin looked up at him, and for just a moment, the careful performance dropped away entirely, replaced by something unguarded and genuinely pleased. "I was hoping you’d ask before I had to."
"You could have asked first."
"And ruin the satisfaction of you doing it?" A small, private smile. "Never."
Lin Yue almost allowed himself the beginning of a matching expression before a sound reached them both, distant and thin, drifting from somewhere deep within the village’s winding streets.
A flute.
High-pitched. Melancholic. Achingly close to human, though something in its phrasing sat just wrong enough to raise the hair along Lin Yue’s arms, a melody that seemed to search for a note it could never quite reach, circling the same aching, unresolved phrase over and over into the gathering dark.
The entire group went still.
No villager so much as glanced toward the sound. No door opened. No window shifted. The silence around them remained exactly as absolute as it had been since their arrival, as though the flute existed in some register the village itself had long since learned not to acknowledge.
Only the players had stopped walking.
Chief Chen’s warm, hospitable smile vanished entirely, all at once, like a light extinguished. He did not turn to face the sound. He stood very still, shoulders faintly tense, gaze fixed straight ahead.
"Do not answer the flute," he said quietly, "after sunset."
Behind him, the melody continued, thin and searching and endless, drifting through the empty streets of Qingmu Village as the last of the red horizon began, slowly, to fade into dark.
—————————————————
Author’s Note:
Hi everyone!
We’ve officially reached another milestone, and before we begin this new instance, I just wanted to say thank you.
Thank you so much for reading and supporting this story. Whether you’ve been here since the very first Chapter or joined somewhere along the journey, I’m truly grateful that you’ve chosen to spend your time with Lin Yue and everyone else in this world.
Reaching this point means we’ve closed another Chapter of the story, and now we’re stepping into a brand-new instance together. Every new instance is a new mystery, a new challenge, and another piece of the larger puzzle waiting to be uncovered. I hope you’ll enjoy discovering its secrets as much as I’ve enjoyed creating them.
Your comments, reviews, Power Stones, Golden Tickets, and even simply reading each update mean more to me than you know. They encourage me to keep writing and continue bringing this story to life.
I hope you’ll continue accompanying Lin Yue on the road ahead. There are still many mysteries left unsolved, many truths yet to be revealed, and many unforgettable moments waiting for us.
Thank you for being here, and welcome to the next instance.
I hope you’ll continue enjoying the journey, and I sincerely appreciate your continued support. Happy reading, and I’ll see you in the next Chapter!
Comments