"That wasn't me!" Su Yan shouted at the corpse. "It was their dying fantasy! Everyone who knows me says I'm easy to get along with!"
The dead man offered no argument.
Su Yan wandered the desert, searching for Yuan Qi. After a hundred li, a trembling voice answered from behind a dune.
"A-A-Ying? Is that you?"
Su Yan found the serpent coiled in the sand, trembling, eyes averted.
"It's me, Qi."
Yuan Qi shrank tighter. "Are you A-Ying or Lord Ying?"
Su Yan moved closer, smiling. "We're friends. I won't hurt you."
"You killed me a hundred times."
Su Yan reached out slowly. Yuan Qi flinched, then leaned into the familiar touch. "During the vision, I was separated from you. I became a great cultivator — the first one threw an axe at you. You crushed it. Then I was a woman in the palace. You blew up half the building. Then I drowned in a well. Then my golden core exploded. Then the Yin-Yang Vine shredded me..."
Su Yan patted him. "That wasn't the real me."
"It felt real."
They found the bell half-buried in a desert valley. Yuan Qi poked it with his tail. The bell shuddered and tried to burrow deeper.
Su Yan pulled it free. "Bell, it's over."
The bell woke slowly. "I dreamed I was an axe. I flew at A-Ying, so proud of my power. Then he caught me. Crushed me."
It had died a hundred deaths — as cauldrons, furnaces, swords — each time feeling its own destruction and its master's screams. Even knowing it was an illusion, the trauma was real.
Two days passed before Yuan Qi and the bell tolerated Su Yan's presence without flinching. The other survivors had wandered into forbidden zones and died.
"How do we get back to Yunmeng?" Yuan Qi asked.
Su Yan looked at the sky. The spirit root floated above the half-ruined palace, a luminous ladder to the stars.
"We wait for Stone City," he said.
The bell's tone darkened. "The painted swordsman took the Heavenly Dao Artifact. Without it, will the city return?"
Su Yan froze. "It won't come back. The dragon-headed apparition, the spirit root gathering, the road rebuilding — someone orchestrated all of this."
He paced. "Just like the Nai River invasion. Accidents that weren't accidents. Someone planned to seize the artifact, rebuild the Yin-Yang Vine, and reconnect the road."
"We're just accidents in their plan," the bell said.
"There must be another way out." Su Yan stopped. "The painted man wanted the Primal Dao Essence desperately. Why? Because he has unrefined immortal medicines in his body. So do the people with him."
"Who?"
"People from the other shore. Returned immortals."
Applause echoed across the dunes. The painted swordsman approached, his shadow stretching long in the sunset.
"Master Bamboo always said you were brilliant." He bowed. "Jiang Qi, Grand Preceptor of Great Zhou, greets the Undying Immortal. His Majesty sends his regards."