After that extreme battle had nearly drained him dry,Mo Fan found this sleep exceptionally sweet and peaceful.
Over the next few days,everything seemed unusually calm.
Just in case,once he'd recovered,Mo Fan quietly made another trip to Abandoned Sword Cliff.
Standing at the cliff top,he looked down.
The dark red blood mist that had once shrouded the valley bottom,so thick it wouldn't disperse,now showed obvious signs of thinning.
And those fringe demon beasts driven manic and mutated by the blood mist had gradually shed the crimson in their eyes,returning to their old state of acting on instinct.
Mo Fan certainly didn't let his guard down.
He quietly opened[Death Vision]and,from a distance,probed that huge snake molt sprawled like a mountain range deep at the cliff bottom,over and over.
Empty.
No complete life fluctuation of any kind.
In his vision,all that remained there was a snakeskin that had been dead for years,with nothing else out of the ordinary.
Whew...looks like it really is dead for good.
Mo Fan let out a long breath,finally letting the stone hanging over his heart settle back down.
Since that eerie source had been utterly erased by[Soul Shock],the matter of relocating wasn't quite so urgent for the time being.
And so,over the next few days,Mo Fan gave himself a rare vacation.
Like a genuinely ordinary servant youth,he spent every day wandering the village with A-Song.
Helping Old Lüpatch up his drafty roof and chop firewood.
Or squatting at the base of a wall,working while listening to the old man ramble on about the petty little affairs of decades past.
These peaceful days brought enormous relief to Mo Fan's long-taut nerves.
They even gave him a sense of stability,as though he'd returned to the peaceful era of his past life.
Until one afternoon.
Mo Fan had just made a trip to the servant district market,picking up two packets of the flaky pastries the kids liked,and was strolling leisurely back along the dirt road.
"Xiaoqi?"
A servant passing by with two buckets of well water saw him,stopped,and called out casually.
"Weren't you just heading down that back road toward the rear mountain?"
The servant wiped away sweat with the towel around his neck and muttered,somewhat puzzled:
"I was calling out to you forever while I was hauling water,and you didn't pay me any mind."
"You just kept your head down and walked.Where were you off to in such a hurry?"
Mo Fan's steps faltered slightly,and he blanked for a moment.
"Me?"
He pointed at the oil-paper packets in his hands.
"I just came back from the market.When did I go to any rear mountain?"
The servant blanked too,looked carefully at the direction Mo Fan had come from...
Then slapped his own head and let out a couple of easygoing curses at himself.
"Bah!Probably these past two days of hauling water have got my eyes going.Saw a back and figured it was you."
"Fine,go on about your business!"
That said...
The servant shouldered his buckets and swayed off into the distance.
Mo Fan didn't take the matter much to heart at the time,just assuming the other man had genuinely mistaken someone else for him.
But...
He hadn't gotten far.
Having just rounded the mouth of an alley,he ran into a village auntie drying medicinal herbs in her courtyard.
"Xiaoqi,what's gotten into you today?Acting all strange."
The auntie looked up at him and said,somewhat baffled:
"Just now,over by that well at the head of the village,you stood there without moving,spacing out for a good half an incense stick."
"I asked you a question and you didn't say a word.You just stared fixedly at the well rim."
"I thought you'd been possessed."
This time,Mo Fan's steps slowly came to a halt.
And the smile on his face froze along with them.
"Auntie."
"Are you sure...it was me you saw by the well just now?"
Mo Fan's voice unconsciously dropped a few notches.
"Child,you think your auntie could mistake those clothes of yours and that face of yours?"
The auntie rolled her eyes and turned back inside to keep working.
"..."
Mo Fan didn't argue.
He simply felt a sliver of cold beginning to slowly climb up his spine.
Carrying an unease that grew stronger and stronger,Mo Fan quickened his pace.
Along the way...
A third person.
A fourth person.
There was even a kid from next door who'd run out to play in the mud.
The locations they named were completely different.
Some said the mouth of the alley.
Some said beside the well.
Some said the little path toward the rear mountain.
But everyone's accounts matched with eerie consistency.
Just a short while ago.
They had all,with complete certainty,seen Mo Fan.
And that"Mo Fan"in their accounts carried an intensely unsettling wrongness in his bearing and behavior.
Not speaking.
Ignoring anyone who greeted him.
Only looking at them with a hollow gaze.
Occasionally giving a stiff nod.
Then turning and walking off alone.
The last trace of a smile on Mo Fan's face had already vanished without a trace.
His heart began pounding violently in his chest.
An exceedingly bad premonition,like a vast shadow,slowly settled over his head.
When Mo Fan came all but running back to the courtyard and found Old Lüsorting firewood by a woodpile just outside...
Old Lülooked up.
Seeing Mo Fan drenched in sweat,his face filled with confusion.
"Xiaoqi?"
Old Lüset down the firewood in his hands.
"How come you're back again?"
It was as if Mo Fan had been struck by lightning.
He froze rigidly on the spot.
"...Again?"
He swallowed with difficulty.
"Uncle Lü...you said again?"
Old Lü,seeing Mo Fan wearing an expression like he'd seen a ghost,grew even more puzzled.
He pointed toward the courtyard.
"That's right,didn't you just walk past me?"
"I was chopping wood over there a moment ago.This old man called out to you twice,asked if you'd gotten the pastries,and you didn't answer me either.You just kept your head down and walked straight into the courtyard."
Old Lügave a snort of feigned anger.
"What,grown into your talents now?"
"Find this old man annoying,won't even deign to speak to me?"
Mo Fan's face...
In that instant,went pale as paper.
The oil-paper packets in his hands dropped to the ground with a smack.
Pastries rolled all over the ground.
"Uncle Lü."
Mo Fan seized Old Lü's wrist with enough strength to make the old man suck in a cold breath.
In his eyes,alarm and urgency he couldn't hide had already surfaced.
"Just now..."
"Where did I go?!"
Old Lü,startled by his expression and his grip,subconsciously raised a hand and pointed at the low room where Mo Fan and A-Song lived.
"Back...back to your own room."
BOOM!
Mo Fan didn't say a single word.
He didn't even have time to explain.
His whole body turned straight into an afterimage,charging toward his own dwelling like a madman.
Only one thought remained in his mind,echoing madly.
A-Song!
A-Song is still in the room!
Over those few hundred meters,Mo Fan ran as though his life depended on it.
Soon...
He reached the outside of the courtyard wall.
But in the very instant he was about to kick the door straight in...
Amid the extreme terror,the last of his reason still clamped down hard on his impulse.
This wasn't Abandoned Sword Cliff.
All around him were ordinary servants.
And A-Song was right there in the room.
If he charged in recklessly and ended up in a direct clash with that monster...
The consequences were not something these ordinary people could possibly bear.
Mo Fan forcibly slowed his breathing.
Softened his footsteps.
Like a cat holding its breath,he pressed himself soundlessly against the half-closed window.
Through a thin gap along the edge of the ragged window paper...
He looked into the room.
One glance was all it took.
Mo Fan felt a chill shoot instantly from the soles of his feet straight up to the crown of his skull.
Inside the room...
A-Song had his back to the window,sitting at that battered wooden table,head down,carefully sorting through some odds and ends on its surface.
And beside A-Song...
There sat another person.
The same coarse blue cloth robes.
The same height and build.
The same contours of the features.
Even the few strands of loose black hair scattered across the forehead were all but indistinguishable from the Mo Fan outside the window!
It just sat there,perfectly quiet.
Because it had its back to the window,A-Song couldn't see Mo Fan standing outside at all.
He seemed to have already gotten used to the abnormality of"Brother Qi being quiet today,"and was still sorting his things while chattering away to the"person"beside him.
"Brother Qi,Uncle Lüsaid just now that you're in a bad mood.What's wrong?"
"Did the steward give you grief again?"
The youth's innocent voice echoed slowly through the quiet room.
And that person sitting beside him...
That monster wearing Mo Fan's face,cobbled together from countless scraps of flesh...
Didn't answer.
It just sat there,perfectly quiet.
Not saying a word.