They were upon a body barely another few steps in.

Hui stumbled. He looked down and found a finger barring his path. The finger led to a hand, the hand led to an arm, until an entire Starbound Sect cultivator laid there, eyes blank, body still. Hui glanced at the face, but found himself staring at a stranger. He took a deep breath. It’s better this way. If it was Sis Mei or Xixing…

Without hesitating, before he could think about it, Hui knelt and put both hands on the cultivator’s finger. He sent a quiet pulse of qi inside, searching for the cultivator’s qi.

Nothing. An empty husk.

Hui took a deep breath, retracting his qi. No qi, but no death qi, either. He isn’t dead. He’s…

He looked overhead. Black clouds swirled around the sixth peak. It might have been his imagination, but more faces swirled in the cloud than before… including some he recognized.

“You’re back.”

Hui startled, staring around him.

A crow sat on the cultivator’s body, rubbing its beak on his robes. It sat up and looked at Hui with bright red eyes. “So? What do you think happened?”

“Chen Wuya?”

The crow snorted, a very un-crow-like sound. It hopped around on the cultivator’s body, exuding frustration. “I’m still stuck in that damn realm. I thought the real seal was the one keeping me in the second layer, but the first layer’s just as brutal. I should be able to escape, but not for years.”

“Then… this… are they all trapped in the soul transferal formation?” Hui asked.

The crow bobbed its head up and down. It cawed, giving Hui a significant look.

“Er, Senior, I… don’t speak crow,” Hui said.

The crow stopped hopping around and stared at Hui, completely stock still. Abruptly, it launched itself at Hui, beak and claws bared.

“Senior, I’m sorry! My apologies! I’ll learn crow-speak at the next opportunity, I promise!” Hui said, falling backward.

The crow landed on him and pinned him to the ground, then let out a self-satisfied sigh. “As I was saying, they destroyed my formation, but they can’t figure out how to destroy the spell. I expect you have… at least a decade before they figure it out.”

A decade. I have to fix this in a decade. Hui took a deep breath. He glanced at the crow. “If I repair the spell formation…”

The crow cawed, hopping around. Its caws sounded almost like laughter. “You? You couldn’t. Not in a decade. Even the last genius to fix it took a full sixty-year cycle.”

“Then… what?” Hui asked. The crow randomly hopped off him, and he used the opportunity to quickly scramble back to his feet.

“Then… you figure it out. They aren’t fully dead, but caught in a state between life and death. You cultivate life and death, so you should be able to figure something out, right?” Chen Wuya said.

“Senior, you said before it would take you years to escape…” Hui hinted.

The crow stepped forward and put a claw on Hui’s chest, stomping him to the ground again in frustration. “Don’t rely on people who don’t care about this Sect. Though in the end, my personal opinion doesn’t matter. Fen Long is an asshole, but he’s an unrivaled talent when it comes to seals and binding techniques. If I escape in a decade, I’ll consider that extraordinary good fortune.”

Pushing at the crow’s claws, Hui pressed his lips together. Still sealed? Can’t I get him out? “What if we used the same technique we used to bring you to the red side of the realm, to get you out of the realm altogether?”

“The red side?” The crow tilted its head.

“As opposed to the gray side,” Hui explained.

“Oh, the poppies. The side where my soul was sealed had gray poppies, and the side where he sealed my body had red. I see. Confusing, but I understand now. Hmm… no.”

“Why not?” Hui asked.

The crow hopped off him and shook its head, letting out a very un-crow-like sigh yet again. “A thousand reasons. Let me see if I can explain it to someone at your pitiful level. Mmm… well, first off, the soul and body realms were superimposed. They weren’t truly different spaces, Fen Long simply portioned off a layer of reality and sealed it separately from the overall realm. Understood? If you wanted to use the same trick to get me out of the body realm, you’d have to have spatial abilities, or else you’d escape the realm and find yourself stuck in the void, in the best case.”

“The void?” Hui asked.

“The space between realms,” Chen Wuya explained, hopping about a bit in frustration. “Lower level cultivators… I swear.”

“Apologies, senior. Please forgive my pitiful lack of comprehension.”

Chen Wuya harrumphed and drew himself upright. “The second problem… is the same as the first, and yet different. You snuck your way out of the soul realm into the body realm by creating a false passage. If you’d exited the proper way, Fen Long’s checks would have caught you.”

“Like walking through security at an airport,” Hui muttered to himself. I understand. If you find a way to sneak in, you can bring water into the secured half of the airport, but if you walk through the proper entrance, security will make you throw out that water every time!

Though… the soul realm had a proper exit? I wonder what it was? Somehow, the image of the ruined pavilion and the trial within welled up in Hui’s mind.

“Like… what?” the crow asked.

Hui’s eyes widened. He clapped his hands over his mouth. “Nothing, nothing!”

The crow peered at him, then shook its head and ignored him, instead preening itself as it continued. “It’s the same for leaving the body realm for the real world. Unless you have spatial abilities and can create your own exit that connects back to the real world, you’d simply enter the void… and die immediately, at your low level.”

Hui shook his head. “Then that’s no good.”

“Hmm, actually… I could survive it, though. Junior, could you do me a favor and forget everything I said in the last minute or so?” the crow asked, giving Hui a friendly look.

“Junior has already forgotten, but Senior, this small cultivator abruptly remembered that there’s a restriction on the time that passes before a single cultivator is allowed to enter the realm again,” Hui said hurriedly.

The crow let out an angry cry, flapping its wings. “That damn Fen Long! So even if I make contact with a cultivator, once they leave, they can’t re-enter to help me? What a load of bullshit! Fen Long, when I get out of here, you’d better prepare yourself!”

Ignoring Chen Wuya’s outburst, Hui walked back to Zhubi. Zhubi tipped his head down, and Hui climbed on top.

Chen Wuya narrowed his eyes. “Where are you going?”

“Senior, I need to confirm a few things. This small cultivator will be going ahead for now,” Hui said, bowing. I need to find Xixing and Sis Mei. I won’t be comfortable until I see them. And while I’m here, I want to stop by Unrivaled Under Heaven Peak and absorb some life qi from Mount Mu, so I can store the life qi and regrow my lotus body once I leave.

After that… after that, I need to figure out how to bring everyone back.