2: Chapter 2 Autumn Outing in the Mist

A tremor surged up from the depths of the earth, like a colossal beast that had been sleeping for ten thousand years turning over in its sleep.

The ancient trees swayed, leaves rustling as they fell; golden leaves and broken twigs rained down, pelting them in the face.

Flocks of birds overhead shrieked as they streaked across the sky, and even the chirping of insects fell silent in the same instant.

The ground was like a wooden board shaken by an invisible giant's hand, the layer of dead leaves underfoot emitting a sticky, grinding sound, while a heavy, pungent scent of damp earth surged up from the fissures.

Screams erupted among the crowd.

The shrieks of sixty-two girls merged into a wave of sound that nearly overturned the canopy; in the chaos, some fell, some crouched covering their heads, and others ran around instinctively.

The joyful atmosphere of the autumn outing was completely shattered in that second, replaced by a primitive, instinctive terror.

Wang Sheng's first reaction was not to crouch or take cover, but to look for Shen Xun'er.

He didn't know why he did this; perhaps it was because for the past four years, whenever something happened to the class, she was always the first person he thought of.

He dashed over, grabbed Shen Xun'er by the wrist, and pulled her down to crouch beside the trunk of a thick, ancient tree.

Shen Xun'er's body trembled slightly in the quake, but she didn't pull her hand away; instead, she gripped his fingers back, her hold so tight her knuckles turned white.

"Xuner, stay low!" Wang Sheng used his body to shield her from the falling debris, half-crouching to protect her between the tree trunk and his own chest.

The moment she looked up, he saw that while there was indeed terror in her almond-shaped eyes, there was even more of an indescribable trust—a certainty built up over four years that required no words.

"I'm fine." Shen Xun'er's voice trembled slightly, but her tone remained steady. "Check on the others first!"

In the chaos, Murong Xue was the first to stand up.

She supported a swaying girl beside her with one hand while gripping her hiking staff with the other, her voice calm and powerful, piercing through the din:

"Everyone, stay away from dead branches! Crouch down and protect your heads! Don't run around!"

Her brown ponytail whipped about in the tremors, and her body beneath her windbreaker was taut like a bowstring ready to be released, her 'big sister' aura fully unleashed at this moment.

Several panicked girls heard her voice and, as if grabbing a lifeline, gathered toward her.

Frost Mage Lin Shiyun was not as composed.

She was jostled and stumbled in the pushing crowd, her long silver-white hair falling in disarray over her shoulders, her usual dignified and cold demeanor completely shattered.

A flash of rare panic streaked across her ice-blue eyes—a fragility only revealed when proud people lose control, fleeting but captured by Wang Sheng.

He let go with one hand to grab her arm, pulling her to his side.

Frost Mage Lin Shiyun's body stiffened for half a second the moment he grabbed her; her lips parted as if she wanted to say something biting, but in the end, she only whispered two words: "Thank you."

The voice was very soft, so soft it was almost swallowed by the roaring of the ground, but Wang Sheng heard it.

Zhao Linger was not as reserved as Frost Mage Lin Shiyun.

She was terrified, her voice completely out of tune, and she instinctively hugged the person closest to her—which happened to be Wang Sheng's waist.

She pressed her entire body against him, her slender, soft frame trembling slightly.

The patch of fair, tender waist beneath her cropped hoodie pressed against Wang Sheng's clothes, the rounded, full curves transmitting a warm sensation through the thin fabric.

Her face was buried in his chest; the tear tracks on her doll-like face hadn't even been wiped away, and her large, watery eyes were filled with terror, yet her hands wrapped around his waist like iron hoops, refusing to let go.

"Don't be afraid." Wang Sheng freed one hand to pat her head, his voice as steady as he could make it. "Stay close to me, nothing will happen."

Zhao Linger sniffled and buried her face deeper, letting out a muffled "Mm," though her body stopped trembling quite as violently.

Su Mengyao was the calmest one in the crowd.

While the tremor continued, she had already crouched down, one hand pressed to the soil, her emerald eyes grave and focused.

Her long, jade-green hair fell over her shoulders in the upheaval, framing her side profile, which was like white porcelain with a faint green tint, appearing exceptionally serene amidst the chaos.

Her fingers trembled slightly, but her touch was precisely sensing every minute vibration coming from the ground, as if she were conversing with the earth.

"This is not a natural earthquake."

She looked up, her voice not loud but exceptionally clear, a flicker of astonishment in her emerald eyes. "The earth's seismic waves have a rhythm... It is responding to something."

Wang Sheng's pupils constricted slightly. Responding to something?

He wanted to press for more, but the next second, the tremor stopped abruptly.

All sound vanished at that moment; even the wind stopped, and the entire ancient forest fell into an eerie, deathly silence.

The sixty-two girls looked at each other, and just as a few were about to speak, they were silenced by an even stranger phenomenon.

A milky-white, dense mist surged out from the fissures in the ground.

The mist was unlike any natural phenomenon.

It didn't drift in from afar but surged from deep underground, seeping and spreading like a living creature from every crack and every inch of soil.

It first formed a thin layer on the ground, flowing along the fallen leaves, and then rapidly expanded.

In three seconds, it swallowed everyone's ankles; in five, it passed their knees; after ten seconds, visibility was less than a meter.

"Everyone, don't move! Stay where you are!"

Wang Sheng's roar pierced through the dense mist.

His left hand held Shen Xun'er tightly, while his right hand still clutched Zhao Linger; both girls' hands were gripped tightly by him.

The dense mist churned around them, as if a sentient living thing were coiling and clinging, bringing a strange chill when it touched their skin.

It wasn't ordinary cold, but an ancient chill that seeped from the pores into the marrow.

Shen Xun'er pressed close to his side, her hand gripping his without a hint of hesitation.

The mist blurred her features, but Wang Sheng could feel the warmth from her palm—not the cold of fear, but a reassuring warmth.

She turned her head and whispered three words in the mist: "I am here."

The voice was soft, yet it was like an anchor, firmly pinning Wang Sheng's heart in the churning chaos.

The mist grew thicker, breathing became difficult, and the air was filled with an ancient, indescribable scent, like the first gust of air released when a thousand-year-old tomb is opened, mixed with the smell of soil, rock strata, and unknown minerals—heavy and suffocating.

"My hand... I can't feel my hand..."

Frost Mage Lin Shiyun's voice came from the left, carrying a rare tremble.

That forever cold and proud Frost Mage Lin Shiyun now had a hint of barely concealed fear in her voice.

The dense mist was stealing her sense of touch; fine water droplets condensed on her long silver-white hair, and her ice-blue eyes flickered in the white fog.

Wang Sheng fumbled toward the sound, his fingers touching cold fabric, then a slender wrist—ice-cold and trembling slightly.

He gripped it tightly: "It's me, don't be afraid."

That hand gripped him back with astonishing force, like a drowning person grabbing the only piece of driftwood.

Frost Mage Lin Shiyun didn't speak, but her fingers dug into his palm, her nails nearly embedding themselves into his flesh; the force conveyed not words, but something deeper than words.

Su Mengyao's voice came from the right, surprisingly calm: "Wang Sheng, I smell flowers."

"What?"

"Not flower scents from Earth." Her voice carried an almost reverent awe.

"I have never smelled this scent before... It's like some kind of ancient, extinct plant is reawakening."

Wang Sheng didn't have time to ponder the meaning of her words, because his body began to undergo strange changes.

His palms grew hotter and hotter—not the heat of a fever, but as if a flame were burning deep within his palms.

That heat flowed up his arms to his chest, then spread from his chest to his limbs and bones.

A feeling of power he had never experienced before surged within him, as if a switch that had been dormant for tens of thousands of years had been flipped, and every cell was clamoring to wake up.

He wanted to look down at his palms, but the mist was too thick.

Then, everything spiraled out of control in an instant.

The mist suddenly contracted, as if an invisible giant hand had gripped everyone in the center of the fog.

Wang Sheng felt himself being pulled in a certain direction by an irresistible force—no, not a certain direction, but all directions simultaneously.

The world spun, and a sense of weightlessness crashed down on him, like being pushed from ten thousand meters in the air.

His eardrums bulged, and a buzzing sound pierced from the top of his skull to the soles of his feet; the sound was low and distant, like an ancient horn, or perhaps the tolling of an eternal bell.

His hands were still clutching Shen Xun'er and Zhao Linger, and his other hand was still tightly gripping Frost Mage Lin Shiyun's wrist.

The four of them were torn and swept along by the same force in the chaos, like four falling leaves in a blizzard.

Their vision began to shatter.

White light blinded them, followed by kaleidoscopic fragments of color—gold, emerald green, deep blue, crimson.

It was like passing through countless worlds, each world a single frame, flashing and vanishing.

He saw burning mountains and rivers, frozen oceans, giant trees blotting out the sky, and a golden giant eye gazing at him from the void; deep within its pupil, something was responding to the scorching heat in his palms.

The horn sound turned into language.

Not Chinese, not English, not any language on Earth, yet Wang Sheng somehow understood it.

Those syllables poured directly into the depths of his consciousness, like an innate instinct, like inscriptions carved into his soul.

"Returned... finally returned..."

The voice was aged and weary, like an existence that had waited for thousands of years, finally receiving a response at the very last moment of its life.

Wang Sheng's body was stretched and compressed, his bones creaking, his muscles and meridians seemingly rewoven, the fire in his palms burning through his entire body before rapidly cooling.

He felt his blood boiling, every cell dividing and reorganizing, the pain so intense it felt like he had been dismantled from head to toe and put back together again.

But deep within the pain, a warm current was growing, like a seed breaking through the soil, like dawn breaking.

Shen Xun'er's hand gripped even tighter in his palm; that strength was his only anchor at this moment.

Zhao Linger's nails embedded into his arm, but she did not let go.

Frost Mage Lin Shiyun's hand was cold as frost, yet it was locked tightly between his fingers, as if all her pride and stubbornness were concentrated in this one handshake.

Then, everything came to an abrupt halt.

Sound vanished, colors vanished, and gravity returned.

Wang Sheng felt himself crash heavily onto a soft surface, the back of his head aching from the impact, but that strange sense of lightness still lingered in his body.

He lay there without moving, gasping for air, his lungs burning as if scorched by fire, each breath tasting of rust and blood.

He opened his eyes.

Above him was not the interlaced branches and leaves of the ancient forest or the dappled autumn sunlight, but a completely unfamiliar, purplish-red firmament.

The color was like someone had mixed intense purple and scorching red together and painted it across the entire sky, magnificent to the point of unreality.

Even more inconceivable was that two suns hung in the sky—one large, one small; one red, one blue—like two gemstones embedded in the purplish-red canopy, emitting a gentle yet eerie light.

Wang Sheng's pupils contracted sharply.

He looked down; he was lying on a field of fluorescent grass he had never seen before. The blades of grass emitted a faint, blue-green light in the darkness, soft as silk, with a warm texture.

At the edge of the meadow was a stream glowing with a faint blue light.

Further away was a primordial forest that blotted out the sky, its silhouette more than ten times larger than the trees of the ancient forest, like the spines of ancient giant beasts spanning the skyline.

And all around him, the sixty-two girls lay scattered in disarray across the fluorescent meadow—some prone, some on their sides—all unconscious.

Shen Xun'er lay less than half a meter to his left, her long, jet-black hair scattered among the fluorescent blades of grass, her face as serene as if she were having a dream.

Zhao Linger was curled up on his right, her fair, slender waist exposed beneath her cropped hoodie, still trembling slightly.

Frost Mage Lin Shiyun lay on her back furthest away, her long silver-white hair spread across the blue-green fluorescence, her skin like jade, cold and elegant as a moon goddess fallen to the mortal world.

Wang Sheng slowly opened his right hand.

In his palm, a golden pattern was slowly fading. The pattern was complex and ancient, like some kind of ancient rune.

In the last second before he fully opened his palm, it completely sank beneath his skin and vanished, leaving only a lingering scorching heat in his palm.

He clenched his fist, then opened it again.

His palm was empty, but that heat remained.

Wang Sheng looked up at the purplish-red sky and the two suns hanging within it, only one thought echoing repeatedly in his mind: Where is this?