The mountains shook, the sea rolled, and Shen Wei’s sight went black.
4
WHEN ZHAO YUNLAN jolted awake, he was still holding the short candle of the lamp of life, with its pea-sized flame. He moved slightly and instantly froze in place. His expression was one of absolute shock.
Slowly, he looked down at his right foot—his sprained right foot.
Kunlun-jun’s body couldn’t be so much as scratched; heat and cold alike posed no threat. It had been six years since Zhao Yunlan’s divine spirit was awakened, and he’d nearly forgotten even the sensation of a mosquito’s bite. How had he managed to sprain his ankle here in the South Sea?
Well, this was new. He grimaced and probed at his ankle. Nothing seemed broken, so he took another ginger stab at moving. Bracing himself with a hand against the wall beside him, he stood up. As he did, he noticed that something else was off: his limbs felt heavy, as if they weren’t his own. Kunlun-jun’s ability to fly and pass through the ground, moving freely through any part of the Three Realms, had disappeared.
What was more, Clarity had stopped ticking, and the talismans in his wallet had all turned into ordinary paper and were completely unresponsive. He couldn’t summon his whip. Even the Soul-Guarding Order, to which he was connected by blood, lay silently in his palm like any regular piece of wood.
Zhao Yunlan held up Fourth Uncle’s lamp of life so he could glance around. Wherever he was, it was extremely desolate. As far as the eye could see, not a single streetlight was lit. Lopsided houses in varying states of disrepair lined the streets, and the air was thick with dust.
It was like an ancient ruin.
He took a few limping steps forward, then had to stop to dump sand out of his shoes. Every breath was a major effort that felt like inhaling needles. Waves of pain stabbed at his heart. In the old days, he might not have been the healthiest mortal around, but he hadn’t had this many problems! Was he just out of practice?
Dragging the weight of his body along, Zhao Yunlan did a loop around the street. His cell phone had no signal, but when he looked, it still displayed the time.
8:45 p.m.
The ham he’d filched before dinner was barely enough to fill the gaps between his teeth. As the pain in his chest and sprained ankle eased, this mortal body began reminding him exactly what it was like to have stomach problems.
A meow came from somewhere. Zhao Yunlan looked up and saw a black cat jump from the withered tree next to him onto the nearest roof. It padded across the top of a dilapidated wall at a leisurely stroll, tail upright. There was no mistaking it: the cat looked like a much younger Daqing, with his neck and waist clearly defined, as Daqing’s had been before he gained weight.
Out of sheer habit, Zhao Yunlan reached out to play with him, whistling in his direction like a pervert. The instant the cat looked over, dark green eyes flashing, Zhao Yunlan saw a paper talisman in his mouth.
But before he could get a good look, the world started spinning. The cat disappeared, and the streets twisted together, contorting as the ground fell out from under his feet. He landed heavily, freshly spraining his right ankle, which had finally stopped hurting.
Zhao Yunlan hissed a curse, then had a sudden thought. He got his phone out again and took another look at the time.
8:35 p.m.
It was now…ten minutes earlier?
Striding through the streets, Zhao Yunlan counted down the time on his phone. Ten minutes later, the black cat appeared again, jumping out from the same place in the same pose. This time, Zhao Yunlan didn’t bother the bizarre little animal. Instead, he leaned against a corner and observed.
The cat, talisman in its mouth, took five steps…and once again, everything began to spin.
Zhao Yunlan was whisked right back to ten minutes earlier. Again.
This repeated two or three more times. Zhao Yunlan hit the point where he didn’t want to stand up anymore—his shoe was too hard to take off.
This world was like a song on repeat—a song that was about ten minutes long, and didn’t take up too much space, and yet he was stuck here as it repeated again and again.
He felt along the wall, then suddenly remembered the weird bubbles that had appeared when he and Shen Wei had been separated.
Bubbles… Time that kept looping…
Abruptly, Zhao Yunlan got to his feet again. After dumping the sand out of his shoes, he walked quickly through the streets. The moment the cat appeared, he tucked the lamp of life between his lips, jogged a few steps, and between putting his hands on the roof and making use of the low wall, he managed to leap up onto the rooftop. He scooped up the black cat, took the talisman from its mouth, and backflipped down toward the ground.
Before he even landed, the time loop reached its end. Zhao Yunlan immediately touched the life lamp’s flame to the talisman, which caught fire. A noise rang out like something shattering. The black cat in his arms melted into smoke.
Zhao Yunlan stumbled a few steps before finding his footing. When he looked back up, he saw that he hadn’t returned to that same starting point. Other things had changed in the street before him too: a streetlight was now on, there was far less dust in the air, and the tree was no longer barren. It boasted only a few leaves, but at least it was alive.
Dusting off his clothes, Zhao Yunlan said, “So that’s what this is. Tch! Here I thought the South Sea actually had something precious, but it turns out it’s just trouble.”