Chapter 141#
The City of Mist · Part Two#
It was a densely intricate map.
The map had fifty entrances in total, and one hundred scenes. The white rabbit’s village and mushroom field where Yu Feichen currently stood was one of those hundred scenes, marked by a simple line-drawn white rabbit. The swamp he had passed through at the very beginning was also a scene, situated right beside Entrance 14.
Beyond that, a scattering of semi-transparent small markers appeared and vanished at random along the routes, following no discernible pattern.
All the routes converged at the exact centre of the map, marked by an upward-pointing triangle with a key symbol drawn inside — its outline matching the old key in his hand.
So that place was the City of Mist that everyone was trying to reach. Every marked scene was a checkpoint; visitors had to pass through layer upon layer of them to get from an entrance to the City of Mist.
The hundred scenes were interconnected, forming countless possible routes. Take the wrong one and you could wander further and further astray, eventually falling at some checkpoint along the way.
It was as though the City of Mist was running a selection process — only those who passed would earn the right to enter.
But with the map in hand, things became considerably clearer. Yu Feichen quickly found the shortest route: heading right and forward from the white rabbit’s village, taking the third fork from the left at seven successive junctions — only one checkpoint stood between him and the city.
When Yu Feichen left the village with the rabbit-skin map, the black bear in the old man’s T-shirt was still practising tai chi. Catching sight of Yu Feichen’s figure, it narrowed its eyes.
“Guest, how is it you’ve come out alone?” The bear’s voice was low and rumbly, a faint growl resonating in its chest, giving off a sense of extreme danger.
Yu Feichen’s expression didn’t shift. “I am the white rabbit.”
The black bear burst into an enlightened laugh. “Ah, I see! Congratulations, white rabbit — you’re off to the City of Mist?”
Yu Feichen: “Yes.”
“Wonderful. You truly are a wise white rabbit. But what is that in your hands?”
Yu Feichen held up the fur side for display. “So I don’t forget that I’m a white rabbit.”
The black bear was greatly heartened.
Yu Feichen departed under cover of night.
Dawn had not yet broken. The road was still thick with mist, the surroundings dim and indistinct — what could faintly be made out was a vast mountain range, with the occasional small town or city scattered through it, blurry as phantom projections. All of it was blocked off by an invisible wall of air, impossible to approach.
Yu Feichen followed the route the map indicated for a long time. The entire way, he encountered no other people or NPCs.
At last, the faint sound of water reached him from ahead. The ground appeared to have been cleaved open by a broad axe — a river flowed calmly through the gap, its banks towering high like a treacherous cliff face. The river was wide; you had to look to the very limit of your vision to make out the other side.
Comparing it against the three-curved-line river symbol on the map — this was the place.
On the bank, a signpost stood quietly, its bright red arrow pointing to the far shore.
He had to cross this river?
Yu Feichen took stock of what he had. An assortment of colourful mushrooms. A sharp knife he’d borrowed from the white rabbit’s home.
He could swim, of course — but not every body of water was worth getting into.
Yu Feichen stepped forward and looked at his reflection in the water.
The reflection looked back at him in silence. The clothing, the appearance — all identical. Yet somewhere in Yu Feichen’s chest, a vague unease rose up, and he couldn’t pin down its source.
He stared straight at the reflection and raised a hand.
The reflection mirrored the gesture exactly. On the surface, nothing appeared wrong.
He frowned slightly and understood.
All along the way, the sky had been heavily overcast, and the water’s surface thick with mist. A normal river in these conditions could not possibly cast back a clear reflection.
So what exactly was that thing in the water, imitating him?
Yu Feichen leaned in closer. As he drew near, the reflected image in the water grew sharper and more defined.
He reached a hand toward the water’s surface. At the instant his fingertips were about to make contact, the grey mist stirred restlessly, and a faint smile crept across the reflection’s face.
Yu Feichen’s own face remained expressionless. A blade flashed from his sleeve — the sharp knife left his hand and plunged straight down into the reflection.
A hoarse shriek erupted from beneath the water. The surface churned, the reflection shattered into fragments and fled into the river’s depths.
The formerly calm river was provoked into rage, heaving up great crashing waves. At the same time, grey mist gathered, and an enormous grey vortex rose up over the river’s surface.
——The river had just become considerably harder to cross.
What was more absurd: after a while, the reflection that had scattered in all directions silently reassembled itself in the water, lingering obstinately and staring up at him.
The knife was gone, but the signpost was still there. Yu Feichen pulled out his third signpost.
If signposts had lives, this one would surely be cursing him out.
The reflection was crudely disrupted by the signpost board and vanished again. Simultaneously there came a sharp hiss — the grey wall surged, and the grey river-mist crawled up the wooden handle, and wherever it passed, the original wooden board disappeared, swallowed entirely by the mist.
If he hadn’t pulled back quickly enough, it wouldn’t have left him even the pole.
“Guest.” A faint, ethereal voice rang out from the centre of the grey vortex. A figure gradually coalesced there — a female form wearing a long grey dress, hair loose and flowing, a religious crown atop her head, surrounded by dense clusters of daffodils.
Yu Feichen would, for now, call her the River Goddess.
“Guest,” the River Goddess said gravely, “why do you drive away your own soul?”
Yu Feichen and the thing that had reassembled itself in the water looked at each other. The reflection’s complexion appeared slightly pale, seemingly weakened by being scattered twice in quick succession.
Yu Feichen: “My soul?”
“Guests are plentiful, yet not everyone has the fortune of reaching the bank of the Mist River, to stand before this sacred river that reflects the soul,” the River Goddess said.
“Is that so.” Yu Feichen said: “May I ask — how does one cross the river?”
“The City of Mist does not welcome false guests. You must prove that you can face your own soul with honesty.”
“And how does one prove that?”
“Kiss it.”
Yu Feichen regarded the reflection in the river in silence.
The reflection regarded him in silence too, appearing to be waiting for a kiss.
Yu Feichen: “That is not my soul.”
The River Goddess: “On what grounds do you say such a thing!”
“If it were my soul,” Yu Feichen said, studying the reflection, “it would not be making things difficult for me.”
The River Goddess: “……You have no heart.”
“Nor do you,” Yu Feichen said. “If I touched the water’s surface, I would be consumed by the grey mist.”
The River Goddess: “I am not that sort of person.”
“You have no reflection,” Yu Feichen said.
What was more, when the River Goddess appeared, his so-called “reflection” had visibly grown weaker. The River Goddess and the reflection were the same kind of thing. The problem would arise precisely if he actually reached out to touch the reflection.
“You can only dwell in the water. You need to claim the lives of enough guests before you can take physical form and enter the City of Mist?” Yu Feichen said evenly.
This was the logic of this wretched place — every NPC was carrying a kill quota.
The River Goddess was left without a word: “……”
“I don’t care what you think.” She spoke coldly. “A living soul must kiss the water’s surface before I will let anyone pass. One is all it takes. If you are unwilling, you may bring someone else.”
Of the three checkpoints so far — the swamp could be crossed if you had your wits about you, fair enough. At the white rabbit checkpoint, he’d had to kill an NPC to obtain the map. At the river checkpoint, if he didn’t want to die himself, he would have to push someone else into the water to cross.
Not that it particularly mattered. Only — it was hard not to find himself wondering: by designing checkpoints like these, what sort of people was the City of Mist trying to select?
Yu Feichen let out a quiet sigh.
He looked at the River Goddess and silently produced several orange mushrooms.
The white rabbit had died too quickly for him to extract the full effects of the warm-coloured mushrooms, but the road had been quiet and uneventful, so he had tested them one by one along the way.
After eating the orange mushroom, his body grew lighter and lighter, until he was floating four or five metres above the ground.
——It was a flight mushroom.
“You can’t leave the water’s surface, can you?”
The River Goddess: “……”
She could only clench her fists in fury and watch as Yu Feichen slowly drifted across the air above the river, then drifted further, and further, until he disappeared at the end of the road.
“I curse you to get snagged in a tree.” She said it as she sank back beneath the surface.
Entrance 14. The swamp.
Grey mist drifted through the air. A figure appeared at the entrance.
He wore a loose black robe with a hood. His appearance fell somewhere between boyish and young adult — silver-white, short curly hair tied in a jaunty little tuft at the back of his head. Beneath the dim, leaden sky, his frost-blue eyes were like clear shards of ice.
He picked up three stones from the ground and threw them separately at the swamp and the man-eating vines, confirming their properties. Then he looked to his right. There was a narrow, deep wedge-shaped hole in the ground — something had been pulled out of it.
Studying the spot, he raised his wrist. A green vine was coiled around it, reaching affectionately toward his cheek.
“Someone pulled out the signpost,” he said, in a calm and certain tone.
The vine curled its leaves.
He sighed lightly, crossed his arms, and leaned back against the invisible air wall behind him.
The night passed slowly. Daylight arrived at its leisure. Pale light spilled over the man-eating vines.
The surrounding scene flickered — the checkpoint refreshed, and a signpost reappeared in the wedge hole from which it had been removed, pointing the way forward.
He didn’t need it anymore, but he had no serviceable weapon at hand.
After a moment’s thought, he pulled the signpost out without any particular qualm.
He walked forward. Unlike in the dark, under daylight the man-eating vines moved with less agility. After a few smooth, fluid dodges, he made his way along the tree trunks and out of the swamp area.
Still remembering the direction of the faint glow he had half-glimpsed in the night, he headed toward the fork on the right.
In the mushroom field, a white rabbit — lacking clothes, hat, and shoes, its limbs all rabbit hooves — was struggling with those hooves to pull mushrooms from the ground: “One, two, three, three, three, four…”
“Oh, guest, let us pick mushrooms together! This time let’s pick some of every colour!” the white rabbit said.
“These are gifts from the City of Mist, to help your journey ahead go more smoothly!”
The harvested mushrooms were sorted by colour and arranged in sequence — a plate of red ones placed at the very front, followed by grey and green.
The white rabbit offered them up with eager, attentive hands: “Try this one — the bright red will give you strength!”
“Is that so.” He smiled lightly, speared a piece of red mushroom, and swallowed it with unhurried grace.
“I can feel it — thank you for your hospitality.” He took another piece.
“Of course — why would I deceive you, beautiful guest? Your face is so lovely.” The white rabbit split its three-lobed mouth into a grin and pushed the grey mushrooms forward. “Try these as well — the grey ones have a wondrous effect too; they’ll make you cleverer.”
Having finished the red mushrooms with elegance, he looked at the grey ones.
“Thank you for your kindness,” he said, “but I am already full.”
The white rabbit was aghast.
Why wasn’t this going according to plan?
Just as it was about to press the guest further, a heavy signpost came crashing straight down onto its head.
——Delivered with no small amount of force, at that, enhanced as it was by however many red mushrooms he’d consumed.
“No… no… foolish human, he deceived me, what he taught me was wrong… foolish… foolish… I curse him… how could this happen…” The white rabbit left behind a fragmented final testament. He raised an eyebrow at the words, then turned his gaze to the human-skin maps on the wall.
A short while later, the rabbit-skin map was in his hands.
His fingers moved across the map. He found the shortest route to the central City of Mist — only one checkpoint required.
But recalling the white rabbit’s dying words, and the signpost that had been pulled from the ground before the swamp, he blinked slowly, and chose the second-shortest route instead — one that required passing through an extra checkpoint.
Distaste.