Chapter 142#
The Mist — Part Three#
Yu Feichen had been hanging in the tree for a full hour.
Truth be told, he hadn’t wanted to keep drifting after crossing the river. The flying mushroom made him feel like a sluggish balloon — not only did it move slowly, but he had no way to steer properly. The wind would blow him far off course, and when he drifted too far, an invisible air wall would block him, sending him stumbling forward along its edge.
When he finally got caught in the tree, Yu Feichen actually felt relieved.
He calmly grabbed hold of a branch, used the leverage to lie back, and decided to wait there until the flying mushroom’s effect wore off.
At last, that buoyant lightness slowly faded away.
Just then, the scene around him suddenly lurched. A vast grey mist rolled in, swallowing the surroundings whole until they dissolved into nothing. The road ahead was smothered in thick fog, impossible to make out.
He had already passed through the river checkpoint. By rights, walking straight ahead along this road should have carried him uneventfully to the destination. But clearly something had changed.
It occurred to him that the map route would randomly spawn certain scenes. He opened the rabbit-skin map, and sure enough — at the position where he currently stood — a translucent sword icon had appeared where none had been before.
Would a randomly spawned scene be any different from a fixed checkpoint? Just then, Yu Feichen spotted a column of black-armoured cavalry riding slowly toward him from the distance, flanking a carriage at the centre of the formation. Every rider wore heavy warrior plate armour, their faces entirely covered by iron-black visors.
They were translucent. Less like solid figures, more like apparitions — ghostly illusions.
Hooves beat swiftly against the ground, and the procession passed the great tree where he was hiding. They were moving fast, yet gradually slowed — somewhere ahead in the grey mist lay an invisible resistance that prevented them from pressing forward.
The lead rider reined his horse to a halt and thrust his longsword into the mist, but it was like striking cotton. The fog was entirely unaffected.
The rider dismounted, and in the instant he landed, his movements faltered ever so slightly. Yu Feichen’s gaze sharpened — he could see blood seeping through the gaps in the black armour.
He was wounded.
Looking at the rest of the cavalry, they were all injured to varying degrees.
The black-armoured rider said to the others: “We’ve reached the boundary seal. We stop here.”
He spoke in an archaic and elegant tongue. Yu Feichen found it faintly familiar, though he couldn’t place where he’d heard it before. And it sounded nothing like the language of the White Rabbit, the Black Bear, or the River God — it belonged to an entirely different system.
From behind the curtain of branches, Yu Feichen continued watching. The well-trained cavalry fanned out around the perimeter, yet none of them could break free of the mist’s encirclement.
Then a strange rustling sound reached his ears.
“On guard!”
The riders instantly drew their swords and closed ranks around the central carriage.
From the direction they had come, great churning masses of dark shadow-creatures surged forward, bearing down on them in pursuit.
“Hold them!”
A dozen or so riders charged toward the creatures on horseback, engaging them in fierce combat.
Strangely, these monsters looked somehow familiar to Yu Feichen.
In the Butterfly People’s mountain range in Landon Warren, he had encountered monsters formed from butterfly people whose souls were incomplete — what he was seeing now bore a striking resemblance.
The riders who had charged out were holding the creatures at bay for now. The rest attempted to push through the mist, but it was no use.
The 36 Structures of Instances — the knowledge orb had mentioned that when the background plot of an instance reaches a stalemate, it means the time has come for the player to make their entrance.
And right on cue, the flying mushroom’s effect wore off completely, and Yu Feichen dropped from the tree.
The lead rider spun around sharply and levelled his longsword at him: “Who are you?”
Yu Feichen: “Just passing through.”
“Where are you going?”
“The City of Mist.”
“The City of Mist?” the black rider said. “What is that?”
He turned to another rider beside him: “Do you know?”
“I don’t.”
“Neither do I.”
NPCs from the City of Mist who didn’t know what the City of Mist was — completely unlike any he’d met before.
So Yu Feichen asked: “Where are you going?”
“We are going to the Central Sanctum.”
— Now it was Yu Feichen’s turn not to know what the “Central Sanctum” was.
Yu Feichen: “And where is that?”
The rider pointed at the road obscured by the mist: “Straight ahead along this path. It’s the final stretch.”
The road Yu Feichen needed to travel was this very same one.
Did the rider’s “Central Sanctum” have something to do with the City of Mist?
Yu Feichen walked toward the sheet of mist that had stopped the black riders — and felt no resistance whatsoever.
He passed straight through it without any obstruction. The road ahead resumed its ordinary appearance, stretching out before him.
So that meant — if he simply walked forward and ignored this strange random scene, he could still reach the City of Mist without any trouble?
Yu Feichen frowned, mulled it over for a moment, then stepped back the way he had come.
Seeing him move freely back and forth, the black rider’s gaze sharpened: “You can pass through the Sanctum’s boundary seal — are you the Sanctum Knight sent to receive us? Why are there only one of you?”
Yu Feichen had no idea what the rider was talking about, but he followed the thread: “That’s right.”
The black rider was not deceived.
“You don’t seem the type. You said you were only passing through, and you clearly have no idea what the Central Sanctum is.”
This NPC’s intelligence was a cut above the previous ones.
Yu Feichen took a quick stock of his own appearance.
He really didn’t look the part. No horse. No sword. None of a knight’s expected bearing — such as, for instance, not casually pulling up road signs.
Yu Feichen’s tone remained entirely unruffled: “The matter is grave. I had to test your identities.”
The rider’s brow furrowed: “I’m sorry — the matter is grave on my side as well, and I must confirm your identity beyond doubt. Then please recite the Knight’s Oath.”
At the words Knight’s Oath, something shifted in Yu Feichen’s mind. A faint, distant dizziness washed over him.
In that split second of disorientation, the scene around him seemed to change — no longer the dim, fog-drenched field, but somewhere clean and sacred and pure, some kind of… some kind of place.
The vision vanished as quickly as it came.
He had passed through so many worlds and heard the Knight’s Oath in at least a dozen versions. He had no idea which one the black rider wanted.
The dizziness continued. It was as if he had lost control of his own body. Yu Feichen’s voice came out slightly hoarse: “Please give me the opening line.”
“Very well,” said the rider. “The Knight’s Oath, first article: I swear to treat the weak with kindness.”
The sense of unreality swept over him again, and Yu Feichen heard words he had never consciously known rise from his own mouth, ghost-like: “I swear to help any who call upon me for aid.”
Judging by the black rider’s reaction, he had not gone wrong.
The next line surfaced in his mind just as naturally.
“I swear to fight for those without weapons or power.”
“……”
His head ached.
“I swear… to love what I love until death.”
As the final vow fell from his lips, the black rider lowered the carriage steps, and from within helped down a young figure cloaked in black.
More accurately — a child.
Slender and slight, with the build of someone eleven or twelve years old. Beneath the hood of the cloak spilled a few locks of radiant golden hair.
Like the black riders, the child’s silhouette was translucent — more apparition than person.
Yu Feichen looked at the child. Across the drifting grey mist, he met a pair of calm, gold-green eyes.
He stilled, and didn’t move.
Until the black rider placed the child’s hand into his.
“He will be the future master of the Sanctum. All living things shall bow before him; all power shall pass through his hands,” the rider said. “We will remain here to hold off the enemy. You must bring him safely to the Central Sanctum. You must swear — swear that every step of the way you will protect him with your life — quickly!”
The shadow creatures came shrieking toward them.
“I swear,” Yu Feichen said evenly.
Armour clashed and rang. The black rider released the child’s hand. Yu Feichen swung onto the horse with the child in his arms, shielding him against his chest, and galloped forward.
But the distance was so short — only a few heartbeats — before a solemn and imposing city gate emerged from the swirling mist, standing abruptly at the end of the road.
And at that same moment, the figure in his arms grew even more ethereal, shifting from translucent to utterly incorporeal — and continuing to fade.
Yu Feichen could almost hear his own heartbeat.
“What is your name?” he said.
But the child only slowly shook his head.
An instant later, he dissolved into the mist, as though he had never existed at all.
Yu Feichen opened the map. The translucent sword marker had vanished without a trace.
Why… why did it look so much like—
What exactly had he just encountered?
He had no answers. Yu Feichen arrived before the city gate. In its surface was an indentation shaped like a keyhole. He took out the old silver key Anfi had given him — the shape was a perfect match.
Before handing over the key, Anfi had said: I need you to go somewhere. There, you will find the greatest enemy of my life.
— Yu Feichen slowly set the key into the hollow.
A deep, resonant clunk of heavy mechanisms, and the city gate began to open.
In the last moment before the mist parted, a voice drifted through his mind — pale and distant, cold as smoke.
“Welcome back to the City of Mist.”