Chapter 18
Chapter 18
The rust-eaten iron gate swung shut behind them without a sound, sealing out the last sliver of blood-red sunset. The CAMCC plain-clothes driver who had brought them had already vanished, as if he’d never existed, leaving only Yun Xi and Milu standing alone beneath the colossal shadow of Xinghui Amusement Park.
The air was so dead it felt suffocating. No summer insects, no evening breeze—only the faint, whimpering creak of warped tin sheets shuddering in the ghost of a draft, playing a warped funeral dirge for this forgotten playground. The afterglow smeared the silhouettes of the broken rides like dried blood, offering no warmth, only menace.
Yun Xi drew a deep breath; the cheap respirator tasted of plastic, dust and rust, churning her stomach—part nerves, part the dry, throat-scraping “employee-welfare” energy bar she’d wolfed down in the van. She stepped onto the grit-coated ground; the tiny stones crunched beneath her shoe.
Milu, a frightened chick clutching a staff almost as tall as herself, stuck to Yun Xi’s heels. The breeze stirred her silver hair; her small face was taut, green eyes brimming with dread.
“Mrs. Yun Xi, Miss Milu.” The voice was flat as an automated station announcement—the driver. He held out two equally cheap respirators. “Internal air quality poor; advised to wear. Comms bracelets activated; keep them on. Good luck.” Before the words finished, the black sedan melted into the shadows like a ghost.
Only the two of them remained, facing the half-open, rust-fanged maw of the park gate.
“......” Yun Xi glanced at the toy-store-quality mask in her hand, then at the gloom beyond the gate. The corner of her mouth twitched. “Xiao Milu, what d’you say we sprint back and tell Wei Bro the mission’s cancelled? Think the CAMCC poker-faces would hunt us to the ends of the earth and garnish our bubble-tea fund?”
“Wuu...” Milu shuddered, nearly dropping her staff. A muffled, teary voice came from behind her mask. “S-Senior Yun Xi... d-don’t joke... Milu is scared...”
“Cough—just lightening the mood.” Yun Xi forced a laugh, snapping the ridiculous mask over her face. The reek of plastic hit like a wall. “Onward—for bubble tea! For rent! Charge!” She strode through the rotting gate like a prisoner to the gallows.
The instant she crossed the threshold—
The Eternal Dream: Prime Abyss Bracelet on her wrist gave a faint, icy tickle, as if grains of sand were slipping across her skin. Not pain—a silent alarm ringing in her soul.
“Wuu...” Milu choked back a cry. The crystal atop her oak staff, normally a soft green, flared and pulsed like a panic-struck firefly, strobing across her pale cheeks.
“Xing Dian? Yue Fei?” Yun Xi called softly.
An indigo orb materialised on her shoulder—Xing Dian—its usually playful flame now a cold, steady burner. Meanwhile the graceful white cat-shadow, Yue Fei, melted into the lengthened darkness at Yun Xi’s feet, leaving a cool thought: Master, the spacetime fabric here is twisted; residue density extreme, emotional contamination off the charts. Listen for the echo.
Yun Xi steadied herself, shoved down the screaming urge to flee, and closed her eyes. Recalling Ancestor’s half-learnt lesson, she sent invisible feelers outward—not searching for malice, but for the... voices trapped in this frozen place.
Boom—!
A torrent of indescribable noise flooded her senses. Not sound, but shards—jagged, stretched, endless:
Children’s laughter, warped like a broken record skipping at the highest note, curling into sobs...
The carousel’s cheerful motor now a death-rattle—clack... screech... clack—locked on a single broken note...
Burnt-sweet popcorn turning rancid in the same breath, mixing with rust and the stink of dust-coated syrup...
And beneath it all, a viscous dread—as though time itself had been slammed on pause, kneaded into a ball and stuffed with mouldy, despair-soaked memories.
“Ugh!” Yun Xi’s eyes snapped open; she lurched back, yanked off the mask and gulped the relatively ‘fresh’ air. “So this is the Shadowmare source? The ‘echo’ after a world-line dies? Ancestor’s ‘expired lollipop’ was a million times tastier!”
“S-Senior Yun Xi! Are you okay?” Milu clutched her arm; the staff’s light flickered wildly.
“Peachy—just got a faceful of psychic sewage.” Yun Xi raised the CAMCC tablet. A crimson blot pulsed over the carousel zone like a bloody eye. “Target one: Carousel. Stick close, flashlight on! Xing Dian, cover us!”
“Mm!” Milu clicked on the high-power torch Wei Wu had shoved into their packs. A white blade of light carved through the dusk, pushing back a finger’s breadth of dread.
The beam revealed a nightmare fresco.
The once-cheerful platform lay buried under burial-shroud dust and rust. Painted horses flaked like leprous skin, revealing black-rotted wood and bloody corrosion. The central axle, a misshapen metal tumour, declared time forever stuck.
Worse—the horses themselves.
Several were draped in slick, living tar. The stuff oozed and pulsed, secreting black slime that accelerated rot wherever it crawled. Where eyes should be, two pits of deeper dark stared, empty yet accusing, whispering eternal abandonment.
The sickly sweet stench—rust plus stale sugar—was thick enough to chew.
“Urp...” Milu gagged, face paper-white, staff-light wobbling. “S-Senior Yun Xi... are those the Shadowmares we have to fight?”
“Yep—SAN-draining horrors, incoming.” Yun Xi gripped her bracelet. Ancestor’s ‘practice dummies’? More like mini-Cthulhus. “Xing Dian—see the unicorn on the left, the liveliest blob? Tag it with a Purification Light—test the waters!”
“Roger! Filth, meet purity!” The indigo orb shrank, then spat a fist-sized comet of violet-white energy. It struck dead-centre.
Sss—!
The blob writhed, venting a soundless shriek that clawed inside their skulls. Black vapour rose; the tar blistered—and instantly drew more of itself from the air, the wood, the rust. Two seconds later the wound was filled, the Shadowmare larger... and angrier.
“Seriously? Self-heal plus enrage?” Yun Xi’s stomach dropped. “Ancestor, your script’s broken! The dummy’s got a regen aura and it’s leeching the terrain!”
A lazy, silvery laugh echoed in her mind—Meng Yun Xi. Aww~ Impatient little me~ (●ˇ∀ˇ●) ✧
See? They’re not separate monsters—they’re the stubborn residue of this zone’s obliterated ‘Happy Hour’ world-line. Like dried syrup at the bottom of a cracked bowl. Scrape the surface and you just pull up more goo.
You have to pry up the spots where the syrup is glued to the bowl. The corroded joints—those rust-locked gears—those are their weak ‘roots’. Slip your little paw (a.k.a. spacetime power) under the rusted cog... and nudge.
“Nudge a rusted gear?” Yun Xi stared at the axle fused with the platform. “With what—Wei Bro’s pocket knife?”
“Idiot Master!” Yue Fei’s cool voice cut in. “She means use the bracelet’s Time Stardust to loosen the node in the temporal layer—not physical rust! Feel the ‘stuck’ moment, then tickle it free!”
Yun Xi exhaled through the stink and the staring eye-sockets, focusing on a horse’s foreleg where tar, rust and wood met. Eyes shut, she dredged up that sensation of time turned to glue, and threaded a mote of star-dust toward the joint.
Ping—
A hair-line chime rang out as some ancient cog gave a millimetre. The tar convulsed, edges turning smoky—its grip slipping.
“Now—Xing Dian!”
A thicker lance of violet light speared the weakened blob. No regeneration this time—only a silent howl and a shower of black ash. Even the rust on the joint looked a shade less tired.
“We did it!” Yun Xi’s heart lifted; tactics beat brute force.
“Senior Yun Xi is amazing!” Milu whisper-hopped, staff glowing steady.
Victory was brief.
A second Shadowmare on the canopy bracket detached like a flung bomb of tar, shrieking straight at Milu—who stood spotlighted, cheering.
“Xiao Milu—down!” Yun Xi’s body lagged behind her panic. Xing Dian’s cannon was still recharging.
Milu’s scream locked every spell in her brain; instinct shoved the oak staff up like a shield.
Boom—!
The crystal blazed moon-white, birthing a hemispheric shield of star-cooled silver. The Shadowmare splattered against it, sizzling, thinning, slowing to nightmare crawl. A final violet pellet from Xing Dian punched through its core and it dissolved into soot.
The shield faded. Milu cracked one eye open to see Yun Xi staring at her—surprised, proud, unguarded.
“Nice work, Xiao Milu. That light—saved us both.”
Milu gazed from the staff to Yun Xi, fear draining, something warmer taking its place. She straightened, thin shoulders squaring.
“Mm!”