Chapter 13 — The Shadow Realm

It was no true shadow, but the "reflection" that Amber, walking the edge of the material world in her shadow state, cast into the physical realm.

So crude, so simple—and so powerful. This "Shadow Walk" opened Gao Yang's eyes wide.

Just what was the background of this half-elf thief?

Before Gao Yang could form any more questions, Amber's figure abruptly reappeared in the air. She came running toward them in a great hurry; Gao Yang had just opened his mouth to ask what was happening when she seized him by the arm and gave a hard yank.

Gao Yang stumbled, then felt himself pass through a layer of cold, insubstantial barrier—and when his vision focused again, the world around him had changed completely.

Everything had lost its color; between heaven and earth there remained only black and white. A thin mist shrouded the world—cold mist, yet without the life-stealing power of the wraith-mist.

Gao Yang looked around and found that the dense forest was gone. Yet the ground about him was covered with one withered tree stump after another, and the stumps stood exactly where the trees had stood in the woods.

And everyone, Heidi included, was standing not far from him—yet they stood rigid and motionless in place, as though struck by a petrification spell.

Rebecca stood closest to Gao Yang. She was frozen in a posture of clutching her staff, her face tense—but her eyes held no light at all. Her body had become a gray-white "statue," staring emptily ahead, the texture of her skin like some coarse ceramic ware.

Threads of black mist were rising from the ground nearby, burrowing into their bodies and etching fine cracks across their ceramic-like flesh.

The eerie, horrifying sight made Gao Yang instinctively look down at his own hands. Only after confirming that they were still human limbs did he let out a small breath of relief. Then he tightened his grip on the Pathfinder longsword and strode quickly toward Rebecca, ready to cut apart those plainly harmful black vapors.

But he had gone barely half a step when Amber suddenly appeared at his side, the half-elf girl seizing his arm in a tight grip: "Don't go near. Outside force can't help them--one misstep and you'll only make it worse."

Gao Yang stared in shock at the Amber of this moment. In this world of black and white, she had taken on an entirely different form.

Her hair had grown longer, floating behind her as though freed from gravity, and those pale brown eyes were now brimming with a faint golden radiance. A mass of black smoke like a flame gathered at her feet, endlessly repeating its cycle of coalescing and dispersing.

Nothing in Gao Yang Cecil's memories could explain the sight before him either.

"Don't ask me too much. If you ask and I don't answer, it'll be awkward--especially since I just dug up your grave. That'd give me a guilty conscience," Amber said rapidly. "We don't have much time. This is my first time entering a place this 'deep' myself, and dragging you along on top of that, who knows how long it can hold."

"What is this place?" Gao Yang asked the question he cared about most.

"The Shadow Realm," Amber said flatly, and jerked her chin toward where Heidi and the others stood. "Look."

That was where Betty and the soldiers had been standing at the start, but one of the soldiers had now collapsed to the ground, reduced to countless pale fragments--truly like a shattered piece of porcelain. The others, like Rebecca, still held the postures and expressions they had worn at the moment they touched the wraith mist.

Only at the feet of little maid Betty was there a row of tiny, faintly glowing footprints stretching away into the distance...