Chapter Text
The sky over Gusu Lan burned with a sickly red that no sky should ever have. It wasn't the red of a sunset, nor that of festive lanterns. It was the red of something wrong, something that didn't belong to any world they knew.
Bái Méixuě ran barefoot through the distorted corridors of the school, her sleeping robes fluttering behind her like white flags of surrender that refused to fall. The floor beneath her feet was cold, colder than it should be, and every step rang with an echo that didn't match her movements.
"Time?!" she shouted over her shoulder, her voice cracking from lack of air.
Nie Huaisang, his normally perfectly groomed hair now plastered to his forehead by sweat, frantically checked the only clock that worked in that cursed place—the modified ancient sundial in Gusu Lan’s main courtyard, except here, it marked something completely different.
"Eight minutes!" he replied in a high-pitched voice. "There are only eight damn minutes left!"
"Just a little longer..." Bai Meixue muttered to herself, though she wasn't sure if she was saying it to motivate herself or to convince herself they could make it. Again. Just like the thirteen nights before.
"They're getting closer!" Jiang Cheng’s shout behind them made everyone instinctively speed up. No one turned to look. After two weeks, they had all learned that looking back meant losing precious speed. And losing speed meant...
Better not to think about that.
Wei Wuxian, running alongside Bai Méixuě in his own pajamas—ridiculously decorated with small embroidered rabbits that Jiang Yanli had made for him—slipped slightly on a corner.
"Shit, shit, shit!" he gasped, regaining his balance. "Why does this place always have to be so slippery?"
"Because the universe hates us!" Bai Méixuě replied breathlessly. "Or because this is a collective nightmare! Pick your favorite!"
Sun Yue, running with the most dignified posture one can maintain while fleeing nightmare creatures in pajamas, intervened with a controlled voice despite the evident panic in her eyes: "The carriage graveyard is around the corner. If we arrive—"
"When we arrive," Lan Zhan corrected, running by her side, his expression inscrutable but with a tension in his jaw that betrayed the fear he would never admit to feeling.
"Optimism," gasped Jin Zixuan, who normally would never let himself be seen in pajamas in front of anyone, let alone running as if his life depended on it. Because, well, it did. "That's... new for you... Lan Zhan..."
They rounded the last corner and the carriage graveyard appeared before them: a ghostly collection of old Gusu Lan buses, abandoned decades ago, covered in vines that glowed here with an unnatural greenish radiance. The broken windows reflected that sickly red sky like empty eyes.
"There!" Wei Wuxian pointed toward the nearest bus. "The one with the half-open door!"
They ran toward it, their barefoot steps hitting the uneven ground of the graveyard. Méixuě could feel the stones digging into her soles, but the pain was secondary. Pain was preferable to what would come if they didn't make it.
Behind them, that sound started again. It wasn't a roar. It wasn't a scream. It was something in between, something that made their teeth ache and their ears ring, a sound only they could hear and that reminded them every night why they couldn't tell anyone about this. How would you explain a sound that makes your soul want to leave your body but that no one else can perceive?
"The door!" Wei Wuxian yelled as they all piled into the bus. "Someone close the damn door!"
Lan Zhan, the last to enter, slammed the door shut with a metallic screech that echoed in the confined space. Immediately, the seven of them collapsed into the abandoned seats, covered in dust and torn fabric.
"That was horrible..." Jiang Cheng groaned, his normally proud face now pale and sweaty. "Worse than yesterday. Definitely worse than yesterday."
"You said the same thing yesterday," Nie Huaisang murmured, fanning himself frantically with his hand even though the air inside the bus was strangely cold.
"Because every night is worse than the one before!" Jiang Cheng snapped, his voice rising in pitch. "That's literally—"
"It stopped making noise..." Bai Méixuě interrupted, her voice barely a whisper.
Everyone froze. The sudden silence was somehow worse than the sound. Because silence meant the thing was thinking.
"Maybe it gave up or something..." Wei Wuxian began, but his voice cut off abruptly.
The creature had just entered the bus.
It hadn't opened the door. It hadn't broken any windows. It was simply there suddenly, at the front of the bus near the driver’s seat. Its shape was wrong, all angles that shouldn't exist, shadows that moved independently of any light source. And that smile. That white and far too wide smile on what might have been its face.
Instinctively, the seven huddled together at the back of the bus. Méixuě felt Sun Yue’s hand grab her arm with surprising strength. Wei Wuxian was trembling against her other side. Jiang Cheng had squeezed his eyes shut. Nie Huaisang was muttering something that could have been a prayer or a curse. Jin Zixuan had both hands clenched into white-knuckled fists. Lan Zhan, despite his controlled expression, had erratic breathing.
"Can we get out through the back door?" Méixuě asked, her voice surprisingly calm considering she was terrified.
"There's another carriage behind us!" Wei Wuxian replied, pointing to the rear window where, indeed, another bus completely blocked the exit. "We're trapped!"
"What do we do?!" Nie Huaisang cried out, his composure finally breaking completely.
Wei Wuxian, with that dark humor that surfaced in the worst moments, simply said: "Die."
"Wei Wuxian!" Jiang Cheng shouted.
"Wei Ying!" Bai Meixue and Lan Zhan scolded him simultaneously, which in any other circumstance would have been funny.
The creature took a step toward them. Then another. The seven hugged each other tighter, closing their eyes to the inevitable.
Bai Meixue felt the cold approaching. She smelled that scent of something rotten, of dead flowers and rusted metal. She felt—
Bai Méixuě sat up abruptly in her bed, panting as if she had just run miles. Sweat soaked her real pajamas—not the robes from the other place, but her real pajamas, in her real room, in the real Yunmeng Jiang.
The grayish light of dawn was beginning to filter through the window. She had survived. Again.
She brought her trembling hands to her face, feeling the dark circles under her eyes that she knew were darker than ever. Two weeks. Fourteen nights of this. And every night, promising themselves they would tell someone. And every morning, remembering exactly how it would sound: "We teleport every midnight to an unknown world where shadow creatures with eerie smiles chase us and only we can hear them and we can barely defend ourselves."
Yeah. Immediate seclusion. Or worse, exorcism.
"That was total crap," she groaned aloud to her empty room.
With automatic movements born of fourteen identical mornings, she pulled out the communication talisman—one that Wei Wuxian had modified to work between the different sects without the adults noticing. The small array glowed softly, showing the avatars of her companions in misery.
Huaisang: are you guys okay?
Bai Meixue sent a thumbs up, too tired for real words.
Wei Wuxian: we made it out.
Jin Zixuan: physically, yes.
Sun Yue: mentally, no.
Bai Meixue almost smiled at that. Sun Yue being sarcastic was a sign that things were truly bad.
Lan Zhan: Did anyone do the homework?
Bai Méixuě slowly turned her head toward her desk. The piles of untouched scrolls looked back at her accusingly. Spiritual cultivation theory. Advanced talisman composition. History of the cultivation wars. Calligraphy. All undone. Again.
She made a face of disgust and flopped back onto the bed, pulling her blue blanket over her head as if that could make her responsibilities disappear.
Wei Wuxian: Homework?
Bai Méixuě: Screw it.
Jiang Cheng: X2.
Huaisang: X3
Jin Zixuan: My teachers are going to kill me.
Bai Meixue: Welcome to the club. You've almost reached our "disaster student" level.
Wei Wuxian: Hey, we INVENTED that level.
Jiang Cheng: Not something to be proud of, idiot.
Sun Yue: Jiang Cheng is right. We need to find a way to... to deal with this. We can't go on like this.
Lan Zhan: Agreed. This is not sustainable.
Nie Huaisang: And what do you suggest? Telling Alan Qiren that every night we teleport to a nightmare dimension? Because personally, I'd rather take my chances with the shadow creatures.
Jin Zixuan: Huaisang has a point.
Bai Meixue : A horrible but valid point.
There was a long pause in the chat. Bai Meixue could imagine them all in their respective rooms, with identical dark circles, contemplating the same impossible reality.
Wei Wuxian: What if we try to stay awake tonight? You know, if we don't fall asleep, maybe we won't...
Jiang Cheng: We already tried that. Night five. Remember?
Wei Wuxian: Ah. Right.
Huaisang: We passed out at midnight anyway and woke up THERE. Except we were even more disoriented.
Bai Meixue: And that was the night it almost caught us in the hallways. Thanks for reminding me of that extra trauma.
Sun Yue: So staying awake doesn't work. Protective talismans?
Lan Zhan: Night seven. They didn't work.
Jin Zixuan: Deep meditation?
Méixuě: Night nine. It still transported us.
Wei Wuxian: Tying ourselves to our beds?
Jiang Cheng: SERIOUSLY?
Wei Wuxian: It was just a suggestion!
Bai Méixuě: A stupid suggestion.
Huaisang: All of our suggestions have been stupid. That’s the problem.
Another heavy silence fell over the chat. Méixuě stared at the ceiling of her room, counting the cracks she had memorized during countless mornings of post-nightmare insomnia.
Sun Yue: What if... we research it? There has to be something in the libraries. Some record of similar phenomena.
Lan Zhan: I have been searching. There is nothing that matches this exactly.
Méixuě: Of course not. Because we're special. In the worst possible way.
Jin Zixuan: Do you think this has to do with... with something we did? Like a punishment?
Wei Wuxian: What could the SEVEN of us have done to deserve this? Besides, Lan Zhan and Sun Yue follow every rule. If this were karmic punishment, they should be safe.
Jiang Cheng: Unless it’s contagious. Like a shared curse.
Huaisang: Great. That idea isn't going to let me sleep. Oh wait, I can't sleep anyway.
Bai Méixuě: Technically we do sleep. It’s just not... you know... restful.
Sun Yue: Bai Meixue, that doesn't help.
Bai Méixuě: I know. Sorry. I'm tired and my filters died like ten nights ago.
Wei Wuxian: We're all at that point.
Lan Zhan: I propose we meet after lunch. In the back pavilion. Where no one will hear us.
Jin Zixuan: Agreed. We need a real plan.
Jiang Cheng: And something different from "run like crazy and hope we don't die"?
Bai Méixuě: That’s been a surprisingly effective plan so far.
Huaisang: Until it isn't.
That uncomfortable truth floated in the chat without an answer. Because they all knew Huaisang was right. Every night, the creatures became faster, smarter, more persistent. It was only a matter of time before...
Wei Wuxian: Alright. Back pavilion. After lunch. Everyone there.
Sun Yue: Confirmed.
Lan Zhan: Mn.
Jin Zixuan: I'll be there.
Jiang Cheng: I guess.
Huaisang: If I don't fall asleep in class first.
Méixuě: X2 on the falling asleep part.
Wei Wuxian: X3.
Jiang Cheng: You're going to get us punished.
Méixuě: Jiang Cheng, honey, at this point punishment would be an UPGRADE.
Jiang Cheng: Don't call me honey.
Méixuě: Sweetheart? Darling?
Jiang Cheng: I HATE YOU.
Wei Wuxian: Now say it without crying.
Jiang Cheng: BOTH OF YOU ARE UNBEARABLE.
Sun Yue: Bai Méixuě, stop teasing Jiang Wanyin
Bai Méixuě felt a strange warmth in her chest at Sun Yue’s gentle scolding. It wasn't the first time she had noticed that when Sun Yue spoke directly to her, something in her... calmed down. It was weird. And confusing. And definitely not something she had the energy to think about now.
Bai Meixue: Yes, mother.
Sun Yue: I am not your mother.
Bai Méixuě: No, but you have that "I'm disappointed in you" vibe that really works.
Wei Wuxian: HAHAHA it's true. Sun Yue has the same tone Lan Qiren uses.
Lan Zhan: Do not compare my sister to Uncle.
Sun Yue: Grateful, brother.
Huaisang: Can we get back to the topic of how to survive? I like this group dynamic and all, but I'd prefer we lasted long enough to keep having it.
Jin Zixuan: Fair point. See you after lunch then.
Wei Wuxian: Unless we fall asleep in our soup.
Bai Méixuě: Death by drowning in soup. What a way to go.
Jiang Cheng: CAN YOU STOP TALKING ABOUT DEATH CASUALLY?
Bai Méixuě: It’s a coping strategy.
Wei Wuxian: A bad one.
Bai Meixue: But it’s OUR bad strategy.
Sun Yue: Rest as much as you can. See you soon.
The chat went silent after that. Bai Meixue left the talisman on her nightstand and stared at the ceiling again. Outside, she could hear the clan waking up: hurried footsteps, voices calling for breakfast, the clinking of swords in morning practice.
Normal life. A life that went on without knowing that seven of its young cultivators were dealing with something no one would believe.
She closed her eyes, but not to sleep. She no longer remembered what it felt like to truly sleep, without fear, without knowing that at midnight she would be dragged back to that place.
"We just have to survive one more night," she whispered to the emptiness of her room. "Just one more."
It was the same lie she told herself every morning.
And like every morning, she almost believed it.
—
Bai Meixue dragged herself through the corridors of Gusu Lan as if every step required the energy of climbing a mountain. Her legs felt as if they were made of lead, and her dark circles—God, her dark circles—were so dark and deep they looked like they had been painted with cultivation ink. If it were up to her, she would be lying in her bed, wrapped in her blue blanket, begging the universe to let her sleep just one night without interruptions. Just one. She wasn't asking for much.
But no. Here she was. Crawling to Lan Qiren's class like a resentful spirit on the way to its own curse.
Upon reaching the classroom door, she saw her little group of nocturnal misery companions already inside. Jin Zixuan literally had his face flattened against the wooden table, his arms hanging at his sides as if he had lost all will to live. Sun Yue—the perfect, composed, ever-elegant Sun Yue—had her mouth slightly open and her eyes blank, staring at the ceiling with an expression that could only be described as "total dissociation from reality." And Lan Zhan, poor Lan Zhan, was sitting rigidly upright, but his eyes were blinking every three seconds in a losing battle against sleep, his head making small jerking motions forward before he forced himself to straighten up again.
It was like watching three statues of cultivators in different stages of collapse.
Behind her, Wei Wuxian, Jiang Cheng, and Nie Huaisang entered with the same energy level as freshly raised corpses. Normally—back in those distant and mythical days of two weeks ago—they would have entered joking, or at least with some kind of cultivator's dignity. Now they just... existed. Barely.
Nie Huaisang tripped over his own feet and grabbed the doorframe to keep from falling.
"Move me to the graveyard already," Wei Wuxian muttered in a thick voice. "At least there I could rest in peace."
"Shut up," Jiang Cheng growled with no real energy behind the word. "If I'm going to die, I'd rather do it without hearing your voice."
"How sweet, brother. I'm moved."
Bai Meixue followed them inside, her bare feet—because she had forgotten to put on proper boots, again—dragging across the cold floor. She slumped into her usual seat next to Wei Wuxian, and her head immediately sought the table surface as if it were a magnet.
Lan Qiren entered moments later, his white robes impeccable, his posture perfect, his expression of perpetual disappointment already firmly installed on his face. He opened his mouth to begin the class but stopped abruptly when his eyes swept the room.
The silence was long. Uncomfortable. Full of judgment.
"...Good morning," he finally said, his voice heavy with an unspoken question: What on earth happened to you all?
No one replied. Jin Zixuan didn't even lift his face from the table. Sun Yue blinked slowly, as if she were processing the concept of "good morning" from a distant dimension. Lan Zhan made a superhuman effort and nodded slightly.
Wei Wuxian raised a hand in a weak wave that died halfway.
Lan Qiren cleared his throat. "Present your homework."
Absolute silence.
More silence.
A silence so deep you could hear the dust settling on the ancient books.
"No one?" Lan Qiren asked, his eyebrow arching dangerously. "None of you completed the assignment?"
Bai Meixue tried to formulate a response. She really did. But her brain was wrapped in thick fog, and words like "homework" and "responsibility" seemed like abstract concepts from a reality she no longer inhabited.
"Master Lan Qiren," Wei Wuxian began in a hoarse voice, "you see, there were... circumstances..."
"Extenuating ones," Nie Huaisang added weakly.
"Very extenuating," Jiang Cheng agreed.
"Extremely extenuating," Bai Meixue murmured against the table.
Lan Qiren looked at them all with an expression that suggested he was reconsidering every life decision that had led him to this moment. "Circumstances... are no excuse for—"
He didn't finish the sentence because Jin Zixuan began to snore. Softly at first, then louder.
Sun Yue, in a move that defied all remaining Lan composure in her body, simply let her head drop forward, her arms falling to her sides.
Lan Zhan fought valiantly for another thirty seconds before his forehead softly met his desk.
"What...?" Lan Qiren stared at the scene as if he had entered an alternate dimension. "Are you... are you all...?"
Bai Meixue felt her own eyelids closing. She fought it. She really did. But it was like trying to hold back a flood with bare hands. Sleep was an unstoppable force, a dark wave dragging her down, and as much as her mind screamed, "No! It's Lan Qiren's class! We'll be punished!", her body simply... gave up.
The last thing she heard before the darkness claimed her was Lan Qiren’s strangled voice: "What kind of behavior is—!?"
"Damn, I fell asleep."
Bai Meixue woke up with a start, her heart racing, half-expecting to see the red sky and the shadow creatures. But no. She was in the classroom. Daylight was coming through the windows. It was... it was the real world.
She looked around and saw she wasn't the only one. Everyone else was waking up too, disoriented, with expressions of panic that quickly turned into resigned exhaustion.
Wei Wuxian rubbed his eyes. "How long...?"
"Twenty minutes," Lan Qiren replied in an extremely controlled voice—the kind of control that only comes from being on the verge of exploding but holding back out of pure Lan discipline. "Twenty minutes during which my entire class fell asleep. This is... this is..."
He didn't seem to have words to describe the level of his indignation.
"...unprecedented," he finally finished. "Completely unprecedented."
"We are sorry, Master Lan," Sun Yue murmured, and the fact that she sounded so completely defeated seemed to alarm Lan Qiren even more than the mass-sleeping incident.
"You are breaking..." Lan Qiren began, but he stopped, looking at them all with something that might have been concern if it weren't so buried under layers of disapproval. "The Lan clan rules clearly state that sleeping in class is—"
"We know," Jiang Cheng interrupted weakly. "We know. But..."
But what? How to explain?
At this rate, we’re all going to fail, Bai Meixue thought, feeling a knot of anxiety in her stomach mixing with the exhaustion. Unfinished homework was piling up. Lessons were being missed. And every day they looked worse, more exhausted, more on the brink of collapse.
But there's not much we can do.
Not when every night was a struggle for survival that no one else would believe.
"You may be dismissed," Lan Qiren said finally, his voice unusually soft. "All of you. Clearly... clearly something is not right. Go and rest."
It was an unexpected mercy, and none of them had the energy to question it. They stood up like zombies and dragged themselves out of the room.
In the hallway, Sun Yue approached Bai Meixue. Her normally impeccable hair had a few strands out of place, and her eyes—those eyes that were usually so sharp and alert—were clouded with weariness.
"Hey, Bai Xiao," she said in a low voice, close enough that Bai Meixue could smell the soft scent of jasmine that always accompanied her. "Let's have lunch together, to talk about... that."
Bai Meixue nodded, too tired to notice the slight flush on Sun Yue’s cheeks or the way her fingers twisted nervously—something completely out of character for someone normally so composed.
They shuffled toward the dining hall, a group of teenage cultivators who looked like they had fought high-level demons for days on end.
Which, technically, wasn't that far from the truth.
The dining hall was relatively empty when they arrived, most of the other disciples still in class. The seven of them huddled around a table in the farthest corner, as far as possible from prying ears.
The food in front of them—simple but nutritious, like everything in Gusu Lan—might as well have been sawdust for all the appetite they had. Bai Meixue pushed some rice around with her chopsticks, staring at it without really seeing it.
As awkward as I thought it would be, she reflected. It wasn't that she didn't trust this group—after two weeks of surviving together every night, trust was no longer the issue. But talking about it during the day, in the real world, under the sunlight... it made everything feel heavier. More real. More terrifying.
"I think we should go back to Savannah," Jiang Cheng said suddenly, breaking the awkward silence.
Everyone looked at him. Nie Huaisang stopped fidgeting with his fingers.
"Didn't we agree it was too dangerous?" he asked, his voice rising slightly in pitch. "Wasn't that literally the consensus last night after we almost... you know...?"
"So what?" Jiang Cheng put his chopsticks down abruptly. "Is it better to sit idly by and leave everything as it is? To keep running every night without understanding what the hell is happening to us?"
"I'd rather be semi-stuck than totally stuck," Bai Meixue declared, leaning her cheek on her hand. "At least now we survive every night. If we go back to Savannah..."
Savannah. That was the name Wei Wuxian had given the location where it all began—an abandoned building in the distorted version of Gusu Lan they had explored the first night, before they knew how dangerous that place really was. Before the creatures found them.
"Well, if you had told us sooner, we wouldn't be in this situation!" Jiang Cheng snapped, his frustration finally boiling over as he looked directly at Bai Meixue.
The silence that followed was tense. Bai Meixue felt something sharp twisting in her chest—a mix of guilt and defensive rage she had been suppressing for days.
"Look who's talking," Sun Yue intervened, her voice cold as ice, her eyes fixed on Jiang Cheng. "You're the one who dismissed all of this as a prank and walked away. If Bai Xiao had said something, would you have even believed it? With your temper, I highly doubt it."
There was a current of protectiveness in Sun Yue’s tone that made something stir in Bai Meixue's stomach. It wasn't the first time Sun Yue had defended her, but there was something about the way she did it—something fierce and personal—that made her feel... strange. Warm. Confused.
"Even if I hadn't believed her, she should have said something!" Jiang Cheng was on his feet now, his voice rising dangerously. "Now we’re trapped in a demonic dimension where we have to escape monsters that want to eat us! None of us have been able to sleep peacefully for days! And we can't tell any senior cultivator or—!"
BANG!
The sound of Lan Zhan’s palm hitting the table echoed in the empty dining hall. Everyone froze. Lan Zhan never made unnecessary noise. The fact that he had done so now spoke of how close he was to his own breaking point.
His fingers moved in the familiar gesture of the Lan silencing spell, his eyes fixed on Jiang Cheng with a mixture of warning and barely contained panic.
Silence. Now.
Jiang Cheng swallowed hard and slowly sat down. They all understood why Lan Zhan was so nervous. If anyone—anyone at all—heard them talking about this, everything would go to hell.
Bai Meixue could imagine it perfectly: Lan Xichen finding out. Then Jiang Fengmian. Then Madam Yu. And after that...
After that would come total disaster.
A sect meeting. Jin Guangshan demanding investigations, probably trying to use this as an excuse to gain political influence, threatening to "eliminate the demonic threat" that she clearly represented because, come on, it always ended up being her fault somehow. Madam Yu—her teacher, who had taken her as a personal disciple in what everyone knew was a revenge move against Jiang Fengmian for bringing in Wei Wuxian—shouting at Lan Qiren about how he couldn't properly protect "his disciples," her voice cutting through the air like the Zidian whip she carried.
And the fact that she and Wei Wuxian were best friends—something Madam Yu had clearly never anticipated when she took Bai Meixue under her wing—would only make everything worse. Because now Madam Yu would have to defend both of them, and that would mean an all-out war against... against everyone, basically.
No, Bai Meixue thought. We can't let that happen.
"If we don't go back to that place... what else can we do?" Jiang Cheng asked, calmer now, his hands clenched into fists on the table.
Good question. Terrible question. The question they had all been avoiding.
Wei Wuxian leaned forward. "We could keep going as we are. Run every night. Survive. Eventually maybe..."
"Eventually what?" Jin Zixuan looked at him with bloodshot eyes. "Eventually it’ll just go away on its own? Eventually we’ll get used to being hunted every night? Eventually we’ll go insane from exhaustion?"
"When you put it that way, it sounds very depressing," Nie Huaisang murmured.
"Because it is depressing," Jin Zixuan replied.
Sun Yue had been silent, her fingers tapping lightly on the table—a nervous tic Bai Meixue had learned to recognize. It meant she was thinking, processing, trying to find a logical solution amidst the chaos.
"Savannah is where it started," she said finally. "The first night, before the creatures appeared. There was... something there. Symbols. Strange energy. If we want answers, they are probably there."
"Or more danger," Lan Zhan added.
"Yes," Sun Yue nodded. "Or more danger."
It bothers me when Jiang Cheng gets worked up like that, Bai Meixue thought, looking at her Jiang Clan companion who was still breathing heavily from his earlier outburst. But I get it. We're all scared. We're all desperate.
If we go back to Savannah, maybe we'll find out what's happening and find a way out... or we'll make everything worse...
Her eyes traveled around the table. Wei Wuxian, her best friend, who had been with her since the beginning. Jiang Cheng, explosive but loyal under all that rage. Nie Huaisang, smarter than he pretended to be. Jin Zixuan, proud but surprisingly brave when it mattered. Lan Zhan, silent but unshakeable. And Sun Yue...
Sun Yue was looking at her. There was something in those eyes—concern, determination, and something else Bai Meixue couldn't quite identify. Something that made her stomach do a strange flip.
The dark circles under Sun Yue’s eyes were as dark as her own. They all looked like that. They were all on the edge.
Bai Meixue sighed, feeling the weight of the decision none of them wanted to make but that they would eventually have to.
Should we risk it?
The question floated in her mind without an answer, heavy as a stone in murky water, as the silence of the dining hall stretched on and the midday shadows slowly lengthened over their exhausted faces.