As the sound of snapping timber grew louder, echoing like cannon blasts through the unnatural fog, Lin Wan couldn’t help but curse the wretched hand she had been dealt.

Her legs felt like leaden weights, and her vision swam with jagged spots of light as the sudden, miraculous burst of energy from her cubs began to settle into a dull, throbbing ache in her lower abdomen.

Every muscle in her body trembled with the aftershocks of the Spirit-Draining Vines’ assault. She struggled to her feet, her fingers digging into the rough, weeping bark of a nearby tree that smelled faintly of old blood.

Every instinct she possessed, honed by weeks of survival in this brutal beast world, screamed at her to run—to put as much distance as possible between herself and the behemoth crashing through the underbrush.

But her body was a traitor; it refused to cooperate, her knees buckling every time she tried to put weight on them.

Just as she turned to flee toward a dense thicket of black-edged ferns, a voice drifted through the fog.

It wasn’t the roar of a predator or the crash of a falling tree, but a soft, melodic call that bypassed her ears and resonated directly in the hollow of her chest.

"Wanwan..."

Lin Wan froze, her breath hitching in her throat. The voice was low, rich, and carried a hint of that familiar, playful rasp that used to make her heart skip a beat back in the safety of the southern plains.

It sounded exactly like Wang.

"Wang?" she whispered, her voice cracking with a desperate, fragile hope. "Is that you? Are you here? Did you find me?"

"I’ve been looking for you everywhere, Wanwan," the voice replied. It sounded closer now, coming from just beyond a veil of shimmering, silver mist that seemed to glow with an inner light. "I’ve missed you. The cubs... I have their names ready. Come to me, my love. Let me see you."

Lin Wan’s eyes glazed over, the pupils dilating until the iris was nearly gone. The maternal protective shield that had just saved her life seemed to melt away under the intoxicating warmth of that familiar tone.

Her consciousness began to slip, replaced by a singular, obsessive need to see his face, to feel the familiar texture of his skin against hers.

She forgot the obsidian vines that had almost bled her dry; she forgot Su Mei’s murderous attempt; she even forgot the warning bells clanging in the back of her mind.

Like a lost soul drawn to a beacon in a storm, she began to walk toward the voice.

[Host! Warning! High-level auditory hallucination detected!] Weiwei’s voice was a piercing, digital shriek in her mind, but it felt muffled and distant, as if the system were shouting from the bottom of a deep well.

[Host, snap out of it! This is a psychic trap, the forest is feeding on your grief! Your heart rate is skyrocketing! Stop walking, Lin Wan! Lin wan!!]

Lin Wan didn’t stop. She pushed through a patch of thorns that tore at her already tattered white tunic, unheeding of the new scratches blooming across her arms.

Her feet moved rhythmically, leading her toward a break in the trees where the silver mist was thickest, pulsing like a heartbeat.

She reached the edge of a small clearing and stopped abruptly. Before her, the mossy ground simply ended.

It was a cliff, but unlike any mountain she had ever seen. The bottom was not visible; it was a deep, black hole—an abyss so dark it seemed to suck the very light from the air, a physical manifestation of nothingness. To her ensnared mind, however, it didn’t look like a drop into a void.

She saw Wang standing in the center of that darkness, his golden eyes glowing with a warmth that promised an end to all her pain. He was standing on what looked like solid air, his arms reached out to catch her.

"Just one more step, Wanwan," the illusion murmured, smiling with a tenderness that brought hot, fat tears to her eyes. "Then we’ll be home. No more Dragons, no more jealous foxes. Just us."

She lifted her foot, her weight shifting over the empty air. She was ready to let go, ready to finally find peace in the embrace of the man she had lost.

Suddenly, a hand—large, warm, and trembling with a frantic, bone-crushing strength, clapped onto her shoulder and yanked her backward with such violence that the air was knocked from her lungs. 𝒇𝙧𝙚𝓮𝔀𝓮𝒃𝙣𝓸𝒗𝒆𝒍.𝙘𝒐𝒎

The momentum was so sudden that Lin Wan was hauled off her feet and slammed into a broad, solid chest that felt like a wall of living stone.

The impact snapped the psychic tether like a dry twig. The silver mist vanished instantly, replaced by the terrifying, dizzying sight of the jagged cliff edge just inches from her toes.

Lin Wan gasped, her lungs burning as she took in a sharp, ragged breath of reality. She felt the rapid, thunderous thumping of the person’s heartbeat against her back—a rhythm so fast it sounded like a drumroll in a war camp.

He smelled of rare, medicinal herbs, cold mountain stone, and a faint, lingering scent of ancient, powerful scales.

He felt familiar, but the energy was different from Long Zhan’s aggressive, fiery heat. This was a cool, deep power, like an underground river.

She looked up, squinting against the dim, sickly light of the woods, and her breath caught.

Looking down at her was a man who looked like a beautiful, tragic wreck. His long, silver-white hair, usually as smooth as liquid silk, was tangled with dead leaves and grey forest loam.

His eyes, typically calm, calculating, and cold as winter ice, were bloodshot and wide with a primal terror. His fine, dark leathers were torn in a dozen places, showing the lean, powerful muscles of his chest and arms.

The man didn’t say a word at first. He simply lowered his head and claimed her mouth in a kiss so deep and desperate it tasted of salt, iron, and a frantic relief.

He held her so close Lin Wan felt as if he wanted to physically merge her into his very being, his hands shaking visibly as they cupped her pale face.

After an eternity, he pulled back just enough to look into her eyes, his forehead resting against hers. His breath was shallow, his pupils still dilated from the adrenaline of the rescue.

"Wanwan... I missed you," he whispered, his voice thick with an emotion he usually spent every waking moment suppressing.

The fog in Lin Wan’s brain cleared completely as she recognized the sharp, elegant features of the Snake Beast King.

Tears of a different kind, relief, exhaustion, and joy, spilled over her lashes. "I missed you so much, Qin Mo," she breathed, her hands coming up to clutch his torn sleeves as if he might vanish if she let go.

At her words, the man’s face broke into a radiant, warm smile—a look of pure, unadulterated joy that stripped away his regal mask and made him look human, vulnerable, and utterly hers.

He pecked her lips again, a soft, lingering touch this time that soothed the ragged edges of her soul.

"Why does it seem like our meetings always happen in the most unexpected ways?" he asked, though his eyes darkened to a lethal shade of silver as he looked at the cliff behind her.

"But this time, you were trying to jump into an abyss. I have never seen a female walk toward her own death with such a peaceful expression."

Lin Wan’s eyes widened as she looked back at the black hole, then at Qin Mo. "I... I saw Wang. He was calling me. I thought I was walking toward him."

She softly pulled away from his chest, looking around at the twisted, gargoyle-like trees that seemed to be watching them.

"Where am I? This isn’t the ridge where I was tied up. I was near a storage shed, then the vines..."

Qin Mo raised a silver brow, his protective grip on her waist tightening until it was almost painful. "You don’t know how you got here? Wanwan, I’ve been tracking your spiritual signature through the under-tunnels for hours. You’ve walked miles into the North’s most dangerous sector. You crossed entirely on foot."

"Of course I don’t know!" Lin Wan exclaimed, a shudder running through her. "Why would I want to kill myself? I can’t remember leaving where Su Mei left me for dead. The only thing I remember is escaping from that vine cocoon and hearing Wang’s voice."

A vein in Qin Mo’s temple became visible, pulsing with a sudden, violent anger that made the air around them grow cold.

"Left for dead?

Escaping from a cocoon?"

He took a step closer, his gaze sweeping over her torn clothes, the red welts on her ankles, and the dark bruises on her neck. "What exactly did you go through without us, Wanwan? Who dared to lay a hand on you?"

Lin Wan’s mouth opened to explain—to tell him about the charcoal fire, the stolen pendant, and the fox’s cold-blooded betrayal, but the words tumbled out in a confused, frantic ramble. She was reaching her breaking point.

"So many things, Qin Mo... the village fire was a distraction... Su Mei took the tooth pendant, she lured me here... the vines were drinking my blood, the cubs saved me..."

He caught her as her knees finally buckled, sweeping her up before she could hit the moss. "Shh," he murmured, his anger at her enemies warring with his desperate need to comfort her.

"We will settle the blood-debt later. For now, we leave. Your scent is already drawing things to this clearing that have no business being awake."

"Yeah," she agreed, her eyes drooping as she leaned her head against his shoulder. "Let’s leave the Whispering Woods. I never want to see another tree as long as I live."

"Whispering Woods of the North," Qin Mo mused as he adjusted his hold, stepping away from the cliff edge. "I never knew I would come here one day. I usually avoid this sector; the spirits here have a particular distaste for the cold-blooded. It took everything I had to keep my senses sharp enough to find you."

"Is it that popular?" Lin Wan asked, her voice fading.

"Yes, very popular," Qin Mo said grimly. "So popular that I am curious how a weak female like you is still alive and was only ’ just’ about to die by jumping into an abyss. Usually, the woods claim a soul within ten minutes of the crossing. You’ve been in here for hours."

"I did almost die," Lin Wan muttered defensively, her fingers tightening on the pendant. "So it still counts. I’m just... lucky."

Qin Mo looked down at her, his expression softening into something fiercely, dangerously possessive. "I guess that’s true. You’ve always been an anomaly, Wanwan. A beautiful, troublesome anomaly. Come, let me take you away from this rot before the forest tries to speak to you again."