The borderlands were a land beyond maps — a shifting ruin of bramble forests, whispering marshes, and forgotten gods whose names had long since turned to moss. No sect dared to hold it. No talisman could tame it.
Here, Li Shen and Yue Lan ran.
They moved like shadows beneath broken moonlight — bruised by battle, hunted by every bounty blade from the Moon Sect to the Lotus Clan. The Codex pulsed in Li Shen's veins like a caged star, quiet for now but always tasting the dark.
On the second night, rain fell through the canopy in thin, silver knives. They found shelter in the hollow ribs of a fallen spirit beast — bones the size of merchant wagons, covered in hanging moss and ghost-lights that flickered at the edges of sight.
Li Shen sat with his back to a rib curved like a temple arch. His robe clung to him, soaked in blood and rain. Yue Lan knelt across from him, pale fingers working a poultice of ashroot and jade leaf.
"Hold still," she murmured.
He hissed when she pressed the paste to the gash at his ribs — the same cut Ruo Han had opened.
"I've survived worse," Li Shen said, voice tight.
Yue Lan's eyes flicked to his. In the lantern light, the Saintess's mask was gone — just a woman now, hair plastered to her cheek, spirit threads flickering faintly in the damp air.
"I know," she said. "But I'm not letting it fester."
He laughed — low and raw. "You're a Saintess no longer."
She tied the bandage tight enough to make him grunt. "No," she said. "Not anymore."
A silence settled between them — not comfortable, but real. The kind of silence that grows in the cracks between ruin and rebirth.
Li Shen's eyes wandered to the Codex runes along his arm — faint now, like dying embers.
"I can feel it," he said. "Waiting. Testing my leash."
Yue Lan didn't flinch. She reached out — slow, careful — and brushed her fingertips over the runes. The marks pulsed under her touch, a living hunger coiled beneath skin and bone.
"Does it hurt?" she asked.
He shrugged. "It's like drowning with one lung full of fire and the other full of ice."
She frowned — her spirit threads drifting from her wrist, silver filaments dancing across his skin. For a moment, the Codex flinched from her touch. Even Ku Mo's whisper went silent.
"You keep it chained," she said, half to herself.
He looked at her — the bloodied boy behind the demon's eyes.
"You help."
For a heartbeat, the bones around them seemed to breathe — the ghost-lights flickering brighter, the rain softening to a hush.
Then the wind shifted — carrying a stink of wet fur and rot.
Li Shen stiffened. Yue Lan's spirit threads retracted in a snap.
Through the ribs, yellow eyes blinked in the dark. A chorus of low growls rippled through the clearing.
Bone Wolves. Carrion beasts. Spirit parasites. Once dogs. Now half-mad things that sniffed out blood and weak Qi in the old border places.
Li Shen rose, wincing at the pain in his side. His blade rasped free — a battered length of moonsteel scored with fresh notches.
Yue Lan rose beside him, hands weaving sigils in the air — her threads flaring to life, silver and bright.
She glanced at him — eyes steady despite the circle of hunger tightening around them.
"We keep running?" she asked.
Li Shen bared his teeth — not quite a smile, not quite a snarl.
"Not tonight."
He stepped forward — just once. The Bone Wolves flinched at the Codex's red glow. Somewhere deep in Li Shen's blood, Ku Mo laughed like a storm behind sealed doors.
Let them come, the demon whispered.
And beside him, Yue Lan's threads wove silver snares in the rain.
Let them come.
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⚡ End of Chapter Fifteen
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