The question hung in the vapor-thick air. Shen Mo merely blinked, a slow, deliberate movement that seemed to dismiss the elder’s terror as a minor annoyance. He had been so close to his nap spot, the soft, fungal growth at the edge of the arena a promise of oblivion. Now this. Elder Kuang’s face contorted, not with rage, but with raw terror. The cultivation aura that erupted from him was a tangible force, a suffocating pressure that seemed to wring the very oxygen from the arena. The aura bore down to crush Shen Mo into the crippled husk he had been for so long. Other youths gasped and stumbled back. But Shen Mo did not move. He felt the immense power, a familiar echo of the poison that had once wracked his body, now magnified a thousandfold. It pressed against him, threatening to collapse his newly restored meridians. A single bead of sweat traced a path down his temple, not from strain, but from the slight exertion of resisting a truly monumental force. “Elder Kuang!” Feng Xiaoyue’s sharp cry cut through the oppressive silence, her hand now firmly on her Moon-Silver Saber. Her pale brow tightened with alarm. “He is a disciple of the sect! What are you doing?!” The elder ignored her, his eyes, usually smoldering embers, now blazing with a desperate fire. He took another step, his knuckles whitening, and the pressure intensified. The very ground around Shen Mo groaned, fine cracks spiderwebbing across the dark stone. This was no mere disciplinary measure; it was an attempt to break him, to erase whatever new power pulsed within his veins. Shen Mo’s patience, thin as stretched silk at the best of times, frayed completely. This was taking too long. His favorite sleeping moss was calling. He let out a prodigious yawn, a sound that seemed to stretch beyond the natural, echoing with a faint, abyssal resonance. It was not a sound of weakness, but of unbothered power. As the yawn reached its peak, the oppressive aura around him flickered, then shattered like brittle glass. The ground beneath his feet, already stressed, gave way with a sickening crunch. A chasm, jagged and deep, split the arena floor from the point where Shen Mo stood, extending outwards in a network of fissures that swallowed chunks of the stone stage. Elder Kuang stumbled back, his pupils pinpricks of frantic horror. The power he had unleashed, meant to cripple, had been casually brushed aside by a yawn. Not just brushed aside, but redirected, an imperceptible strike cracking the very foundations of the arena. He stared at the abyss that had just opened, then back at Shen Mo, who was now rubbing the sleep from his eyes. “Can I go nap now?” Shen Mo mumbled, genuinely put out. The casualness of the question, after such a cataclysmic display, was a deeper shock than the cracked earth itself. He took another step, effortlessly navigating the newly formed chasm, heading directly for the nearest exit from the arena. “Stop him!” Elder Kuang shrieked, his voice losing its usual gravitas, devolving into a raw, desperate croak. “He cannot leave! Not with that… that essence!” Feng Xiaoyue, though stunned, reacted first. Her Moon-Silver Saber flashed, a streak of frigid light, arcing towards Shen Mo’s retreating form. It was a warning strike, meant to force him to halt, to answer. But Shen Mo, without even turning, simply waved a hand. The blade, inches from his back, veered sharply, embedding itself with a frustrated *thunk* into a nearby pillar. “Seriously?” Shen Mo muttered, not to Xiaoyue, but to empty air. “This is getting ridiculous.” He accelerated, melting into the throngs of bewildered onlookers now scrambling away from the arena’s collapsing edge. He was gone, a wisp in the poisonous vapors curling around the high arches. Xiaoyue retrieved her saber, her face a mask of furious indignation. He had not just evaded her; he had *dismissed* her, with a gesture, a mumble. Her pride, already smarting from his earlier disregard, burned. “He used a demonic art,” she hissed, turning to the trembling Elder Kuang. “I will expose him.” Without waiting for a reply, she launched herself after Shen Mo, her figure a pale, determined specter against the deepening shadows of the Umbral Mist Sect. She would track him, she decided, and she would find the source of his monstrous power. Her cultivation sense, sharp as a honed blade, could feel the lingering traces of his unique energy signature, weaving through the miasma like a dark, lazy current. She followed it out of the hollowed stalagmite, into the treacherous chasms beyond. The air outside was colder, thick with damp stone and the stink of rotting bone. Obsidian peaks loomed, their jagged edges softened by the perpetual, swirling fogs. Hungry spirits keened from hidden crevices, their wails echoing through the dark. Xiaoyue pushed through a curtain of phosphorescent moss, her steps light, silent, her eyes scanning the gloom. She saw him then, a dark silhouette against a faint patch of eerie moonlight, leaning against a towering, fungal growth. He was not sleeping; he muttered toward empty space. “You pushed me, didn’t you?” Shen Mo’s voice was a low grumble. “All that ‘unleash your slumbering power’ nonsense. Now look, I have a stalker.” A wisp of black mist coiled in front of him, coalescing into the translucent, seductive form of Huan Meilan. Her eyes, pools of liquid shadow, sparkled with wicked amusement. Her spectral fingers traced the air near his cheek, sending an unnatural chill through the already cold grotto. “A stalker with exquisite taste, it seems,” Huan Meilan purred, smooth as dark jade. “She senses the Abyss within you, little worm. And you *did* need to stretch. Your form was stiff, your focus scattered.” She paused, her phantom smile widening. “Now, for your next lesson. The Whispering Coil technique. It requires… intimacy with your own shadows.” Her spectral form shifted, pressing close to Shen Mo, her illusory hand guiding his own. “Feel the darkness within. Let it envelop you, not as a weapon, but as a second skin. Sink into its embrace, *deeply*.” Shen Mo sighed, but followed her instructions, his body relaxing into a stance that was both fluid and disturbing. His limbs moved with an unsettling grace, his body twisting, contorting as if performing a slow, sensual dance with an invisible partner. The pose demanded supple joints and total submission to the dark energies. He leaned into the phantom touch of Huan Meilan, his head tilted back, exposing his neck in a vulnerable, almost yielding gesture. His eyes were half-closed, a lazy surrender to the dark energies that now seemed to ripple around him. Xiaoyue, crouched behind a clump of rustling reeds, stiffened with pure outrage. The intimacy of the scene, the suggestive movements, the way he seemed utterly enthralled by thin air—it sickened her. Demonic, without a doubt. Her knuckles locked around her hilt, fury chilling her blood. She burst from the brush, her Moon-Silver Saber a gleaming arc, aimed not at the phantom, but at Shen Mo’s exposed back, a desperate attempt to sever the corrupted connection. “Demonic scum!” she cried, her voice cutting through the fog. Shen Mo, still in his deep, yielding pose, barely reacted. He merely shifted a fraction of an inch, a movement so subtle it was almost imperceptible. Xiaoyue’s icy strike, intended to cleave through his spine, hissed past his ear, missing him by a hair’s breadth. Instead, the steel slammed into a crumbling, moss-covered marker embedded in the cavern wall behind him. The slab, etched with forgotten runes, exploded into pulverized grit. For a breath, silence held. Then the cavern floor vibrated. A guttural screech of primordial malice ripped through the cavern. Fog thickened, swirling into a violent vortex. From the shattered warding stone’s cavity, a multi-limbed, chitinous horror, dripping with abyssal ichor, began to pull itself into the sect’s safe zone, its many eyes glowing with predatory hunger.

The Moonlit Interrogation