The Molting Season

Mo Fan fell into thought.

Zhankong had chosen to keep the news of his own survival quiet, wary of the Black Church's reach. But if the Black Church was still out there scheming against him, that kind of secret wouldn't stay buried for long.

What Mo Fan couldn't figure out was what those Black Church scum actually wanted. Was it the Earth Sacred Spring, or the totem beast secret Tang Yue had mentioned?

As his thoughts wandered, he noticed something at the very top of the wall — a rather charming image rendered in simple brushstrokes. It depicted an enormous serpent, its body drifting half-visible through sketched clouds...

Below the great serpent was a far smaller creature on the ground. Side by side, the two looked like a python beside an earthworm — the difference in scale was staggering. Mo Fan couldn't help but laugh. "What, does the Sky-Scraping Serpent have a little baby? Honestly, kind of adorable."

Tang Yue glanced over with a smile. "The one you're calling a baby *is* the Sky-Scraping Serpent."

"What the—then what's that thing on top?!" Mo Fan nearly fell over.

The Sky-Scraping Serpent was already the most awe-inspiring creature he'd ever laid eyes on. On a foggy day, its lower body could rest on the earth while its head brushed the clouds.

And yet up in this mural, there was something dozens of times larger still — a celestial serpent that would blot out the sun and swallow the sky.

"I don't know either," Tang Yue said. "Ancient people painted it. Perhaps it's simply a flight of imagination — they believed there existed a deity that even the Sky-Scraping Serpent would worship, something that dwelled in the heavens, boundless and vast..."

Her people harbored many ancient traditions they could no longer explain even to themselves. No matter how extraordinary something was, how thick with accumulated wisdom — it might still fail to survive the passage of time. Lost, discarded, broken.

Mo Fan figured it was probably just a philosophical idea. If a creature that enormous actually existed, he'd rather move to Mars. Earth was far too dangerous.

**"Sssssss..."**

A deep, resonant hiss cut through the silence — the kind that seemed to reach into the very depths of the soul. And it was coming from somewhere near the island.

Mo Fan's whole body went rigid. He turned to Tang Yue with wide, disbelieving eyes.

"You... don't tell me... it's *here*?" His expression had gone strange.

He believed what Tang Yue had told him — totem beasts did appear in the history books. But every time he thought back to how the creature had surfaced without any warning, ice shot through him, and cold sweat broke out across his skin before he even noticed it happening.

"Yes, it's out there." Tang Yue pointed outside.

"Teacher Tang Yue, why don't we head back to your place to talk about this?" Mo Fan suggested.

Tang Yue burst out laughing. "You don't have to be so scared. It won't hurt anyone. Want me to introduce you?"

"No, no, that's completely fine. It's your deity — you do the worshipping. I'm just an outsider; the god probably doesn't appreciate my accent." Mo Fan kept a perfectly straight face.

"Alright, I'll stop teasing you." Tang Yue's smile softened. "It does live in West Lake — but under normal circumstances, you could drain the entire lake and never find it."

"Why?"

"It sleeps within the seal of the Three Pools Mirroring the Moon. Around the time the Black Church came to Magic City Shanghai to cause trouble for you, the walls of that seal became unstable — and that's why it can now move freely between Hangzhou and the sealed space." Tang Yue led Mo Fan to a spot where the Three Pools were visible.

Mo Fan looked out across the water. Three stone structures, each shaped like a broad-brimmed incense burner, stood upright on the lake's surface. They must have had deep foundations below to hold themselves that way.

They formed a perfectly balanced triangle. Within the hollow of each stone brazier, a soft flame danced, its light reflected on the dark water that mirrored the moon above.

"It possesses the Eyes of Terror," Tang Yue explained, making sense of Mo Fan's earlier reaction. "Any creature weaker than it will have a seed of fear planted deep in their soul. That seed grows silently in the spirit — you might not notice it taking root until the day it becomes a towering tree. Only when you encounter the creature again do you discover that your legs have given out beneath you, surrendering in terror without a shred of will to resist."

"Figured as much," Mo Fan said with a deliberately easy smile. "Nothing in this world — not Demon-Beasts, not monsters, not ghosts — can rob me of sleep. Only a woman like Teacher Tang Yue has ever managed that."

"Smooth talker!" Tang Yue shot him a look of exasperated elegance — one of those eye-rolls that somehow still came across as effortlessly alluring.

Tang Yue taught him a method to purge the demon of fear from his mind. The technique was simple: during Meditation, whenever the serpent's face surfaced in his thoughts, he had to hold its gaze — no matter how terrified he felt inside, he could not look away. Win that battle once, and the seed would never take root. Fail, and nightmares would follow him without end.

Mo Fan gave it a try. Simple as Tang Yue made it sound, actually doing it was another matter entirely. Even just confronting the serpent within his Inner World wrung a cold sweat from him.

But the results were immediate. As the sweat dried on his skin, the fear dissolved with it.

Once it had fully faded, Mo Fan found himself wondering whether he should just go meet this supposedly world-shaking "deity" in person.

*Better not,* he decided. *What if it really does hold a grudge against outsiders? It might plant some kind of mental shadow in my head — and then life really wouldn't be worth living.*

"I was hoping you might know why the great one has been appearing in the city — something we could act on to prepare," Tang Yue said, walking at a leisurely pace, a trace of disappointment in her voice. "Turns out you haven't figured out anything either."

"Come on. Something at this level? That's way out of my league," Mo Fan said.

"What, you don't want to help me anymore?" Tang Yue blinked at him.

"It's not that I don't want to... wait, when did I ever say I was going to help you?" Mo Fan stopped short.

"When you arrived. I share a great secret with you; you help me solve a problem that's been giving me headaches for ages." Tang Yue kept blinking — that mature, strikingly feminine face of hers arranged into an expression of total wide-eyed innocence.

Mo Fan's face fell.

Honestly, he felt completely played.

Looking back, she'd probably had this angle worked out from the very moment she'd invited him here and started sharing all these grand secrets.

"Fine," he said with a pained smile. "Tell me what you need."

"Every ten years, the deity goes through a molting — and that time is nearly here," Tang Yue said. "The Chief Adjudicator and Heifeng have put me in charge of this matter and asked me to select some capable subordinates. During the molting, the deity becomes extremely vulnerable — it's the one and only weakness it has as a divine creature. That makes it a target: old enemies nursing long-held grudges, and those with ulterior motives, may try to take this opportunity to strike. In the days before the molting, the deity grows extremely sensitive — even the faintest hint of a threat can agitate it. That's the main reason it's been appearing in the city center. Under normal circumstances, it would never emerge unless we opened the seal ourselves."