" Shen Mu nodded.

"So you can stop worrying this time.

Come in with me? " Snow Fox shook her head in a flurry.

Helpless, Shen Mu set her down—only to see the white fox still crawling feebly for the way out, belly to the ground.

He picked her up again and set her on his shoulder, then strode toward the gateway.

The white fox was frantic with terror; her snow-white fur bristled all over her body, her claws clamped hard on Shen Mu's shoulder, her eyes round and staring ahead, so frightened she dared not stir a hair. As Shen Mu walked into the mist, Snow Fox gripped tighter still, her fluffy tail standing bolt upright. The mist was dense, lingering year after year without dispersing, yet strangely, once inside, he felt not the least dampness. Moving through it, Shen Mu saw droplets of water suspended in the fog, floating silently, motionless, one and all. Then, within the mist, he saw many shards of broken jade floating in the air as well, and besides them fragments of vital weapons, mangled bones—all drifting silently, as if without the slightest weight.

When he had looked in from outside the gateway, he had seen only the dragon skeleton and none of these things.

"There must have been a savage war here—even the bones of masters and their vital weapons were smashed to pieces! What in the world happened in this place? Did it happen before the Desolate Ruins Calamity, or after?

" Suddenly Shen Mu's scalp smarted: a skull had drifted up right in front of Snow Fox and scared her half to death; she leapt onto his head, clawing into his scalp, her back arched high. The white fox trembled and shuddered, and her shivering set Shen Mu's scalp shaking too. "A dragon—! " The white fox shrieked, darting off his head in a flash to flatten herself against his back, all four paws locking tight around his waist, so that Shen Mu might have been carrying a white pack on his back.