What could kill a thing that would corrode you at a touch?
A thought broke into Hui's mind. A strange thought.
She only had one of them. One water moss bundle. She threw it away from herself, and the forms immediately were distracted, circling around the water moss, like they couldn't figure out what it was. It held a strange attraction to them.
A tale, Hui had heard long ago, the only use water moss actually had: It would attract dead things. If you slept under a water moss, you were very likely to catch an ailment of possession, and the water moss would always bring chills to whoever passed beneath it.
However, Hui didn't keep running. If she kept running, the ghosts would be attracted to her again and wouldn't choose the tastier water moss anymore. Instead, she took it out. The poison of the death wallow wasp stinger. Poison that could literally corrode anything, even spiritual energy.
Her hand burned away with poison, but her body accepted it, despite burning almost to the bone and evolved to handle it, because of the unique condition developed in the cauldron.
She cut her tongue to the pain, gripping it in her melting hand, to slash at the ghosts. Immediately, at the touch of the stingers, the ghosts couldn't handle such overly corrosive poison and burned away on the spot. Ghost after ghost Hui burned.
The close contact with them, obviously caused her skin to begin to get eaten way by death energy. However, just chewing a couple petals of the ever life flower quickly solved that problem, and helped heal her hands from the stinger poison.
After dealing with all the ghosts in the immediate vicinity, Hui once more picked up the water moss and headed along the cliffside. Skirting along the outside of the valley, she looked for a spot that looked climbable to escape this mist of death, as more ghosts gathered in her peripheral. Unfortunately, this proved harder than she thought, night completely fell, and yet she was no closer. She could not sleep, and she had to escape before the water moss withered. That meant she had merely three days to get out of here.
Three days for the water moss to dry up and wither.
She tried to remember what the ridge looked like. Picturing the scene from above. She remembered looking over the ledge, watching the stinger fall from Li Haoli's toss…there. She remembered it, there was a pass, directly across from the cliff from which she'd fallen. it could hardly be considered a pass, but it was the only place that the ridge declined slightly, so she'd take her chances. Hui gathered up her strength as she readied herself for the long journey, before she began her journey forward, racing through the darkness. She brought out a compass that she'd found in the spacial ring earlier, since the stars were completely masked, and all night long, she spent relentlessly traversing the barren misty landscape.
Over and over she found dead corpses littering the ground, until she'd gone so far, that even corpses couldn't be found. She was probably farther than anyone had traversed in thousands of years in this cursed valley. Finally, at midnight of the second day, a small mound revealed itself. Hoping that it was the opposite ledge, Hui hurried herself, panting, as she was on her last breath. Unfortunately, she was wrong, and it was merely a small plateau that didn't even break the clouds. However, in the middle of this small plateau was a small stone coffin. Seeing just a skeleton inside, and long used to such sights already, she hurriedly threw out all the bones, even accidentally crushing the skull on a stone nearby with her throw in her hurry, before she pulled herself over the ledge, pulling the lid of the coffin over her, to finally lay down and sleep. She left the water willow outside and kept the ever life flower laying near her head.
She slept the rest of the night, waking up the next morning surprisingly refreshed. Coming out of the coffin she fought off the unwelcome visitors that had been waiting for her outside, and then crawled out to take a look around her. Not a lot changed between night and morning. Only, night was a darker gray, and morning was a lighter gray. As if the mist somehow illuminated the night, just as it dampened the day.
With a quick precursory glance, as she moved to leave, she noticed something shiny glistening from the skull she'd just thrown. She walked over to it, flinging the fragments of skull away, to pick up the item. It was shiny silver, with a teal stone inset in it. A beautiful circuit meant to crown a head. However, because the skull had been wearing a helmet, the circuit hadn't been in view until she threw it across the ground.
Liking the shape and color, she quickly stored it in her spacial ring and looked around for anything else useful, she only found ruby and emerald rings, however, to her disappointment, they weren't spacial rings, just fire and ice ones, that supported those abilities. In fact, the corpse looked like it must've already been raided before, and she was only lucky enough to knock aside the helmet to find the circuit, as for the rings, they had been hidden beneath various other bones. She sighed, and then noticed that there was actually a grave marker nearby. However, the words on it had long since faded away.
Since they were useless to her, and not very pretty to look at, Hui quickly threw away the rings back into the coffin. If someone else came here they could have fun grabbing them. She'd already cleaned out the nice coffin for them to sleep in anyway.
With that, she continued on her way. Passing the same scenery for another day, she was rather disappointed that she hadn't reached the end by nightfall. However, after running for another night, she finally reached the base of the cliff and started climbing. Using every part of her strength left and all the control possible, she crested the top at last and looked back down into the valley. The ridge was so low here, it barely made it above the clouds, but it was still nice to look down, at the hell she'd barely escaped.
She glanced down at the water willow which had now withered so that its bulbs looked like sticks, rather than marbles, and then tossed it over the edge, along with the stem of the ever-life flower that now held only a couple petals left of the original 100 and what was left of the death wallow stinger after being corroded so badly by the ghosts. They were from Li Haoli, cast down with her into the valley and she felt it only right to keep them in the valley.
She turned away, looking at the vast landscape before her. The evening, three days ago, she had been looking over the valley, barely able to see the other side. Now, if not for her stomach growling and parched mouth, it seemed like only one night had passed, and she was already on the other side, looking beyond it.
Hui smiled and leapt over the side, sliding on the slippery gravel, all the way to the base, before sauntering her way toward the stream she'd seen in the distance. Afterall, dehydration had long since taken hold, since in the spacial rings she had, only one carried about one skin of wine, and no water to speak of. Hui reached the stream, barely able to stand anymore, but got a drink of it, before she passed out on the side.
Hui groggily was forced awake by the pain of the rocks she laid on poking violently into her body. Tyring to reposition herself more comfortable, the pain finally forced her eyes open to see two white feet….