The dusty roads leading out of Đại Việt Kinh were crowded not with merchants and travelers, but with weary refugees, their faces etched with fear, their bundles containing all that remained of their lives. Học giả Phan Thị Ánh Tuyết, disguised in simple, practical clothing, her refined robes replaced by roughspun fabric, moved among them, a small, inconspicuous figure carrying a burden heavier than any earthly possession: her dangerous knowledge.
Leaving the capital had required caution and a small bribe to a gate guard who looked the other way, his eyes more interested in the coin than the quiet woman slipping out before dawn. The air outside the city walls was raw, lacking the perfumed falseness of the Citadel, smelling instead of woodsmoke, fear, and the faint, unsettling metallic tang that she was learning to associate with the distant Hư Vô.
Her destination was vague – rural districts known for their ancient shrines and temples, places where the old ways still held sway, less tainted by the political machinations of the capital or the pragmatic, spirit-dismissing mindset of the military command. She sought not archives, but people – priests, hermits, wise women – who might speak the language of the ancient texts she had read, who understood the balance between worlds not from dusty scrolls, but from lived experience.
The journey was fraught. Military patrols, wary and often rough, checked papers and questioned travelers, looking for spies or deserters. Displaced people eyed newcomers with suspicion. The land itself bore scars – abandoned farmhouses, fields turning a sickly grey near the horizon, patches of unnatural silence where birds did not sing. These were the subtle signs of the 'Slow Decay' she had read about, the physical manifestation of the world unraveling. (Grimdark setting).
She asked questions cautiously in villages, not directly about Hư Vô, but about old shrines, about people who "spoke with the land" or "understood the troubled spirits." Most villagers were wary, fearful, offering only shrugs or tight-lipped silence. Some pointed her towards ruins they no longer visited. Others spoke of priests who had tried to help, but had since... changed, or vanished into the encroaching mist.
Days blurred into a week of travel. The comfort of the archives felt a lifetime away. She felt exposed, vulnerable, the political dangers of the capital replaced by the more immediate threats of the road and the creeping blight. Yet, the urgency fueled her. The fate of Lạc Hồng, she was convinced, rested not just on the physical front lines, but on understanding the fundamental flaw that allowed the Hư Vô to exist.
Her search eventually led her towards a valley rumored to hold a shrine older than the Great Covenant itself, a place supposedly tended by a solitary priest who still practiced the ancient rites. It was deep in the countryside, far from major roads, requiring her to navigate winding, overgrown paths.
Finally, after days of searching, she found it. The Shrine of the Sleeping Spirits. It was humble, moss-covered, nestled beneath ancient trees, exuding an aura of profound, if slightly melancholic, peace. A thin line of smoke curled from a joss stick by the entrance. Someone was here.
As she approached, a figure emerged from the shrine's interior. He was a man of indeterminate age, clad in simple, dark robes, his face calm but marked by a deep weariness around the eyes. He looked at her, an unexpected stranger in this remote place, with quiet inquiry.
"Are you... the priest who tends this shrine?" Ánh Tuyết asked, her voice a little breathless from the climb and her nervousness.
The man nodded. "I am Cao Văn Dũng. And you are far from the roads, seeker. What brings you to the Sleeping Spirits?"
Ánh Tuyết hesitated for a moment, looking into his eyes, trying to gauge him. He didn't look like a charlatan or a recluse fleeing the world. He looked like someone who had seen things, understood things, perhaps things that defied the understanding of the capital. This was her chance.
Taking a deep breath, she decided on honesty, albeit carefully phrased. "Linh Mục Cao Văn Dũng. I am Phan Thị Ánh Tuyết, a scholar from the Grand Archives in Đại Việt Kinh. I have been studying the ancient texts... the Thái Cổ Biên Niên Ký... and I have found things within them about the nature of the Hư Vô... things that suggest it is not merely an invasion, but something tied to our world's fundamental balance... to ancient covenants... and to... neglect."
Linh Mục Cao Văn Dũng's calm facade didn't break, but his eyes, those weary, knowing eyes, widened almost imperceptibly. "Neglect," he echoed softly. "The Slow Decay." The words were familiar, not from texts, but from the chilling vision he had experienced during his communion.
"Yes," Ánh Tuyết confirmed, a surge of desperate hope rising within her. He understood the terms. "The texts speak of the Balance between worlds... and what happens when it is undone, not by war, but by the decay of disregard. They call the Hư Vô the 'Grey Devourer,' an unmaking that consumes both form and essence."
Dũng stepped closer, his gaze intense. "Consume essence... Yes. I have... seen its touch... in the Spirit World. It is not just the flesh it turns grey. The spirits... they too are being twisted. Corrupted. Silenced." (Connecting his vision to her findings).
Ánh Tuyết felt a thrill of confirmation, mixed with profound dread. Her texts described the why and the how in abstract terms. Dũng had seen the living, spiritual reality of it. Their separate pieces of knowledge fit together into a horrifying, complete picture. The Hư Vô was not just a physical war; it was an existential crisis, an unraveling of reality on all planes, physical and spiritual, brought about by the kingdom's long history of imbalance and neglect.
"The generals fight shadows on a map," Ánh Tuyết said, her voice barely above a whisper. "The officials scheme for power in a house built on sand. They do not understand what this truly is."
"And the spirits cry out, but their voices are drowned out by the Grey Silence," Dũng added, his gaze distant, seeing the blighted spiritual landscape of his vision.
They stood there, an unlikely pair – the scholar who read the ancient past, the priest who saw the dying spiritual present – bound by a terrifying truth that the rest of the world seemed determined to ignore. The vastness of the problem, the isolation of their knowledge, settled upon them. What could a scholar and a priest, armed only with dangerous truths about ancient neglect and spiritual decay, possibly do against an enemy that consumed existence itself, especially when the powers that be were part of the problem?
The silence of the shrine valley no longer felt peaceful, but expectant. The Hư Vô was coming, creeping closer, a consequence of a broken balance that only they, it seemed, truly understood. Their journey had just begun.