The forest was quiet in a way that felt wrong, as though the air itself were holding its breath. Grey walked beneath its withered canopy, each step carrying him toward the faint sound of running water. Yet his mind drifted far from this ruined world, pulled back to a life that now seemed like someone else's distant memory.
He had once been fifteen, young, unremarkable, and burdened with the strange talent of turning reflex and stubbornness into a budding career as a pro-gamer. A life lived behind glowing screens, not the scent of rotting leaves and corroded soil. His father, always away chasing business deals, had left him in the care of a woman who wore smiles only when watched. The moment the house grew silent, those smiles peeled away, revealing the cold disgust she harbored for a child not her own.
Grey still remembered how he would sit in his room with headphones on, pretending not to hear the insults thrown from beyond the door. He remembered reporting it to his father, only to meet the same dismissive answer each time."Give her a chance."
A chance… as though cruelty were a simple misunderstanding.
And then, that day. His father away. The man in the house. The rifle lifted with trembling hands that held no hesitation. The deafening bang. A burst of pain. Falling. Darkness swallowing him whole.
When he opened his eyes again, the world he knew had died with him.
"It's all in the past now," Grey muttered, clicking his tongue as though to dispel a lingering ghost. "Nothing I can do about it."
The stream came into sight moments later. Mist drifted above its surface like a thin veil of breath, and the cold murmur of water against stone carried a sense of weary solitude. He crouched low, senses stretched thin, eyes sweeping through the tangled undergrowth.
Silence.
He approached the bank, washed the grime from his hands, and filled his bottle. Only when he turned away did he allow himself a shallow exhale.
"I'm not like those idiots in anime," he whispered, forcing the tension from his shoulders. "I won't get killed just because I blinked."
Only when the broken shack reappeared through the trees did he allow himself a true breath of relief.
Inside, the rabbit meat sizzled over the fire, steam rising like gentle ghosts. The scent was faint, almost nonexistent without seasoning, yet to his starved body it was intoxicating. He tore into it fiercely. Taste meant nothing, hunger was the only truth that mattered.
"It needs spice," he chuckled, leaning back with a weary smile, "but right now, it's the best thing I've eaten."
As warmth filled his stomach, his thoughts drifted once more to the uncertain path ahead.
No parents. No relatives. No place that would even pretend to be home.
"Sky Mist Academy…" he murmured. A place where anyone capable of cultivating could stay. A place rumored to stand firm amidst the chaos of the land. But distance mattered. Spirit coins mattered. Reality was an unforgiving accountant.
"Forget that. First, I need to escape this corroded zone."
The thought alone carried weight. He knew nothing of its boundaries, only that a single misstep would lead him deeper, past sanity, past life.
A memory flickered, hulking muscles, a horned silhouette, blood-red eyes staring through smoke and ruin.
His heart trembled.
He pushed the fear aside and ventured out once more, searching for clues to his surroundings. Hours slipped by. He bent to examine a strange, vein-patterned plant when a soft rustle broke the quiet.
He froze.
Another sound. Closer.
Grey slipped behind a tree, body rigid, breath held hostage.
From the bushes emerged a creature that seemed born from a nightmare stitched together by failure and suffering, a Mutated Leopard.
Its flesh sagged, rotting as though time itself had rejected it. Maggots writhed across its hide. From the hollow of its missing eyes, only one remained, not in its socket, but dangling grotesquely from its mouth, pulsing faintly with crimson light as if it were still alive.
Grey's pupils shrank. His heart constricted like a fist tightening around it.
An eighth-level Qi Accumulation aura seeped from the beast, thick and suffocating. Even from a hundred meters away, it felt as though death had placed its hand on the back of his neck.
'Why is something like this near the outskirts…?'
Even his thoughts trembled.
He dared not even shift his gaze. The creature moved with predatory grace, its single eye sweeping the area with eerie awareness.
Then, it stopped.
The eye turned toward him.Just for a breath. Just for a moment. But that moment hollowed him out.
And then, it walked on.
Grey's knees nearly buckled as air rushed back into his lungs. His shirt clung to his skin, soaked with cold sweat.
'So strong… too strong.'
Something in him quivered, fear, but also a seed. A wish. A hunger to rise above helplessness.
But this zone was not the place to chase opportunity. This was a graveyard wrapped in fog. Treasure seekers did not return, only their regrets did.
"I've stayed out too long," he whispered, forcing his shaking legs into motion.
He ran. The broken house felt impossibly far, a fading sanctuary swallowed by the rotting forest. When he finally stumbled inside, chest burning, the memory of that single floating eye still felt pressed against his thoughts.
'Let's not meet anything else insane today…'
He crossed his legs and began to cultivate, drawing in spirit energy with slow breaths. The purity of the qi brushed against his insides like cool mist, but beneath it seeped the corruption he had brought back from the god-realm, a dark, suffocating current, like oily threads slipping through his veins.
His eyelids trembled.
How harrowing…
Time blurred. His body glowed faintly.
Then...
BOOM!
A thunderclap tore the world apart.
Grey's eyes snapped open. Outside, the sky churned with storm clouds colored like bruised flesh. He shoved furniture against the door, breath quickening.
A sudden flash of searing pink lit the entire sky. A heartbeat later came a roar of thunder so violent it shook dust from the ceiling.
The first drop of rain fell.
It hissed.
Grey looked up just as a burning hole punched straight through the roof with a vicious sizzle.
His heart lurched.
Acid rain.
More droplets followed, red, furious, each one carving holes in wood, stone, and debris alike. Steam rose from the floor. The roof buckled. The house that had seemed whole from the outside now revealed its true nature, a skeleton of survival barely held together.
Grey watched, jaw clenched, as the storm outside tried to devour the world.
And the corroded zone revealed another layer of its cruelty.
His fear deepened… and so did his resolve.
**☺️😉**