The sand of the Hanhai Plains, laced with the stench of blood, stung Ye Ningzhou's face like poisoned needles.
He lay prone on the leeward side of a sand dune, his fingernails dug into the scalding grit, knuckles whitening to the color of bone. The defense map, soaked with cold sweat, had wrinkled at the edges and frayed at the corners, yet he pressed it tightly to his chest—where the warmth of Amu still lingered, and where the final gaze of his parents burned like fire in their pupils.
"Search! Search thoroughly! Leader Xiao said if even one survivor slips through, I'll skin you alive!"
Butcher Li's roar echoed from the town entrance, mingled with the harsh scrape of a massive axe dragging over flagstones. Ye Ningzhou bit down hard on his wrist to stifle the whimper rising in his throat. He watched the fat man grab a wailing child and hurl him against a wall like a dead dog; brain matter splattered across the yellowish town banner, staining the two characters "Black Stone" a vivid crimson.
Cultivators from the Demon-Slaying Alliance ran amok in the town. Talisman fire ignited thatched huts and scorched the drying animal hides. A hunter tried to resist, only to be incinerated into a twisted black cinder by a flame talisman array, a half-drawn arrow still clutched in his hand. Ye Ningzhou recognized that bow—it belonged to Uncle Zhang, who'd laughed just yesterday, saying he'd teach him to shoot straight through a sand wolf's eye.
Now, those eyeballs floated in a pool of blood.
"Brother Ningzhou…" A voice as faint as a mosquito's buzz sounded behind him.
Ye Ningzhou froze, spinning around. It was the neighbor's little girl, her hair in two buns, face caked with mud, a newborn puppy clutched tightly to her chest. "My… my mother told me to follow you," her voice trembled uncontrollably. "She said you'd keep me alive…"
Before she could finish, a streak of talisman fire hissed past the sand dune, igniting the nearby saxaul grass. Butcher Li's bellow drew closer: "Movement over here! Dig up every inch for me!"
Ye Ningzhou's heart hammered. He grabbed the little girl and darted into the depths of the dunes. Sand poured into his shoes, rubbing his soles raw, yet he ran faster than the wind—Amu had died to buy him this time; he wouldn't waste it on hesitation.
"Why are they killing everyone?" The girl stumbled as he dragged her, the puppy letting out a weak whimper in her arms.
Ye Ningzhou didn't look back, his teeth grinding until they ached. He remembered Xiao Wanlei's sinister grin when he'd snatched the Dao Seal, the cold glint of that half-piece of qinghei—deep blue-black—fragment in the firelight. His parents had said it was a token of the Abyss Guardians, meant to "suppress something." But to the Demon-Slaying Alliance, it was proof of "colluding with demons."
"Because they're dogs," Ye Ningzhou's voice was as rough as sandpaper. "Biting dogs."
After running about three li, the sounds of slaughter behind them faded. Ye Ningzhou hid the girl in an abandoned hunter's hut, pressing half a piece of dry rations into her hand. "Wait here. At dawn, head south—find the oasis merchant caravans."
The girl clung to his sleeve, tears pooling in her eyes. "Aren't you coming with me?"
Ye Ningzhou ruffled her hair, his fingertips brushing the wolf-tooth necklace—Amu's warmth still seemed to linger on it. He looked toward the town, where flames had merged into a single blaze, painting half the sky red. Even the sand wolves, which howled at the moon, had fallen silent.
"I have things to do," he said.
As he turned, the fragment of the Dao Seal in his chest began to burn again. This time, it wasn't a searing pain, but a sense of something struggling to break free. Ye Ningzhou pressed a hand to it, clearly feeling the outline of the character "衡" (Heng—Balance), like a seed taking root in his flesh and blood.
He crept toward the docks along the edge of the dunes. Moonlight stretched his shadow long, like a dying wolf.
The stench of blood at the docks was thicker than in the town. Several fishing boats lay overturned on the shallows, their planks pierced with broken arrows and ash from burnt talismans. Ye Ningzhou waded through knee-deep seawater, his soles sliced by splinters of wood; droplets of blood fell into the water, blooming into tiny red flowers.
Then he saw the shattered cargo ship.
Its hull had been split open by some tremendous force, the mast sticking askew in the sand, the sails reduced to charred skeletons. A familiar figure lay prone on the deck, a wound on his back so deep the bone showed, yet his body still held the posture of charging forward—it was Amu.
Ye Ningzhou walked over and knelt beside him. Amu's eyes were still open, staring out at the dark sea, a broken oar clutched tightly in his hand. Ye Ningzhou tried to close his eyes, but his fingers trembled uncontrollably.
"You fool…" he muttered, tears finally spilling, landing on Amu's neck. "We were supposed to hunt in the depths of the Hanhai Plains together. Did you forget?"
Of course, Amu didn't answer. Only the waves lapped at the hull repeatedly, as if weeping in his stead.
Ye Ningzhou took off his coarse linen jacket and covered Amu with it. His hand brushed against something hard in Amu's arms;pulling it out, he found a fist-sized inner core, its surface glowing with a pale blue light—it was the sand wolf core Amu had hunted that very day.
The fool had held onto it until his last breath, saving it for Ye Ningzhou's breakthrough.
Suddenly, the sound of hooves echoed in the distance, mixed with Xiao Wanlei's shouts: "That brat can't have gotten far! Search along the coast!"
Ye Ningzhou quickly tucked the inner core into his arms,then dragged Amu's body behind a reef to hide it. He took one last look at the cooling form, then tightened the wolf-tooth necklace around his neck.
"Wait," he said to the sea wind, his voice as soft as a sigh, yet sharp with poisoned resolve. "I'll make them pay. Every last one."
The moment he turned and plunged into the water, Ye Ningzhou spotted Xiao Wanlei's fleet cruising in the distance. The flame talisman arrays on their bows flickered in the dark, like the ghost fires of hell.
He dived beneath the surface. The defense map dug into his chest, a painful reminder. The patrol routes and talisman array nodes marked on it had now become blood-stained coordinates.
The night on the Hanhai Plains still blew with sand. But from this moment on, only two things mattered in Ye Ningzhou's world:
Survive. Avenge.
The seawater was salty and bitter, stinging like needles when it flooded his nostrils. Ye Ningzhou held his breath and swam toward the deep sea. He'd wrapped the defense map in oilcloth three times, pressing it tight to his chest, where it pressed against the fragment of the Dao Seal through his flesh—strangely, there seemed to be a faint resonance between them.
He could hear the hoofbeats on the shore fading, Xiao Wanlei's curses shattered by the waves into indistinct noise. But Ye Ningzhou didn't dare stop. It wasn't until his lungs felt ready to burst that he used the moonlight to orient himself and swam toward the reed marsh three li away.
The reeds grew taller than a man, rustling in the wind, perfectly masking his movements. Ye Ningzhou collapsed in the mud, gasping for air; seawater and cold sweat dripped from his hair, pooling into a small puddle on the ground. He touched the sand wolf core in his arms,its warm pulse making his fingertips tingle—it was the thing Amu had died to protect, and now his only reliance.
"Mortal bones…" Ye Ningzhou stared at his hands. They'd held bows and chopped firewood, but never a cultivator's magical weapon. The elders in town used to say: those with no spiritual veins, mere mortal bones, would remain mortal all their lives. They'd never even reach the Qi-Gathering Realm, let alone stand against someone like Xiao Wanlei, a Qi-Gathering cultivator.
But he refused to believe it.
The blood of his parents, Amu's death, the three hundred corpses in Black Stone Town—all screamed at him: rules were made to be broken.
He tore a strip from his sleeve, dipped it in dew from the reed leaves, and spread out the defense map on the ground. The map had been drawn by Amu's father, an old hunter who'd never learned to read, yet he'd marked every detail of Black Stone Town's surroundings: dune formations, even the hidden paths the Demon-Slaying Alliance often took. Ye Ningzhou's finger traced the small cross next to "Butcher Li"—it marked the route Li took on his nightly patrols, beside a patch of low pine woods, perfect for an ambush.
"You'll be first," Ye Ningzhou murmured to the cross, his eyes colder than moonlight.
Just then, a wolf's howl echoed in the distance. Not the usual sand wolf of the Hanhai Plains—this sound was deeper, laced with the reek of blood, as if carried from Black Stone Town. Ye Ningzhou looked up sharply. The flames over the town had dimmed, leaving only a few trails of black smoke twisting in the night wind, like the shadows of wandering spirits.
He suddenly remembered Amu's words at dusk: "Tonight's wolf howls will shake the stars from the sky."
Now it seemed: it wasn't the wolves' howls that startled the stars. It was the evil in men's hearts that had blackened the entire sky.
Ye Ningzhou stood, folding the defense map into a small square and tucking it into his boot. He wrapped the sand wolf core in cloth and tied it to his waist. One last glance toward Black Stone Town—once, it had been his home, filled with the scent of roasted meat, his parents' scoldings and laughter, Amu's swinging wolf-tooth necklace.
Now, there was nothing left.
"I'm leaving," he said to the empty air, as if saying goodbye to Amu. "Wait for me to return."
As he turned and vanished into the depths of the reeds, the fragment of the Dao Seal in his chest burned again. This time, it wasn't a searing pain, but a warm current spreading through his veins, flowing to the tips of his limbs. Ye Ningzhou clenched his fist, feeling a faint surge of strength gather in his fingertips—perhaps this token of the Abyss Guardians was more than just an ordinary stone.
The reeds closed behind him, rustling like they were hiding his tracks. On the distant sea, Xiao Wanlei's fleet still cruised, the light of the flame talisman arrays piercing the darkness now and then, yet failing to reach this reed marsh where a flame of vengeance smoldered.
Ye Ningzhou's figure grew farther and farther, blending into the night of the Hanhai Plains. His steps were slow, but unshakable; each one pressed into the sand seemed to carve a vow.
The sand wolves still howled at the moon. But this time, their howls carried the name of a mortal-boned youth.