The branch snapped.
Chen Ba lowered his stance.
Lightning Qi gathered in his calves.
Something crashed through the mist.
Running.
A Greenback Tuskboar burst onto the survey path.
Blood covered one side of its body.
Three deep wounds scored its rear flank, black around the edges. One tusk had broken near the base.
It looked exhausted.
Terrified.
The beast saw Chen Ba and stopped.
Chen Ba stepped aside.
Enough space to pass.
The Tuskboar glanced behind itself.
Then back at him.
It did not want to turn around.
Chen Ba understood.
He wasn't prey.
He was blocking its escape.
The boar charged.
First Step.
Crack!
Chen Ba burst diagonally aside.
The Tuskboar passed, twisted, and attacked again.
Too fast.
The broken tusk scraped his robe.
Chen Ba retreated between the trees.
The beast followed.
Wrong again.
Greenback Tuskboars were supposed to commit to simple charges.
This one watched his feet.
When Lightning Qi gathered, it hesitated.
When he shifted his weight, it adjusted.
"You're too clever."
The next charge came harder.
Chen Ba waited.
Crack!
Backward-left.
The beast turned early.
Its remaining tusk passed over his head.
Too close.
His calves already burned.
He could not win by repeating the First Step.
So he used the valley.
Trees.
Roots.
Loose stone.
Slopes.
He drew the Tuskboar through all of them, using short bursts only when the beast cornered him.
It adapted.
So did he.
At two close-growing trees, Chen Ba waited until the final moment.
Crack!
He burst left.
The Tuskboar tried to turn.
Its injured rear leg failed.
Its shoulder slammed into the trunk.
Chen Ba pulled the Black Pole free.
No Qi answered.
He swung anyway.
BOOM!
The pole struck the wounded flank and knocked the beast down.
The impact numbed both his arms.
The Tuskboar rose.
Chen Ba stared.
It should have fled.
Instead, it looked beyond him.
Its whole body began trembling.
Something moved through the forest.
Slowly.
The Tuskboar abandoned Chen Ba and ran.
The trees behind it exploded.
A huge dark shape emerged.
One long limb moved.
The Tuskboar died before it could scream.
The creature lifted its body and threw it aside.
Chen Ba froze.
The beast he had struggled to survive against...
had been prey.
The newcomer was several times larger.
Black-grey skin stretched across a thin, unnatural frame.
Bone-like growths protruded from its shoulders and spine.
Half its body looked rotten.
Dark energy seeped from old wounds.
Monster.
Perhaps.
Chen Ba had never seen anything like it.
The creature looked at the dead Tuskboar.
Then at him.
Every instinct screamed.
Run.
Lightning gathered.
First Step—
The creature vanished.
Pain exploded through Chen Ba's abdomen.
He looked down.
A hardened limb had pierced straight through him.
Through his stomach.
Out his back.
For one impossible second, there was no pain.
Then all of it arrived.
His Qi collapsed.
The Black Pole fell from his hand.
The creature lifted him from the ground.
Blood ran down its limb.
Chen Ba could not breathe properly.
Could not move.
Could barely think.
Aunty Ning.
He had promised to return.
The limb withdrew.
Chen Ba fell.
Blood spread beneath him.
His fingers scraped weakly against the soil.
The Black Pole lay several paces away.
Too far.
His vision disappeared.
Darkness.
A heartbeat.
Weak.
Another.
Slower.
The pendant against his chest turned freezing cold.
Something beneath thirteen years of silence stirred.
The Black Pole trembled.
Then rose.
It crossed the blood-soaked ground and dropped into Chen Ba's hand.
His fingers closed around it.
The unknown creature approached.
Stopped.
Frost spread across the earth.
Grass whitened.
Mist crystallised.
Trees cracked under sudden cold.
The creature stepped back.
Ice climbed its body.
A pressure surfaced for only an instant.
Ancient.
Overwhelming.
Then—
the frozen monster shattered.
Black-white fragments scattered through the forest.
Before they landed, they began to melt.
Not into water.
Into nothing.
The cold vanished.
The Black Pole dropped beside Chen Ba.
Silence returned.
The eruption rolled across the surrounding region.
Trees shook.
Cold swept through distant patrol routes.
Alarm talismans were already reacting farther north.
One patrol leader turned toward the disturbance.
"What was that?"
"Quarry?"
"Has to be."
Reports had begun arriving of something seriously wrong beneath the North Quarry.
Unknown danger.
Dark energy.
Possible high-level presence.
No one considered another explanation.
Certainly not a thirteen-year-old Qi Initiate on a White-grade herb survey.
The patrol moved north.
Chen Ba remained where he had fallen.
For some time.
A different patrol eventually traced damage through Greenmist Valley.
They found the Tuskboar first.
Dead.
Its body had been pierced through.
The patrol leader crouched.
"Not done by a pole."
"Something else was here."
Broken vegetation led farther in.
Frozen leaves had already thawed.
No second corpse remained.
Then someone shouted.
"Here!"
Chen Ba lay beneath a tree.
Unconscious.
His robe was soaked red around the abdomen.
The ground beneath him had dried black with blood.
A guard knelt.
Then frowned.
"Where's the wound?"
They turned him carefully.
Blood covered both front and back.
Enough for a complete impalement.
But the skin beneath had already closed.
Only faint lines remained across his abdomen and back.
"Check his pulse."
Weak.
Stable.
"No major internal bleeding."
The guards stared at the blood.
Then at Chen Ba.
"What happened?"
Nobody could answer.
The Black Pole lay beside him.
Silent.
Ordinary.
The patrol leader looked back toward the Tuskboar.
"He fought it."
"What about the rest of this damage?"
"Probably his movement technique."
"And that energy eruption?"
"That came from the quarry."
The explanation fit what they already knew.
So they accepted it.
"Get him back."
Chen Ba woke once during the return.
A guard leaned over him.
"What attacked you?"
Memory came in pieces.
Mist.
Tuskboar.
Something larger.
Pain.
Then cold.
"Tuskboar..."
"Anything else?"
Chen Ba tried.
A dark shape.
Blood.
The Black Pole in his hand.
Nothing after that.
"I don't..."
His eyes closed.
That became the patrol report.
Greenback Tuskboar encounter.
Severe exhaustion.
Heavy blood loss of unclear origin.
Probable overuse of Thunder God's Three Steps.
No second creature confirmed.
The emergency healer frowned at Chen Ba's abdomen.
"There should be a wound."
Elder Chen Zhaolin stood nearby.
"There was enough blood."
"More than enough."
Only a thin healing line remained.
The same mark crossed his back.
"His body repaired itself before the patrol found him."
"How?"
"Constitution, perhaps."
She checked his pulse again.
"Mixed-blood descendants can develop unusual recovery traits."
His meridians told a simpler story.
Heavy exhaustion.
Both calves strained.
Qi nearly empty.
The healer glanced at the Black Pole.
"That weapon probably made the movement technique even harder on him."
Reasonable.
Simple.
Wrong.
But nobody had evidence for anything else.
The Greenmist Herb Survey required eight plots.
Chen Ba had completed three.
The fourth contained only partial observations.
The rest were untouched.
Mission incomplete.
No punishment.
No combat bonus.
No exceptional contribution.
The patrol had found one dead Greenback Tuskboar.
Nothing more.
The Achievement Hall awarded:
30 Achievement Points.
Chen Ba's total rose to:
45.
That was all.
When Chen Ba woke properly, his abdomen hurt.
Far less than it should.
Across the next bed, Chen Shun sat wrapped in bandages with Qi-stabilizing needles along one arm.
They stared at each other.
Chen Shun spoke first.
"What happened to you?"
Chen Ba frowned.
"Tuskboar."
Shun glanced at the blood-soaked remains of Chen Ba's robe.
"That did all this?"
Chen Ba searched his memory.
The Tuskboar.
Something chasing it.
A dark shape.
Then nothing.
"I don't know."
Shun fell silent.
Chen Ba looked at his bandages.
"What happened to you?"
"Long story."
Chen Ba's gaze shifted to the Black Pole resting against the wall.
Heavy.
Silent.
Exactly as before.
He had the strange impression that he had held it after falling.
But he could not remember picking it up.
Outside the recovery hall, the Chen Clan prepared for the emergency beneath the North Quarry.
Every senior cultivator who had sensed the enormous eruption had already reached the same conclusion.
It came from the quarry.
No one looked toward Greenmist Valley.
No one looked toward Chen Ba.
Beneath his robe, the key-shaped pendant had already returned to its usual cold.
As though nothing had happened.