Then they exploded.
Not dramatically. Not in a shower of glory. They exploded wetly, with a series of soft pops that sounded like overripe fruit being stepped on, and a thick gray-green mist billowed outward—foul-smelling in a way that didn't just offend the nose but reached past it and assaulted the soul directly.
Lu Chen's instincts screamed. His eyes watered. His stomach performed acrobatics that would've earned a gold medal in his past life.
He ducked behind the nearest tree, sleeve over his mouth, and thought: What the actual hell.
The tree looked deeply uncomfortable. A tree didn't have feelings. But if it did, it would be filing a complaint while retching the last sap it absorbed.
Behind him, the guards had already scrambled back, dragging the wagon with them. Lin Xue had her sister's face pressed into her shoulder so hard Lin Mei's muffled protests sounded like a kitten at the bottom of a well. Old Guard Wei, veteran of a hundred battles, looked like he was about to lose everything he had eaten in the past week.
One person didn't escape.
The woman with the flute had been standing in the center of the pack when they detonated. The mist had engulfed her completely. She emerged from the cloud retching, her silver hair plastered to her face, her grey robes ruined in ways that defied description.
"How—" she choked, spitting, her voice a wet rasp. "How is this possible? The ritual shouldn't have—the corpses were too fresh—they still had residual life force—they rejected—"
Lu Chen stepped out from behind the tree, one hand pinching his nose.
"So," he said, his voice coming out slightly nasal, "this was your secret skill? Biohazard?"
What side are you even on?
The woman finally stopped retching long enough to glare at him. Her eyes were streaming—rage and involuntary tears indistinguishable. "I'll kill you," she hissed. "I'll—"
Lu Chen sighed.
He'd broken through. He'd nearly lost his sense of smell permanently. And now this woman was threatening him while covered in exploded wolf guts. His patience was a thin wire and it had just snapped.
Phantom Mirage Step.
He appeared in front of her. She was Body Forging 1—stronger than him on paper. But she was also mid-retch, half-blind, and currently reconsidering every life choice that had led her to this clearing.
He bitch-slapped the consciousness right out of her.
The crack echoed through the trees. She crumpled like a puppet whose strings had been cut simultaneously—limp, boneless, and landing face-first in the one patch of ground that had not been improved by the explosion.
[Defeated: Unnamed Demonic Cultivator (Body Forging 1) — Soul Points Gained: 0]
"I know what I did," Lu Chen said quietly.
He gestured to the guards. "Bind her. Use the leftover spirit ropes from the bandits."
Old Guard Wei hesitated. "Those ropes devour blood qi. They're... unpleasant."
"That's why you're using them."
Wei's face moved through several expressions before settling on something resembling respect. He barked the order. The guards moved quickly—efficient now that they had something useful to do. The woman was bound, gagged, and loaded into the wagon beside the still-unconscious bandits from the previous night. Nobody commented on the arrangement.
It suited everyone.
Zhao leaned close to the caterpillar-eyebrow guard. "You know, I was going to complain about the smell. But then I remembered I once slept in a latrine for three days."
"We remember, Zhao."
"Just putting things in perspective."
"Please stop putting things in perspective."
The caterpillar-eyebrow guard's eyebrows, which had been caterpillars before, had now transformed into exhausted, defeated caterpillars. They had seen too much. They wanted to retire.
---
Lu Chen watched them work, then felt a familiar pull behind his eyes. Like someone tugging on his consciousness from the inside.
[Detected: Host is out of combat mode. Unlocking system upgrade pathway.]
"Wait—"
His vision blurred. His knees buckled. His consciousness began to leave his body with the slow, inevitable pressure of a tide going out.
"System—" The word came out slurred. "You couldn't have waited five—"
He collapsed.
---
The clearing erupted.
Lin Xue was at his side before the guards had finished processing what had happened, her composure cracking clean through. "Brother Lu!"
Lin Mei peeked over her sister's shoulder, face pale. "Is he dying?"
Lin Xue pressed two fingers to his neck. Let out a slow breath. "He's alive. His heartbeat is strong." She looked at Wei, eyes dark. "But we can't stay here."
"Overexertion," Wei said, his tone that of a man who didn't entirely believe his own diagnosis. He looked at Lu Chen's face—relaxed, unbothered, as if wherever he'd gone was considerably more comfortable than the wolf-soaked clearing. "Load him carefully. We move before anything else finds us."
The guards moved. The caravan resumed its journey, slower now, more watchful.
And Lu Chen dreamed.
---
Far away—in a place that had no name, where time moved differently and space folded in on itself—the void trembled.
A crack appeared in the nothing.
A middle-aged man stepped through. His robes were plain, his face unremarkable, but his aura pressed against the void around him the way a mountain pressed against the earth beneath it—not aggressively, simply by existing. Everything near him adjusted to accommodate the weight.
The crack widened.
A second figure emerged. A woman, silver-haired, sharp-eyed, her expression carved from centuries of patience. She didn't look at the others. She didn't need to.
A third. A fourth. They kept coming until nine figures stood in the void—five men, four women—each one carrying an aura that could have unmade the plane where Lu Chen lay unconscious without particular effort.
The void held.
That was the part that mattered. That was the part that should not have been possible.
The oldest among them spoke first. "You all felt it."
They nodded.
One of the younger men shifted his weight. "Is it truly that?"
"Yes." The oldest's eyes were steady. "The Mandate of Chaos has awakened."
The silver-haired woman's expression didn't change, but something moved in her gaze—old and focused. "The Heavenly Dao hasn't reacted yet."
"No."
"Then we have a window."
"A small one." He turned to face the tear in the void, at the faint glimmer of the world beyond it. "We find them first. We protect them before our enemies understand what they're looking at."
Silence settled over the nine.
One of them—the youngest, though young was a relative concept among people who had outlived civilizations—looked at the tear with something that might have been apprehension. "And if we're already too late?"
The oldest didn't answer immediately.
When he did, his voice was quiet. Final.
"We won't be."
The void folded.
They were gone.
[TO BE CONTINUED...]