Ryan pulled Lucia along, maintaining a distance of thirty to fifty paces behind the fleeing group.
The waist-high wild grass rolled endlessly in the night wind, its rustling masking their footsteps. The occasional gasps and footsteps coming from ahead became their only guides in the darkness.
Lucia followed barefoot behind him. Though the soles of her feet had long been sliced open by the sharp grass blades, she gritted her teeth and remained silent.
“Teacher...”
she whispered, lowering her voice. “They seem to know what happens at night.”
“Yes.”
Ryan responded calmly.
The village that had risen out of the soil from thin air should have meant safety, yet when those survivors saw it, their faces held nothing but terror.
What they feared was clearly not the village itself, but what would happen after it appeared.
Ryan did not rashly ask.
In a bizarre realm like this where no rules seemed to apply, the survivors' experience was often mixed with fear and guesswork. Making contact blindly would only expose them.
Suddenly, the footsteps ahead stopped.
Ryan halted instantly, reaching out to pull Lucia into the grass.
A dead silence fell ahead.
A moment later, the voices of several men drifted over.
“Why did we stop?”
“Did you hear a sound nearby?”
“Wait, something's wrong...”
“There's something beneath the grass roots!”
In the next instant, a faint rustling of grass blades scraping together came from all directions.
“Run!”
“The hunters are here!”
A bloodcurdling shriek suddenly rang out.
A grayish-black shadow abruptly tore through the waves of grass, pouncing on the man bringing up the rear.
It was a monster even larger than an adult male wolf. Its limbs were long and thin, and its entire body was covered in wet, short grayish-black fur. It had a narrow, elongated head and a massive maw that split all the way back to its ears, filled with interlocking, sharp teeth.
Most bizarrely, it did not let out any growl or roar.
It seemed to have no eyes, hunting solely by scent and ground vibrations.
The man had only run a few steps before he was tackled from the side. The sound of his neck snapping was exceptionally clear in the night.
The remaining people completely broke down, fleeing madly in different directions.
Immediately after, two more hunters emerged from the sea of grass, chasing after the fleeing figures.
Lucia clutched Ryan's shirt hem tightly, her body trembling uncontrollably.
“Don't move,” Ryan said in a low voice. “And don't run.”
“But they...”
“They chase moving targets.”
Ryan's gaze locked onto the monster that had just killed its prey.
It was lowering its head, its nostrils flaring as it caught the scent in the air.
In the next second, it suddenly turned its head.
Its target was exactly where Ryan and Lucia were hiding.
“It's too late to run now.”
Ryan squatted down and picked up a sharp stone shard from the mud.
The monster lunged forward with a sudden burst of speed.
A foul, bloody stench rushed at them.
Just as the massive maw was less than half a meter from his face, Ryan suddenly sidestepped.
The monster missed, brushing past his shoulder.
Using the momentum of his dodge, Ryan slashed his right hand hard, drawing the stone shard across its abdomen.
Dark red blood sprayed out.
The monster tumbled to the ground but quickly scrambled back onto its feet.
It did not attack again immediately. Instead, it lowered its head, seemingly re-evaluating the prey before it.
“Teacher!”
Lucia suddenly closed her eyes.
The spiritual perception of her 【Grail】 aspect rapidly spread out.
“I can feel its heart, but... there's also a strange piece of flesh!”
she said urgently. “Under the third rib on the left, near the abdominal cavity. That thing is providing power to its limbs!”
Ryan nodded.
“Understood.”
The monster lunged once more.
But this time, it did not attack Ryan. Instead, it abruptly changed direction, bypassing him to spring straight at Lucia.
“You're asking for death.”
Ryan took a swift step forward, grabbed a thick piece of dead wood nearby, and swung it hard horizontally.
Thud!
The monster was forcibly knocked off course, crashing heavily into the muddy water.
“Lucia!”
Lucia gritted her teeth, concentrating all of her 【Grail】 spirituality.
That power burrowed into the monster's body, disrupting the function of that specialized organ.
The monster's movements suddenly froze.
It was only for an instant.
But it was enough.
Ryan rushed in front of it, grabbed its lower jaw, and pinned it ruthlessly into the mud.
He thrust the stone shard in his right hand into the location Lucia had indicated.
Squelch!
The stone shard plunged deep beneath the third rib.
The monster struggled frantically, its claws gouging deep furrows into the ground.
Ryan did not stop. He drove the stone shard deeper into the chest cavity and twisted it violently.
The monster convulsed a few times before completely losing all strength.
The night wind swept over the sea of grass once more.
Ryan sliced open the corpse and retrieved a fist-sized, dark red organ from deep within its chest cavity.
It still radiated a faint warmth.
“We're keeping this.”
“Teacher, what is that?”
“I don't know.”
Ryan wrapped it up carefully.
“An extraordinary organ containing the traits of 【Grail】 and 【Flesh】. We'll study it once we're safe.”
The two did not pursue the other hunters, nor did they look for the surviving escapees.
After the battle just now, Ryan had confirmed an important rule.
These hunters did not kill aimlessly.
They relied on scent and vibrations to find prey, prioritizing fast-moving, panicked targets, and they would hesitate in the face of fierce resistance.
Though this dream sea of grass was bizarre, rules still existed here.
As long as there were rules, they could be observed and exploited.
“Let's keep moving.”
The two traversed the sea of grass once more.
After more than half an hour, a faint, pale gray light finally appeared on the horizon.
Ryan stopped beside a mutilated corpse that had been partially eaten.
An old leather bag was pinned beneath the corpse's arm.
Inside was only a piece of moldy jerky, a bottle of turbid potion, and a tattered beast-hide map.
Ryan used the spirituality of 【Lantern】 to illuminate the map.
The map was highly crude, with most of it already covered in bloodstains.
However, on the right edge, a towering white stone pillar reaching into the clouds was drawn with black charcoal.
Beneath the stone pillar, a sentence was written in Ancient Common:
“There is sanctuary beneath the stone.”
Ryan put away the map and handed half of the jerky to Lucia.
“Teacher, are we going there?”
“Yes.”
Ryan looked into the distance.
“There should be a defensive line left behind by the rules there.”
The two continued forward in the direction indicated by the map.
Finally, before the sun rose, a sudden patch of white appeared at the end of the sea of grass.
It was a white stone pillar so massive it bordered on absurd.
Within a range of dozens of paces around the pillar, all the vegetation had withered and died.
The moment Ryan and Lucia stepped onto that withered, yellow grassland, the first thing they felt was not the relief of finding a safe haven, but an extremely sudden silence.
There was still wind here.
The grass blades scraped gently against one another in the wind, and the chirping of some unknown insect could even be heard in the distance. Yet compared to the sea of grass that had nearly swallowed them earlier, this place felt as though it had been forcibly carved out of the world by some mysterious power.
The waist-high, wildly growing weeds came to an abrupt halt dozens of paces away from the white stone monument.
The outer perimeter was still a lush green, but the inside held only a patch of grayish-yellow withered grass.
It was as if an invisible boundary separated two completely different worlds.
Lucia took a cautious step forward.
Nothing lunged out at her.
She took another step forward, looking down at the dry, hard ground beneath her feet. Her tense little face finally relaxed a bit.
“Teacher...”
“Yes?”
“Nothing is watching us here anymore.”
Ryan did not answer.
He stood in place, closed his eyes, and carefully sensed his surroundings using the spirituality of 【Lantern】.
After a moment, he opened his eyes.
“Not for now.”
Only then did Lucia let out a long breath.
She looked down at her feet.
After fleeing all this way, the cotton socks on her feet were torn beyond recognition. The soles of her feet were sliced with many tiny cuts from the sharp grass, and now that the muddy water had dried, the blood had mixed with the dirt.
She simply took off both socks completely and stepped barefoot onto the withered, yellow earth.
“It's so hard.”
She stamped her feet lightly.
“The grass here seems completely dead.”
Ryan did not correct her.
Because he had already noticed something more.
These plants had not died a natural death.
Their root systems were still intact, yet all the roots presented a grayish-white color as if scorched by fire. The once-vibrant spiritual essence of life within the plants had completely vanished.
This was not death.
To be more precise, life had been repelled from them.
Ryan walked forward through the withered grass.
Soon, the white stone pillar appeared before them.
Now that they were close to it, the pressure it exerted was far more pronounced than it had seemed from a distance.
The stone pillar rose dozens of meters high, with a base diameter of nearly seven or eight meters. Its surface bore a pale, ashen color worn by the passage of endless years, resembling a colossal bone growing out of the earth.
The column was covered in cracks.
Some cracks even stretched over ten meters high.
Yet strangely, despite this, it still showed no signs of collapsing.
Ryan reached out and gently touched the stone pillar.
It was cold.
It was hard.
There was no unusual temperature.
But when he channeled a thread of 【Lantern】 spirituality into it, an extremely blurry image suddenly flashed in his mind.
Many people were kneeling here.
They wore robes from an era long lost to time.
Some held torches, some cradled plants, while others knelt prostrate before the stone pillar, pressing their foreheads firmly against the ground.
And behind them was a grassland that had not yet become as wild and frenzied as it was now.
The image lasted for less than two seconds before vanishing completely.
Ryan withdrew his hand.
“People used to be here.”
Lucia looked up at the stone pillar.
“They lived here?”
“Most likely.”
Ryan squatted down, pinching a small amount of grayish-white powder from beside his foot between his fingertips.
The powder was very fine.
It was mixed with some kind of mineral particles, along with extremely faint ritual remnants.
“And they weren't just an ordinary expedition team.”
He looked up at the stone pillar.
“This place was once a long-term occult outpost.”
Lucia nodded, only half-understanding.
“Then where did they go?”
“They died.”
Ryan spoke very calmly.
Lucia froze for a moment.
“How do you know?”
“If they were still alive, the ritual here wouldn't have decayed to this state.”
Ryan walked around to the back of the stone pillar.
A large amount of withered grass had accumulated there.
After kicking away several layers with his foot, a grayish-white stone slab completely different from the surrounding earth was revealed beneath.
There was a noticeable gap along the edge of the slab.
Ryan squatted down and tapped it with his finger.
It was hollow.
There was space below.
He immediately gripped the edge of the stone slab and hauled it upward with a sudden heave.
Boom!
The heavy stone slab was flipped right over.
Beneath it, a flight of stone steps extending underground was revealed.
Lucia looked at the pitch-black entrance, her expression instantly turning somewhat grim.
“Teacher...”
“What is it?”
“Why is it that every place that seems safe always ends up having a hole?”
Ryan remained silent for two seconds.
“Because danger is usually hidden below.”
“...”
Lucia suddenly felt that her teacher made a lot of sense.
But she didn't want to hear that kind of sense at all.
Ryan did not waste any more time.
He took out his flint, scraped some dry lichen from the edge of the stone monument, and bound it to a wooden stick to make a simple torch.
The flame flared up.
The dim yellow light illuminated the steps.
“Keep close.”
“Don't touch the walls.”
“If you hear any sound, tell me first.”
Lucia nodded hastily.
The two headed down the stone steps.
Ryan only stopped when he reached the very last step.
The underground was not the complex labyrinth they had imagined.
This place was more like an underground outpost that had been abandoned for decades.
The room was not large.
The four walls were constructed from rough stone blocks, and decayed wooden crates were piled in the corners.
A few stone tables lay overturned on the floor.
Some faded murals remained on the walls.
Ryan held up the torch.
The first painting showed a group of people kneeling on a grassland.
The second was an ancient tree so massive its canopy was invisible.
The third was a lantern.
Lucia took a few steps closer.
“Teacher.”
“Yes.”
“Is that lantern the same as yours?”
Ryan did not answer immediately.
He carefully observed the mural.
That lantern had no flame.
Instead, seven or eight concentric geometric rings of light radiated outward around it.
“It might be related.”
“Does that mean they also worshipped 【Lantern】?”
“I can't be sure.”
Ryan shook his head.
“The mural only proves they had witnessed some power related to 【Lantern】; it doesn't prove they worshipped it.”
Lucia nodded.
But right at that moment.
Click.
An extremely faint sound of metal scraping came from a corner of the stone chamber.
Lucia froze instantly.
Ryan stopped in his tracks as well.
The light of the torch slowly turned toward the sound.
In the corner, a corpse was slowly standing up.
It was so withered it no longer looked human.
Its skin clung tightly to its bones, and the robe it wore was mostly rotted away. A rusted copper nail even pierced straight through its chest.
And in its right hand, it still held a short sword.
Lucia's face turned white in an instant.
“Teacher...”
“Get back.”
Ryan reached out and blocked her behind him.
The withered corpse raised its head.
It had no eyes.
Two pitch-black eye sockets stared directly at Ryan.
In the next instant, it suddenly charged forward.
Its speed was not fast.
But its strength was immense.
The short sword thrust straight at them.
Ryan sidestepped to the left.
Rip!
The blade scraped past his clothes, leaving a bloody scratch on his chest.
He glanced down.
The wound was not deep.
“High strength, low speed.”
The withered corpse thrust again, and Ryan took half a step back.
The short sword struck the stone wall heavily, sending sparks flying.
Lucia closed her eyes, quickly activating her 【Grail】 perception.
A few seconds later, she snapped her eyes open.
“Teacher, it has no life!”
“I know.”
“It's not a living corpse!”
“I know.”
Ryan stared at the withered corpse.
“It's being driven by something.”
The spirituality of 【Lantern】 quickly enveloped the withered corpse.
In the next moment, Ryan saw it.
In the deepest part of the withered corpse's chest cavity, a faint white glow was constantly circulating.
It had no heartbeat.
It had no blood.
It did not even have normal neural activity.
That glow of white light was its true core.
“Lucia.”
“Yes?”
“Behind the breastbone.”
Lucia closed her eyes once more.
A moment later, she pointed at the withered corpse.
“Right there!”
The withered corpse charged again.
This time, Ryan did not retreat.
The moment the short sword thrust forward, he took a sudden step forward.
The blade scraped past his shoulder.
At the same time, Ryan raised his right leg.
Crack!
He kicked the withered corpse's knee with brutal force.
The withered corpse lost its balance.
Taking advantage of the opening, Ryan grabbed its shoulders and pinned its entire body to the ground.
Immediately after, he drew the sharp bone tooth he had obtained from the carrion bird and thrust it ruthlessly through the gaps between its ribs.
Crack!
The bone tooth pierced the withered chest cavity.
The withered corpse struggled frantically.
Its hands clawed desperately at Ryan's arms.
Ryan remained expressionless.
“Lucia.”
“Here!”
“Tell me the location.”
“A little to the left!”
Ryan shifted his wrist.
“A little lower!”
The bone tooth sank deeper.
“Right there!”
Ryan exerted a sudden burst of strength.
Rip!
A white stone shard was forcibly pried out from the deepest part of the withered corpse's chest cavity.
Rate on N.U.
