Xiao Fang reacted instantly.

  With a fsh of her hand, she activated an amplification talisman, her voice thundering through the battlefield with magical crity:

  "All senior disciples—protect your seedlings! Scatter immediately! Head northeast toward the Falling Star Ridge! Stay mobile—don’t bunch up! Move now!"

  Her words were decisive, clipped, but every disciple understood the unspoken truth:

  Survival now depended on luck and instinct.

  Clustering together would only make them easy prey.

  Every man and woman for themselves—but the seniors were still responsible for keeping the seedlings alive.

  Zhang Tian barely understood what he was hearing before his senior jerked the beast around sharply, spurring it into a sprint across the broken earth.

  Above, the air shimmered with burning feathers and spiraling destruction.

  Yan Hu stood still for a moment, watching as another of his sect members was torn apart mid-scream.His jaw tightened beneath the beast-mask.

  Even he—proud, brutal Yan Hu—felt a chill.

  He could face two cultivators of his realm without flinching.

  He could face exhaustion, poison, treachery.

  But this?

  No amount of brute strength would save him from the Fming Desote Demonic Birds if he stayed.

  Not even his bloodline.

  With a savage snarl, he turned, using his own amplification talisman to bark his orders:

  "Golden Beast Sect! Scatter! Every man for themselves! Move!"

  The masked cultivators hesitated only a second before they obeyed, breaking apart into streaks of desperate flight.

  The battle was forgotten.

  There was no more Golden Beast Sect versus Water Serenity Sect.

  There was only the flight for survival.

  The flock descended fully now, the air vibrating with heat and demonic pressure.

  Screams echoed from all directions.

  Cultivators—enemy and ally alike—fell beneath the fiery talons or were consumed by molten fme.

  The world itself seemed to burn.

  And Zhang Tian, clutching the saddle horn with white-knuckled desperation, understood in that moment:

  This wasn’t just a battlefield.

  This was a massacre.

  And only fate—and will—would decide who lived through it.

  The forest had turned into a graveyard.

  After Xiao Fang’s desperate order, the survivors had scattered into the dense thickets, fleeing in all directions like insects escaping fire.Zhang Tian clung to his senior, Fang Chen, as they raced through the trees, sand and ash mixing with the heavy stench of blood hanging in the humid air.

  High above them, dark crimson shapes circled—the Fming Desote Demonic Birds, their three burning eyes scanning the ground with predatory hunger.

  Every few heartbeats, another scream was cut short.

  They could not outrun them. Not for long.

  Fang Chen, tall and grim, his dark brown hair pstered to his forehead by sweat, made a quick decision. He dismounted sharply, pulling Zhang Tian down with him.

  "We can’t keep riding," he hissed, voice tight. "The beasts are too easy to spot."

  Without hesitation, Fang Chen opened his beast sack—a storage pouch designed for living creatures—and with a fsh of light, their desert mount vanished into its confines.

  They fled on foot, ducking low, weaving through the broken roots and jagged rocks, hearts pounding in their throats.

  The forest around them whispered with the sound of death.

  By nightfall, they found a rge, hollowed-out tree, its trunk wide enough to conceal them both if they huddled close.Fang Chen crouched near the entrance, weapon ready, while Zhang Tian tucked himself deeper inside, trembling, trying to quiet his ragged breathing.

  Neither spoke.

  Speaking could draw death.

  Outside, the sounds of the night began—and they were horrifying.

  The first time they heard it—a fellow disciple’s terrified scream piercing the night, followed by the heavy beat of massive wings—they flinched violently.The scream was cut off midway, repced by the wet, sickening sound of flesh being torn apart.

  Later, as the fireflies dimmed, they heard ughter—soft, cruel. The sound of a bird pying with its prey.

  Risking a gnce through a crack in the trunk, Zhang Tian saw it:One of the immortal seedlings—someone he had seen sharing meals by the fires—was pinned beneath a massive cw, still alive, thrashing weakly.

  The Fming Desote Demonic Bird toyed with him—pecking, slicing shallow wounds, pulling back each time the boy screamed.It seemed almost amused.

  When the boy finally stopped moving, the bird lost interest, flinging the corpse aside like garbage and ascending once more into the bck skies.

  Zhang Tian pulled back, hands trembling so violently that he dug his nails into his own palms just to stay silent.

  Beside him, Fang Chen’s jaw was locked tight, his face pale and drawn, but his bde never dipped.

  Neither spoke.

  Neither slept.

  Hours passed—or maybe it was days.

  Time dissolved into cycles of terror and exhaustion.

  Every time Zhang Tian's body slumped toward sleep, a scream—near or far—would jolt him awake.

  Sometimes it was a howl of defiance.

  More often, it was the helpless, high-pitched wail of someone who realized, too te, that they had been found.

  They even saw survivors—once.

  A man, wounded and limping, cradling a young woman in his arms—his Dao companion, perhaps.The girl’s body was already half-devoured by spirit-wolves attracted by the bloodshed, but the man didn’t react.He simply rocked back and forth, murmuring broken prayers, as the beasts tore what remained from his grasp.

  Fang Chen had to physically restrain Zhang Tian from stepping forward.

  "There’s nothing you can do," Fang Chen whispered."If you move, you'll just join them."

  Zhang Tian bit down on his sleeve to stifle his sob.

  The helplessness burned more fiercely than any wound.

  Each night was the same.

  Sleep, if it came, sted minutes—punctuated by screams, or the heavy thrum of wings passing overhead, or the wet sounds of feeding.

  The smell of blood never left the air.

  The forest felt alive—alive and hungry—feeding off their despair.

  Even the insects grew silent after a while.

  Even the wind seemed to shiver.

  Zhang Tian’s spirit cracked slowly.

  The polished, confident young man from Earth—the hopeful martial artist from Red Maple Vilge—felt himself hollowing out with each passing hour.

  He wasn’t a hero.

  He wasn’t brave.

  He was a frightened boy hiding in a rotted tree, praying not to be noticed.

  Fang Chen remained a constant, grim presence beside him—steady, patient, unwilling to speak false comfort.

  At times, Zhang Tian wondered if that was what kept him sane.

  The silent understanding between them:Stay quiet. Stay hidden. Stay alive.

  The Fming Desote Demonic Birds had turned the forest into a sughterhouse.And now, survival was not about courage.

  It was about patience.Endurance.Luck.

  And so they waited.

  Eyes open.Hearts hammering.Praying to gods that had long since abandoned this pce.

  Praying that dawn would come before the birds found them.

  They moved again at dawn.

  Or at least, what passed for dawn in this cursed forest.

  The blood-colored sky above barely shifted from the bruised bckness of night to a murky rust-red. The earth beneath their feet was soft with ash and torn flesh, and the trees leaned overhead like the bones of long-dead giants.

  Zhang Tian stumbled after Fang Chen, every muscle aching, mind fogged with exhaustion.

  They hadn’t slept. Not really.

  Sleep was a lie whispered by the body—a momentary surrender between each scream that tore through the forest.

  He gripped the worn strap of his beast sack tightly, trying not to trip on the twisted roots, trying not to listen to the distant shrieks and sobs that echoed like ghosts.

  He was still alive.

  Barely.

  As they climbed a shallow ridge, Zhang Tian caught a glimpse of the battlefield behind them.

  He froze for a moment, the weight of it pressing down on him.

  The earth was littered with corpses—some scorched bck, others ripped apart, their blood soaked into the sand.The air stank of death, of wet rot and charred bone.

  Among the wreckage, he could still see shapes moving.Birds—those monstrous, burning creatures—picking at the remains.Sometimes tossing a piece into the air for sport.Sometimes simply leaving it to rot.

  Zhang Tian tightened his grip on the strap until his knuckles whitened.

  This was cultivation?

  Not the elegant, mystical path he'd once daydreamed about.

  Not sages on misty mountains.Not enlightenment under ancient pines.Not even the cold battles he had read about in the stories of old Earth.

  This was real.

  This was survival.

  Screaming. Bleeding. Watching people he barely knew die screaming, knowing he could do nothing but hide and pray he wasn't next.

  A heavy, ragged breath escaped his lips.

  He thought he would be used to fear by now.

  After all, hadn't he faced death dozens of times already?

  Hadn't he survived the brutal forest? The desert storms? The Golden Beast Sect ambush?

  But no.

  Each time fear returned, it was fresh.

  It sank into his bones, wrapped around his heart, choked his spirit with icy hands.

  And now, it wasn’t just fear anymore.

  It was anger.

  And guilt.

  And something even worse—doubt.

  Can I survive in this world?

  Is this all I am—someone who hides in a hollow tree while others die?

  He clenched his jaw so tightly it hurt.

  He wanted to scream.He wanted to cry.He wanted to go back—to Red Maple Vilge, to the zy afternoons at university, to cheap meals and clean beds.

  But all of that was gone.

  And standing here, breathing the tainted air of the killing fields, Zhang Tian understood something terrifying and undeniable:

  There was no going back.

  Fang Chen’s voice broke through his spiraling thoughts—calm, steady, dragging him back from the edge.

  “We move east,” Fang Chen said, low. “Small streams converge there. Might be shelter.”

  Zhang Tian nodded numbly, following without a word.

  His body moved because it had no choice.

  But inside, something was changing.

  Slowly.Painfully.Inevitably.

  The Zhang Tian who had fallen into this world six months ago would have broken completely by now.

  But this Zhang Tian...He bent.He bled.He feared.

  Yet he did not break.

  Not yet.

  And maybe—not ever.

  Far above, the fming birds screeched into the blood-red sky.

  And below, with ash in his hair and fear in his chest, Zhang Tian took another step forward into the unknown.

  They moved cautiously through the broken woods, the air so heavy it felt like swallowing ash with every breath.

  Fang Chen led, Zhang Tian close behind, both hunched low under the twisted remains of dead trees.

  The earth underfoot was soaked, part mud, part blood, and everywhere there were the signs of desperate flight: broken branches, discarded talismans, torn pieces of clothing half-buried in the churned earth.

  And then—

  A sound.

  A weak, ragged voice.

  "Help... please... someone...!"