Chapter 1: Living

March, early spring.

The eastern part of the Nanhuangzhou Continent, a remote corner.

The hazy sky was a shade of grey-black, heavy with a stifling pressure, as if someone had splashed ink onto rice paper; the ink had soaked through the firmament, staining the clouds.

The clouds were layered and intertwined, diffusing streaks of crimson lightning, accompanied by the rumbling of thunder.

It was like the low growl of a deity, echoing through the mortal world.

Blood-colored rain fell upon the mortal realm, carrying a sense of desolation.

The earth was blurred; a ruined city sat in silence amidst the dim red rain, devoid of any vitality.

Within the city, walls were broken and ruins were everywhere. All things were withered and decayed. One could see collapsed houses everywhere, as well as blue-black corpses and fragments of flesh, like shattered autumn leaves, silently withering away.

The streets, once bustling with noise and excitement, were now desolate.

The dirt roads that once saw people coming and going were now devoid of any clamor.

Only blood-mud remained, mixed with fragments of flesh, dust, and paper, indistinguishable from one another—a shocking sight.

Not far away, a broken carriage was stuck deep in the mud, filled with sorrow. Only an abandoned rabbit doll remained on the carriage shaft, swaying in the wind.

Its white fur had long since been soaked into a damp red, filled with a gloomy and eerie air.

Its turbid eyes seemed to retain some lingering resentment, staring alone at the mottled stones ahead.

There, a figure was lying prone.

This was a boy of thirteen or fourteen, his clothes tattered and covered in grime, a broken leather pouch tied around his waist.

The boy narrowed his eyes, motionless. A bone-chilling cold penetrated his worn-out outer garment from all directions, invading his entire body and gradually stealing away his body heat.

Yet, even as the rain fell upon his face, he did not blink. Like a falcon, he stared coldly into the distance.

Following his gaze, at a distance of seven or eight zhang away, a gaunt vulture was gnawing on the rotting carcass of a wild dog, occasionally observing its surroundings with vigilance.

It seemed that in this dangerous ruin, at the slightest sign of movement, it would instantly take flight.

And the boy, like a hunter, waited patiently for an opportunity.

After a long while, the opportunity arrived; the greedy vulture finally buried its head completely into the wild dog's abdominal cavity.

In an instant, the boy's narrowed eyes flashed with a cold glint.

His body shot out like an arrow released from a bow, rushing straight toward the vulture. With a flick of his right hand, he drew a black iron spike from the leather pouch at his waist.

The tip of the iron spike flashed with a sharp, cold light.

Perhaps sensing the killing intent, the moment the boy rushed out, the vulture immediately noticed. Startled, it flapped its wings to take flight, intending to escape.

But it was too late.

With a forceful flick of the boy's expressionless hand, the black iron spike transformed into a black line and shot out.

Pfft!

The sharp iron spike instantly pierced into the vulture's head, shattering its skull and killing it instantly.

The powerful impact carried its carcass, which fell at an angle and, with a 'bang', was pinned to the carriage not far away.

The blood-colored doll to the side swayed even more violently due to the carriage's disturbance.

The boy's expression remained calm, his speed not faltering in the slightest from beginning to end. He rushed to the spot and, upon arriving, grabbed the vulture's carcass along with the iron spike.

The force was so great that the part of the carriage pinned by the iron spike was also torn off in a small piece.

Having done this, he did not look back and sped away along the edge of the street.

The wind seemed to grow stronger at this moment; the blood-colored doll on the carriage swayed, as if watching the boy's departure.

Further and further away.

The wind was indeed stronger, carrying the chill from the rain, brushing against the boy's thin clothes.

The boy couldn't help but shiver, his brows slightly furrowed. He pulled his collar tight and let out a sharp intake of breath.

He hated the cold.

And the way to resist the cold was to find a place sheltered from the wind and rain to rest. But at this moment, the boy running through the streets did not slow down in the slightest, as ruined shops flashed past his eyes.

He didn't have much time left.

Because hunting the vulture had taken too long, and there was still one place he hadn't visited today.

"It shouldn't be far now," the boy muttered to himself, speeding along the street.

On the road ahead, blue-black corpses could be seen everywhere. Their faces, having lost all hope, were filled with ferocity, as if transformed into an aura of despair, wanting to taint the boy's mind.

Yet the boy was accustomed to it and didn't even glance at them.

As time passed bit by bit, the boy looked at the sky from time to time, a hint of anxiety appearing on his face. It seemed that for him, the changing of the sky was more terrifying than those corpses.

Fortunately, not long after, when he saw a pharmacy in the distance, the boy breathed a sigh of relief and rushed toward it.

The pharmacy was not large. Many medicine cabinets were scattered on the ground, emitting a musty smell, like a tomb that had been opened, filled with chaos.

In the corner, there was also the corpse of an old man, his entire body blue-black, leaning against the wall, as if he hadn't had time to close his eyes, staring blankly at the outside world.

The boy stepped in, took a glance, and immediately began to rummage through the place.

Most of the herbs here, like those corpses, had turned blue-black; only a few remained normal.

Among these normal herbs, the boy carefully identified them for a long time.

Seeming to recall past experience, he finally picked up a common stalk of Golden Trauma Grass, took off his thin clothes, and revealed a huge wound on his chest.

The wound had not yet completely healed; one could see the edges of the wound had already begun to turn black, and some blood was even seeping out.

The boy lowered his head to look, crushed the herb, took a deep breath, gritted his teeth, and raised his hand to apply it bit by bit to the wound.

In an instant, the intense pain of the wound surged like a rushing tide, causing the boy's body to tremble uncontrollably. But he forced himself to endure it, yet the sweat on his forehead could not be suppressed, falling drop by drop along his cheeks onto the dark ground.

It became ink-like.

The entire process lasted for more than ten breaths. Until he had completely applied the herb to the wound, the boy seemed to have suddenly lost all his strength. He leaned against the medicine cabinet to the side, resting for a good while, before letting out a deep breath and slowly putting his clothes back on.

He looked at the sky outside again, pondered, and took out a tattered map from the leather pouch at his waist, carefully spreading it out.

The map was very simple, depicting this very city.

The locations of the pharmacies inside had all been marked, and in the northeastern direction, many areas had been crossed out with fingernails, leaving only two areas without crosses.

"After searching for these days, it should be in these two areas," the boy said in a hoarse voice, muttering to himself. After putting the map away, he was about to leave.

But before leaving, he turned back to look at the old man's corpse to the side, his gaze falling on the corpse's clothing.

It was a fur coat; perhaps due to the special nature of the leather, the fur coat was not heavily corroded.

The boy thought for a moment, walked over, took the fur coat off the old man's corpse, and put it on himself.

The fur coat was a bit large, but after wrapping his thin body, the boy finally felt a trace of warmth. He lowered his head to look at the old man's open eyes, raised his hand to gently cover them, making him close his eyes.

"Rest in peace," the boy said softly. He tore off a curtain from the shop, covered the old man's corpse, and turned to leave the pharmacy.

As he walked out, a faint glimmer shone from before his feet. The boy lowered his head to look; in the blood-mud lay a palm-sized fragment of a mirror.

In the mirror fragment, he saw his own face.

The face reflected in the broken mirror, though covered in grime, could still vaguely be seen as an extremely handsome face.

It was just that it lacked the innocence a thirteen or fourteen-year-old boy should have, replaced by indifference.

The boy looked silently at himself in the mirror on the ground, and after a long while, raised his foot and stepped on it.

'Crack.'

Streaks of cracks appeared.

After crushing the mirror with one foot, his body flickered, and he sped away.

On the ground, although the broken mirror was filled with cracks, it still refracted the sky above, which seemed to cover the world, cover all living beings, like the vast half-face of a deity's remnant.

The remnant face was indifferent with closed eyes, high above, with only wisps of withered, curved hair hanging down.

That was a natural existence in this world, just like the sun and moon.

It was as if beneath her, all living beings were ants, and like the phenomenon of 'Jingzhe' (Awakening of Insects), the growth of all things was influenced by her and had to change.

And at this moment, the sky, too, under this deity's remnant face, gradually lost its light.

The shadow of the setting sun was like black haze, permeating the city ruins, covering the earth, as if wanting to swallow everything.

The rain grew heavier.

As the night gradually swallowed everything, the wind did too, emitting bursts of sharp whimpering sounds.

It was like the shrieks of fierce ghosts, beginning to awaken the eerie existences within the city, causing all kinds of hair-raising sounds to respond one after another, as if to seize one's soul.

The running boy quickened his pace, his movements becoming more urgent. Between this race against the descending night, he nimbly wove through the streets.

Until, when he passed a collapsed house and intended to use it to leap further, the boy's pupils suddenly shrank.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw that in a patch of ruins not far away, there seemed to be a person.

Looking from afar, this person was dressed neatly, as if without any injuries, sitting there leaning against a wall.

Most importantly, the skin exposed on the other person's body was actually a normal color, not blue-black!

Such a figure, in this city, unless it was a living person, it was impossible to appear!

And a living person... in these days, apart from himself, the boy hadn't encountered a second one.

This scene caused his mind to shake, and soon, as if thinking of something, his breathing became slightly rapid.

He had the heart to go over, but the night, like a haze, had already swallowed everything behind him.

The boy hesitated, remembered the location, and left rapidly.

Speeding all the way, finally, before the night could catch up to him, the boy returned to his temporary residence in this city.

It was a hole in the ground, very small inside, filled with bird feathers.

The gap at the entrance was not large; an adult could not squeeze in, only the boy could barely enter.

After entering, he skillfully used books, stones, and other debris inside the hole to block the entrance.

The moment it was completely filled, the night outside instantly covered everything.

The boy did not relax his vigilance. He gripped the iron spike tightly in his hand, held his breath, and squatted there, listening for a long time.

Gradually, the roars of strange beasts and shrill sounds came, occasionally mixed with eerie laughter.

Until clearer roars echoed, and in the boy's tension, the sounds seemed to pass by and fade away. Only after they became faint did he breathe a sigh of relief and sit to the side.

The hole was pitch black. The boy sat there silently, and time seemed to stop at this moment.

He was dazed for a while, calming his nerves that had been tense all day. He grabbed a water bottle from his side, took a few sips, ignored the sounds outside, and took out the vulture from his pouch.

In the darkness, he held it to his mouth and tore into it bite by bite.

A fishy, astringent taste came from his throat, but he calmly swallowed it slowly, squeezing the food down his throat into his stomach.

And his stomach was also churning forcefully at this moment, trying to digest it to alleviate the hunger.

Soon, the entire vulture was eaten. The boy took a deep breath, bursts of exhaustion surged over his entire body, and his eyes slowly closed.

But in his hand, he always gripped that pitch-black iron spike tightly, like a lone wolf feigning sleep.

It seemed that if there were any abnormality, he would instantly open his eyes.

At this moment, in the outside world, the night was like a curtain, covering the city, covering the earth, and also covering this firmament.

The world beneath the firmament was extremely vast; the Nanhuangzhou Continent, located overseas, was just one of them.

How big the entire world was, few people knew. Only that majestic remnant face on the firmament, carrying a strong sense of deterrence, could be seen by everyone who looked up.

The time of this remnant face's arrival could no longer be traced.

People only knew from fragmented descriptions in some classics that a long, long time ago, this world, filled with immortal spiritual energy, was prosperous and vibrant, until... this huge remnant face, carrying destruction, was attracted from the depths of the distant void.

During its arrival, the living beings of this world used all methods to stop it, but all failed. In the end, only a few ancient emperors and masters abandoned the living beings, taking some of their clansmen and choosing to migrate.

Not long after, the remnant face arrived, hanging in the sky. From then on, the nightmare descended.

Her aura permeated the entire world; mountains, oceans, all things, and living beings, and even the spiritual energy that cultivators relied on for cultivation, were all tainted by her.

All things withered, living beings perished, with less than one in a hundred surviving.

From then on, those who struggled to survive in this disaster called this half-face... a deity.

They called this world the 'Endland', and the place where the ancient emperors and masters went was called the 'Holy Land'.

This kind of naming had passed down generation after generation through multiple eras.

And the disaster brought by the deity was not just these; her majesty suppressed all living beings at all times, because...

Every few years, or decades, or even centuries, she would open her eyes at irregular intervals, lasting for a few breaths.

Every time she opened her eyes and looked at an area, that place would instantly be strongly polluted by her aura.

Living beings would be plunged into misery and suffering, turning into an eternal forbidden zone.

Over many eras, the forbidden zones in this world had become more and more numerous, and the areas that could be inhabited had become fewer and fewer.

And nine days ago, the deity opened her eyes again, and the place she looked at was exactly the area where the boy was.

In that area, all species and more than a dozen human cities, regardless of where they existed, whether inside the city or in the slums outside, were instantly strongly polluted, turning into a forbidden zone for life.

Under this terrifying pollution, all living beings either directly decomposed into blood mist, mutated into strange beasts without intelligence, or had their souls scattered, leaving behind blue-black corpses that had been polluted.

Only an extremely small number of people and beasts could survive.

The boy was one of them.

At this moment, outside the pitch-black hole, following a shrill sound that came from far to near, the sleeping boy quickly opened his eyes.

The iron spike in his hand was instinctively raised, and he looked vigilantly at the gap in the blocked entrance.

It was not until the shrill sound circled nearby and gradually faded away that the boy breathed a sigh of relief.

Having lost his sleepiness, he touched his leather pouch and took out a bamboo slip from inside.

In the darkness, he touched the handwriting on the bamboo slip, and his eyes seemed to have some light. He then sat up straight, closed his eyes, and adjusted his breathing.

The boy was named Xu Qing, and he had lived alone and struggled in the slums outside this city since he was a child.

In the sudden catastrophe nine days ago, he hid in a crevice in the stone. Unlike other terrified and crazy people, he calmly watched the deity open her eyes on the firmament, watched the special cross-shaped pupils in the deity's eyes in the sky, and seemed to have lost the emotion of fear.

Until he saw a purple light descend from the sky, landing in the northeastern direction of the city.

The next moment, he lost consciousness.

After waking up, he became the only survivor inside and outside the city.

But he did not leave immediately.

Because he knew that the forbidden zone formed by the deity opening her eyes would be shrouded in blood rain at the beginning, turning into a barrier.

People inside couldn't get out, and people outside couldn't step in, unless the forbidden zone was completely formed.

And the sign of its formation was the stopping of the blood rain.

This catastrophe, for Xu Qing, who grew up in the slums, didn't seem like much.

Because in the slums, whether it was all kinds of vagrants, wild dogs, or a disease, or even a cold night, could make people lose their lives at any time, and it required a great struggle to survive.

And as long as one was alive, everything else didn't matter.

Of course, in the cruelty of the slums, there would occasionally be a trace of warmth.

For example, some down-and-out scholars would teach a group of children to read and write for a living. Apart from that, there was the memory of relatives.

It was just that in Xu Qing's mind, the memory of his relatives was gradually blurring with the passage of time, even though he tried very hard to recall, afraid of forgetting.

But he knew he was not an orphan; he still had relatives, but they had long since been separated.

So his ideal was to survive.

If he could live a little better, and if he could have a chance to see his relatives, that would be even better.

So, having luckily not died, he chose to enter the city.

He wanted to go to the residences of the upper-class masters in the city to find the methods to become strong that were rumored in the slums, and even more so, to find that purple light that had fallen into the city.

And the path to becoming strong had been circulating in the slums, desired by everyone. They called it 'cultivation', and those who mastered the methods of cultivation were called 'cultivators'.

So becoming a cultivator was Xu Qing's greatest wish, apart from the memory of his relatives.

Cultivators were not uncommon. In the past few years in the slums, Xu Qing had seen this type of person enter the city from afar.

Their typical characteristic was that when one looked at them, one's body would instinctively tremble.

Xu Qing even heard people say that the City Lord was a cultivator, and the guards around him were also cultivators.

So after searching in this city for a long time, five days ago, he finally found this bamboo slip in his hand on a corpse in the City Lord's Mansion.

That place was very dangerous, and the wound on his chest was left behind at that time.

What the bamboo slip recorded was exactly the cultivation method he longed for.

All the content on it had long been memorized by him, and even in these few days, he had already begun to try to cultivate.

Xu Qing had never seen other cultivation techniques; this bamboo slip was the only one he had obtained, and he didn't know how to cultivate correctly.

Fortunately, most of the descriptions on it were simple and easy-to-understand words, mainly based on visualization and breathing.

So by following the steps, he had gained some harvest.

This method was called the 'Sea Mountain Secret Technique'.

The method of cultivation was to visualize the totem carved on the bamboo slip in his mind, combined with specific breathing to inhale and exhale.

This pattern was very eerie; it was an alien existence, with a large head and a small body, only one leg, the whole body was black, and the face was ferocious like a fierce ghost.

Xu Qing had never seen this kind of creature; the bamboo slip called it a 'Xiao'.

At this moment, following the cultivation, not long after this pattern appeared in his mind, Xu Qing's breathing gradually changed, and dark currents gradually permeated the surrounding air.

The spiritual energy in the surroundings surged in bit by bit, slowly drilling into his body, flowing through his entire body, causing bursts of bone-chilling cold. The parts where it passed felt like being placed in ice water.

Xu Qing was afraid of the cold, but he endured it without giving up, still persisting.

Until a long time later, when he followed the requirements of the bamboo slip and finally ended this cultivation, his body was soaked in cold sweat.

And the stomach that had just eaten the vulture again felt bursts of hunger.

Xu Qing wiped away the cold sweat, touched his stomach again, and a look of determination appeared in his eyes.

Since practicing this technique, his appetite had obviously increased too much, and his body was also more flexible than before.

All of this made him have a stronger endurance for the ice-cold during cultivation.

At this moment, looking up, Xu Qing looked outside through the gap at the entrance.

Outside, it was pitch black, with only terrifying roars, sometimes strong and sometimes weak, echoing in his ears.

He didn't know the real reason why he became a survivor; perhaps it was luck, or perhaps... he saw that purple light.

So while looking for the technique these days, he was also constantly going to the northeastern area to find the landing point of the purple light, but unfortunately, he never found it.

In his thoughts, Xu Qing listened to the roars outside. In his mind, he couldn't help but recall the corpse leaning against the wall he saw when he returned at sunset, so his eyes slowly narrowed.

The place where the other person was located was the northeastern area, and... it seemed to be a living person.

"Could it be related to the purple light?" ===== CHAPTER 2 =====