The force of the lynx's bite tore into Shen Zuo's shoulder, stone mixing with blood and flesh, and the axe slipped from his hand to the ground. But the pain... wasn't a reason to back down. On the contrary, Shen Zuo tightened his grip on the lynx's chest even harder, crushing its bulging muscles without mercy, his fingers driven fully into the lynx's flesh, no room for retreat, only forward.
The lynx twisted its head, seemingly intending to bite through Shen Zuo's neck, but he pulled his head away at just the right moment, then released the lynx's chest after his fingers had been buried completely inside it. Pain and bleeding never left either of them, but Shen Zuo didn't hesitate, quickly activating the Healing Phantom, just enough to stop the bleeding, and the plan worked. The bleeding slowed gradually, and Shen Zuo kept the minimum amount of energy flowing through the Phantom so the bleeding wouldn't return.
He stepped closer, grabbing the axe with his left hand... which had returned to its human form, soaked in blood. The lynx backed away, step by step, after seeing Shen Zuo advance with steady resolve.
Suddenly, the lynx froze in place. It didn't move, didn't make a sound, just stood rigid like a statue. Shen Zuo was puzzled for a moment, then lifted his gaze and immediately understood why.
The hawk.
Standing calmly on one of the tall trees, watching in silence, its blue eyes burning with a terrifying glow. The familiar blue flame, whose effects he'd seen before, was at its peak now.
A wide smile spread across Shen Zuo's face as he raised his axe, seizing the opportunity without hesitation. He gripped the axe with his left hand, with everything he had left in him, and directed a decisive strike at the helpless lynx's neck.
The blade sank deep into its neck, and the blow was enough to sever half the neck from above, right at the spinal cord.
Shen Zuo's favorite way to kill.
Stillness held for a moment before the lynx's body collapsed silently... and another ending was added to the list of his victims.
Five Phantoms burst out of the lynx's body at once, scattering into the air like sparks fleeing the battle.
Shen Zuo, being the closest, reached out with lightning speed and caught one of them before it could escape, his grip confident and unwavering.
But before he could do anything more, the bird suddenly appeared in front of the corpse, as though it had been waiting for this exact moment. With calm eyes and a quick motion, it devoured the remaining four Phantoms without any intention of sharing or negotiating.
The deal was done in silence, each taking what they could.
Shen Zuo said with irritation, pressing on his wounded shoulder, staring at the bird:
"You greedy bird, you know that?... you and grandpa Bai Ren are exactly alike."
The bird raised its head with a sideways glance, indifferent to what was being said.
"I'm losing a shoulder here, you bastard... and you end up stealing everything in the end."
But the bird simply smoothed out the feathers on its wing, then let out a faint cry, sounding suspiciously like a provocative laugh.
And Shen Zuo, despite his anger, couldn't help but sigh.
Despite the tremendous pain, his shoulder half-eaten, his right arm hanging like a useless piece of extra meat, he got to work without hesitation. He used only his left hand, dragging the axe with it, striking carefully at specific areas on the bear's body, first cutting open the belly with difficulty, then moving toward the heart and the area around it, searching for the beast's core buried among the tissue.
Then he headed toward the lynx's corpse, its long claws still sunk into the soil even after death. Shen Zuo paid that no attention, focusing instead on the chest cavity where he'd plunged his hand earlier, extracting the core from inside, a core that looked coated in a thin layer of clotted blood.
He gathered everything he could: the cores, some teeth, the lynx's fangs and the bear's claw, and even a bit of the bear's thigh. Then he wrapped it all in a piece of cloth and hoisted it onto his back. The pain still gnawed at his body, but he began making his way back toward the observation tree... slowly, one step after another, ignoring the corpses he'd poisoned, ignoring the hawk still watching from a distance.
Wherever Shen Zuo went, his steps crossed paths with the remains of corpses scattered across the edges of the forest. He never ignored them, instead approaching, glancing over them quickly, then carefully cutting open the rotting skin or splitting the chest area, sprinkling a bit of the venom extracted from the snake's core and continuing on. Even the dead, he never left them without use; all of them had become tools for building some future trap.
As he moved, he spotted a fairly recent corpse, its blood still damp in some spots. The tongue hung out, the eyes tinged with blue, no signs of tearing or struggle, just swelling in the belly and paleness in the face, everything suggested a single explanation: poisoning. Shen Zuo smiled a sidelong smile, his suspicions confirmed that the poison had begun taking effect. He didn't hesitate, cutting the body open and pouring more poison over it, until the sharp smell that had become familiar to him lately grew even stronger.
Once he finished, he headed to the area around the observation tree, which was relatively safe, lit a small fire there with wood he'd gathered himself. He sat in silence, pulled out the bear's thigh he'd cut earlier, hung it over the fire with one of his iron arrows, and started roasting.
The air was heavy with the smell of ash and meat, but to Shen Zuo... this was the smell of survival.
Meanwhile, Shen Zuo was activating the healing Phantom, which he'd named "Healing Spirit" in his own head. What a cheesy name...
"Your narration is the cheesy one, and all your plans are absurdly convenient... a failure of an author, through and through!"
Shen Zuo shouted into the void once again, and apparently, he'd finally lost his mind.
"And how do you know? Huh. Did you find it somewhere?!"
He kept shouting, and Zhou Ji's voice answered from nowhere, as usual:
"I haven't found it yet... I'm still in the searching phase."
Shen Zuo shot back sharply:
"You haven't found it, then shut up. Don't say I've lost it before you've found it somewhere else first."
"Alright, now... you haven't actually done anything on your mission. All the beasts counted for you don't add up to more than ten."
Zhou Ji said in a calm tone, as though tearing down all of Shen Zuo's assumptions.
Shen Zuo responded quickly, shock plain on his face:
"What?! How the hell is that possible?! I consider myself basically done with the Level One category, the ones who are...
Zhou Ji answered coldly:
"A hundred and fifty."
"Did you kill them yourself? You did nothing but dig in the ground and make useless arrows."
Shen Zuo screamed in rage:
"Damn it."
"Damn everything! How in the hell did you expect me to kill these beasts exactly?! ... things are getting more and more impossible here... what do you all even want from me?!"
Zhou Ji's voice rose suddenly, coming from the void around Shen Zuo in a calm tone, but one carrying a hint of sternness within it.
"Alright... the first mistake you make, everything you've done before will be denied, even if you haven't made one, some people will try to harass you and say you did nothing at all. So you won't grow arrogant in their eyes, or you won't ask for more, or just because they need to vent their anger... on something, which is most likely you."
He fell silent for a moment.
Then continued in a lower voice, but closer... as though he'd drawn near to Shen Zuo's mind:
"Look... a moment ago, you were belittling my narration. Trying to diminish it, only because you're angry... at his bullying of you. Because he took most of the Phantoms from you."
A faint, dry chuckle drifted out of nowhere, then he said:
"Don't worry about everything I said about your achievement... and by the way, I don't really care about what you say either. I think... I'm doing a good job. And you think... you've made incredible progress? Fine, don't worry about anything else."
Another moment of silence, then came the heaviest line, in a quiet but steady voice:
"No one will understand the amount of effort you've put in... except you. No one will imagine how exhausted you've been... except you. They'll think... they could do what you did. Easily. As though... you'd done nothing at all."
Then the voice softened a little, but its echo seeped in from deep within his memory, in a tender tone... but a painful one:
"Shen Zuo..."
"We don't train you to survive. But to understand how to live."
"We're trying... to give you something of this world... before it surprises you."
"We know that we... won't be able to teach you everything..."
"And we also know... that your heart, despite everything you've been through... is still pure."
"And that... is what we don't want to see broken."
"The world out
side... shows no mercy, Shen Zuo."
"And what we fear most... is that you'll come back to us one day, as... someone else."