"Watch out!"
Riven didn't hesitate. His hand shot out, grabbing Yue Lin by the shoulder and yanking her backwards just as a faint shimmer detached itself from the cliff wall.
Clack—!
A gray claw slammed into the rock where her neck had been, leaving a gouge as deep as a pinky. Dust rained down from above.
Yue Lin's eyes widened for half a heartbeat before narrowing into cold focus. She spun in a circle, knife already flashing into her hand.
The creature clinging to the wall was nearly invisible — its stone colored carapace blending perfectly with the shale.
But if Yue Lin still couldn't find it after it nearly took her life, she'd be a dishonor to her cultivation level.
As she spun into position her knife already flew toward the beast, accurately hitting the neck of the scorpion.
It penetrated through with the same gray glow on it as usual, before she pulled it back out.
The scorpion slowly fell down the rock wall, not able to hold itself anymore. The body thudded against the stone trail, tumbling once before coming to a twitching stop.
Its legs spasmed weakly. Then stilled.
It was only now, laid out under full light, that its outline became clear. Roughly the size of a small cooking pot, its shell was the same mottled grey as the surrounding rock, ribbed with fine grooves that scattered shadows unnaturally. The kind of camouflage that made it vanish into stone unless you knew exactly what to look for.
Yue Lin crouched beside the fallen creature, her expression calm — almost unnervingly so, considering a second earlier she'd nearly lost her life.
The bashfullness from before — the blush, the slight embarrassment — had vanished.
She was almost like a completely different person.
"We shouldn't get distracted again," she said quietly, eyes on the scorpion.
Riven nodded, jaw tight. "I didn't realize they could blend into their surroundings that well."
He glanced at the wall it had emerged from. Just stone. Perfectly ordinary-looking.
That was what made it dangerous.
The scorpions were just lesser ferals, comparable to late-stage Inner Essence Realm in power at the most. Most of them should be more around the level of the mid-stage Inner Essence Realm.
That might have been why they'd underestimated them.
Both of them were strong enough to beat opponents of that power.
And yet, if he'd been late by even a second, Yue Lin, someone at the Inner Condensation Realm, might have fallen to such a beast.
No amount of strength mattered if you didn't see the attack coming.
His gaze dropped back to the twitching corpse.
And the truth was — even aside from its camouflage — that scorpion hadn't come close to using its full capabilities.
From the guild records, Riven knew Gale Scorpions weren't just wall-crawling pests with tricky hides. They were wind-aligned beasts — faster than they looked, both in reaction and raw movement.
But their deadliest trait was their poison.
A potent, fatal toxin — delivered through the tip of their tail.
The catch? It came with a steep limitation.
Once used, the venom took nearly a full week to regenerate. That made it a rare and precious resource — both for the scorpions themselves and for anyone hoping to harvest it.
Because if a scorpion used its poison mid-fight and then died, that was it. The venom was spent. And now that it was dead, it wouldn't be regenerating anything.
Which meant, to collect an intact poison sac, you had to kill them before they ever got the chance to strike with it.
And that, for most people, was difficult.
Which might also be why, the quest hadn't been taken till Riven and Yue Lin arrived.
While Riven was standing around, Yue Lin didn't waste time.
She crouched beside the corpse, blade already in hand. She made a clean incision along the underside of the scorpion's carapace.
The shell peeled back with a faint crackle, revealing pale membranes and tightly packed organs glistening beneath.
She reached in without hesitation.
Wow.
"There," she murmured.
Her knife slid under a translucent sac near the base of the tail — swollen with faintly shimmering liquid, almost pearlescent under the light. Intact. Unruptured.
The Gale Scorpions only had toxins in that poison sack, so the whole procedure was harmless.
She cut it free in one smooth motion and lifted it carefully, holding it between two fingers as if it were a delicate fruit.
"That's one," she said, voice calm again.
Riven exhaled slowly, a little disgusted and a little impressed. "Check if there's a beast core too."
Yue Lin gave a small nod and leaned back over the carcass, her knife flicking through cartilage and membrane with quiet precision, before frowing slightly.
"Nothing."
"Damn," Riven muttered. Not unexpected, but still disappointing.
Lesser ferals only rarely produced cores.
But it would have been a nice change to be lucky for once. Afterall, the reason he chose this mission, was to collect cores to use for his bloodline.
Still. One venom sac was already a good start.
Yue Lin wiped her blade clean against a patch of nearby moss before sliding it back into its holster beneath her dress. She stood with a smooth motion, putting the sack into her pouch as she turned toward the ledge above.
"Let's keep moving," she said.
Riven gave one last glance at the twitching corpse, then nodded. "Yeah."
They climbed the remaining stretch — a short scramble up loose shale and angled stone — until the path opened up above them.
The plateau was nothing like the trail they'd followed.
The stone gave way to dust and brittle soil, with thin, crooked trees growing across the ridge. Sparse and spindly, each one twisted in odd directions — gray trunks with bark that looked almost petrified, like veins of dead wood turned to ash. Some leaned at impossible angles, branches drooping like withered arms.
In front of them, a forest of what looked like bone trees stretched out.
"…What is this place?" Riven murmured.
A strange hush lingered beneath the canopy, and every step they took sent soft puffs of dust into the air.
Even the air seemed cooler here too.
They moved cautiously between the trees.
And then — something shifted ahead.
A faint flicker of motion between the trunks.
Both of them stopped.
Another Gale Scorpion — crouched near a boulder, blending nearly perfectly with the stone.
Its shell was ribbed with the same shadow-scattering grooves as the last, its stance low, tail poised.
Yue Lin's hand dropped to her knife. Riven shifted his weight, ready to grab a needle.
But before either of them could move —
Another shape darted from the side.
Claws clashed.
A second Gale Scorpion launched itself at the first, ramming into it with enough force to knock both of them sideways. Dust and dry leaves scattered as they tumbled across the forest floor in a flurry of limbs.
Riven's eyes widened. "They're fighting?"
The first scorpion snapped its claws viciously, tail whipping over in an arc — but the second was faster, ducking low and lunging with a brutal forward jab.
The fight was fast. Ugly.
Snapping jaws, clashing limbs. One of them took a hit to the side — cracked shell — and recoiled sharply.
Then, with a sudden shift, it turned.
And bolted.
Skittering fast, low to the ground, it twisted between the bone-like trees — fleeing deeper into the dead forest.
The other followed.
Yue Lin was already in motion.
"After them," she said, voice steady.
Riven didn't hesitate. "Got it."
They ran.
No longer as quiet and cautious as they had been when they first entered the weird bone forest.
Skittering fast, low to the ground, it twisted between the bone-like trees — fleeing deeper into the dead forest.
The other followed.
Yue Lin was already in motion.
"After them," she said, voice steady.
Riven didn't hesitate. "Got it."
They ran.
No longer as quiet and cautious as they had been when they first entered the strange bone forest — the chase shook the stillness around them. Dry leaves and gray dust stirred in their wake. The trees blurred past, tall and silent, like watchful sentinels.
Then — suddenly — the forest opened.
The strange trees thinned, giving way to a small clearing surrounded by uneven stone ridges.
And in the center of it, still and black as coal — was a pond.
Its surface was smooth. Too smooth. No ripples. No reflection of the sky. Just an uncanny stillness, dark enough to look bottomless.
The fleeing scorpion skidded to a stop at the edge, claws twitching.
It didn't move forward.
Instead, it shivered.
Riven slowed, hiding nearby, frowning. "What—?"
The scorpion stared at the pond for a heartbeat longer. Then it snapped its head to the right — and turned, trying to bolt again into the trees.
But that hesitation had cost it.
The second Gale Scorpion lunged.
It couldn't run anymore.