Chen Yuan had no idea how long he had been running.
The night wind tore into his lungs like a knife. The wound on his left shoulder had long since reopened, blood seeping through the cloth binding it, trickling down his arm and dripping onto the earth beneath his feet. The Bi Fang fledgling cradled against his chest had stopped struggling, only occasionally letting out a soft cry, as if to confirm it was still alive.
He didn't dare stop.
The monster that could kill a Blood-Merging Realm expert might be closing in at any moment.
The path beneath his feet grew narrower. Bushes scraped against his calves, leaving bloody scratches. He navigated through the forest by memory alone, avoiding the main roads, refusing to light a torch, barely allowing himself to breathe.
Only when the eastern sky began to pale did he finally slow his pace.
He was now at the edge of Soul-Breaking Ridge. One more ridge, and he would see the village.
Chen Yuan sat down beneath an old locust tree, gasping for air. He placed the Bi Fang fledgling on his lap and examined its injuries.
The left leg was crushed, bone visible through the wound, the flesh already turning black. Without immediate treatment, this descendant of an ancient divine beast would not live three more days.
"You're unlucky," Chen Yuan muttered. "You got me."
He knew no medicine, possessed no spiritual herbs. In a world where bloodline determined status, a mere mortal who had never awakened anything wasn't even qualified to heal a beast.
The Bi Fang fledgling lifted its head. Its fiery red eyes stared at him. There was no fear in them, no pleading—only something Chen Yuan knew very well.
Resentment.
The same resentment he carried.
"Fine." Chen Yuan tore a strip from his shirt and carefully bound the broken leg. "Live or die—it's up to you."
He was about to rise when he heard hurried footsteps approaching from the forest ahead.
Not beasts. Humans.
And more than one.
Instinctively, Chen Yuan scooped up the Bi Fang fledgling and dove into the bushes by the roadside.
Three people in green leather armor emerged from the depths of the woods. Their garments bore the emblem of the nine-tailed fox—the mark of the Qingqiu Border Patrol.
The leader was a man in his thirties with a scar running from his left forehead down to his jaw. He stopped, looked at the bloodstains on the ground, and frowned.
"The trail ends here."
"Captain, that girl is badly wounded. She can't have gone far," said a younger patrolman. "Further ahead is Soul-Breaking Ridge. There's a hunter's village beyond. Should we search it?"
The scar-faced man shook his head. "The National Advisor's orders are to take her alive. We can't stir up too much attention. She's under the National Advisor's seal—she can't run far. Split up and search. Signal when you find her."
The three spread out and disappeared in different directions.
Chen Yuan held his breath. Only when the footsteps had faded completely did he crawl out of the bushes.
He stared at the few drops of blood on the ground that had not yet dried.
That wasn't his blood.
His blood dripped from his left shoulder, landing to his right. These drops were three paces to his left, heading toward the village.
Someone had passed through here before him—someone injured.
Someone the National Advisor's office wanted to capture.
Chen Yuan hesitated.
He was just a mortal without a bloodline, an outcast rejected by his own clan. The affairs of the National Advisor's office were none of his concern. The wisest choice was to pretend he had seen nothing—go back to the village, shut the door, and act as if nothing had happened.
But he didn't move.
Because those drops of blood, in the pale morning light, glowed faintly.
That was not ordinary blood. It was the blood of an awakened Nine-Tailed Fox bloodline—naturally suffused with spiritual energy, taking on a faint cyan glow in the light.
Nine-Tailed Fox.
The royal bloodline of Qingqiu.
The National Advisor's office was hunting someone with Nine-Tailed Fox blood?
Chen Yuan thought back to the mission his father had died on three years ago. That mission should never have required a Blood-Merging Realm hunter's involvement—it was supposed to be a culling of high-rank beasts. Yet Qingqiu City had dispatched three patrol teams, plus more than half of the Chen clan's elite.
After that battle, Qingqiu Han's own younger sister, Qingqiu Yue, had disappeared.
The official statement said she had died in battle, her body never recovered.
But Chen Yuan remembered something his father had said the night before he left, drunk on wine, words that a nine-year-old boy could not understand at the time.
"Princess Yue wasn't killed in battle. She was sacrificed."
The next day, his father was dead.
Chen Yuan tucked the Bi Fang fledgling back into his chest and followed the trail of cyan blood.
The bloodstains were intermittent—sometimes a single drop far apart, sometimes a small pool on a rock. The wounded person had tried desperately to hide their tracks, but the injuries were too severe. The secret could not be kept.
After about two sticks of incense's worth of pursuit, the blood trail ended at the roots of a giant dead tree.
It was an old locust tree that had been dead for who knew how many years. Its trunk was hollow, its roots twisted together, forming a deep cavity near the ground.
Chen Yuan crouched and peered inside.
Dark. Deep. The faint scent of blood drifted out.
"Anyone there?" he called in a low voice.
No answer.
He called again, this time with different words: "I'm not a patrolman. I'm a hunter from the village down the mountain. Do you need help?"
A long silence.
Then a hoarse, breathless voice came from the depths of the cavity.
"...Come in."
Chen Yuan turned sideways and squeezed into the tree hollow.
It was deeper than he had expected. He walked seven or eight steps before reaching the bottom. In the darkness, he could see nothing, only smell the thickening scent of blood and a faint, jasmine-like fragrance.
"Who are you?" the voice asked.
Chen Yuan fumbled out his flint and blew it alight.
The weak flame illuminated a corner of the cavity.
A girl leaned against the wall.
She was about twelve or thirteen, around Chen Yuan's age. Silver-white hair spilled over her shoulders, matted with dirt and blood. Her face was pale—so pale it was almost translucent—and her lips were crusted with dried blood. She wore a tattered cyan dress. Just above her left breast was a ghastly wound, as if pierced by some sharp weapon.
But what stunned Chen Yuan the most, in the flickering firelight, was not her injury.
It was her tails.
Six fluffy white tails grew from the base of her spine, lying limp on the ground.
Six.
A Nine-Tailed Fox bloodline was born with one tail, gaining an additional tail with each major breakthrough. Six tails meant her cultivation was at least at the peak of the Blood-Merging Realm—possibly even the Demigod Realm.
A twelve-year-old Demigod?
In all of Qingqiu Nation, only one person had such talent.
"You are... Qing Li?" The words slipped out of Chen Yuan's mouth.
The girl's eyes flew open.
They were amber vertical pupils that gleamed with a startling light in the fire's glow. She stared at Chen Yuan for three seconds. A flash of killing intent crossed her eyes, then faded.
"You know me?"
"The only daughter of the Qingqiu ruler, heir to the Nine-Tailed Fox bloodline, Princess Qing Li." Chen Yuan stuck the flint into the earthen wall beside him. "Probably only I, in all of Qingqiu Nation, wouldn't recognize you."
The corners of Qing Li's mouth twitched, as if she wanted to laugh, but the movement pulled at her wound and she gasped in pain.
"You're not from Qingqiu City?"
"Kicked out." Chen Yuan crouched to examine her injury. "The one who hurt you—they used an arrow forged from spiritual energy?"
Qing Li nodded, a trace of lingering fear in her eyes. "The National Advisor's people. Xuan Ming himself struck. All my guards are dead."
"Why does he want you?"
"Because he needs my blood." Qing Li gritted her teeth. "The blood of the Nine-Tailed Fox is the key to unlocking the fragments of the Mountains and Rivers Map. He's already found two fragments. He only needs the third. Once the map is complete, the ancient凶兽 sealed within will be released..."
Her voice grew weaker as she spoke. Her pupils began to dilate.
Chen Yuan's heart sank. Wounds caused by spiritual-energy arrows continuously eroded the victim's vitality. If the residual spiritual energy wasn't removed, even a Demigod Realm cultivator wouldn't last a day.
"Don't talk." He set the Bi Fang fledgling aside gently and reached for Qing Li's clothes.
"What are you doing!" Qing Li jolted awake, a flash of panic in her amber eyes.
"Getting the arrow out." Chen Yuan didn't look up. "If we don't treat that spiritual arrow wound, you won't live through the night. Stop moving if you don't want to die."
His voice was calm—so calm it didn't sound like it belonged to a twelve-year-old.
Qing Li stared at him for a few seconds, then finally let go of the hand she had pressed protectively over her chest.
Chen Yuan carefully tore away the fabric around the wound.
Three inches above her left breast, a thumb-sized hole, its edges tinged with an unnatural black. Deep inside the wound, a faint green light pulsed—the residual spiritual energy.
"I don't have spiritual energy myself," Chen Yuan frowned. "I can't remove the residual energy. But I can cut away the necrotic flesh to slow the erosion. It's going to hurt. Can you take it?"
Qing Li looked at him and asked an entirely unrelated question: "What's your name?"
"Chen Yuan."
"Chen Yuan..." She murmured the name. "You're from the Chen clan?"
"Kicked out. So no, not anymore."
Qing Li fell silent.
Chen Yuan drew his dagger from his belt—his last one. The previous blade had snapped while prying open the beast trap. He heated the edge over the flint flame, then looked up at Qing Li.
"Ready?"
Qing Li closed her eyes and nodded.
The moment the blade cut into her flesh, Qing Li's body went rigid. She bit her lip and did not scream. All six of her tails flared out at once, thrashing wildly in the cramped hollow and sending dust raining from the earthen walls.
Chen Yuan's hands were steady.
He had treated countless beast wounds in the mountains. He knew exactly where and how to cut. Piece by piece, the necrotic flesh fell away. Black blood welled from the wound, then slowly turned red.
When the last of the necrotic flesh was removed, the little ball of cyan spiritual energy suddenly pulsed. Like a living thing, it traveled along the blade and seeped into Chen Yuan's finger.
A searing pain exploded from his fingertip and spread instantly through his entire body.
Chen Yuan grunted and fell backward.
He felt his blood burning.
The bloodline that had lain dormant for twelve years—the one he had believed didn't exist—was suddenly ignited by that wisp of foreign spiritual energy. Like a riverbed dry for ten thousand years suddenly flooded, like a glacier frozen for a billion years suddenly melted by the scorching sun.
His body began to glow.
Not one color, but countless colors mingling together, finally merging into a single, unfathomable darkness—a primordial chaos.
The light shot out from the tree hollow, straight into the sky. Everyone within a hundred li saw it.
Qing Li's eyes widened in disbelief as she stared at the boy before her.
"Chaos... Bloodline?"
Chen Yuan couldn't hear her.
His consciousness was pulled into an endless void.
No sky, no earth, no light, no darkness. Nothing.
But he could feel something awakening in that void.
Vast. Ancient. Unnameable.
Something opened its eyes.
"I've waited so long... Finally, someone has come."
Chen Yuan gasped back to consciousness.
He was panting, drenched in cold sweat. The wound on his left shoulder had somehow healed completely, not even a scar left behind. His entire body brimmed with a strength he had never known before—as if he could shatter a mountain with one punch.
Qing Li leaned against the wall of the hollow, watching him weakly with complicated eyes.
"Do you know what's inside you?"
Chen Yuan clenched his fist, feeling the power rushing through his veins.
"No."
"The Chaos Bloodline." Qing Li's voice was barely a whisper, as if she were uttering a world-shaking secret. "Legend says it's the progenitor bloodline of the ancient gods and demons. It can devour, replicate, and fuse all powers. It's been lost for ten thousand years. Even the Classic of Mountains and Seas only mentions it in fragments."
She looked at him, a glimmer of worry in her amber eyes.
"Xuan Ming has been searching for it for three hundred years. If he finds out you're on Soul-Breaking Ridge, he will tear this forest apart."
Chen Yuan was silent for a long time.
Then he tucked the Bi Fang fledgling back into his shirt and reached down to help Qing Li to her feet.
"Let's go."
"Where?"
"There's a village down the mountain. I've lived there for four years." He hoisted her onto his back. "It's small. Hiding two people shouldn't be a problem. Once your wound heals, we'll figure out our next move."
Qing Li lay against his back, her silver-white hair falling over his cheek.
"Why are you helping me?"
Chen Yuan thought for a moment, then gave an answer that surprised even himself.
"Because I'm not resigned to this."
"Not resigned?"
"You're not either, are you?" He paused. "Hunted, sacrificed, used as a key to unlock some fragments—you're not resigned to dying like that either."
Qing Li didn't speak.
But her arms tightened a little around Chen Yuan's neck.
Outside the tree hollow, the morning light had fully illuminated the mountains.
Chen Yuan carried Qing Li on his back, the Bi Fang fledgling tucked inside his shirt, and walked unsteadily toward the village below.
What he didn't know was that high above them, beyond the clouds, a pair of gleaming eyes watched the column of chaotic light that had shot into the sky.
"Found you."
The ancient voice echoed in the wind, barely containing its ecstatic joy.
"Three hundred years... finally found you."
The clouds tore apart. A vast black hand, large enough to blot out the sky, reached down from the void toward Soul-Breaking Ridge.
But just as the hand was about to touch the ridge, a cyan light screen rose from the earth, enveloping the entire forest.
On that screen, the phantom images of nine fox tails drifted slowly, radiating an ancient and majestic presence.
Qingqiu Nation.
The Nine-Tailed Guardian Great Array.
The black hand paused for a moment above the screen, then slowly withdrew.
"Interesting... Even the old ruler's formation has activated." The low voice chuckled. "It seems old Qingqiu Han already knows his daughter is here."
"No matter. The array protects Soul-Breaking Ridge. This old man cannot enter. But the moment that girl steps one foot outside the ridge..."
"She will be mine."
The void sealed shut. The eyes vanished.
The forest returned to silence, as if nothing had ever happened.