After a long and terrible dream, Tristan felt his consciousness returning. All he could remember was falling from the mountain.
'I survived.'
But perhaps that was the worst part. When they hit the ground, it felt like his organs had turned to mush. The pain was so intense that he lost consciousness.
However, even unconscious, he could still feel the pain. It was as if dozens of small creatures were trying to eat him alive.
He also felt hungry—extremely hungry. The accelerated metabolism from his Light cultivation was taking its toll. Tristan was nearing the point where his body would start devouring itself.
'I'm exhausted.' Even though he had woken from a long dream, he wished he could sleep for a few more hours.
The last thing he noticed was the discomfort in his stomach like he'd been on a roller coaster, though he had never seen one in person. He was certain that was the sensation.
In summary, he found himself in a depressing situation once again.
But for some reason, the repetitive poking at his cheek irritated him more than anything else.
"What is that?"
Slowly opening his eyes, Tristan saw the shape of a child in front of him. The small girl had light blue eyes and hair, like the sky, and her skin was lightly tanned by the sun. She was staring at him with her large, bright eyes.
He squinted, seeing the young girl poking his face.
First, he checked the condition of his body. Initially, it felt as if something was restraining him, and he almost panicked. The thought that crossed his mind was that he might be trapped again, but then he realized that his arms were just bandaged and could be freed easily.
Then he looked around, scanning his surroundings for any sign that he had been found by his stepmother's subordinates. However, he wasn't in a dark, grim place as he would expect in such a situation. Instead, he was lying in a soft bed, and the place around him was clean and well-decorated, not strange or eerie.
Detecting no immediate danger, he finally stopped ignoring the clearly startled girl in front of him and stared at her.
"Who are you? Where am I? And stop poking me!"
Yue looked at him, surprised.
"Oh, you… you actually woke up! How are you still alive? Wait, are you a cultivator too? Are you a powerful cultivator? Is that why you survived?" The girl in front of him asked excitedly.
Irritated by the lack of answers to his own questions, Tristan remained silent and just continued to stare at her.
"Right, you must be really shaken by what happened! My name is Zhou Yue, and you are?"
'Hmm... she doesn't seem to know who I am.'
He thought for a moment, not wanting to reveal his true identity, and decided on a name that was familiar but didn't bring him good memories.
"Dusk. My name is Dusk."
"What is this place?"
"We're at the Zorayan merchant guild's camp," she replied.
Tristan frowned in surprise.
'A merchant group? How? There's no place in this territory without mountains or hills. Transporting goods here must be extremely difficult.'
'People from this world don't seem to find that strange, but to me, it feels unnatural. It's as if the land has hit puberty and is full of pimples.'
'Maybe these goods are very valuable, and they need to reach their market quickly?'
"So what happened to you? Were you here alone, or did you come with someone? How did you find that magical beast? Why were you on that mountain?" Tristan's thoughts were interrupted by Yue's barrage of questions.
At that moment, an older man entered the small, improvised cabin.
His eyes and hair were brown, with some parts of his hair already turning gray.
Tristan narrowed his eyes and made his vital energy circulate through his body, preparing to launch an attack immediately, though given his body's current condition, it would probably fail.
The strange girl skipped excitedly toward the old man and said, "Grandpa! He woke up! He woke up!"
The old man looked at Tristan in surprise and sighed in relief.
"Boy, are you okay? How are you feeling?"
Zhou Lan walked toward Tristan with concern but abruptly stopped when he noticed that Tristan's expression was anything but friendly. His coal-black eyes stared intensely at him, appearing both empty and filled with indescribable emotions.
He remembered something. When he had changed Tristan's bandages, he had noticed that the boy's body was full of old scars and wounds. On top of all that, the boy was very thin for his age.
'He must have had a hard life. I'd better speak to him cautiously,' Zhou Lan thought.
***
At the guild leader's request to recover the magical crystal, Jian headed toward the location Zhou Lan had mentioned, where he found the child and the magical beast.
He approached the enormous base of the mountain, so high that his eyes couldn't see its peak.
Fear crossed his heart as he looked at the terrifying creature lying dead on the ground—two meters tall, with a humanoid body covered in fur and claws at the tips of its fingers. But what caught his attention the most was that the creature was missing a large portion of its head.
'Where did the rest of the head go?' Jian wondered.
Focusing on his task, he took out a knife and cut into the creature's solar plexus. He kept probing until he felt something. When he did, he plunged his fingers inside the creature and pulled out a small red orb about 15 millimeters in diameter.
Jian's eyes widened in surprise.
Inside the crystal, the essence moved like liquid.
"A beast that reached the Mid level? Damn! If we had encountered that, we probably would've been killed."
"It must have been a miracle that the boy escaped with his life."
Jian pocketed the gem and started heading back to the makeshift camp.
But as he returned, he noticed something.
Since there was still daylight, he managed to spot several human footprints, indicating that a group of people had passed by a few days earlier. He frowned and thought:
'Another group of merchants? Adventurers? Or could it be the mountain bandits?'
He thought it best to stay more alert in that area.