The first ten miles beyond the shattered iron gates of Qingzhou City were painted in pure, relentless black.
The deluge offered not the slightest mercy. If anything, the heavens seemed intent on drowning the earth beneath a furious, freezing downpour. What had once been a flat, stone-paved official road was now completely submerged, transformed into a knee-deep bog of churned black mud, rotting vegetation, and stagnant water.
Three thousand mortals—exhausted parents carrying terrified, weeping children, trembling elders leaning heavily on broken wooden staffs, and former blacksmith apprentices clutching meager sacks of coarse grain—trudged through the gloom. Every single footstep was a grueling battle against the sucking grip of the mire. With every ragged breath, the howling wind carried not only the stench of saturated clay, but the overpowering, metallic tang of hot blood radiating from the towering silhouette leading the procession.
Gu Yao walked alone at the very front of the long, shivering line.
His strides were slow, heavy, and halting, each step plunging deep into the black water. Trailing behind his left foot, his six-hundred-pound shattered iron hammer—Severed Head—carved a deep, ragged trench through the mud, which filled instantly with dark, blood-tinted rain. Every thousand paces, Gu Yao was forced to come to a complete standstill, his broad, scar-littered back heaving violently as his lungs drew in desperate, wet bursts of freezing air.
The side effects of forcibly pulling the second Immortal-Locking Nail—the Ju-Que Nail—out of his vertebrae by a third were now raging through his physical frame with brutal clarity.
The nail was no mere iron spike; it was an ancient cosmic seal infused with the cold, hungry intent of the upper Immortal Sects. With its binding partially ruptured, the dormant, god-shattering physical strength locked deep within his marrow collided violently with the rusted iron trapped inside his spine. His flesh had taken on a morbid, dark-red hue, as if his blood were boiling beneath his skin, and tiny crimson beads oozed continuously from his pores, washed away by the torrents of rain as fast as they appeared.
Inside his body, the pain was a grinding, saw-like torture—as though ten thousand white-hot iron teeth were chewing through his marrow with every millimeter his muscles flexed. Yet, even twisted, bleeding, and scarred, his broad spine remained an unbending pillar against the storm.
"A-Yao... drink some water."
A soft, calloused hand reached out from the dark rain, gently pressing against his bleeding forearm.
Shen Yi stepped up beside him, her faded grey tunic soaked through, her dark hair clinging in wet strands across her forehead. She carried a tattered leather waterskin she had managed to retrieve from an abandoned wagon back on the road. Without asking how much longer his broken body could endure, she positioned herself on his windward side, using her thin frame to shield him from the biting gusts sweeping across the wasteland.
Gu Yao took the waterskin with stiff, blood-crusted fingers. He tipped it back and swallowed. The water tasted faintly of river sand and old leather, but the cold liquid washed away the foul, metallic taste of stagnant blood lingering in his throat.
Tipping his head back, his hollow, grey eyes gazed into the pitch-black horizon behind them. The line of three thousand people stretched into the night like a frail, flickering thread. In the vastness of the Great Desolation, surrounded by the predatory shadows of the celestial islands soaring above the clouds, this procession appeared impossibly small—like a swarm of ants fleeing a burning forest.
"Eighty-seven miles left to the nearest Border of the Hundred Nations," Gu Yao rasped, his voice sounding like two rusted iron plates grinding together. "The Sect's pursuers are almost here."
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No sooner had the words left his mouth than a piercing, high-pitched whistle sliced through the roaring downpour from above.
It was the icy, avian screech of a Spirit-Hidden Crane—the specialized tracking beast unique to the Cloud-Soothed Sect.
High above the mud, beyond the reach of any ordinary mortal, several streaks of pale-green light cut through the black storm clouds. These were the outer disciples of the Sect. Having witnessed the horrifying carnage back at Qingzhou Plaza, where an inner disciple had been turned into a mist of blood with a single hammer blow, they lacked the courage to descend. Instead, like vultures circling a dying beast, they circled at a height of three hundred feet, occasionally launching crescent-shaped, pale-green wind-blades downward to test the resolve of this silent procession.
"Ah—!"
A sharp, agonizing scream erupted from the rear of the line.
An elderly man, carrying his young granddaughter on his back, stumbled in the black mire. A green wind-blade struck his right ankle with terrifying precision, severing flesh, tendon, and bone in a fraction of a second. Blood spurted into the puddle, staining the dark water a sickening magenta. The old man collapsed into the mud with a wail, while his child was thrown into the mire, crying out in terror.
Panic, swift and infectious as a plague, rippled through the crowd as mortals began to shove and trample one another in the dark.
"Do not break rank! Stay together!"
A voice, sharp and fiercely resilient, rang out across the screaming crowd.
Shen Yi did not retreat toward Gu Yao for protection; instead, she turned and sprinted straight into the chaotic rear of the line. She slid into the mud beside the bleeding elder, her hands moving with practiced speed. With a harsh tearing sound, she ripped a long strip of coarse linen from her tunic’s hem and bound the man's shattered leg tightly, pulling the knot with her teeth until the arterial gush slowed to a seep.
She lifted the crying child into her arms, standing upright in the mud, staring straight up at the green lights hovering above the clouds.
"They dare not descend!" Shen Yi's voice carried over the howling wind, echoing clearly in the ears of the surrounding refugees. "They fly so high because they are afraid! As long as Brother Gu is here, they are nothing but a flock of squawking sparrows!"
Her words acted like a heavy iron anchor driven straight into the quivering hearts of the refugees. The fleeing mortals stopped. They looked at Shen Yi—a woman with mud on her face and blood on her hands—and then at the colossal, quiet figure standing at the head of the road. Their frantic heartbeats slowly calmed, replaced by a strange, burning heat in their chests. Two burly blacksmith apprentices stepped forward, picking up the wounded elder between their shoulders, and the line reformed, dense and unyielding.
At the front of the line, Gu Yao cast a cold, bloodshot glance toward the sky. He did not raise his hammer. Instead, he bent his knees, his massive left hand plunging deep into the rocky soil at the side of the road, locking his thick fingers around a hundred-pound granite boulder buried beneath the mud.
His lower spine emitted a violent burst of staccato cracks, and blood spurts directly from his nose as the partially extracted nail vibrated inside his flesh. Yet his arm did not tremble.
"BEGONE!"
With a primal, earth-shaking roar that drowned out the thunder, Gu Yao ripped the massive stone from the earth and hurled it skyward with pure, unadulterated muscle strength.
The boulder, tearing through the heavy rain, created a visible wave of compressed air, smashing directly into the wing of a low-flying Spirit-Hidden Crane. The beast let out a strangled screech as its wing was instantly obliterated into a cloud of feathers and crimson mist. Terrified screams echoed from above as the surviving disciples frantically pulled their reins, ascending hundreds of meters higher into the clouds, daring not to approach again.
"Gu Yao... you won't last long!" Elder Mo Xiu's venomous voice drifted down on the wind from the depths of the clouds. "When the Heaven-Pole Guards descend, these ninety-seven miles will be your graveyard!"
Gu Yao ignored the voice. He spat a glob of dark, clotted blood into the mud, wiped his face with his wet sleeve, and grabbed the leather-wrapped handle of Severed Head once more.
He took a heavy, deliberate step into the downpour. He knew Mo Xiu was telling the truth; his spine was on the verge of shattering, and every nerve in his body was screaming in agony. But he could not fall. Because these three thousand mortals were no longer "slag"—they were learning how to walk like human beings.
And every footprint on this blood-soaked road was a debt being collected... from a world that feasted on people.