Chapter 1

Chapter 1: Wang Jie

As a guide for hire, Wang Jie had two choices.

One: die at the hands of the team that had paid him.

Two: kill them first.

The second sounded easier.

“Kid, time to hit the road.”

The fat man snarled and brought his blade down. Gray streams of energy coiled along the edge; the strike hadn’t even landed, and already a biting chill swept over Wang Jie’s skin.

Wang Jie lifted his eyes. Under the hard sunlight, his slight frame looked almost frail. A faint golden rim seemed to outline his ordinary face, and the light in his eyes deepened into something dark and bottomless.

He raised a hand and caught the blade.

Clang.

The gray energy might as well have never existed. Wang Jie twisted his fingers, and the steel snapped. Before the fat man could even register what had happened, Wang Jie flicked the broken edge across his throat. Blood misted into the air.

Wang Jie stepped forward, seized another man by the hair, turned, and whipped him into a third.

Bang.

Two skulls met—then burst.

He didn’t pause. He lifted his arm and flung the jagged shard sideways. It punched into the last man’s heart.

The man stared at him, eyes wide with disbelief, shuffling back one step at a time until his legs gave out. Darkness swallowed him.

Wang Jie exhaled, irritated. “What a hassle. We agreed I’d be your guide. You pay me, we’re done. You don’t pay, and you still want to steal my map?

“No class.”

He glanced toward the open ground beyond, grabbed the nearest corpse, and threw it.

The body arced through the air. Before it hit the dirt, the earth split and a plant surged up—its petals lined with teeth. It swallowed the corpse in one gulp and sank back down, leaving nothing behind.

Wang Jie tossed the others the same way.

That was one of the apocalypse’s few conveniences: you could kill without leaving evidence.

Of course, he’d looted them first.

A pleasant surprise—on the fat man, he found a mutated beast tooth. Disaster material.

Old Five’s medicine hadn’t worked. Si Yan’s prices kept climbing. At least Old Nine’s leg was close to healed.

Thinking of that, Wang Jie smiled faintly, dusted himself off, and kept moving. He still had brothers to patch up.

Wind tore across the wasteland. In the distance, heat shimmered above the ruins, warping the outline of an abandoned city until it looked half imaginary.

Half a day later, Wang Jie entered the city and scanned the streets. His gaze snagged on a wall.

Most of the plaster had fallen away, but behind a pane of glass, an old newspaper had been pressed and preserved—yellow with age, yet intact.

“Rainbow birds appear in Jin Ling’s outskirts; citizens rush to watch.”

Wang Jie stared at it in silence. No one had imagined a headline fit for trending searches would mark the beginning of the end.

Every time he passed this spot, he found himself looking.

The year printed on the paper was 2200.

That year, disaster cleaved Blue Star’s history in two. Peace vanished, and the apocalypse became the world’s defining word.

On that day, every firearm and every piece of weapons manufacturing equipment on Blue Star was destroyed.

No one ever discovered why. At the same moment, every plant and animal began to change, developing terrifying aggression within a short span of time.

Humans, too, entered an age of cultivation no one had ever expected.

Now it was 2210. Ten years after the apocalypse, Wang Jie was eighteen.

He’d been eight when it began.

He still remembered what the old world had felt like.

He liked his job as a guide. It paid well, and it gave him an excuse to search outside the base for disaster materials. Two birds, one stone.

He’d see if anyone needed a guide today. If he was being honest, his professional ethics were excellent.

As he walked the city’s edge, chewing sounds drifted from the shadows now and then. He barely reacted anymore.

Then his eyes shifted to a billboard in the distance. He bent, picked up a pebble, and tossed it.

Tap.

The pebble struck metal with a light chime—like it startled someone.

“Come out,” Wang Jie said. “I’ve already seen you.”

Two women emerged from beneath the billboard.

One had an ordinary face and roughened skin, but her figure was unmistakably good. Even thick, ragged layers couldn’t hide it.

The other was dressed in even worse scraps. Grease smeared her face so thoroughly it was hard to make out her features. She trembled as she clutched a dagger, staring at Wang Jie like he was a nightmare.

Wang Jie looked them over without speaking.

“Excuse me,” the rough-skinned woman asked softly, voice tight with fear. “Are you a cultivator?”

“I’m a guide,” Wang Jie said.

Her eyes brightened instantly. “A guide? That’s… that’s great. Please take us back to Jin Ling Base. I can pay you.”

Wang Jie watched her. She didn’t dare meet his gaze, but she forced the words out anyway. “Really. I have money—it’s in the base. If you take me back, I’ll give you all of it.”

The other woman spoke too, her voice hoarse as if she hadn’t had water in days. “I have disaster materials. I can give you those.”

Wang Jie turned to her. “What kind?”

“A tube of beast blood.”

He nodded once. “Fine. I’ll take the job.”

He’d been looking for work anyway, and a tube of mutated beast blood was worth a lot.

Both women visibly relaxed, gripping each other’s hands like they were afraid to let go.

“But I’ll warn you,” Wang Jie said, his mouth curving, “don’t lie to me. The price of deceiving a guide is more than you can afford.”

“We won’t,” the rough-skinned woman said quickly. “Never.”

Wang Jie gestured. “That way. Stay close.”

It didn’t take long for him to regret traveling with them. Two weak women in the wild was a liability—especially the timid one, who jumped at every sound. She didn’t scream, but she made the air feel stretched and ready to snap.

“Thank you,” the rough-skinned woman said after a while. “My name is Flow. What should I call you?”

Wang Jie didn’t look back. “You two together?”

Flow hummed agreement. The timid woman stayed silent.

Wang Jie glanced back at Flow, eyes unreadable. “Wildgrass. Jin Ling Base’s best guide.”

Flow blinked. “Wildgrass?”

A thunderous boom cut her off.

Wang Jie’s expression changed. He grabbed both women and dragged them down hard into a crouch, then raised a finger for silence.

Above them, between the skeletal high-rises, mutated creatures swept past in a frenzy, shrieking as they charged. The ground trembled under the stampede.

No one moved.

They hid until the noise finally died away.

Wang Jie edged forward and peeked toward the distance. There were people out there—more than a handful.

He didn’t step out. He kept them tucked in cover.

The group approached slowly, spreading out as if searching for something. They moved like they didn’t fear mutated beasts at all.

And then, inevitably, they noticed the three of them.

Clang.

A broken saber flashed through the air and slammed into the wall beside them, spiderwebbing cracks outward. The metal gleamed coldly.

The one who’d thrown it was a young man more than a hundred meters away. From that distance, he’d pinned the blade into the wall behind them. His strength wasn’t ordinary.

Flow clutched Wang Jie’s arm instinctively. The timid woman shrank even tighter, dagger shaking in her hand.

“What are you?” the young man barked. “Come out.”

Multiple gazes snapped their way.

Wang Jie drew a deep breath, rose, and walked out first. The women followed, trembling.

“Who are you?” the young man demanded. “Why were you hiding?”

“We’re looking for disaster materials,” Wang Jie said evenly. “We were about to head back to Jin Ling Base. I’m a guide.”

The young man’s eyes swept over him, then flicked to the two women behind. His face stayed blank. After a beat, he waved them on.

Wang Jie muttered a couple of grateful words and hurried the women away.

“That was a hunting squad, wasn’t it?” Flow whispered once they were out of earshot.

Wang Jie nodded. “Only a hunting squad has the strength and nerve to walk the wild that openly.”

A hunting squad was a profession born of the apocalypse—teams recognized by a base, hunting mutated creatures for a living. Without base approval, you couldn’t even claim the name.

Every hunting squad was dangerous.

And that one didn’t belong to Jin Ling Base.

“Wait.”

Behind them, the young man called out again.

His gaze locked on Wang Jie, and he beckoned sharply.

The women went stiff. They looked at Wang Jie like they were begging him not to go.

Wang Jie stayed calm. People died like weeds in the apocalypse, but most didn’t kill without a reason. The men he’d killed earlier had tried to take his map—and his life.

He walked back.

“You’re a guide?” the young man asked again.

“Yes.”

The young man tossed him a signal device, then held up a photograph. “If you see this person, turn it on. Once we confirm his whereabouts, there’s a heavy reward.”

He pulled out a tube of crimson blood, shook it, and tossed that over too with a short laugh.

Wang Jie caught it, startled. “Mutated beast blood?”

“Find him, and you’ll get ten more tubes,” the young man said.

Wang Jie’s eyebrows jumped. “Ten?”

“For us, ten tubes are nothing,” the young man said, chin lifting with arrogant ease.

Wang Jie nodded once. “Understood.”

The young man waved him away, already bored. To them, guides were plentiful—rats with sharp noses, better at tracking people through the wild than a hunting squad could be.

As Wang Jie rejoined the women and walked, voices drifted from the hunting squad behind.

“I just hope the Hibiscus Tears is still unused. Otherwise, even if we kill the bastard, it won’t matter.”

“It has to be,” someone else replied. “We’ve been chasing him nonstop. He hasn’t had time.”

“Stealing from the Five Extremes… once we find him, make him beg for death.”

Wang Jie kept his pace steady until the group was far behind, then let his eyes darken.

Hibiscus Tears.

He wanted it too. It would heal Old Five.

They hadn’t gone far when the timid woman suddenly gasped. She’d stepped on a shard of bone; it punched through her foot. She looked at Wang Jie with a helpless apology.

Wang Jie scanned the area. “Relax. There’s not much danger around here anymore. Watch your step, and stop tensing up like you’re about to die. I’m watching.”

“Then we should find somewhere to stay the night,” Flow said. “We won’t make it back before dark.”

Wang Jie nodded and led them off the main route.

Not long after, they reached a row of low, single-story houses.

The walls were mottled and stained with old blood turned black. Bone piles rotted in corners, stinking in the heat.

The moment they stepped into one of the houses, they saw a man sitting on a broken sofa, calmly watching them.

Wang Jie’s pupils tightened.

It was him.

The man the hunting squad was searching for.