Scorching sun, yellow sand.
A wind howled by, whipping up dust and carrying with it the stench of blood and rot, crawling into the nose of the boy collapsed on the ground.
The boy twitched his fingers; the tips touched burning sand and pebbles.
His eyelids were heavy. Every time he forced them open it felt like needles, accompanied by a spinning, blinding white light.
But in the end, the boy still opened his eyes.
The sky was a bleached blue.
Above him, the sun poured endless heat onto every inch of the land and the sand beneath his feet.
It felt like being roasted.
"Again..."
He wore coarse linen.
He could not sense any true qi or spiritual energy in his body.
At this moment Chen Yan's meridians were completely dried up.
A new beginning.
A new beginning meant he had to rebuild up to the Qi Circulation Realm before he could restore his cultivation.
Chen Yan frowned slightly and sniffed the air twice.
The stench of rot grew stronger.
Once his eyes adjusted to the light, Chen Yan cast his gaze over the surroundings—
Corpses.
Bodies lay everywhere in disarray.
Some facedown, some on their backs, sunk at varying depths into the yellow sand like discarded sacks.
Countless broken spears, snapped swords, and shattered shields half-buried in the sand.
This was a battlefield?
Chen Yan quickly realized the truth.
The rotten smell of the bodies, stirred by the wind, thickened as it blew.
He licked his parched lips, then looked down at the sand at his feet.
Beneath this silence, something was hidden.
Not wind, not sand.
Footsteps.
Heavy, disorderly, with the faint clink of metal armor, emerging from behind several sand dunes.
Soldiers.
Not comrades tidying the dead, but scavengers sweeping the battlefield.
Each of these soldiers carried a large cloth sack on his back, stuffed with weapons and valuables looted from the scene.
Their swords were drawn, and they would occasionally stab at the bodies lying in the sand to make sure nothing still breathed.
Finally, a pair of greedy eyes fixed on Chen Yan not far away.
"Hey, there's still someone breathing over there!"
A scar-faced thug sneered, revealing yellow, crooked teeth. The ring-hilted blade in his hand still glinted with a cold sheen, and seemed to be stained with blood.
Seven or eight figures approached Chen Yan's direction.
The boy in rough linen had no intention of running; he simply sat there waiting for the thugs to come closer.
When they were still about five zhang away, Chen Yan finally stood.
He could sense the naked murderous intent on them.
Yet Chen Yan watched them approach with an indifferent gaze, then rose from the sand and said slowly:
"Water?"
The scar-faced man at the front grinned and strode up toward Chen Yan.
"Water?"
Without hesitation he swung the ring-hilted blade toward Chen Yan's neck.
These thugs had no morality; they killed without blinking—enemies, civilians, even women and children.
Chen Yan's expression did not change.
Before the blade could strike him, he sidestepped.
Then he raised a palm and slammed it hard onto the thug's jaw.
The thug staggered, eyes darkening as if knocked senseless, his footing unsteady.
Chen Yan pulled a broken spear half-buried in the sand and thrust its tip into the thug's belly.
Pfft!
The spear pierced with a dull sound. The tip emerged an inch from the scar-faced man's lower back, stained with dark red blood.
The scar-faced man's face twisted in pain; he wheezed and gasped. Chen Yan then twisted the broken spear hard—
"Cough—"
Blood stained the scar-faced man's yellow teeth, and he began to retch up mouthfuls.
Chen Yan simply pushed the spear shaft gently forward, then released it, letting the heavy body collapse without strength and crash into the sand, raising a cloud of dust.
"Damn, Er Dezi!"
"Kill him!"
After a brief stunned silence, the thugs erupted.
To most of them, Er Dezi being speared by the linen-clad boy was like capsizing in a gutter.
All but one.
A short, thin, dark-skinned man at the back didn’t join the rush to avenge Er Dezi.
He had just noticed that the boy’s methods were unnervingly clean and precise, not the result of a lucky strike.
Something was wrong.
If the linen-clad boy was truly just a blind cat stumbling over a dead rat, those who surged at him would have hacked him to pieces without anyone else needing to step in.
But if the boy actually knew martial skills, charging in would only be sending themselves to die.
So the short, thin man chose to observe.
Chen Yan moved.
This time he did not stay and wait for the blades to come to him; he attacked first.
He had no cultivation now, and his body was thin—no match for those thugs in raw strength.
But his close-quarters combat technique and reflexes far exceeded theirs.
Chen Yan charged the nearest thug. As he approached he crouched and slid, brushing along the blade the thug held, then barreled into him. He elbowed the man’s liver, grabbed the wrist holding the knife, and twisted fiercely—
"Ah!"
A pig-like scream rang out, and the knife clattered to the ground.
Chen Yan hooked the falling blade up with his toe, kicked it into the air, then caught it steadily.
He spun once on his heel, raised the blade high, and with a precise cut sliced the thug’s neck—blood spurted.
He turned and swung at another thug lunging at him; his speed allowed no time to react.
Chen Yan's blade entered the man’s skull; he tried to pull it out but it wouldn’t budge.
Then he lifted his foot.
He kicked the head-split thug’s body into the sand.