(Heartfelt thanks to 'Wu Guan Wei She Mi', 'Lei Xiang', 'Icebound Thunder Dragon', 'o0Blood Inscription0o', 'Kaede no Chōrei', and 'Lewd Soul' for their rewards!)
The pitch-black night dyed the green forest black, making the atmosphere seem extraordinarily oppressive and tense.
In one of the forest clearings, a group of people surrounded someone half-kneeling on the ground, gasping for breath with a pale face and tightly gripping a luxurious staff.
A closer look revealed that, apart from a small handful, the rest of the group were all over twenty or thirty years old. Their auras were extremely disordered, and they were panting heavily, clearly having expended a great deal.
The pale-faced person kneeling in the center was a young man around twenty years old. He was handsome, but there was a trace of blood at the corner of his mouth. He appeared to have sustained some injuries.
As for why the young man being protected in the middle had been injured, one only needed to look at the scene in the direction the people guarding him were glaring at.
There stood a group of black-clad figures, more than twice as numerous as the people protecting the injured young man. They silently watched him with cold eyes filled with killing intent.
At their head stood an old man dressed only in black. He was also the only one who had not concealed his face, his hands clasped behind his back.
"You cannot escape, Prince Kaya!" the black-clad elder at the front said indifferently.
"Why not surrender obediently?..."
Hearing that, Kaya remained half-kneeling on the ground. Even at such a life-or-death juncture, he forced a bright smile and said mockingly, "Surrender? You mean you'll let me go if I surrender?..."
The black-clad elder fell silent for a moment, then sighed.
"I misspoke..."
That