But that was not the most chilling part.
What truly made their blood freeze was the scene on the ground.
Corpses lay scattered haphazardly across the charred earth.
So many corpses.
There were elderly people with graying hair and wrinkled faces, their expressions still frozen in terror even in death;
Children with mutilated bodies, their small forms twisted at unnatural angles, dead before they could even cry out;
Women with disheveled clothing, clearly subjected to humiliation and beatings before death, boundless fear and despair lingering in their eyes...
Not a single corpse was intact.
Some had been torn into pieces by immense force, their organs and severed limbs flung everywhere;
Some had only their upper or lower bodies left, their ragged breaks looking as though they had been forcibly ripped apart by wild beasts;
Others had been gnawed down to stark white bones, clear bite marks still visible, wisps of flesh clinging to them...
Blood had soaked into the earth, pooling in low-lying places into dark-red puddles that attracted swarms of flies drawn by the stench, their buzzing maddening.
The carnage was more horrifying than a painting of hell, more terrifying than the deepest reaches of a nightmare.
The air was filled not only with the stench of blood and scorched flesh, but also something deeper—the deathly silence and desolation left behind when life had been mercilessly trampled and civilization brutally destroyed.
"This wasn't done by humans."
Han Yuchen swung down from his horse, his feet landing on blood-soaked earth turned muddy with ash.
Ignoring the sickening sensation beneath his feet, he walked straight to a relatively intact male corpse, crouched down, and carefully examined the wounds.
The corpse's chest had been completely torn open. Its ribs were broken, and its heart was nowhere to be found.
The wound's edges