The boundless wilderness was steeped in ink-black darkness. The last ray of golden sunlight had long since been swallowed by the horizon.
Night Scene was like cotton soaked through with ink, pressing heavily down upon the withered yellow grass. Every inch of land stretched out a sinister outline in the darkness.
The wind passed through the sparse shrubs, letting out a whimpering hiss that mingled with the howls of strange beasts roaming everywhere, forming a gigantic web of sound.
"Woo..."
"Roar..."
"Hiss..."
A sharp howl like that of a lone wolf came from the northwest. From the southeast rolled the muffled roar of a black bear, while now and then, a hissing sound like a giant python flicking its tongue seeped out from the depths of the darkness. The sounds collided in the air and traveled several kilometers away.
Mu Qi and Zhang Zhao were hiding in a wind-sheltered cave.
A bonfire burned before them. The dead branches at its center crackled, and the orange-red flames throbbed like a beating heart, stretching the two men's shadows long across the uneven rock wall.
Whenever the flames suddenly leaped higher, the shadows twisted and writhed like grasping claws. When the fire weakened, the shadows obediently curled back up, trembling lightly with each burst of the firewood.
Drops of water seeped from the cave walls and wound down through the cracks in the stone, gathering into little puddles on the ground that flickered with reflected firelight.
To evade the investigators pursuing them, the two had been lying low in this wilderness cave for some time.
The wounds that had once seeped blood had long since scabbed over and fallen away, leaving only pale pink scars that now rose and fell faintly with their breathing.
Zhang Zhao unconsciously rubbed the old injury on his