After wiping away his tears, Little Fly knelt toward the gray, mist-shrouded sky and knocked his head heavily against the ground three times.
The instant his forehead touched the earth, a faint pulse came from the wasteland, as though it were responding to his obeisance.
"Old man, wait for me... I'll come back!"
With that, he turned and left. With every step he took, the sand beneath his feet sank slightly, leaving behind shallow footprints that glimmered faintly—
His bloodline was unconsciously drawing in the earth's vital essence.
He first ran back to the cave where he had lived for five years.
The cave lay at the foot of a solitary cliff, its entrance concealed by a natural stone screen and extremely difficult to find.
The cave was only three zhang wide, and its walls were covered in dense ancient inscriptions—
The old man had carved them with his essence blood as ink: Heaven-Shrouding, Sun-Obscuring Runes that could conceal all traces, rendering everything inside the cave invisible to the laws of the wasteland.
That was why, over the past five years, no matter how savage the demonic beasts or how bizarre the demonfolk, none had ever discovered this cave.
Little Fly packed up his only two coarse hemp garments—the old man had woven them from iron-thread hemp unique to the wasteland, making them as tough as low-grade magical artifacts.
Then he picked up the wooden bow resting against the stone wall.
This bow was no ordinary weapon. Its entire body had been carved from dragon-pattern wood.
The wood was as hard as iron yet astonishingly flexible. Nine blood-colored inscription patterns were carved into the bow, each corresponding to a ferocious beast totem—Taotie, Qiongqi, Taowu, Hundun...
The old man had said that this bow was called Nine Fiends Devour Sun, and