A woman's corpse.
Before this, Xu Fan had imagined countless ways he might encounter the natives of the Forbidden Land.
But he had never anticipated this scene.
A native woman lay motionless in a pool of blood.
Xu Fan took three quick steps to her side and crouched down. Holding up a torch with one hand, he reached for the woman's arm with the other.
The familiar feel of skin.
He had thought the natives of the Forbidden Land would have rougher, tougher skin to protect them from harm.
He hadn't expected it to feel so soft when he touched her.
It felt no different from a woman on Blue Star.
Then Xu Fan applied a little force and rolled the woman's body over.
He wasn't doing it out of some morbid curiosity.
He wanted to understand how the natives differed from humans on Blue Star.
And to find out what had killed the woman!
There were no wounds on her back.
That meant her fatal wound was on the front of her body.
Judging by the appearance of the wound, he could tell whether she had been killed by one of her own kind or by a ferocious beast's claws.
Soon, the woman's face was turned upward.
Her deathly appearance was somewhat horrifying.
Her face was deathly pale, her pupils unfocused, and her mouth hung open in an O.
It was as if she had seen something terrifying just before she died.
One thing worth noting...
The woman's eyes.
Her nose.
Her mouth.
Her ears.
Her cheeks.
They weren't much different from those of a woman on Blue Star.
The only differences were the gray horn growing from her forehead,
a slightly higher nose bridge,
and somewhat pointed ears.
There was no doubt.
She was a native of the