Half a month later, somewhere in the Mountain Ruins...
Here, the floating mountain range stretching for thousands of miles formed a landmass like solid ground, like an island amid a sea of void. The peaks of those mountains reached heights of more than a hundred thousand meters, like swords pointed straight at the heavens. Accompanying those towering peaks were incomparably deep valleys between them...
The higher the mountains, the deeper the valleys.
Within the shadowy valleys, a layer of pale white mist drifted in and out of sight. Amid that white fog stood jagged, grotesque rocks everywhere. These valleys never saw sunlight year-round and were constantly shrouded in mist. Thus, the craggy rocks had also become gathering grounds for strange creatures that favored darkness.
At this moment, Zhang Tie was concealed in a hidden spot halfway up the mountainside outside one of the valleys. Looking down from here, he could overlook the entire valley; looking up, he could observe the outside. Compared with the barren valley below, this place was thick with trees and riddled with caves—the ideal place to hide.
A crimson centipede over a meter long slowly crawled up from the valley below. Right beneath Zhang Tie's eyes, the centipede seemed to sense something. Its crawling paused slightly, its long antennae trembling as they probed the air around it.
"Go away..." Zhang Tie sent a thought toward the centipede. Startled, it immediately burrowed into the nearby grass and scurried off with a rustle, vanishing without a trace.
After driving the centipede away, Zhang Tie once again surveyed the valley. There was still nothing there.
Hidden within a pit, Zhang Tie had lost count of how many times he had inspected the area outside this deep valley over the past days. Yet every time he looked, there was not