Miracles Usually Happen at Night

The campfire burned slowly.

The night sky above this small campsite was shimmering with countless stars, looking down upon this land. It also watched the campfire burning slowly within the camp and the man who was currently processing a corpse.

He Shenyan was skinning and gutting an ugly monster. His hands were covered in blood, yet he appeared completely indifferent to it, even humming a tune.

Having arrived in this world nearly a month ago, he had been wandering through this cold jungle. He Shenyan could sense the human villages not far away, but he had no intention of disturbing them.

He lived quite comfortably alone in the jungle, doing nothing but finding monsters to study every day. The ugly, small monster in his hands was trembling at this moment; its brain was exposed, shivering slightly in the cold air.

Its wrinkled skin had already been peeled off, wet and steaming, and was tossed carelessly onto a table to the side. Although it was in excruciating pain, it was unable to move, scream, or call out to its kin.

"There, there. Don't be afraid, you ugly little thing. It will be over soon."

He Shenyan gently patted its bright red brain, eliciting a violent shudder. Had he not discovered dozens of human skeletons under the bridge where these creatures lived, perhaps he wouldn't have been so cruel.

His attitude toward non-human races had always been flexible and variable—in other words, if you don't kill people, I won't kill you.

He Shenyan knew he was a human supremacist, and he didn't care.

These things had ugly, ferocious faces and were mostly quite small. Their teeth were extremely sharp, as were their claws.

He Shenyan had no doubt that their filthy, foul-smelling claws could disembowel those farmers in a single strike. If there were only one, it might not be terrifying. But the problem was, they were pack animals.

So, he had simply lent the local residents a hand; he had already studied enough of those griffin-like monsters in the past few days anyway.

He Shenyan hummed a tune as a glowing magic blade condensed in his hand, neatly and precisely slicing open the monster's brain.

It began to tremble violently, its entire brain seeming as if it wanted to fly out from between the half-open skull, and its eyes bulged out. Its long, narrow tongue lolled out of that large mouth, and it died in extreme agony.

He Shenyan remained unmoved, continuing to dissect the corpse of the monster that had just died.

About half an hour later, he snapped his fingers. A curtain of water appeared out of thin air, allowing him to wash the blood from his hands and clean the messy workbench until it was brand new.

With a casual flick of his finger, he used his mental power to toss the corpse hundreds of meters away. He had no interest in the monster's fate; the animals in this jungle were not exactly friendly.

Or rather, anyone or anything that could survive in such a bitter, cold place shouldn't be very friendly.

He strolled slowly around the camp, beginning to ponder whether he should go and harass those four stone-like monsters again tomorrow.

They possessed simple intelligence and had already been made paranoid by He Shenyan's intermittent, sudden attacks. Although he hadn't killed them, he was very keen on teaching them how to do simple arithmetic.

These simple-minded creatures couldn't even speak in long sentences, yet they were forced by him to learn math, and they couldn't win a fight against him either. They had simply abandoned their cave and run away.

He Shenyan laughed out loud at the thought. His eccentric sense of humor brought a classic joke to mind, but he didn't intend to tell it. After all, telling oneself a joke was truly too pathetic.

Even if he was currently trying to escape the pursuit of the Eternal Heaven, it was the same.

The memories of those angels were a treasure trove to him. He would flip through them whenever he was bored, like skipping through a long, stinking, thousands-of-episodes-long soap opera; you could always find some new plot.

Three weeks ago, he discovered from those memories that anyone who killed an angel would be branded—but he himself had none.

It might also be because he hadn't killed them, but had eaten them instead.

Back to the point, just because he hadn't detected one didn't mean it wasn't there.

He didn't believe he could wantonly kill twenty-five angels and still continue to run around the Sea of Stars; the Eternal Heaven would find him sooner or later—well, in a few tens of thousands of years, perhaps.

It was funny to think that those twenty-five angels had thought they had discovered an ownerless world and had excitedly traveled there together; it wasn't even an official mission.

Moreover, because of the vast distance they had crossed, by the time the news of their deaths reached the Eternal Heaven, at the speed recorded in their memories, it would probably be enough time for a turtle to naturally evolve into a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle.

He was currently treating this as a vacation, relaxing his mood while also studying these unique local monsters. One could never have too much knowledge.

He Shenyan returned to the campfire, where a lounge chair was placed. It was wooden, with soft cushions and a footrest. You didn't even need to sit on it; just looking at it made you feel it must be very comfortable.

He lay down, watching the starry sky, while the campfire beside him burned slowly, crackling and popping.

It was truly a night as peaceful as could be, and it would have been even better if one could ignore the noisy sounds coming from not far away.

Feeling annoyed, he opened his eyes with a frown, a flash of blue light passing through them. A low-level Eagle Eye spell allowed him to see a group of people in the jungle holding torches, chasing an old man.

His hair and beard were white, and he was cradling a small girl in his arms. The girl was fast asleep; even being hunted didn't seem to be enough to wake her from her slumber. The old man was gasping for air, his lungs protesting against him.

A burning sensation came from within his body; his old companion, the one who had been with him for who knows how long, was protesting in this way: Old man! Now is not the time when you were young!

The old man ignored it and kept running. That speed was nothing short of a miracle for an elderly person. The sturdy young men behind him couldn't catch up to him, forced to let him dash through the jungle until he gradually disappeared from sight.

Soaked to the bone, the old man sat down against a very thick tree.

He closed his eyes, his chest heaving violently, and fumbled to place the girl in his arms onto the grass beside him. The weather in Kaedwen was always known for its cold, let alone running into the jungle in the middle of the night wearing soaked, thin clothes.

But compared to his own condition, the slaughtered village, and those who had been chasing him for unknown reasons, he was more worried about this girl.

He had always worried about her, from his youth to his twilight years.

"Oh, merciful Melitele. I pray, if you are watching me, if you can see this useless old man, I beg you, shed your tears of mercy so that this innocent child may leave in peace."

He prayed to the goddess Melitele. She was a loving goddess who protected the poor, the homeless, children, and pregnant women. He had no other choice but to pray to her.

It seemed as if the goddess had manifested, and a miracle had truly occurred.

From the dark jungle in front of him, a man in black robes slowly walked out. His black hair draped over his back, and an indescribable, mysterious aura radiated from the pure white ball of light following beside him.

Not to mention that face; the old man would dare to swear on his own name that even during the time he spent carousing in the city in his youth, he had never seen such a handsome man.

Compared to him, those bards who were fought over and scrambled for by noble ladies were like maggots in a sewer.

But—all of this, compared to those eyes that seemed to radiate starlight...

Gods. Have you manifested?

He stared blankly at the man, actually forgetting how to speak.