Night fell, and the sky, black as a curtain, shrouded the earth in gloom. Only somewhere in the forest did firelight shine.
The seven travelers sat around the campfire, and after eating and drinking their fill, they began to chat.
Only then did Li Chen and You An learn that Ma Heng's party consisted of five people. A man called Lao Ying was Ma Heng's friend, while Lao Ying and another man named Ying Xiong were paternal cousins.
After a demonic calamity struck his hometown, Ying Xiong had been forced to leave his native land with his wife and daughter and become a rogue cultivator. The other two members of the party were thus his wife, Niu Min, and his daughter, Ying Cui Cui.
Ma Heng was from Clear Spring Commandery, and his hometown was Mistywood Town. He often roamed the forests and mountains within a thousand li, working as both a Demon Hunter and a Ruins Seeker, making his living by hunting wild beasts and gathering spirit materials in the mountains.
Some time earlier, Ying Xiong's family had discovered this group of mountain ogres and invited Ma Heng and Lao Ying to help. The opportunity they had been waiting for happened to arrive when the mountain ogres went out to gather Rice Fruit, leading to their encounter that afternoon.
After hearing this, Li Chen said little and showed no intention of explaining his and You An's backgrounds in detail.
Ma Heng and the others merely took him for an aloof young master and thought nothing of it.
After the conversation, You An stayed beside Li Chen, watching as he settled on a clean rock and worked the merfolk fat by the firelight.
A hazy glow shone around his five fingers, as though spiritual essence were flowing into the small