The mysterious girl

After traveling roughly ten kilometers, Lin Shan discovered an area with a dramatic change in elevation and an extremely level surface.

From where he stood, all the ground ahead had sunk nearly two meters. As far as he could see, every tree had been trampled flat and crushed, and a faint scent of blood drifted into his nose.

"That enormous unknown creature stepped on this place. Nothing could have survived under that kind of weight."

Lin Shan considered it for a moment. Rather than alarmed, he was delighted. This was practically a natural shelter. He just did not know how large this single footprint was or how long it could shelter him.

Lin Shan jumped into the enormous pit. As expected, he encountered no danger as he walked through it.

Suddenly, he spotted a limp mass of something black lying motionless on the ground ahead.

Lin Shan studied the puddle of darkness with a strange expression. Unless he was mistaken, this should be an anomaly?

He had thought anomalies had no physical form and could avoid damage, at most suffering a reduction in their supernatural power.

He had never expected that a single step from that giant beast could crash even an anomaly.

But on closer thought, it made sense. A life physique controlled spiritual power to attack or defend, while a fallen physique probably used spiritual power to strengthen the body directly. The body itself embodied spiritual power, which was why it could step on an anomaly without a physical form.

Lin Shan approached the mass of darkness and examined it closely. He wanted to study just what an anomaly was. A crashed anomaly was a perfect opportunity.

First, Lin Shan poked it with the dagger from his bag. The blade passed straight through, and he sensed no supernatural power.

He shaped his heart light into a rod, intending to use it to turn the anomaly over.

But the instant the heart light rod touched the mass, it unexpectedly dissolved into specks of black light and vanished into the world.

"It... died?" Lin Shan's lips twitched. "Was this thing trying to scam me by playing dead?"

Surely not. I remember the Parchment saying anomalies could neither die nor be destroyed...

Left with no choice, Lin Shan continued onward, hoping to find other anomaly "corpses."

He walked for another four hours without encountering any more anomaly corpses. Perhaps they had all vanished already. There were plenty of wild beast corpses, though, all embedded in the earth as mangled masses of flesh and blood.

After a simple lunch, he set off again. He had now walked over thirty kilometers in total, yet he still had not left the enormous footprint.

Everything was flat as far as he could see. He felt like a three-dimensional creature living in a two-dimensional world.

Suddenly, an intensely strong smell of blood filled his nose.

Lin Shan frowned and sniffed. With such a strong smell of blood, could there be a nest of beasts ahead?

Ten minutes later, the ash fog abruptly cleared, revealing an enormous stretch of ruins. This had actually been a settlement belonging to some race, but it was now nothing more than rubble.

Countless red dots densely covered the spaces between the ruins. When Lin Shan approached for a closer look, his hair stood on end. Every one of those red dots had been a living person, crushed to death!

They covered everything as far as the eye could see, dense and seemingly endless. How many people had there been? A hundred thousand, or a million?

Since everything had now become a two-dimensional image, he could no longer make out the architectural style or anything else.

Examining a mangled patch of flesh and blood on the ground, Lin Shan realized they were not of the Human Race. They seemed to have tails.

"People from another race...?"

Despite traveling so far, Lin Shan had never encountered anyone from another race. He had never imagined his first encounter would happen under these circumstances.

This should originally have been a city, yet it had been pressed straight into a two-dimensional painting.

Lin Shan realized he had still underestimated that giant beast. He had assumed it crushed things through sheer weight, but every flattened surface along his route had been at the same height. Even the former city before him now had not a single raised spot.

Weight alone could not have made the ground so uniformly level. Some terrifying ability must have been involved as well.

Lin Shan walked across the bloody, flat painting, hoping to find something useful. A race capable of building a city in the Ash Fog World must have developed for many years, perhaps even longer than the Cat Clan. They surely had never imagined that generations of effort would be destroyed by a single foot.

It also drove home the cruelty of this world. Hundreds of thousands of lives had become a painting in an instant...

Lin Shan searched the ruins for a long time, only to discover that nothing remained. Everything had been destroyed.

At one point, Lin Shan's pupils contracted, and he whipped his head around to look behind him.

A little girl who looked only twelve years old stood silently behind him.

She was ragged from head to toe, with a Beastskin Book floating above her head. Her long blue hair fell over her shoulders, and a blue fox tail extended behind her. Her eyes had no whites, only solid black, and she stared at Lin Shan without the slightest emotion.

Her stare made Lin Shan's skin crawl.

Lin Shan sensed no transcendent spiritual power from her, but how had she appeared behind him without a sound?

A moment later, Lin Shan understood.

Although she had no spiritual power, supernatural fluctuations emanated from her. An aura found only in anomalies spread outward with her at its center.

"Crack, crack, crack..."

Lin Shan's brows knitted tightly. Supernatural power was completely different from spiritual power. Spiritual power followed discernible patterns; supernatural power obeyed no reason at all.

Right now, for instance, he could feel his blood freezing, while a layer of ice crystals coated his internal organs.

Without hesitation, Lin Shan took down the Red Lantern suspended in the air by his heart light. He burned its oil into pale red flames, targeting the little girl behind him!

The girl did not catch fire. The two supernatural powers collided, with neither gaining the upper hand for the moment. A strange sizzling sound filled the air.

While the girl could not move, Lin Shan immediately shaped his heart light into a spear and directed it to pin her to the ground in a single thrust.

Red blood flowed out, and pain appeared on the girl's face. Lin Shan showed no mercy and prepared to strike her again.

The spear wheeled around, obeying him as naturally as his own arm. It traced a circle in the air before hurtling toward the girl again.

Squelch!

This thrust pierced straight through the girl's heart, making her pass out on the spot.

Lin Shan did not let his guard down. Someone who could wield an anomaly's power should also possess its undying nature. Just as he prepared to throw the spear a third time, the supernatural power around the girl abruptly vanished. She seemed to have become an ordinary girl.

In an instant, fierce flames engulfed her. It was the Red Lantern's power. With the supernatural power no longer suppressing it, the Red Lantern had set her alight.

Lin Shan had thought that would be the end of it, but the book above her head gave a slight tremble and extinguished the flames outright. Even so, the girl was charred black all over. Without her supernatural power, she surely could not survive.

The Beastskin Book above the girl's head drew Lin Shan's attention.

"Is this a Clan Artifact?"

He did not dare act rashly. His understanding of Clan Artifacts was superficial; all he knew was that they could disperse ash fog. That ability alone was already absurdly powerful...

"If I could carry a Clan Artifact through the ash fog, wouldn't I be relatively safe wherever I went?"

Lin Shan gazed at the Beastskin Book, tempted. If he could get his hands on it...