Escape

The sound did not come from one direction, but rather seemed as if the entire sky was wailing in agony.

Everyone instinctively covered their ears and curled up in pain.

This sound transcended fear, reaching straight to the depths of biological instinct.

Next came a massive shadow, accompanied by a terrifying roar that tore through the air, plunging straight down from the firmament.

Liu Qian jerked his head up, his pupils instantly contracting to the size of pinpricks.

A...

No, a beast!

A monster bird, its body size breathtakingly huge, tore through the lead-gray cloud curtain and was diving straight toward them!

Its wingspan was a full hundred feet wide, blocking out the already dim daylight and instantly dragging the entire bloody ground into a deeper gloom.

Covered across its massive body were not ordinary feathers, but dense, long plumes flashing with an eerie purplish-red metallic luster, whipping furiously in the gale kicked up by the dive.

Most chilling of all, it had three heads.

Each one was as large as a robust foal, covered in the same purplish-red horny scales.

Three pairs of eyes burned with an intense lust for slaughter in the dimness.

At this moment, its three giant beaks, filled with serrated fangs, opened simultaneously, letting out a deafening screech. A foul wind carrying a heavy scent of sulfur rushed over them, seeming to swallow whole every living creature on the ground.

Run!

The instinct for survival overwhelmed all hatred.

How could Liu Qian still care about entangling with Gerion?

Relying almost on reflex nerves enhanced by dragon blood, before the monster bird's devastating shadow completely engulfed him, he kicked off the ground fiercely, shooting like an arrow released from a bow, running for his life toward the nearest clump of twisted, withered woods.

The gravel underfoot was mixed with sticky, bloody filth, every step exceptionally slippery.

His ears were filled with the terrified, desperate screams of the guards, the screech of the diving monster bird, the roar of wings tearing through the air, and the sounds of flesh being ripped apart coming from behind.

Liu Qian dared not look back; he could imagine that gruesome scene.

The half-plate armor the Lannister guards were so proud of was probably no sturdier than paper beneath those giant claws.

Gerion Lannister-how long could his selfish, cold expression endure in the face of this absolute power?

A trace of elation flashed through Liu Qian's heart, only to be instantly drowned out by an even more intense desire to survive.

He bolted, weaving among the intertwining withered trees.

The thick, unyielding white sulfur mist was everywhere, with visibility less than five paces, and every step trod upon unknown terror.

He did not know how long he ran, until the terrifying screeches and human shrieks behind him were gradually swallowed by the thick mist and distance, and only then did he stop.

Glancing around, there was nothing else besides dead silence.

Liu Qian let out a long breath; he was finally safe.

At that moment, a bold thought surfaced in his mind.

Was the retreat of the scaly monsters earlier so sudden and orderly precisely because they sensed the descent of this Purple-Winged Beast?

Were they fleeing in terror from a higher-tier predator?

At this thought, cold sweat broke out on Liu Qian's back. The intelligence of the monsters of Valyria exceeded his imagination.

He dared not dwell on this question, and instead thought of that madman.

Damn Gerion! Damn the Lannisters!

Liu Qian gritted his teeth, cursing silently.

He was merely trying to survive, taking a dead man's sword to hack at monsters, yet in the eyes of that blonde aristocrat, he-a slave-didn't even deserve this bit of struggling to stay alive?

Was he supposed to just present his neck to be slaughtered like a beast waiting for the butcher?

What was even more hateful was that the man had slaughtered without hesitation those guards who still retained a shred of compassion.

In his eyes, apart from himself, probably even the family guards he swore to protect were nothing more than chess pieces to be discarded at any time.

This ruthlessness was more chilling than the monster's sharp claws.

Liu Qian deeply engraved this iceberg-like face into the bottom of his heart.

Immediately following that, he felt a sense of regret.

The reason he had stalled with Gerion for so long earlier was mainly to recover his physical strength, but it had been disrupted by the arrival of the monster bird, ruining his plan to silence him.

Although it seemed that monster bird would take Gerion's head, one never knew-Gerion might just survive against all odds.

Liu Qian's gaze darkened. If Gerion did not die this time, when they met again, given the chance, he would surely repay the debt in blood.

Pushing aside all distracting thoughts, just as Liu Qian was pondering his next move on how to survive in this cursed land and how to obtain more Dragon Spirits...

Splash... splash...

A sound like flowing stream water abruptly came from the depths of the thick mist less than ten paces away to his left.

Liu Qian instantly gripped the captured steel sword in his hand, his sword tip lifting slightly, held horizontally across his chest, his muscles coiled and ready.

There was no one else here; if danger arose, he would not hesitate to trigger the system's power.

He moved his steps slowly, his entire person like a ghost melting into the dense fog, stealthily probing toward the source of the sound.

The mist was gently parted by an unseen force, and the sight before him caused Liu Qian's breath to hitch.

A small pool of water, about ten square feet in size, lay quietly in the embrace of the withered woods.

The pool water was not clear, but rather presented a slightly boiling milky-white color, with tiny bubbles continuously rising from the bottom of the pool.

And the source of the sound was a young girl sitting sideways by the pool, looking to be about twelve years old.

She had her back to Liu Qian, a head of silver-gold hair like flowing moonlight, shimmering with a soft and dazzling halo even beneath this dim sky.

Her skin was white to the point of translucency, carved like the finest suet jade, emitting a hazy luster amidst the permeating steam.

The girl's slender, graceful waist, rounded shoulders, and long legs were completely exposed to the air without concealment, resembling a water sprite descended from myth into the mortal world.

With her delicate hands, she was gently stirring the somewhat scalding pool water, her fingertips brushing across the surface and stirring up ripples, her expression serene.

Even through the dense mist, that breathtaking beauty was enough to make any man's heart beat faster.

Her whole body radiated an aura full of vibrant vitality, like a flower bud covered in morning dew, exuding a pure and charming allure that deeply captivated Liu Qian's gaze, making him almost forget the dangers of this place.

However, when the girl seemed to sense something, turning her head slightly to reveal her face, Liu Qian felt a chill instantly rush from the soles of his feet straight to the top of his head, causing him to gasp sharply.

That was a face where an angel and a demon had been forcibly stitched together.

The left half of her face was as exquisite as the gods' most perfect masterpiece, the skin delicate and flawless, her nose uptight and dainty, her lips full, and most mesmerizing of all was the deep purple eye-like the purest amethyst gemstone, profound and mysterious, swirling with starlight. It was breathtakingly, unrealistically beautiful.

Yet the right half of her face was a creation of hell, where dense, hard scales like ugly vines covered the skin that ought to have been there.

There was an identical deep purple eye, but it was the cold, vertical slit pupil of a reptile.

Scales! Slit pupils!

The appearance of this right face was unmistakably cut from the same cloth as the humanoid monsters that had driven them into a desperate situation not long ago.

Yet those monsters had turbid, frenzied gazes, and manic, bloodthirsty behaviors, having long degenerated into beasts that only knew how to kill and devour.

As for the young girl before him, her left face was peerless, her expression serene, and moreover, she was bathing in this eerie boiling spring.

This was unmistakably behavior and intellect possessed only by humans.

The vibrant aura of life on her body was something those walking-corpse monsters could never possess.

Could this be one of the survivors of the Doom of Valyria of legend?

Liu Qian's mind instantly recalled some people who shared the same appearance as this young girl.

Shireen Baratheon, afflicted with greyscale, and the stone men of The Sorrows.

Though he had never witnessed a true greyscale sufferer with his own eyes, the descriptions in his memory of skin hardening, keratin hyperplasia, and the eventual transformation into mindless stone statues seemed somewhat similar to the symptoms on the girl's right face, yet possessed fundamental differences.

The ultimate end of greyscale was complete petrification and rigidity.

As for those monsters, the wide-open mouths they bared when attacking, the sharp, cluttered fangs inside, and the slender tongues flexibly licking brains all indicated that they had not turned to stone, but rather undergone some far more terrifying mutation.

Just as he was immersed in this startling comparison and contemplation, an intense, foul stench unceremoniously invaded his nasal cavity.

Something was there! Very close!

Every hair on Liu Qian's body stood on end, and his combat instinct made him instantly raise his head to search for the source of the odor.

The very instant his gaze shifted upward, a foul-smelling drop of saliva landed with a plop onto the ash at his feet.

His heart plummeted, and Liu Qian's sight rapidly tracked upward along the trajectory of the falling saliva.

He saw a monster covered all over in earth-yellow scales, sprawling like a giant gecko on a thick branch directly above his head.

Its ugly head hung low, and on its pitted, scaly face, a pair of scarlet slit pupils locked onto the Liu Qian below, its slender tongue darting in and out while sticky saliva dripped down drop by drop.

Its limbs' muscles were taut, its sharp claws deeply embedded in the dead wood, and its entire body assumed a pouncing posture coiled with ready energy.

Its target was none other than the top of Liu Qian's head!