A moment later, Wang Ying sighed in relief, only to knit her brows again.
"Old Cao isn't seriously hurt. He coughed up blood because he overtaxed his supernatural power. In theory, he should recover after some rest."
She hesitated for a moment.
In that brief pause, even the air inside the vehicle seemed to freeze.
Everyone stared at her lips, waiting for her to finish.
But her next words were like a dull knife, brutally slicing through the most fragile layer of defense in everyone's hearts.
"But it'll be dark soon. What do we do without Old Cao to guide us?"
Yang Yong's heart sank.
It was not a slow descent, but an iron weight hurled into a deep well, plunging straight, irrevocably, toward the bottom.
That was right.
The captain who could plan safe routes and lead forty people out of deadly danger, time and again, now lay across the back seat, the blood at the corner of his mouth not yet fully wiped away.
They would have to return to those days...
Days when danger lurked every few steps, when they never knew what they might disturb with each footfall.
And there were forty of them.
The presence of forty living people on this land shrouded in the Eerie was like a bonfire lit in the night.
The brighter the fire burned, the more things it drew.
Without Cao Xianming, where could the group go?
No one spoke.
Silence pressed down like a waterlogged quilt, layer upon layer, until they could barely breathe.
The setting sun was sinking at a visible pace.
Its orange-red afterglow fled desperately beneath the horizon, as if something were chasing it.
Night was about to fall.
The Blood Moon could appear in the sky at any moment.
Leave or stay?
They had to