"I devoured three Junior Beast Soldiers in all, but I still didn't level up... Looks like advancing through the warrior ranks isn't as simple as I imagined..."
Chu Tiannan walked out of the stairwell, shook the blood off his hands, and muttered to himself.
Of course, it wasn't his blood, but that of other Demon Beasts...
His eyes suddenly widened!
What kind of... hell on earth was this...
The plaza still bore faint traces of its former scale, but now the sky was blood-red, and so was the ground. Heaps of mutilated remains formed mountains of corpses, thick black blood seeping from them. Flies buzzed in the foul-smelling wind. Among the ruined walls in the distance were faint flames and rising dust, and beneath the dim sky, the only sound was the rumble of collapsing buildings.
Caw.
A crow with blood-red eyes spread its wings and soared high, its black feathers mingled with blood as they fluttered through the air.
Thump-thump, thump-thump.
Chu Tiannan's heart pounded like thunder, and he could not calm down for a long time. War and strife plagued the Origin Continent, but even as a powerful demon dragon, he had never experienced such... slaughter.
Yes!
This was a one-sided massacre, a bloody butchering like a meat grinder.
He couldn't help averting his eyes, feeling a sorrow and desolation, born of being human, that words could hardly describe.
Without the Devouring System, I'd probably have become just another ordinary set of remains on the ground...
Chu Tiannan suddenly frowned, his gaze settling on a set of remains not far away. The body was nearly intact, kneeling on one knee before a pile of corpses, and it gave him an eerie feeling.
Through the fighting earlier, Chu Tiannan had also discovered that although his physical body was frail, his soul was even stronger than it had been on the Origin Continent, and it had developed a detection ability. Without suspecting anything else, he carefully approached and immediately spotted a strangely shaped watch on the corpse's wrist.
"This was a warrior!"
Chu Tiannan's spirits stirred, and he bowed to the corpse. A warrior who had stood before the masses and faced death without hesitation deserved his respect.
Only then did he remove the watch.
"I can't look anything up?" He was a little disappointed. A warrior's watch could provide positioning and information searches, but clearly, he wasn't a warrior and couldn't use the second authorization.
"Forget it. Being able to determine my location is good enough. I still have a third of the journey left to reach the boundary of East China Base City. I'd better hurry."
Chu Tiannan put away the warrior's belongings, entered a clothing store nearby, and changed into a fitted black outfit. He secured the Heaven-Deriving Sword with strips of cloth and started toward the edge of the city.
After the baptism of those bloody heaps of corpses, Chu Tiannan had already grown somewhat numb as he made his way through the city, but the more he saw, the more he longed to see living people.
Finally, he stopped in front of the wide-open North Mausoleum Park. He could see the road outside the city in the distance.
"Going through here is the shortest way out, but..."
Looking at the empty park, with a few sets of remains scattered here and there, Chu Tiannan hesitated.
"There's no cover. Going through here means exposing myself to the Demon Beasts... No, I can't hesitate. This is the fastest route. If I take another detour, the danger will multiply..."
"Forget it. I'll make a dash for it."
Having made his decision, Chu Tiannan drew the Heaven-Deriving Sword and, under cover of the dim sky, hurried across the plaza.
Thump-thump.
In that emptiness, even his heartbeat seemed amplified without limit.
Huff...
A low exhalation came from ahead. Chu Tiannan's expression changed drastically, and he instantly dropped flat to the ground, but... it was already too late!
In the darkness, a pair of blood-red eyes suddenly opened wide!!