I Came from the Scarlet Earth

Myriad Poison Domain, Scarlet Earth Forest.

It was a vast, boundless ancient jungle. The dense canopy covered the sun overhead, leaving only the tiniest gaps.

The shade swayed, and shadows dappled the ground.

Cultivators in strange clothes moved silently through the trees, keeping a subtle distance from one another.

But strangely, no one in the entire forest walked on the ground. Most of them stepped across sturdy, thick branches, carefully keeping watch on their surroundings.

That was because there was no solid ground to stand on in the Scarlet Earth Forest. As far as the eye could see, there was nothing but an endless expanse of muddy swampland.

The tall trees in the forest did not grow in soil, either. Their roots plunged deep into the muddy, viscous swamps.

Colorful miasma drifted through the woods. Snakes flicked their tongues, and young birds shrieked.

In the most primitive place on this continent,

a young man dressed in white straightened up in the bushes, then wiped the sweat from his forehead.

"Damn, why's this shithole just like the Chunin Exams in Naruto? Everyone's running around in the trees, and there's nowhere to stand."

The young man in white shook his head and grumbled a few times, then casually wiped his sweaty hands on his clothes.

A gentle ray of sunlight passed through the thick leaves and landed perfectly on the young man's clean cheek.

His sleeve brushed by, and a strand of hair fell loose.

The young man in white merely narrowed his eyes and smiled lazily, yet he shone brighter than the sunlight. It was like a cool breeze sweeping past on a scorching summer day, making people lose their focus without even realizing it.

"He's really good-looking, and such a show-off. He's probably the most show-offy human I've ever seen."

The red-haired girl crouching in the tree thought this as she raised an eyebrow at the young man below and openly looked him over a few times.

"I'm leaving, heroine."

The young man below suddenly looked up and waved at the red-haired girl in the tree, saying this.

The red-haired girl froze, then instinctively asked, "Leaving the Scarlet Earth Forest?"

"Yeah."

"Where are you going?"

"Along the Luo River, to have a look around Luoyang City."

The young man below scratched his head and sighed helplessly. "I heard my junior brother's gone crazy. As his senior brother, I should at least go check on him."

"If he's dead, someone will have to dig a grave and bury him, won't they?"

"Your junior brother's gone crazy?"

The red-haired girl couldn't quite process that. She asked blankly, "Can he be cured?"

"I'm not sure. It depends on whether he's really crazy or just pretending."

"What if he's pretending?"

"Then there's no need to cure him. Just keep him by your side and raise him for a while, and he should be fine."

The young man in white answered casually, as though he were talking about a pet he kept.

"What if he's really crazy, then what?"

The young man below fell silent for a long while, then tilted his head back and clicked his tongue strangely.

"Actually, being really crazy isn't so bad. Someone dances in the rain with headphones on. The people walking by can't hear the song in his headphones, so they think he's crazy."

The girl in the tree furrowed her brows and thought for a long time, then asked the person below in all seriousness, "What are headphones?"

The young man blinked, unable to explain for a moment.

He pondered for a while, then finally said, "It's a kind of Law Technique. Only you can hear what I say."

"Oh, I see."

The red-haired girl thought she understood what he meant, so she nodded.

But she couldn't be bothered to see him off, so after hesitating for a moment, she simply said goodbye.

"Safe travels."

The young man in white waved to the girl in the tree, then turned and disappeared into the woods.

The red-haired girl fell silent for a moment, then lightly leaped onto another treetop.

Her gaze dropped to the bushes where the young man had straightened up earlier.

The bushes were empty, with only a blurry human-shaped outline, as though a corpse had just been laid there for a short while.

The red-haired girl raised her brows and spotted a few traces of blood on the leaves.

And a few strange tufts of red fur.

The rainy season in Luoyang City had finally passed, and the out-of-town visitors in their varied clothes had also left the old city.

Long-awaited sunlight fell along the Luo River, where many white willow catkins floated on the water.

Everything seemed to have returned to normal. The old city was still bustling with people, bright with lights.

Only, a nameless madman had suddenly appeared by the river outside Luoyang City.

By the look of him, the madman seemed to be a young boy.

His hair was disheveled and he was covered in grime. All day long, he clutched a broken Bronze Mirror and wouldn't let go.

The residents of Luoyang City often saw the madman digging around in the dirt by the Luo River, looking for something. Sometimes he would grab stones and throw them, running around like a lunatic.

He rarely shouted, but would often inexplicably pass out in the river, carried a great distance by the current like a corpse.

A few days later, the madman would crawl back along the riverbank and continue stumbling through the water, searching for things.

For the past two months, rumors about the madman by the river had long since spread into Luoyang City.

Some of the city guards tried to drive him away, but even when they threatened the madman with their knives, he seemed not to understand what was going on.

Children by the river threw stones at him. The madman neither dodged nor avoided them.

The sharp corners of the stones struck his forehead, and blood ran from his temple, yet the madman seemed not to feel a thing. He didn't even wipe it away.

His clothes had long since been soaked by the river and reduced to tatters. He often buried his head in a hard bun from who knew where, and at night he would run into the mountains outside the city.

The residents of Luoyang City didn't know the madman, but they had noticed that quite a few unfamiliar faces had recently come to town.

Some were adults accompanied by younger people; others were young people arriving in pairs.

Most of them simply stood on the riverbank and watched the madman from afar for a few moments, then sighed and turned to leave.

"Third Mister really has gone mad."

Soon, this news spread throughout all the human sacred lands.

One night, the young man, raving and unsteady, passed out in the Qingliang River. Clutching the last piece of Bronze Mirror he had found, he was swept away by the rushing current, no one knew where.

The madman had left Luoyang, and for a very, very long time, he never appeared again.

And on the night the madman was swept away, an old, hunched shadow appeared on a large rock outside Luoyang City.

The cool night breeze blew past, stirring deep red fur.

The moment its dark yellow fangs showed, the moon above Luoyang City turned an eerie blood-red.

"I... told you... not to go to Luoyang..."

"Fucking idiot..."