The First Spear Strike in the Mountains

There was no road beyond the stone passage.

Only a narrow strip, worn down by beast claws and old cartwheels, ran south along the cliff. A steep rock face rose to the left, and a deep ravine lay to the right. At its widest, the path could only fit two people abreast. The map marked it as the First Inner Passage. Beyond it lay the edge of the deeper reaches, where hunters from the outskirts rarely ventured.

Helian Yuan's right arm had lost its strength, his chest was injured, and the old wound at his waist had reopened. He did not slow down after passing through the stone passage. The gray-robed man would not let a half-collapsed stone wall end the pursuit, and the black-armored retrieval team would be even less willing to let the route tube reach the mountain's interior.

He used a strip of cloth to secure the short spear to his right palm, relying entirely on his left hand, shoulders, and back to wield it. At intervals, he changed direction on bare rock to keep his blood from leaving an unbroken trail.

Before dusk, the sound of loose stones rolling came from behind him.

Only two people had come after him.

The gray-robed man had not personally entered the inner passage. A black-armored man had caught up with a level-three Throat-Locking Wind Wolf. The wolf had been fitted with a new collar, and more foam coated its mouth, but its nose could still follow the scent of blood. Another guard carried a crossbow and stayed ten paces from the wolf, giving Helian Yuan no chance to approach either man.

There was no slope to take as a detour along this narrow path, nor were there ordinary magical beasts he could use.

For the first time, Helian Yuan had to deal with a level-three magical beast head-on, somewhere he had not set a trap in advance.

In the past, he had relied on terrain, chains, traps, and advance preparation to hunt the level-three Ironmane Bear, the Red-Maned Wolf pack leader, and the Ironback Mountain Badger. The Throat-Locking Wind Wolf, however, was a trained hunting beast. It was fast and knew to wait for the crossbow bolt to cut off his path before lunging for his throat from a blind spot.

More troublesome still, it was not afraid of the iron whistle.

Fear had been used on it so often that it had grown numb to it.

Helian Yuan stopped at a bend. Three jagged rocks jutted out ahead, leaving a gap only half a person wide between them. Beyond them was a downward slope. If the Wind Wolf knocked him down there, he would roll straight into the ravine.

It was not good terrain.

But it was the only place where the crossbowman could not get a clear view of his whole body.

Helian Yuan stuffed the route tube into a crack behind the jagged rocks and stood at the edge of the slope. He did not hide. When the black-armored man rounded the bend, he first saw Helian Yuan's dangling right arm, and his expression visibly relaxed.

"Leave the tube."

Helian Yuan did not answer.

The crossbow guard raised his weapon behind them. The black-armored man released the wolf's collar chain and gave a short, quiet command.

The Wind Wolf did not pounce immediately. It moved along the rock face on the left, trying to circle around to Helian Yuan's right. It knew that arm was useless, and it also knew that someone forced toward a ravine was more likely to dodge inward at the last moment.

Helian Yuan watched its shoulders.

Before the Wind Wolf launched itself, its front shoulders would dip. Only when it actually pounced would its hind legs kick hard off the ground. It had been trained with the iron collar, and its head movements were often interrupted by the whistle, but its body had already learned to compensate. As a result, the shift in its center of gravity before an attack was more obvious than a wild wolf's.

The crossbow string twanged.

Helian Yuan did not dodge inward. He took half a step toward the ravine, and the bolt grazed past his chest and buried itself in a jagged rock. The Wind Wolf thought he had lost his balance and pounced at once.

Its front shoulders dipped.

Its hind legs kicked off the ground.

Helian Yuan waited until the wolf's jaws were less than three feet from his throat before turning sideways. Unable to swing the spear with his right arm, he grabbed the cloth securing the shaft with his left hand and held the short spear across his body like a door bar.

The Wind Wolf bit down on the shaft.

The tremendous force pushed Helian Yuan down the slope. The iron-clad shaft let out a piercing scrape, and the wound in his right shoulder nearly tore open on the spot. He did not contest the wolf's strength. Instead, he deliberately lifted his heels off the ground and gave way, drawing its lunge farther in.

Man and beast slid toward the edge of the ravine together.

The Wind Wolf sensed something was wrong and released its bite, trying to retreat.

Helian Yuan slammed his left hand down, jamming the spear shaft between two jagged rocks. The Wind Wolf's neck had passed over the shaft, but its body was still lunging forward, and the new collar beneath its throat struck the iron cladding.

The bluish-green metal gave a short ring.

The Wind Wolf's entire body stiffened for an instant.

That was the instant Helian Yuan had been waiting for.

He did not blow the whistle or let Tiger Shadow rise to its full height. The black shadow drew in from beneath his feet, following his right leg, waist, and back all the way to his right arm. Set the shoulder, drive the elbow, lock the wrist-the sequence of movements he had practiced countless times over the past few days had finally come down to a single chance amid old wounds and pursuit.

Tiger Shadow clung to his arm.

Helian Yuan tightened his right hand around the short spear once more and raised its tip between the jagged rocks. Rather than stabbing at the Wind Wolf's head, he drove it straight through the throat beneath its open jaw.

The spear strike had no impressive display.

There was only the dull sound of the spear tip piercing soft flesh.

The Wind Wolf's body was still moving forward. Helian Yuan turned with its weight and braced the butt of the spear against the rock wall. The level-three magical beast's full momentum drove back into its own throat, and blood quickly spread along the iron cladding.

It struggled and swiped at Helian Yuan's chest.

The blow sent Helian Yuan crashing against the rock, and his vision went white, but he did not release the spear. Tiger Shadow held for only half a breath before dispersing, and his right arm lost its strength again. What held up the shaft after that was not reinforcement, but the jagged rocks, the stone wall, and the Wind Wolf's own weight.

The Wind Wolf's claws slowly fell.

The crossbow guard had already loaded his second bolt.

Unable to pull the spear free, Helian Yuan let go. He rolled behind the jagged rocks as the bolt flew past, grazing the back of his neck. The black-armored man, however, was in no hurry to shoot. He looked first at the dead Wind Wolf, then at the outline of a tiger's claw that had flashed around the spear tip and vanished.

"A Tiger-Type Blood Art?" he murmured.

Those words made Helian Yuan's heart sink.

Ordinary people could not recognize the Tiger-Stripe Bloodline, but a true retriever might know some of its unusual characteristics.

The black-armored man raised a hand to stop the crossbowman. "Take him alive."

The objective had changed.

Until now, they had been after the route tube. Now they wanted to retrieve Helian Yuan himself.

Helian Yuan pulled the copper tube from the crack and backed down the slope. The black-armored man did not immediately approach the dead wolf, instead going around the jagged rocks in pursuit. He was faster than an ordinary guard, at least on the level of a level-four warrior. Helian Yuan had no chance of winning a direct fight.

As Helian Yuan retreated to the edge of the ravine, he suddenly tossed the copper tube into it.

The black-armored man's gaze instinctively followed the flash of copper.

The next instant, Helian Yuan pulled a thin cord hidden in his sleeve with his left hand. The copper tube did not actually fall. The cord ran around a low stone at the cliff's edge, and the tube swung back through the air, striking the crossbowman's wrist behind them.

The crossbow bolt went wide.

Helian Yuan seized the chance to ram into the black-armored man, not trying to knock him down but merely pushing them both toward the narrow gap. The black-armored man punched him in the shoulder and back. Helian Yuan used the force to roll to the other side of the jagged rocks and grabbed the butt of the short spear wedged in the stone.

The spear would not come free.

He used his hunting knife to cut the cloth binding it to his right hand, abandoning the short spear.

The weapon that had accompanied him through the outskirts remained in the dead wolf's throat, the clearest testament to the outcome of the fight.

The black-armored man did not continue the pursuit. He stood beside the Wind Wolf's corpse and watched Helian Yuan use the cord to retrieve the copper tube, his gaze as though he were truly assessing his prey for the first time.

"Go into the mountain, and you won't live seven days."

Helian Yuan panted, his left hand pressed to his chest.

"Then let's talk about it on the eighth day."

He turned and descended along the inner passage.

There was no pursuit behind him, only the sound of the black-armored man cutting off the Wind Wolf's collar. The man would not give up; for now, he simply preferred to bring back an intact level-three magical beast corpse and a definite piece of information: the token thief of Sunken Bone Slope could deliver a strike using a black tiger shadow.

By the time night had fully fallen, Helian Yuan had emerged from the inner passage.

The mountains suddenly opened up before him. Taller ancient trees obscured the sky, and the distant roars of beasts were no longer scattered, but answered one another in layers across their territories. The scents of magical beasts in the air were more varied and stronger, and even the wind seemed to carry an unfamiliar weight.

He glanced back.

The stone passage in the outskirts was now obscured by fallen rocks and firelight. The gray-robed man's people were still on that side, the hunter with a crossbow on his back had gone west, the old hunter had returned to town, and the buyer continued to watch over his scales.

No one had followed him into this part of the mountain.

Helian Yuan carved the sixth hunting mark inside the route tube, not on the hide or on a weapon.

A level-three Throat-Locking Wind Wolf.

This was the first time he had killed a level-three magical beast head-on in a narrow passage, with no complete trap, no companion, and no retreat, using his own judgment and a partial manifestation of Tiger Shadow on his body.

The cost was the short spear left behind, his right arm being unable to use Shadow Cover again for the time being, and the retrieval team connecting the unusual tiger might to him personally for the first time.

The mountain road of the first volume ended here.

Deeper in, a point of firelight flickered among the trees.

It was not the gray-robed man's gray lamp.

Someone was hammering metal at the edge of a cliff, sparks falling into the darkness with every blow.