The Southern Border, the Hundred Thousand Mountains.

Inside a dark and damp enormous cavern, a water droplet fell from a stalactite hanging inverted from the domed ceiling above. With a soft plop, it struck the forehead of a delicate-featured youth of thirteen or fourteen below.

The youth’s lips were tinged blue-purple. Jolted by the water droplet, he suddenly shivered and slowly opened his eyes.

He stared at the pitch-black dome above, dazed for a moment, then struggled to sit up.

“Hiss…”

Pain radiating from all parts of his body made him involuntarily suck in a sharp breath.

However, his mental fortitude seemed quite resilient. He forcibly endured the pain and sat up rigidly, leaning back against the damp and slippery cave wall behind him.

His movements brought forth a series of clanging sounds, which in turn triggered a wave of intermittent groans.

The youth was startled and looked around warily. Only then did he discover that in the surrounding darkness, there were vaguely at least two or three hundred shadowy figures.

On one of his wrists, he wore a heavy shackle. A chain extended from it, connecting to the shackles on the hands of more than ten nearby people, linking them all together in a string.

“Where am I?” The youth thought in shock, confusion immediately rising in his heart.

He pondered silently for a while, only to discover with horror that there was no answer.

The youth felt only chaos in his mind. Memories of his past were all blurred; he couldn’t remember anything at all. The only thing he could recall was his own name—Yuan Ming.

He had actually lost his memory!

Before Yuan Ming could figure out what had happened, a heavy rumbling sound suddenly came from the distance, shaking people’s hearts with unease, as if a thick iron door had been pushed open.

Immediately after, a patch of firelight tore open a gap in the darkness. Seven or eight burly men holding torches, dressed in animal hides with curved horn knives hanging at their waists, came walking in, surrounding a tall man who was bare-chested.

In the flickering illumination of the firelight, Yuan Ming saw that these people all had date-red colored skin. Their bodies were bulging with muscles, their contours outlined distinctly, filled with a primitive and wild aura.

Especially the bare-chested leader—the muscle lines on his body appeared even more robust than the others. His entire form was filled with explosive power, looking just like a vajra warrior enshrined in a temple.

However, these people’s hairstyle was quite peculiar. All the hair around their heads was completely shaved, leaving only a tuft of hair on top, braided into a thick queue.

Seeing this, Yuan Ming felt, for some reason, the three characters “Southern Barbarians” inexplicably surface in his heart.

As this thought arose, fragments of memory in his mind seemed to piece together, and some images appeared intermittently.

In those images were bustling and prosperous marketplaces, magnificent and splendid mansions, and crowds dressed in silk and satin. ​stolen content​He looked down again at his own clothes, already worn to mere strips of cloth. This made Yuan Ming certain that he and these Southern Barbarians before his eyes were absolutely not the same kind of people.

Just as Yuan Ming was full of confusion, the bare-chested leader suddenly glanced in his direction and said a string of words in a chattering tongue.

Yuan Ming listened to that strange pronunciation, completely different from the language in his memory, yet understood it at once.

This was the Southern Barbarian language!

What the man said was: “This is the last spot. Be quick about it, don’t miss anyone.”

Those Southern Barbarians dressed in animal hides all advanced holding torches, each pulling out something that looked like the bone of some wild beast, all embedded with a thumb-sized red stone.

“Who are you people? What are you doing?” Watching one of them walking toward him, Yuan Ming asked in Southern Barbarian language, forcing himself to remain calm.

The bare-chested leader heard this and glanced at him, revealing a trace of surprise on his face. But the Southern Barbarian who had walked up to him let out a low growl and swung his torch toward Yuan Ming’s cheek.

Yuan Ming dodged to the side. The torch grazed his shoulder and smashed into the wall, scattering a shower of sparks.

The flying sparks frightened the person beside Yuan Ming, who cried out “Wah!” and frantically shrank his body, trying to squeeze into a crevice beneath the rock wall.

Taking advantage of the firelight, Yuan Ming saw that this person’s upper body was bare, lower body wrapped in a skirt woven from dead grass. His entire body was pitch-black, his form withered and dry, his hair filthy and matted—he looked no different from a savage.

That Southern Barbarian bent down, grabbed the savage’s ankle in one hand, and ​noodles​with a slight exertion of force, pulled him out. Then, amid his violent struggling, he brought the beast bone up above the savage’s head.

The beast bone first lit up with a cluster of blue ghostly flames. Then the red stone embedded in the center also suddenly brightened.

However, that bit of red light had only just lit up when it immediately extinguished again.

Seeing this, the bare-chested leader frowned slightly and shook his head.

The Southern Barbarian gripping the savage’s ankle saw this and without hesitation drew the curved blade from his waist and chopped down at the savage’s head.

With a squelch, a wretched scream rang out. The savage’s struggling movements immediately slowed, gradually falling silent.

“Kill… they killed someone…” Yuan Ming only felt a warm splash of fresh blood spray onto his cheek. His breath was filled with the nauseating stench of blood, his mind going blank.

A chill rose from the bottom of his heart, making his entire body rigid. He even forgot to continue evading.

Of course, he couldn’t escape anyway.

His wrist was still bound by the ice-cold chain to that still-warm corpse.

Just as he hadn’t yet recovered his senses, the light before his eyes dimmed. A beast bone had already been brought above his head.

Accompanied by the ghostly blue flames lighting up, a red light [visit our site]like candlelight also ignited, but didn’t immediately extinguish.

Not until several breaths later did that red light leisurely fade.

The beast-hide clad man gripping the beast bone placed one hand on the knife hilt at his waist and turned to look at the bare-chested leader.

The latter pondered briefly, seeming somewhat hesitant, but still nodded.

Only then did the beast-hide clad man release his hand from the blade and turn to walk toward another person.

After his figure departed, Yuan Ming finally recovered from his fear.

He forcibly suppressed all his doubts and shock and looked around, only to discover that those bound by chains around him were almost all disheveled savages.

They too, like himself, were tested one by one with that beast bone held above their heads amid panic and confusion.

Whenever the red light flashed and died immediately, they were all killed with one clean stroke. Only those whose red light could persist for a moment survived.

For a time, wails, cries of alarm, and the metallic clashing sounds of chains being pulled rang out one after another, unceasing.

The whole process lasted roughly over an hour. The entire cavern was permeated with a heavy stench of blood.

Seeing that all the testing was complete, the bare-chested [unauthorized copy]leader began giving chattering orders again.

Then Yuan Ming and the dozen or so who had survived were all released from the chains, each newly fitted with manacles and shackles, and brought aside to wait.

Yuan Ming felt somewhat anxious, not knowing what these people were going to do, and didn’t dare open his mouth to ask.

But from the Southern Barbarians’ earlier actions, it wasn’t hard to deduce that they had passed some sort of selection and probably wouldn’t be killed for the time being.

At this moment, the bare-chested leader suddenly took from his waist a silver-white bell about an inch long. Gripping its wooden handle, he held it upright and shook it.

Clang…

A clear and ethereal bell sound rang out, echoing through the spacious cave.

The instant Yuan Ming heard the sound, he felt as if his mind had received a heavy blow. There was no sensation of pain, yet he felt intensely dizzy, and even the scenery before his eyes appeared in layers of afterimages.

In this hazy and illusory state, Yuan Ming saw a spiritual light brighten above the heads of those corpses in the cavern. Then one blurred shadow after another floated out.

He watched as those shadows floated out from above the corpses’ heads, overlapping one after another, until finally they became identical to the corpses themselves.

Yuan Ming was jolted with fright, and he also became somewhat more clearheaded.

Only then did he discover with horror that those floating shadows weren’t his eyes stolen contentplaying tricks—they were all real.

It was just that they all hung their heads, their legs suspended in air, floating above the corpses.

Yuan Ming swallowed hard and looked toward the bare-chested leader. He saw him holding the bell and shaking it once more.

Clang

The same ethereal sound rang out. This time Yuan Ming didn’t feel obvious dizziness. He watched with wide eyes as those suspended shadows all floated toward the bell in the bare-chested leader’s hand.

As they approached, the shadows transformed into points of light one after another, merging into the bell and disappearing.

“Could it be… these shadows are those people’s souls?” This thought couldn’t help but emerge in Yuan Ming’s mind, making his spine go cold again.

If he hadn’t passed that mysterious test, not only would he already be headless at this moment, but his soul would likely have been extracted just like those people.

“The harvest isn’t bad—thirteen of them. Alright, head back to regroup and prepare for the return journey.” The bare-chested leader put away the bell, wiped the sweat from his head, and said.

It seemed that shaking the bell those two times had also taken quite a toll on him.

Yuan Ming stared blankly at the bell in the man’s hand. Though he didn’t know what that thing was, these Southern Barbarians before him were clearly not ordinary people.

…

Three days later, within the Hundred Thousand Mountains, in a mountain valley shrouded in miasmic fog.

A troop with their faces uniformly covered by blue-green beast hide masks marched in grand procession through the poisonous miasma of alternating blue-purple colors.

These people were clearly divided into two categories. One consisted of Southern Barbarians dressed in animal hides with curved blades hanging at their waists—only about twenty or so people. They were positioned at both ends of the column, with several occasionally shuttling through the middle to maintain order. The other category consisted of prisoners with bare upper bodies and shackled hands, arranged in a long line, silently trudging forward with heads bowed.

Yuan Ming, as one of the latter, was caught in the crowd, laboriously advancing with unsteady steps, following the group.

These past few days they had been traveling through mountain terrain and muddy ground. He hadn’t spoken a single word the entire time, nor had anyone come to question him. However, through the sparse exchanges between those Southern Barbarians, Yuan Ming learned that the place where they currently were was called the “Southern Border,” and their destination for this journey was—the Emerald Snail Cave.

According to those Southern Border men, it was a place blessed by divine spirits, their holy land for cultivation. And they—these people—had been selected and sent there to receive the gifts bestowed by the divine spirits.

Given these people’s sinister and uncanny way of doing things, Yuan Ming didn’t believe this “Emerald Snail Cave” would be any good place, and what awaited him certainly wouldn’t be anything good either. But now, with others holding the blade while he was the fish on the chopping board, he could only take things one step at a time.

What was even worse was that his memory hadn’t been recovered in the slightest. He still couldn’t remember who he was.

However, in his fragmentary remaining memories, the “Central Plains” was far more prosperous than this uncivilized land. He should have come from there, but why had he traveled from the Central Plains to this place and ended up severely injured? Had he been entrapped by villains, or pursued by enemies?

Countless thoughts churned in Yuan Ming’s mind, but he secretly resolved that he must get to the bottom of all this!

Fortunately amid the misfortune, these Southern Border men hadn’t Read on Jormuntl tormented them much along the way.

During the journey, they distributed food to these prisoners at regular intervals. Though it was only some hard-to-swallow dried fruit and pitifully scarce dried meat, they also applied herbal ointment to treat the injuries on their bodies.

It was during the treatment process that Yuan Ming discovered he had over thirty wounds of various sizes on his body, including lacerations, abrasions, and penetrating wounds. Even one of his ribs had been broken.

As for the herbal ointment those Southern Border men applied to him, it wasn’t at all perfunctory. In just three short days, it had almost healed all his external injuries. Only the broken rib remained difficult to restore in such a short time. Besides being somewhat painful, it didn’t affect his movement.

Now that they had entered this miasmic valley, those Southern Border men had even distributed beast hide masks for poison protection. This only made Yuan Ming even more cautious in his heart.