Outside New Rivadin, the yellowish-gray Desert was steaming with scorching heat under the midday sun.
Five Steppe Bandits, belonging to Bestour’s command, were currently on their routine patrol and hunt.
Their warhorses trod on the soft sand, skillfully circling a half-collapsed low wall made of concrete and bricks.
Ahead, a dozen ordinary Skeleton Warriors, with stiff movements and faint, eerie green soul fires burning in their eye sockets, aimlessly wandered inside a warehouse in the ruins of a suburban village, their rusted swords dragging on the sand, emitting a monotonous scraping sound.
“Hey, same old rules, want to bet?” The leader of the Bandit squad, a man named Batu with a scar on his face, grinned, revealing a mouthful of white teeth, and reached for his polished Kujit composite shortbow from beside his saddlebag.
The other four smiled knowingly and also took out their bows and arrows.
For these prairie men, skilled in mounted archery and swift as the wind, these isolated low-level undead were excellent entertainment during their tedious patrols.
“Whoosh!” “Whoosh!” “Whoosh!” The sounds of arrows tearing through the air rang out one after another, astonishingly precise.
One feathered arrow accurately pierced the knee joint of a skeleton from the side, sending shards of bone flying, and the skeleton immediately lost its balance and fell to the ground; another arrow directly struck the hand bone joint of another skeleton holding a sword, and the bone claw snapped, the rusted sword clanging to the ground; an even more powerful arrow directly penetrated the empty eye socket of a skeleton, and with a “thud,” the eerie green soul fire extinguished like a popped bubble.
“Haha, Batu, your eyes are still as sharp!” A companion laughed.
The skeletons slowly turned towards the source of the attack, letting out silent roars, and charged with wobbling steps, but their movements were as slow as snails in the eyes of the Bandits.
They skillfully maneuvered their warhorses, maintaining a perfect distance, their shortbows unleashing a precise volley of arrows like a sudden storm.
Arrows flew, like nimble fingers, dismantling the joints of these skeletal monsters one by one—elbows, shoulder blades, spines, ankles… The crisp sound of bones shattering was incessant.
In a short while, this group of skeletons was scattered on the ground like dolls taken apart by mischievous children, twisting and struggling futilely, no longer posing a threat.
“Boring, clean them up!” Batu put away his bow, a relaxed smile on his face, yet his tone carried the Kujit’s innate bloodlust.
Several Bandits drew their scimitars or short spears, rode forward, and with several “thuds,” easily pierced the skulls of each disassembled skeleton with their sharp metal, completely extinguishing the faint soul fire, just like farmers breaking up clods of earth with hoes.
They deftly pulled out their weapons, wiping off the few bone fragments and viscous fluid on the sand, as if they had just completed a pleasant morning exercise.
“Let’s go, it’s too clean around here. How about we head east?” A young Bandit suggested.
Batu wiped the sweat from his forehead, looked at the scorching sun above the warehouse, and then scanned the monotonous sand dunes and ruins around them, nodding: “Alright, no harm in looking around more.”
Their assigned patrol area was already quite expansive, and going a bit deeper was tacitly allowed by Lord Bestour.
The team slightly adjusted their direction and continued eastward along a dry gully where no traces of the old road could be seen.
The warhorse hoof prints left shallow marks on the sand, which were quickly smoothed by the microbreeze.
Time slowly passed, and before they knew it, they had traveled a considerable distance.
When Batu took out his waterskin again to moisten his chapped lips, he inadvertently looked up, and his gaze instantly fixed on the edge of the horizon.
His movements froze.
“Hey… look over there!” Batu’s voice deepened, tinged with surprise, as he pointed to the junction of the eastern sky.
The other four followed his gaze. In the distant sky, the originally grayish-blue dome was enveloped by a deep, thick, unyielding black cloud.
That black cloud was like a massive ink stain spilled across the sky, carrying a strange sense of heaviness and oppression, and it seemed to be very slowly… spreading towards their direction?
It didn’t look like natural storm clouds; the black was too pure, its edges subtly roiling with changes imperceptible to the naked eye, exuding an unspeakable ominous aura.
“What the hell is that?” A Bandit muttered, subconsciously tightening his reins, and his warhorse, as if sensing the unease, restlessly pawed at the sand beneath its hooves.
“Dark clouds? Is a big storm coming? Doesn’t look like it…” Another guessed, but his tone was full of uncertainty. The Desert weather was unpredictable, but this pure black, almost light-devouring, they had never seen before.
“It feels… very bad.” The young Bandit’s voice was a bit tight. As scouts, they had an instinctive intuition for danger.
Batu’s brows were tightly furrowed, and he squinted, trying to see more clearly.
The distance was too great to distinguish details, but the area corresponding to the black cloud below was precisely marked on their daily patrol map as an extremely dangerous fringe area—a deeper “Unidentified Zone.”
The adventurous spirit of a Kujit cavalryman and his sense of duty began to fiercely contend within him.
To go, or not to go?
That black cloud was definitely not normal, very likely related to undead or demons. They were scouts; exploring the unknown and warning of danger was their highest mission.
But for just the five of them to delve into such an obviously strange area, the risk was simply too high.
“We can’t just let it go.” Batu made his decision, saying in a deep voice, “That thing looks evil; we must find out what’s going on. But just the few of us going in, I’m afraid it won’t work.”
He no longer hesitated, immediately unfastening the Kujit short whistle, made from the leg bone of some large bird, that hung at his waist.
This bone whistle was used to transmit emergency signals and could produce a specific sharp, long tone in the wind.
Batu took a deep breath and forcefully brought the bone whistle to his lips.
“Whoo—whoo whoo—whoo—”
The piercing and extremely penetrating sound of the bone whistle suddenly broke the silence of the Desert, repeating in a specific rhythm.
This was the signal for “Highest Alert, Emergency Assembly”!
The whistle echoed through the empty sand dunes, carrying far. Everyone held their breath, nervously listening to the surrounding movements, weapons in hand, vigilantly scanning their surroundings, like beasts before a hunt.
Time seemed to freeze. After about half a cup of tea, a rapid sound of hooves first came from the right flank, and soon, a squad of four Bandits broke through the dune ridge, appearing in sight.
The leader was a burly man, none other than Batu, who had previously followed Gegen to New Rivadin to report intelligence.
“Captain Batu! What’s wrong?” Batu reined in his warhorse, his sharp eyes sweeping over everyone, finally resting on Batu’s grave expression as he pointed eastward.
Almost immediately, from a more distant direction to the left, another squad of six Bandits galloped over, following the whistle.
The leader was another experienced veteran Bandit, Arsland.
“Old Batu, blowing so urgently, is there something big?” Arsland’s voice was rough, but his eyes were equally steady and cautious.
Three squads, fifteen elite Steppe Bandits, instantly assembled here!
They were all Bestour’s falcons scattered across the Desert, his most agile eyes and ears, and now their gazes were all focused on Batu, the air filled with the tension before battle.
“See for yourselves!” Batu again pointed to the increasingly close, clear, and heavy ominous black cloud on the eastern horizon, quickly explaining their encounter and his concerns: “We were clearing out some bone fragments here when we found that thing! It’s definitely not dark clouds! It looks like it’s emerging from the depths of the ‘Black Earth’ further east of Long City, which has been completely eroded by the Spirit World! I suspect it’s related to those ghostly things, or some other monster has appeared! We can’t just go back and report the name of a black cloud without doing anything, can we?”
Batu stared at the black cloud, his brows furrowed tightly, and nodded forcefully: “Damn it, something’s not right! Just looking at it makes my heart pound, it’s even more sinister than the black light on those Bone Armor Cavalry! We should go check it out!”
Arsland squinted, carefully distinguishing the color and form of the cloud, and slowly spoke: “I also feel something strange. And this distance… it seems there is indeed something moving. If we don’t figure it out, and it covers us, it will be our dereliction of duty to the stronghold. Headman Bestour sent us out not to be blind!”
The three squad leaders’ opinions instantly converged—investigate!
Once decided, the Steppe Bandits’ actions were extremely decisive.
The fifteen riders were like-minded, without any unnecessary words, only confirming with each other through their eyes.
“Go!”
Batu gave a low shout, sharply spurred his horse’s flanks, and the agile Kujit warhorse beneath him shot out like an arrow, heading straight for the ominous black cloud in the east.
“Charge!”
“Follow!”
The other fourteen riders moved simultaneously, closely following Batu, like a reddish-yellow whirlwind, kicking up dust into the sky, rushing headlong towards the dark black cloud that loomed at the end of the desolate Desert, as if it could swallow everything.
The roar of hooves was like dense war drums, pounding on the empty earth, and their speed was very fast.
...
The reconnaissance team of fifteen Steppe Bandits, led by Batu, Batu, and Arsland, galloped like arrows released from a bow towards the thick, inky, and ominously churning black cloud on the eastern horizon.
The Kujit warhorses trod on the soft yellowish-gray sand, swift as the wind, yet stirring up little sound.
However, that distant black cloud, like a beast solidified in a mirage, remained unreachable no matter how hard they whipped and urged their mounts to gallop with whinnies.
The horizon seemed to endlessly stretch that chilling blackness.
“Damn it! This is like chasing a mountain until the horse drops dead!” Batu panted, his cheeks stinging from the strong wind, and the sweat on his forehead quickly evaporated, leaving only the sticky feel of sand.
He squinted, looking at the seemingly unchanged distance, the sense of impatience burning within him like a bonfire.
“Conserve energy, pace yourselves!” Batu, experienced, his hoarse voice cutting through the wind: “Running this hard, the horses will be ruined before we get there! That ghostly thing looks evil, there might be something strange about it!” He pulled on the reins, slightly controlling the speed of his warhorse.
The rest of the squad also slowed down a bit, maintaining their usual vigilant formation.
Galloping across the vast, desolate plain, the passage of time became blurred.
The sun had already tilted westward from overhead, and shadows lengthened.
They passed by more than one site of former human villages.
Most of the houses in these villages had already collapsed by more than half, revealing reinforced concrete or brick structures like the stark white bones exposed after the earth had festered.
Even more bizarrely, some previously flat ground was strangely warped into humps and fissures, and some sturdy foundations were twisted as if by an invisible giant hand, presenting impossible angles and fracture marks—this was precisely the distorted landscape caused by the massive “fallen objects” accompanying the Spirit World’s erosion, powerful enough to alter topography.
The air was filled with the strong scent of desolation and the decaying odor unique to ruins, a mixture of dust and rust.
“Stop!”
Arsland suddenly gave a low shout, sharply pulling on the reins.
His gaze was sharp as an eagle’s, fixed on the corner of a half-collapsed courtyard wall ahead.
The others stopped almost simultaneously, their hands already on the scimitars or shortbows at their waists, vigilantly looking in the direction he was staring.
They saw several terrified eyes peeking out from a crevice in the shadow formed by the crooked wall and a pile of broken concrete slabs, like frightened small animals.
They were human eyes!
“It’s people! Living people!” Batu whispered, with a hint of disbelief.
In the core of this desolate region, where undead and demons ran rampant, and the Spirit World swallowed everything, there were still Blue Star Humans clinging to life?!
“Go over, be careful!” Batu made an immediate decision, his voice even lower.
The fifteen riders spread out into a cautious semi-encircling formation, slowly urging their horses towards the courtyard.
Arrows were nocked, not aimed at the survivors, but their vigilance remained undiminished.
“Come out! Speak!” Batu shouted into the shadows, using the Blue Star language with a strong Kujit accent, ensuring the other party could understand: “We are not undead! We are humans, from Long City’s Deherim, scouts of Lord Shen Mu!”
Suppressed sobs and whispers came from the shadows behind the wall.
After a while, a figure tremblingly crawled out, followed by two, three… a total of five people.
Three men and two women, disheveled, their clothes so ragged they barely covered them, their faces sallow and emaciated, their eye sockets deeply sunken, covered in the grime of long concealment and filled with terror.
They leaned against the broken wall, their bodies trembling like autumn leaves in the wind, their eyes full of distrust and extreme fear of strangers.
“From Long City… New Rivadin?” The voice of the leading gaunt man was hoarse like a broken gong, as if he hadn’t spoken loudly in a long time.
But his voice also carried confusion and shock.
He knew Long City.
Or rather, this place originally belonged to the outskirts of Long City.
It was just that he didn't know what New Rivadin was.
They didn’t know. (End of Chapter)
