Tristan felt pain all over his body, especially in his arms. He was also hungry, very hungry. The accelerated metabolism of the Light element was taking its toll, and Tristan was nearing the point where his body would begin to devour itself.

  Because of this, even though he had been unconscious for a long time, he felt very tired.

  There was also a discomfort in his stomach, as if he had been on a roller coaster. Although he had never seen one in person, he was certain this was what it felt like.

  In short, he was in a depressing situation again.

  However, for some reason, the repetitive annoyance on his cheek was bothering him more than anything else.

  "What’s going on?"

  As Tristan slowly opened his eyes, he saw the form of a child in front of him. The little girl had light blue eyes and hair like the sky, and her skin was slightly tanned by the sun. She looked at him with big, bright eyes.

  The young girl was currently poking Tristan’s cheek.

  Tristan squinted his eyes.

  First, he assessed the condition of the rest of his body. Initially, he felt as if something was restraining him, and he almost panicked. The thought that crossed his mind was that he might be trapped again, but then he realized that his arms were merely bandaged and that he could easily remove them.

  Then he looked around, searching for any signs that he might have been found by his stepmother’s subordinates. However, he wasn’t in a dark, gloomy pce as he would expect in such a situation. Instead, he was lying on a soft bed, and the surroundings didn’t seem strange, they were clean and well-decorated.

  Not detecting any immediate danger, he finally stopped ignoring the girl in front of him and stared at her.

  "Who are you? Where am I? And stop poking me!"

  Yue looked at him with surprise in her eyes.

  "Oh, you… you really woke up! How are you still alive? Wait, are you a cultivator too? Are you a powerful cultivator? Is that how you managed to survive?" The girl in front of him asked excitedly.

  Annoyed by the ck of answers to his questions, Tristan just remained silent and continued to stare at her.

  "Right, you must be very shaken by what happened! My name is Zhou Yue. And yours?"

  'Hmm… she doesn’t seem to know who I am.'

  "Dusk, my name is Dusk," Tristan said, hiding his current identity by using his family name from his previous life as his new identity.

  "What is this pce?"

  "You’re in a merchant guild’s camp," she replied.

  Tristan frowned in surprise.

  'A merchant group? How? There isn’t a pce in this territory without mountains or hills. Transporting goods here must be extremely difficult.'

  'The people of this world don’t find this strange, but Tristan saw it as something unnatural. It was more like the nd had hit puberty and was full of pimples.'

  'Maybe these goods are very valuable, and they need to reach the point of sale quickly?'

  "So, what happened to you? Were you here alone, or did you come with someone else? How did you find that magical beast? Why were you on that mountain?" Tristan's thoughts were interrupted by the flood of questions from Yue.

  At this moment, an older man entered the small, improvised cabin.

  His eyes and hair were brown, with some parts of his hair already turning white. His skin was tanned by the sun, and he was wearing simple clothes.

  Tristan narrowed his eyes and circuted the vital energy in his body, preparing to unch an attack immediately, even though in his current condition, it would probably fail.

  The strange girl ran excitedly towards the old man and said,

  "Grandpa! He woke up! He woke up!"

  The old man looked at Tristan in surprise and sighed in relief.

  "Boy, are you okay? How are you feeling?"

  Zhou Lan walked toward Tristan, concerned, but abruptly stopped when he noticed that Tristan’s expression was far from friendly. His eyes, as bck as coal, stared at him intensely. They seemed both empty and filled with indescribable emotions.

  Zhou Lan recalled something. When he had changed Tristan’s bandages, he had noticed that his body was full of scars and old wounds. Additionally, the boy was still very thin for his age.

  'He must have had a tough life; I should talk to him cautiously,' Zhou Lan thought.

  ***

  Jian, at the guild leader's request to retrieve the magic crystal, headed in the direction Zhou Lan had mentioned where he found the child and the magical beast.

  Jian approached the enormous mountain base; it was so high that his eyes couldn’t see its peak.

  He looked at the terrifying dead creature on the ground. The creature’s appearance filled him with fear 2m(6.6 ft) tall, humanoid body covered in fur, with cws at the tips of its fingers. What caught his attention the most was that the creature was missing a rge part of its head.

  'Where did the rest of the head go?' Jian wondered.

  Focusing on his task.

  He took a knife and cut into the creature’s sor plexus area. He kept digging until he felt something, and when he did, he thrust his fingers into the creature and pulled out a small red orb about 15mm(0.6 in) in diameter.

  Jian’s eyes widened in surprise.

  Inside the crystal, the essence moved almost like liquid.

  "A beast that reached Mid Red? Damn! If we had encountered it, we probably all would have been killed. It’s a real miracle that kid escaped alive."

  Jian put the gem in his pocket and began to return to the improvised camp.

  But as he was heading back, he noticed something.

  Since there was still sunlight, he could see several human footprints indicating that a group of people had passed by a few days earlier. He frowned and thought.

  'Another merchant group? Adventurers? Or could it be the mountain bandits?'

  'We’d better proceed with more caution.'