Everyone in the house rushed outside. Looking north, they saw a cloud of dust and sand covering everything, mixed with a faint Yin of death.
Screams of despair echoed everywhere. In that city, not everyone was a competitor in the Trial — only about two-thirds of them.
That was because the vast majority of people never left the desert, dying there instead. Naturally, they ended up forming families and having children.
But those children weren't part of the system. Only when they reached what was considered adulthood — which varied depending on race and other factors — would the system activate for them. Before that, they were extremely vulnerable.
And it wasn't just in the desert. In the other two regions of this world, children were also born, and the situation was similar. The difference was that, once they reached the right age, the system would bring them to the desert completely alone.
