Having shaken off the searchers by the creek, Gene pressed further south. Every step he took was heavy with caution. He avoided trails, shunned open paths, and moved like a shadow between rocks and thickets. He had no wish to encounter more pursuers—or anyone at all.
That day the sky grew overcast. A thin drizzle began to fall, weaving silvery threads through the air. Within moments, his hair and shoulders were damp, the cool droplets chilling his battered body. Gene's eyes darted across the uneven landscape, searching for shelter from the rain.
It was then, at the foot of a craggy cliff, that he noticed something unusual. Half-hidden by wild vines and moss was a narrow cleft in the rock—a dark opening, so well concealed that even a step closer, one might mistake it for a shadow.
A cave.
Gene hesitated. The mouth was barely wide enough for a man to squeeze through sideways. The darkness within breathed a faint stench of age and dust, as though the air inside had not stirred for centuries.
He gripped his knife tightly, pried the vines aside, and slipped into the crevice.
At first the passage pressed close on both sides, forcing him to twist his shoulders to move forward. After ten or so cautious steps, the narrow throat of the cave opened suddenly into a chamber. To his surprise, it was a sizeable cavern—dry, spacious, and faintly ventilated, carrying none of the musk of beasts. Instead, a musty tang of ancient dust lingered, thick yet strangely sterile, as if time itself had been sealed inside.
Pale light trickled in from the entrance, enough to show him vague shapes. Gene's eyes caught something on the walls. Patterns? Scratches? His pulse quickened. He fished out a fire-striker from his pouch—a prize scavenged from a fallen bandit—and coaxed a small flame to life. The wavering glow revealed the cavern walls in detail.
And what he saw made his skin prickle.
The stone surfaces, rough and uneven, were covered with carvings—dense, tangled etchings that stretched across three walls. They were not words, at least not in any script he recognized, but jagged, twisted lines and curling symbols that seemed to writhe under the firelight. Ancient, incomprehensible, and unnerving.
The deeper he stared, the less stable he felt. The lines seemed to shift subtly, as if crawling in the corner of his eye. A faint dizziness clouded his mind, a disquiet that rose from somewhere beneath thought. He tore his gaze away with effort, chest heaving.
What were these? Who had carved them here, in such secrecy? And why?
He raised the fire closer, tracing the wall step by step. The markings were not random scratches—each groove was deliberate, carved with persistence over untold years. Some lines were faint and eroded, while others remained sharp as if freshly cut, forming a pattern too complex for him to grasp.
At the far end of the cavern, the firelight fell upon something far more unsettling.
A skeleton.
It sat upright in meditation, legs folded beneath it, hands resting upon its knees. The remnants of its garments had long since crumbled to dust, leaving only the pale bones, untouched and undisturbed. The empty sockets of the skull faced the wall, as though the figure had been contemplating the carvings at the very moment life abandoned it.
Before the skeleton lay a flat stone slab, smoothed with care. Like the walls, it was etched with the same twisted script—lines and whorls looping like the paths of madness. But in the center of the slab, carved deeply and unmistakably, were four ancient characters Gene could recognize:
"逆血归源"
Return of the Inverted Blood.
The flame wavered as Gene's hand shook. His thoughts roared.
Inverted Blood. The very same name Ji Lianyu had spoken of—the dreaded "Bloodbound Guardians" who once served the false saint Tianzhu!
Cold crept up his spine, beads of sweat forming on his brow despite the chill of the cave. Could this long-dead figure have been one of them? A disciple? A scholar of their secrets? Or perhaps someone who had opposed them and paid the price?
The carvings, the symbols, the slab—they seemed less like records and more like a binding, a curse carved into stone to outlast ages. And here sat the silent witness, his bones the final testimony of some forgotten struggle.
Gene's grip on the fire-striker tightened. He suddenly felt as though he had trespassed into a place never meant for the living. The walls seemed to press closer, the lines twitching in the dim light like veins filled with shadow.
Inverted Blood… Return to the source…
The words echoed in his mind, heavy with menace.
What source? What power?
And most chilling of all—what if this cave was not merely a remnant of the past, but a seed waiting to awaken?
Gene stepped back, heart pounding. He could not stay here long. The place was wrong—too silent, too watchful. Yet a part of him knew he had uncovered a secret of vast consequence, one that tied directly to the storm brewing across the land.
He lowered the flame, his face pale. Whatever this cavern concealed, it was not meant for him. But fate had dragged him here, and he could no longer pretend ignorance.
In the depths of the southern wilderness, Gene realized, the shadows of ancient curses still stirred.
And they had begun to notice him.