The feast was grotesque in its efficiency.
Ji Han didn't cook the centipede meat; he didn't have the fuel to waste. He sat in the darkness of the limestone hollow and consumed the frozen, raw flesh of the Frost-Bone Centipede. His jaws, reinforced by Qi, crunched through the remaining bits of shell and cartilage.
His body, a starving engine, roared to life. The meat hit his stomach and dissolved into pure energy, flooding his shriveled muscles. His skin regained its elasticity. The hollows of his cheeks filled out. It wasn't instant, but the vitality of a Level 1 Beast was potent.
"We have three days of Dusk," Lin Qinghe said. She was sharpening a shard of Black Iron against the floor. "The moment the sun dips below the horizon, the temperature will plummet. The heat stored in the ground will bleed into space."
Ji Han swallowed the last bite. He stood up, wiping blue ichor from his mouth. He felt strong. Not just human strong, but dense. His bones felt heavy, like lead pipes.
"Then we strip the world," Ji Han said.
He grabbed the Frost-Iron Cleaver. He climbed the rope to the granite seal, pushed the slab aside, and ascended the spiral tunnel.
When he emerged from the trench, the air smelled of sulfur and dust.
The surface world was unrecognizable. The lush, azure ocean of grass was gone. In its place was a flat, grey wasteland of ash. The ground was hard-baked clay, cracked into geometric patterns like a shattered tortoise shell.
The sun hung low in the west, a bloated, dying orange ball. It cast long, terrifying shadows that stretched for miles.
"Fuel," Ji Han assessed.
The ash on the surface was useless—it would burn in a second. He needed the roots. The tubers that had retreated underground to survive the summer were now mummified in the dry earth.
He walked to the nearest patch of cracked earth. He didn't use a shovel. He raised the Frost-Iron Cleaver.
THUD.
The heavy blade smashed into the ground. He twisted it, ripping up a clod of earth the size of a suitcase.
Tangled inside were the dried, woody remains of the Azure Grass roots. They were no longer juicy tubers; the heat had roasted them into hard, fibrous knots.
"Charcoal," Ji Han realized, picking one up. It was light, dry, and dense. "The sun made us charcoal."
He turned back to the trench where Lin Qinghe had emerged, shielding her eyes from the orange glare.
"The entire kilometer," Ji Han pointed with his cleaver. "We harvest every root within the barrier. We fill the tunnel. We pack the walls with them."
"That is tons of material," Lin Qinghe said. "And we have no wagon."
"I am the wagon," Ji Han said.
He began to work. It was a brutal rhythm. Smash the ground. Rip the roots. Pile them up.
He moved with the speed of a cultivator. His endurance was supernatural. He didn't sweat; his body absorbed the ambient heat and converted it into motion. He was a locust, stripping the land of its last biomass.
For three "days"—which was really just the sun inching lower by a fraction of a degree—he worked without sleep.
He created mountains of dried roots near the tunnel entrance. Lin Qinghe's job was to ferry them down. She dragged bundles into the Granite Tunnel, stacking them against the walls, narrowing the passage but insulating it with layers of wood.
By the time the sun touched the horizon line, the 1km circle of his territory looked like it had been shelled by artillery. Pockmarked. Barren.
But the tunnel was full.
Ji Han stood at the edge of his territory, watching the sun begin to vanish.
The temperature dropped instantly. It was palpable. A wind picked up from the east—the "night side" of the world. It wasn't a breeze; it was a vacuum draft, sucking the heat away toward the freezing dark.
He shivered.
"Ji Han!" Lin Qinghe called from the tunnel entrance. "Look!"
She was pointing not at the sun, but at the ground near the barrier edge.
Ji Han walked over.
Buried in the ash, revealed by his excavation, was a bone.
It wasn't a human bone. It was a ribcage, massive and curved, like the hull of a ship. It belonged to something the size of a whale.
Ji Han touched it. It was ancient, turned to stone.
"A fossil," Ji Han said.
"No," Lin Qinghe whispered, joining him. She touched the bone, her face pale. "This is not from the ground. Look at the ash on top of it. It fell here."
Ji Han frowned. "Fell?"
"During the Long Day," she theorized. "The beasts outside the barrier... they died. The heat killed them. The wind buried them."
Ji Han looked out past the golden barrier. The frozen "statues" of the wolves and monsters he had seen months ago were gone. The plain was empty.
They hadn't moved away. They had cooked.
"The Long Night brings new life," Lin Qinghe said, looking fearfully at the darkening sky. "The Yang beasts are dead. But when the sun is gone, the Yin beasts will wake up. And they will be hungry for the only warmth left in the world."
She looked at the tunnel.
"Us."
Ji Han gripped his cleaver. The sun was half-gone now. The twilight was turning purple.
"Let's go inside," Ji Han said. "We seal the door. We light the fire. And we don't open it for six months."
He grabbed the last bundle of roots. They retreated into the earth, pulling the petrified grass mat over the entrance, and then, for good measure, they dragged a heavy stone slab from below to block the trench entirely.
Thud.
The door closed. The Long Night began.