Chapter 11: Saving Someone

The cultist leaped up, raising his short blade over his head as he brought it straight down toward Eve.

Eve shifted half a step to the side.

The short blade struck empty air and hacked into the spot where she had just been standing. The blade sank into the layer of rotten leaves, sending several fragments of leaf litter flying.

Guixu swept sideways.

It was very light, like brushing aside a curtain.

The scythe blade did not even touch his body. It was still more than half an arm’s length away from his chest, yet he froze.

The dark-red mist inside his body was forcibly torn out. It poured from the markings, seeped out through the gaps beneath his fingernails, and gushed from the corners of his eyes, the corners of his mouth, and his nostrils.

All of it surged toward Guixu’s edge, like iron filings being drawn to a magnet.

The gray-robed man opened his mouth.

No sound came out.

The short blade slipped from his hand and stabbed into the rotten leaves. The markings on the blade had gone completely dark.

His knees hit the ground first. Then his entire body toppled forward, his face burying itself in the decaying leaves. His body twitched twice.

He had stopped breathing.

Eve put Guixu away.

She lowered her head and glanced at the corpse.

Eve crouched down, pinched the gray-robed man’s sleeve between two fingers, and turned his corpse over.

Half a piece of parchment slipped out of his cuff. It had been folded crookedly, and its corners were wrinkled from sweat.

Eve slowly unfolded the parchment. A dark-red pentagram was burning with a vivid red glow.

Eve rested a hand against her chin in thought.

What sort of strange pentagram is this?

Then Eve lifted the parchment and held it up toward the moonlight.

When the moonlight shone through it, the pentagram’s color deepened slightly, changing from dark red to a purple so deep it was almost black.

Eve held up the parchment and tilted her head.

She turned the paper over.

There was nothing on the back. When she flipped it back again, the pentagram was still just that same pentagram.

Eve lowered the parchment. The pentagram’s color returned to dark red.

She stared at it seriously.

She could not understand it.

Eve stuffed the parchment beneath her skirt.

She stepped over the corpse and walked toward the direction where the scent was thicker.

Soon, traces began to appear on the nearby tree trunks.

There was a slanted sword mark that ran from the middle of a tree down to its roots, its cut clean and neat.

It looked like it had been made not long ago.

Beside the sword mark, a patch of bark had been torn away, revealing a charred-black layer of wood beneath, as though it had been scorched by fire.

Eve reached out and touched the blackened surface. A fine layer of carbon dust clung to her fingertip.

Holy Light again, but it had missed.

She continued walking. The rotten leaves on the ground had been overturned across a large area, revealing the damp black soil underneath.

Footprints were stamped into the black soil. There were several people’s tracks, all overlapping, making it impossible to tell who was who.

One footprint was especially deep. The heel had sunk an entire finger joint into the ground, as though the person who had stepped there had been carrying something heavy, or had been injured and could not support their weight on one foot.

Beside the footprint was a small patch of rotten leaves whose color looked wrong.

She crouched down. Dark-red spots had splattered across the leaf surface. They had already dried completely, their edges blackened.

Bloodstains. And not just this one patch. Every few steps ahead, there were one or two more drops, forming a broken trail that led deeper into the forest.

Eve followed the bloodstains.

The blood grew heavier beside a tree.

The tree roots bulged above the ground like several arched backs. On one of the roots, there was a large pool of blood that had flowed down along the grooves in the root system before congealing in a puddle at the lowest point.

Several scraps of cloth lay scattered nearby. They were dark blue, with charred edges that had curled over. They felt stiff to the touch.

Clothes? Whose?

Eve crouched down and turned one of the scraps over. A small leather tag had been sewn onto the back, embossed with the image of an open magic book.

She stood up.

The blood trail split here.

One trail led east. The bloodstains were newer, and the drops were close together, as though whoever had made them had been walking in a hurry.

The other led north. Those bloodstains had already turned black, with only two or three drops every few meters.

Eve glanced at the eastern trail, then at the northern one.

She chose east.

Let me have a look.

What could it be?

After walking for about an hour, Eve saw a pair of boots.

They were black leather boots that reached the knees. A tear ran along the side from the ankle to the middle of the calf, the leather peeling open to reveal the lining inside.

The boots were still on someone’s feet.

Their owner was sitting with his back against a slanted tree trunk, his head hanging over his chest, his long beard covering his face.

He was wearing a dark-blue uniform, the same color as the cloak fragment she had picked up earlier. A crack had been split through the leather armor over his chest, running diagonally from his collarbone to his ribs.

His clothes were soaked through with blood, wet from his chest all the way down to his belt. Under the moonlight, they looked black.

Eve walked over and crouched down in front of him.

She reached out and checked Hawke’s breathing.

It was very faint, but he was still alive.

...

Lin Mo patted Hawke on the shoulder.

Hawke did not react.

“Hey? Are you still alive?”

Lin Mo shook his shoulder again.

“Hey, hey, hey.”

“Say something.”

“Do not play dead!”

Only then did Hawke reluctantly open his eyes. He had just tried to speak when a mouthful of blood spilled out, splattering across Lin Mo’s chest.

No, my clothes!

“Young man...”

Hawke had only managed to say a few words before he fell asleep again.

Lin Mo stared at him, somewhat speechless.

He really was old and frail. He closed his eyes and fell asleep the moment he lay down.

Non-Elemental—High-Tier Detection Spell.

Lin Mo took a rough look.

This guy’s body is in excellent shape.

Three broken ribs. A hole punctured through his left lung. Blood pooled inside his chest cavity. His liver and spleen were both ruptured, and his abdominal cavity was filled with fluid. The bones in his right wrist had shattered into several pieces. There was a blood clot inside his skull, and its position was rather bad. Nearly half the blood in his body was gone. His spiritual energy core was dim and blackened, operating only in fits and starts, like an oil lamp on the verge of burning out.

If he had not run into me, he probably would not have survived the night.

A green glow lit up in Lin Mo’s hand.

I really am too kind. I am clearly a vampire, yet I still have to save a human.

No, after he wakes up, I would be letting down the grace of saving his life if I do not extort at least a few payments from him.