Chapter 122: Aftermath

Three days had passed since the monkey tide. Red Talon Hall had never been this quiet.

The vast training grounds that were usually filled with shouting disciples, clashing swords, and roaring beasts faded away. The red banners that usually whipped proudly against the mountain breeze hung limp under the mighty sky.

Across the western terrace, dozens of temporary medical tents have been placed across the area.

The stench of crushed medicinal herbs, scorched flesh, and burning spirit incense lingered calmly in the cold air.

The elders moved between the rows of beds with dull, exhausted faces.

The disciples who had survived the slaughter walked with white, blood-stained bandages wrapped tightly around their arms, shoulders, ribs, and legs.

Some leaned gently against wooden crutches, their hands clenched hard, some sat staring blankly at the stone floor, their robes lingering in the wind. And some had lost everything.

Today, Red Talon Hall held its solemn memorial. The hundreds of surviving disciples and elders stood in the grand courtyard before the main hall.

At the front of the wide stone platform there were rows upon rows of freshly carved black wooden memorial tablets. Each tablet bore a name chiseled in red glossy metal, representing a living soul who had died fighting for Red Talon Hall.

The junior disciples who had barely managed to stand still, and veteran senior disciples who had held the frontline till their cores ran dry.

The sect instructors, and frontline elders who had thrown their own bodies into the claws of Rank 4 mutated monsters.

People who had fought until their last breath, and the sect master Xue Hongzhao stood at the front of the platform.

Under his crimson robes, the fatal hole that had once pierced clean through his chest had already healed with the miraculous power of the phoenix’s eternal flame.

But his calm face was strangely pale, his eyes darkened by a profound, suffocating sorrow.

He slowly stepped to the edge of the stone dais, his gaze darting across the hundreds of bowed heads below.

"Three days ago..." His voice boomed across the silent courtyard. It wasn’t loud, but it reverberated straight through the hearts of everyone. "We marched out to protect the sect."

"We marched out expecting an ordinary, wild beast tide." Xue Hongzhao paused, his fists tightening within his wide sleeves. "What we encountered... was a brutal slaughter."

A few senior elders lowered their heads, their jaws trembling with suppressed rage.

"Twenty-seven Rank 4 mutated commanders led thousands of lower-ranked monkey beasts toward our gates," Xue Hongzhao continued, his words lingering through the cold mist like a blade.

A low, painful groan rippled through the rows of wounded disciples.

"Four of those commanders were eliminated during the initial clash in the valley. Twenty-three beasts remained to ambush our camp in the dark. And later, within the dark cave of the southern mountain..." Xue Hongzhao’s eyes turned pitch-black with murderous fury. "We uncovered a reality far more terrifying than wild beasts."

The courtyard fell dead silent. The people could only hear the faint flutter of the silk banners in the wind.

"The beasts were not acting on animal instinct. They were being controlled and commanded by the cultivator of demonic methods."

Everyone there remembered that nightmare inside the cave. The suffocating stench of decay, the heaps of gnawed human bones, the mutated Rank 5 beasts whose golden eye mocked their strength, the horrifying speed with which the demonic cultivator had struck from the shadows, and the fountain of dark blood when the sect master’s heart had been crushed.

Everything that happened was so scary and a near death experience.

"Today, Red Talon Hall remembers those who fell in the dark," Xue Hongzhao slowly bent his waist, bowing deeply toward the rows of black wooden tablets. His voice wavered slightly before returning to calm. "They were not mere deaths on a casualty scroll. They were our disciples, our martial brothers, our mentors, and our family."

The whole courtyard remained breathless, clenching their fists. Then, in perfect synchronization, every surviving disciple bent forward, and every elder bowed their head respectfully.

No one spoke, there is only the faint crackle of burning white incense and the quiet, muffled sobs of grieving youths echoed across the mountain peak.

Far away from the crowd, standing at the secluded corner of an outer viewing pavilion overlooking the southern peaks, Lin Yuan stood alone.

His hands were tucked casually into his wide blue sleeves, his back leaning against a cold wooden pillar.

His dark eyes were locked on the distant, jagged mountain ridges where the smoke of burning villages had finally faded away.

There is only one word that has been echoing repeatedly inside his skull for the past seventy-two hours, biting at his sanity like a parasitic insect.

’Noir.’

Lin Yuan’s long fingers slowly clenched under his robes, his nails biting deep into the flesh of his palms. ’How the hell did that bastard know that name?’

A cold sweat crawled down the back of his neck despite the chilly breeze. Nobody in this world should know that identity.

He had died in a stone basement under the crimson moon of the magic kingdom, his chest collapsing under the exhaustion of a forbidden soul-binding ritual and it was in a whole other world. He had woken up in the frail, tired body of a fifteen-year-old boy in Green Hollow City.

He had guarded that he was transmigrated from everyone. He had never uttered that name to his father, Lin Zhentian. He had never mentioned it to their best friends either. He had kept it hidden even from his core beast.

But that strange, pale cultivator, a man wielding demonic white tiger essence in the remote mountain wilderness of the Qinglin Continent had recognized him in an instant.

"You are an interesting bastard..."

"Lin Yuan—"

"Argh... Sorry... You are Noir, right?"

These words lingered in Lin Yuan’s mind over and over. He called him with pure confidence like he knew the past of Lin Yuan.

The chilling question was how he knew that? Was that demonic cultivator also a soul that had crossed the boundary from the same kingdom as Noir? Or was there a deeper, far more terrifying connection between the forbidden arts of that world and the demonic cultivation of this one?

Lin Yuan’s eyes narrowed in confusion and head ache. ’If someone in this world knew who Noir was... does that mean the enemies from my past life are out there too?’

Meanwhile, down along the borders of the outer territory, a few teams of senior elders had spent the last two days investigating the ruins of Stonebrook Village and Redleaf Village.

Both villages were destroyed, where wooden houses, markets, and auction houses once stood, there was only debris, shattered timbers, and dried blood stains on the broken walls and ground.

The few mortal survivors who had managed to hide and escaped were brought in and questioned thoroughly. The elders checked through the ash for any clues.

Anything that could explain how a horde of many thousand monkey beasts had crossed dozens of miles of sect-patrolled territory.

But, the search resulted in nothing. The thousands of monkey footprints simply appeared in the deep southern valleys, marched through the villages in a straight line, and then vanished. It was as if an army of mutated monsters had appeared out of thin air... and then vanished back into the ground.

The more the senior elders investigated, the colder their hearts became. An invisible, malevolent hand was moving behind the scenes, far beyond the strength of a few wild beasts.

The night slowly descended over Red Talon Hall. The moon rose high into the sky, obscured by drifting clouds that cast the southern peaks in shadows.

Lin Yuan waited until the third watch. When the sect patrols changed their routes and the tired guards rotated positions, a dark silhouette slipped over the eastern wall without making a sound.

Nobody noticed his departure. Lin Yuan rushed out of the sect without any sound, relying on the enhanced nocturnal vision and the feather-light agility of his white tigers, he moved through the thick forest like a ghost.

He slowly walked toward the southern ridges. He passed through the battle area they fought with the monkey beasts, and the campsite they got ambushed.

And reached the dark where the Rank 5 beast had been slaughtered, where the demonic cultivator had stepped out from the darkness and killed Xue Hongzhao brutally crushing his heart.

Lin Yuan stood at the entrance of the cave. The wind howling through the rocky gap sounded like the weeping of dead spirits.

He stepped inside alone. The pitch-black darkness swallowed his body instantly.

Within his robes, the twin white tiger tattoos on his back groaned once, a faint heat emanating through his spine.

Lin Yuan kept his hand resting near his waist, his senses extended to their limits as he walked toward the rustling, descending passage.

The deeper he walked, the colder the air became and the sound of footsteps echoed across the area.

The sect clean-up scouts had already cleared the corpses of the mutated commanders two days ago, carting away the remains for study and burning them to prevent any fatal diseases.

But the strong, suffocating iron stench of dried blood still lingered stubbornly across the cave.

The large areas of the ceiling collapsed, and wide cracks appeared on the stone floor that remained scorched pitch-black, crystallized into glass by the sheer fury of Xue Hongzhao’s eternal fury.

Lin Yuan halted in the center of the vast underground cave. He stood right where the throne of bones once scattered across the ground. His eyes slowly darted across the area.

’What truly happened here?’ Lin Yuan’s thoughts turned cold and analytical, searching for any clues. ’Did that demonic cultivator build this shelter only to ambush Red Talon Hall on a demonic desire? Or was he here as a scout... carrying out orders for an organization far larger than this sect?’

The Rank 5 beast had lowered its head and called that man ’Master’. And throughout the brutal battle, that man had acted with an unbothered expression on his face. He commanded those beasts with ease, and without exhaustion in his eyes.

Lin Yuan slowly walked across the area of the scorched and cracked ground.

Then, he suddenly stopped mid-stride, his gaze snapped toward the far-left corner of the rear wall, near the shadowed entrance of the strange cave.

"Wait..." Lin Yuan murmured, squinting his eyes slightly.

Surrounding that whole place of the dark cave, the rock was painted black, cracked and bubbling from the phoenix’s white-hot fire.

But, on a small patch of rocky cliff which is roughly three feet wide... the rock was clean without any burn marks or blood.

The divine flames of the phoenix had somehow been repelled by that specific patch of rocky cliff. Lin Yuan walked over, his footsteps cautious and calm.

He crouched down slowly on one knee, nodding his head.

There was a small intricate carving etched deep into the smooth stone.

It was a jagged, grotesque symbol representing a multi-jointed, distorted beast claw wrapping expeditiously around five intertwined, bleeding crescent lines.

It was so weird and a faint aura emanated from it. The deep grooves of the carving were filled with a thick, crimson-black residue.

Lin Yuan stared at the mark, his breathing turning shallow. He slowly extended his right hand, his hand hovering an inch above the dark grooves.

The second his skin reached toward the sigil, a powerful vibration slammed straight into Lin Yuan’s soul. His chest seized immediately.

The twin white tiger tattoos across his back repeatedly flared with agonizing heat, hissing against his flesh.

"What happened?" Lin Yuan’s eyes widened, and he instantly jolted his hand backward, tumbling half a step back into a low crouch. "What the hell is that?!"

A few wisps of thin, oily black mist began slowly lingering out of the carved grooves.

The mist withered lazily into the air, carrying a foul, stagnant demonic aura. It was truly faint and suppressed that even a Divine Beast Realm master like Xue Hongzhao might have overlooked it in the midst of the chaotic aftermath of battle.

But up close, the malevolence emanating from the mark was weird.

Lin Yuan’s expression turned utterly grim.

’This wasn’t normal marking,’ Lin Yuan thought, his hands quivering slightly. ’It was like someone carved this ritual sigil into this rock long before the beast tide ever reached the outer valley.’

This dark cave had never been a random beast den; it was like an altar.

Lin Yuan slowly stood to his full height, his dark eyes locked onto the black mist with chilling intensity.

The dark cave fell dead, suffocatingly quiet once more. A small drip of moisture lingered across the area once.

Then, without any warning, deep within the oily black grooves of the carved claw, a faint, rhythmic pulse rippled outward.

The air pressure in the dark cave changed vehemently.

Lin Yuan’s eyes totally focused on the sigil. His hair stood on end, a wave of pure, primal fear crawling over his spine.

Because in that fraction of a second, across an unfathomable distance, through the dark mist of that demonic sigil, Lin Yuan felt a pair of ancient, lethal, and scary eyes snap open in the darkness. And it seems like it was looking at him.