Chapter Fourteen: The Azure Blade and the Cold Gaze

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The mist deep within the forest had yet to lift, carrying the chill and dampness of rotting leaves, clinging to the skin like a layer of ice. Tao Zui had dragged Amu and Yaya in a desperate run for nearly an hour; her lungs burned as if stuffed with fire, each breath tinged with the metallic taste of blood. At some point, Xiao Hei had gotten lost; Amu’s empty hand was clenched so tightly it had turned white, while the blood from the wound on his arm had congealed at the sleeve into a dark, hardened crust.

“Sis… I can’t run anymore…” Yaya’s voice was a mere whisper, and her steps faltered; she nearly fell.

Tao Zui stopped and bent down to scoop her up. The little one’s face was alarmingly hot, her lips dry and cracked—likely shocked from their tumble down the slope and now chilled through. “Hold on just a little longer,” Tao Zui rasped, her voice hoarse. “Ahead… there should be somewhere we can rest.”

No sooner had she spoken than the brush behind them suddenly rustled.

Tao Zui tensed instantly, shielding the children behind her as her right hand darted to the revolver at her waist—only three bullets left. She braced herself, sure the tree fiends had caught up, her heart pounding as if it would shatter her ribs. But emerging from the mist was not a monster, but a man.

He wore a black trench coat, its hem whipping in the breeze to reveal a suit of deep gray combat gear beneath. Tall and upright as a pine, he held a short, blue-tinged blade, viscous black-green liquid dripping from its edge onto the dead leaves below with a faint hissing—the blood of a tree fiend.

His face was shrouded in the shadow of his hood, revealing only a sharp, cold jaw and lips so thin they seemed devoid of mercy. His eyes shone in the mist with an icy, star-like brilliance; as they swept over Tao Zui and the children, there was not the slightest warmth in them, as if he were regarding three stones, not living souls.

“Zhou… Zhou Yuanxuan?” Amu blurted the name, his face turning even paler than when he’d seen the tree fiends, shrinking instinctively behind Tao Zui.

The man paused, his gaze from beneath the hood settling on Amu. His voice scraped out, hard and cold as sandpaper on steel: “You know me?”

“Grandpa… Grandpa said ‘Ruthless Zhou’s’ blade is blue, that he kills without blinking…” Amu’s voice shook uncontrollably. “He said you crawled out of the ‘Dead Zone’—even the mutates steer clear when they see you…”

The “Dead Zone” was a forbidden place at the edge of the wasteland, a land so irradiated it was said to melt stone into mud. No one had ever returned alive.

The man ignored Amu’s words, his gaze shifting to Yaya in Tao Zui’s arms, then to the gun clenched in her hand, and finally to the jagged crack on the mask covering her face. “Tree fiends?” he asked, his tone unreadable—neither a question nor a statement.

Tao Zui didn’t answer, simply flicked off the revolver’s safety, her fingertips blanching from the force. The scent of blood on this man was even stronger than the tree fiends’, and the invisible pressure he exuded was more suffocating than the scarred face in the Black Bone Camp.

“Back on the slope,” the man suddenly spoke, twirling the blue blade in a graceful arc between his fingers, “the one with the shovel—was that your companion?”

Tao Zui’s heart clenched. The slope… that was Chen Mo! “What happened to him?” she couldn’t help but ask, her voice trembling before she realized it.

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The man's gaze lingered on her face for two seconds, as if weighing something, but in the end he simply delivered two words, flat and cold: “He’s dead.”

“No… no, he can’t be…” Yaya suddenly burst into tears, her small hands clutching Tao Zui’s collar in a death grip. “Uncle Chen Mo said he’d make me candy… He can’t be dead…”

Tao Zui’s fingertips were icy cold, the wound on her back stabbing as if with an icicle. She knew the man didn’t lie—no one could survive the tree fiend’s poison and claws. Yet whatever hope she’d clung to was ground to powder by those three words.

“There’s another injured one,” the man said, the blue blade gesturing into the mist behind him. “Over there, still breathing. Want to go pick him up?”

It was Xiao Li!

Tao Zui’s head snapped up, her eyes—visible beneath her hood—suddenly alive with urgency and disbelief: “Where is he?”

The man stepped aside, revealing the scene behind him. By a tree stump in the mist, Xiao Li lay curled on the ground, the wound on his arm black and swollen, his face deathly pale, his breath as faint as a dying ember—but alive.

“You saved him?” Tao Zui asked, wary. She didn’t believe ‘Ruthless Zhou’ would rescue anyone out of kindness.

“In my way,” came his curt reply, the blue blade tapping against his fingers. “The tree fiends’ screams disturbed my sleep.”

The reason was so cold it sent a chill down her spine.

He turned to leave, but Tao Zui called out, “Wait!”

He halted, but did not turn.

“How many tree fiends are left?” Tao Zui asked, her voice tense. She had to know what dangers awaited if she was to keep the children alive.

The man was silent a moment, either calculating or too indifferent to answer. After a while, his voice floated back through the mist: “Just killed seven. The rest… probably enough to kill you three times over.”

Before the words had faded, his figure had already melted into the dense fog, leaving only the soft whistle of the blue blade slicing the air, and a phrase, barely audible: “Head south, cross ‘Severed Finger Gorge’—you can avoid them. Don’t expect me… to clear the way again.”

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Tao Zui watched him disappear, her grip on the gun slowly loosening. This man, Zhou Yuanxuan, was strong beyond belief, colder than ancient ice, yet in turning away, he’d given them a path to survival.

“Zui, do you… do you think we can trust him?” Amu’s voice still trembled.

Tao Zui looked down at the sleeping Yaya in her arms, then at Xiao Li, barely alive by the stump. She drew a deep breath. “Yes.”

At the very least, he hadn’t killed them outright. In a man-eating forest like this, that already counted as ‘mercy.’

She hoisted Yaya onto her back, had Amu help Xiao Li, and set out in the direction the man had indicated—toward Severed Finger Gorge. The mist was thinning, sunlight filtering through the branches to cast dappled shadows on the ground.

Not far along, Amu suddenly pointed to a tree trunk ahead. “Zui, look!”

Carved into the bark with the blue blade was a simple arrow pointing south. Beside it, a crooked symbol—like an eye without a pupil—stared coldly at them, as if to say: Take the wrong path, and it’s certain death.

Tao Zui traced the icy markings with her fingertips, remembering those star-cold eyes beneath the man’s hood. Who was this ‘Ruthless Zhou’? Why was he here? And why… had he shown them the way?

The mist thickened again, the path ahead uncertain. But for now, at least, they had direction—and a fragile, blood-tinged thread of hope.

Far behind them, deep in the lingering fog, Zhou Yuanxuan reclined on the branches of an ancient tree, the blue blade at his waist and a dead leaf twirling between his fingers. He watched their retreating figures, the corner of his mouth curving into a barely perceptible smile—cold as frost, and just as inscrutable.

“Chen Mo’s people… interesting,” he murmured, flicking the leaf into the wind. “Let’s hope… they don’t die too soon.”

In the distance, the howls of the tree fiends rose once more, but none dared approach Severed Finger Gorge, as if something even more terrifying awaited them there.