Seph’s body suddenly crumpled forward as the giant man behind him dissolved into his original components and became five different of the same sandy monsters.

  Sun ran toward Seph and was screeching beside him; the monkey was worried sick about his friend, but Seph couldn’t hear a thing. All he could feel was the pain of getting his stomach battered for some time.

  The enemies had completely caught him off-guard; his gourd wasn’t even protecting his back, as was usually the case.

  Seph was rolling in a fetal position, from right to left, and in one of his rolls, he saw many of the grinning monsters looking at him as they all stood around him.

  One of them raised his leg and was about to stomp Seph’s arms that were holding his stomach, but Seph willed his gourd to intercept the attack.

  As the monster’s leg landed on the gourd, Seph made it jerk suddenly under his feet, which unbalanced the monster, and he fell on his back beside Seph.

  Another monster tried to do the same but got the same treatment. Only this one; Seph followed his falling body with the gourd and stomped his head into a bulb.

  Seph thought he was going to catch a break after he did that, but suddenly two enemies unclenched both his palms away from stomach and started dragging him towards the middle of the village, away from the entrance of the scar of fate.

  Sun was screaming and doing the best he could, but it was no use.

  Seph’s body was resilient enough to not get hurt by the inhumane dragging of his body on the ground, but that was the least of his worries at that point.

  Once they got him away from the entrance, they all surrounded him. Seph felt he was good enough to stand up to them, but with how they had circled him, what use was it going to be?

  Seph pushed the gourd with force in front of him targeting the head of one his enemies, as he turned to his back to strike another with a palm strike.

  He succeeded in both; he didn’t kill either of them, but he sent the enemy he hit with the gourd tumbling and made the one he hit with the palm strike crumple on the ground.

  At the same moment, he felt sudden flares of pain on his right arm and left arm, as two of the enemies with the swords slashed him from the side.

  Seph waved the gourd with anger at one of them, knocking the sword away from his hand, and lunged at the other with a palm strike, but he felt two other swords slash at his back.

  Before he could turn towards his back to address those enemies, another enemy lunged at him from his front side and stabbed his stomach with a fifth sword.

  In anger, Seph struck the enemy that stabbed him three times in a row with palm strikes, turning his head into flying black porridge.

  So far, he had taken out 12 of these monsters, but there were over 80 of them left.

  It was a lost battle. Only Seph was unaware of the situation outside. Did the villagers make it to safety?

  Seph couldn’t help and keep his body upright, as he fell on both knees, holding his stomach, looking at the monsters in anger.

  He thought if this was the consequence of mistakenly killing his neighbors? Should he give up and let them have their revenge from beyond the grave?

  ***

  Lilith led Seph’s mother, and the healer, to the mountain slope leading out of the village. The two older people were slow, but they were her priority. She didn’t want to go back to Seph and say that something bad happened to his mother because she was saving other villagers.

  Along the way, each time they came up to a house, she would knock loudly on their door and scream at them that a scar of fate had opened in the middle of their village.

  She would leave them to process this information and kept guarding Seph’s mother until they finally made it out.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  When she headed back for the rest of the villagers, she found quite a lot of them already headed her way.

  None of the villagers knew the girl with the exotic clothes, but since many of them were warned first by her, they asked her for guidance, “What do we do?” many of them asked in different shapes and forms.

  “Just head for the slope, and head for the next village. I am going back for whoever we might have missed.” She told them strictly.

  Many of their faces looked grateful to her, many of them looked wary of her, but the scar of fate was right there for anyone to see, so no one doubted her.

  Luckily, the villagers had called each other, and many of the houses were empty or in the process of becoming empty since some villagers fell behind because they tried to drag their riches or some belongings with them.

  Lilith screamed at the stragglers, “What the hell are you doing? This is not the time to focus on materials, you need to save your lives. Someone inside the scar right now risking his life to give you all enough time to escape. You can’t waste that opportunity. I won’t let him stay in there more than he needs to.”

  She didn’t say that to everyone and used shorter versions to urge people to leave.

  The villagers had missed some houses, but she knocked on all of them. Also, she ended up finding many kids that got forgotten by their terrified parents. She carried each one to the next house, and if there was a family inside, she would give them the kid to take to the extraction point.

  She also found many villagers who intentionally fell behind because they were looking for their relatives; many had left either forgetting from the sheer horror, or thinking that their men had left first but the ones who stubbornly stayed behind were going to be a problem, since Seph killed many men and they could be their quarry.

  She got an idea of how to fix this by telling them that a group of men entered the scar of fate with weapons to buy them time, and they shouldn’t let their sacrifices go to waste.

  Hearing this horrified the older men and both the old and young women, but they couldn’t imagine entering the scar; no villager would ever dare.

  Which would end up helping to portray those dead villagers as heroes of their village and families, who gave up their lives bravely so that everyone can live.

  By the time she finished her task, she was carrying two children on each hip that she delivered to the fleeing villagers, and she didn’t even think she had time to check on Seph’s mother, who was leading the exodus.

  She ran back towards the scar of fate, hoping against hope that she will find Seph alive.

  ***

  The monsters weren’t done with Seph, as one of them stabbed his sword into the back of the kneeling cultivator.

  Seph screamed as he pushed his chest forward, with two swords sticking out of his body now; he knew he had only a few minutes to live.

  He wished that his Graveyard Emergence ultimate skill was usable, even though he hated how he gained the skill.

  He wished he didn’t have to die right then and there; his life felt worthless to him since he turned into a yin cultivator, but something changed. He didn’t want to die if he could help it, and he couldn’t...

  His power felt depleted; he felt he couldn’t land a palm strike anymore. He felt like he couldn’t order his gourd around either.

  Meanwhile, Sun was screaming after getting pushed outside the circle of monsters, trying to get back to Seph, but he couldn’t.

  Seph felt his companion was beside him, even if he was that little distance away. He wouldn’t die alone.

  As he was about to let his head fall on his chest and rest, waiting for the final blow/blows, he heard a whip piercing the air at a terrifying speed.

  He looked up to see that most of the monsters were looking at the entrance now and paid him no attention.

  Lilith had entered the scar with him and whipped the head off one of those monsters.

  As the monsters turned around to face her, a big fireball that her tiny dragon had unleashed hit them.

  The fireball wasn’t big, though, and it took out a single monster.

  The jeering monsters got out of their stupor and ran towards Lilith. Seph got up weekly; he grasped the sword in his stomach with both hands and pulled it out.

  He then reached for the sword sticking out of his back and pulled it out too, but in a rather awkward position that it was harder and more painful.

  He didn’t drop this sword, as he headed for one corpse while saying, “Please, be there.”

  He stabbed the monster in the chest, and heaved as he pulled the chest open, and inside he found his quarry, a tasty human heart.

  He ate the heart in two big bites and let his healing factor do its job as he ran slowly towards Lilith.

  Meanwhile, Lilith had lashed the heads of four more monsters before they got to her, and Baby, her dragon, torched two heads off with her fireballs.

  Her output was much less, because her fireballs need to recharge for some time before she unleashed them.

  There were about 80 monsters left, and the fight was impossible for Seph and Lilith. As Lilith was getting cornered herself, the only way out was into the village.

  Seph dragged his feet as he headed back for Lilith, while Sun was in-between them, not sure which one he should go for. Lilith was fighting, but his friend was hurting.

  Regardless, as Seph reached Sun, the monkey jumped on his shoulder, which made Seph wince.

  Sun looked at him worriedly, but Seph just said, “It’s good to see you again, buddy.”

  Seph was picking up speed as he walked; his body was healing, not as fast as he hoped, but beggars can’t be choosers, he thought.

  As he reached the back of the mob, he started unleashing palm strikes back-to-back; they weren’t powerful enough to kill, but he wanted to make way to reach his friend.

  His gourd was busy crashing into one monster after another. As he finally could see Lilith, she lashed her whip in his direction. It circled his waist, and she pulled him towards her, as she jumped out of the scar of fate.

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