Chương 32: Narrow Escape

Across a distance of a kilometer and overlapping layers of dense foliage, a gaze—tangible, icy, berserk, and brimming with absolute killing intent—locked onto the canopy where Rowan was hiding, with the pinpoint accuracy of a sniper rifle. Thump! Thump! Thump! After a momentary stalling, Rowan's heart began to beat frantically out of control. His scalp went completely numb as if pricked by needles, and goosebumps erupted across his skin as if he were being hunted by a lethal apex predator. Flee!

There was zero hesitation, and absolutely zero wishful thinking. The instinct of an underhive rat screamed at Rowan that if he was even half a beat too slow, he would die. In the center of the distant basin, the ancient knight covered in gore had no intention of charging over. To him, whether the entity hiding in the canopy was a scout left by the fugitives or just a suicidal bug, he simply needed to crush it to be safe; he absolutely would not delay his pursuit because of it.

With cold apathy, the knight raised his exaggeratedly massive greatsword. BOOM! Accompanied by an ear-splitting sonic boom, a violently berserk cyan airstream and searing crimson flames instantly curled around the blade. Fused together by some ancient combat art, these two entirely different elements were unleashed by the knight across a distance of a kilometer in a straightforward, unadorned horizontal slash! It wasn't a monotonous arc of sword aura.

It was a massive, rapidly rotating net of fire interwoven with a hurricane! This wind-fire killing net expanded wildly against the gale. Like the gaping maw of the Grim Reaper, it instantly engulfed the entire canopy region where Rowan was hiding. Several ancient trees along its path, thick enough to require a dozen men to encircle, had their tops sheared off as smoothly as cutting tofu the moment they touched the fire net.

Searing flames erupted at the cross-sections, filling the sky with burning splinters and ash.

"Damn it!" The very instant the knight raised his hand, Rowan had already violently kicked off the trunk with both legs. Like a plummeting boulder, he threw himself out of the tree, free-falling toward the deep jungle over sixty meters below. But he had still severely underestimated the terrifying speed of a high-tier knight's multi-element combat art.

Suspended in mid-air with nothing to leverage, Rowan watched in absolute terror as a slender, tangible thread of fire at the edge of the spinning wind-fire net shot straight for his neck at an incredibly devious, unavoidable angle! It was too fast. He didn't even have time to tilt his head!

"Condense!" In the split second between life and death, Rowan drained nearly a third of the mana in his crystal core, violently throwing his left arm up to shield his face. The extreme deep-blue ice armor of the Frost-Chill Gauntlets instantly formed over his forearm and palm, radiating a bone-chilling white mist. Sssss—CRACK! The instant the thread of fire collided with the extreme-chill ice armor, an ear-piercing hiss of vaporization erupted.

The ice armor—renowned for its defense, capable of effortlessly shattering steel pipes—lasted less than 0. 1 seconds against the aftershock of the knight's casual strike before violently shattering into ice crystals, erupting into a cloud of steam! The residual power of the fire thread was largely diminished, but it still sliced viciously into Rowan's left elbow. He didn't immediately feel the agonizing pain of burning. The first sensation Rowan's brain received was a spine-chilling, numb coldness.

Immediately following that, he clearly heard the agonizing, teeth-grinding friction of his own elbow bone being sawed halfway through.

"Argh!" The thread of fire cauterized the edges of the wound, and the excruciating pain finally crashed over Rowan's nerves half a beat late like a tidal wave. But he didn't even have time to scream. His completely off-balance body was plummeting toward the ground at terminal velocity. Without buffering the fall, a sixty-meter drop was more than enough to shatter every bone in his body and rupture his internal organs, killing him instantly.

Fighting through the dizziness wracking his brain, Rowan forced his bloodshot eyes open against the rushing wind. Spotting his target below, he shot out his uninjured right hand, desperately grabbing onto a thick, protruding branch. SLAM! The moment his right hand caught the branch, the massive kinetic energy of his fall nearly dislocated his right arm. Normally, relying on the physical strength reinforced by the Furnace Melding Art, he absolutely would have been able to hold on.

But at this moment, the inhuman agony of his left arm's bone being sliced open severely disrupted his force generation and core balance. Love what you're reading? Discover and support the author on the platform they originally published on. He managed to buffer the fall and bleed off a portion of the momentum, but the rough bark shredded the palm of his right hand into a bloody mess. His fingers slipped, and his body resumed its violent descent. CRASH!

Like a ragged burlap sack, Rowan smashed heavily into a dense thicket of underbrush. The rigid thorns instantly shredded his cheap robe. He tumbled through the mud and rotting leaves for a dozen consecutive rolls before his back slammed heavily against a moss-covered boulder, finally bringing him to a complete halt.

"Blargh..." Rowan opened his mouth and vomited a massive mouthful of fresh blood. His internal organs felt as if they had all shifted out of place. His left arm hung limply and bizarrely in the muddy water; the wound at his elbow was deep enough to expose bone, the cross-section bearing the charred black marks of high-temperature carbonization.

He bit down on his lip so hard he drew blood, practically stuffing mud and rotting leaves into his mouth to shove the screams back down his throat, forcefully concentrating his attention to listen to his surroundings. That terrifying knight could pursue him at any moment. However, the knight never came to investigate. As Rowan lay in the muddy water playing dead, an incredibly blinding light suddenly erupted from the deepest part of the basin, accompanied by a muffled explosion.

"Damn it!... The seal... broke...!" Rowan vaguely heard a massive, furious curse echo from the distance. Immediately following, the two oppressive auras rapidly receded. The two knights clearly realized they had been delayed by the swarm of low-tier mana-beasts and the commotion in the tree. No longer caring to confirm whether Rowan was dead or alive, they turned into two streaks of light, hacking and slashing their way out of the stampede toward the source of the blinding light.

With the knights' departure, the stampede also began to disperse.

"I... I survived..." Rowan gasped heavily, cold sweat entirely soaking his body. He struggled, attempting to crawl to his feet. Just then— THUD! A heavy, muffled crash landed less than five meters to his right, splashing mud all over his face. Rowan turned his head with immense difficulty. He saw a giant bird—its entire body scorched black, its iron feathers mangled—lying there emitting black smoke, weakly flapping its wings in its dying breath.

To his absolute shock, it was the D1-grade [Iron-Feathered Gale Eagle] he had fought off earlier! In a stroke of terrible luck, it had built its nest in that ancient tree. It hadn't even had time to scream before it was caught in the outer edge of the knight's AoE strike. In an instant, the greedy, vicious glint of a true scavenger exploded in Rowan's eyes. He brutally tied off his bleeding left arm using strips of cloth.

Gritting his blood-stained teeth, he drew his high-frequency straight sword with his right hand and staggered unsteadily toward the dying eagle. With a single slash, the eagle breathed its last, its wings dropping limply. There was no time to harvest those valuable iron feathers; the dispersed high-tier mana-beasts nearby could follow the scent of blood over at any second.

Rowan brutally cleaved open the scorched eagle corpse, precisely dug out the cyan D1-grade mana crystal, shoved it haphazardly into his pocket, and decisively turned to retreat. Dragging his heavily injured body, Rowan navigated the chaotic beast horde like a ghost, struggling agonizingly back to the massive tree hollow. Squeak? The moment he entered the hollow, the Crystal-Scaled Pangolin—which had been hiding in the corner—saw Rowan covered in blood with his left arm half-severed.

Terrified, all its crystalline scales stood on end, and it spun in anxious circles.

"The surface isn't safe..." Rowan leaned weakly against the trunk. His right hand trembled as he pointed at the ground.

"Dig... dig down!" Rowan crouched down, miming a digging motion. The pangolin seemed to understand Rowan's intent. A flash of profound seriousness crossed its small, obsidian eyes. The next second, it finally displayed its true racial talent as a pangolin. An earthen-yellow mana halo enveloped its four seemingly stubby claws. The moment they touched the ground, the hard soil and solid rock became as soft as butter, parting to the sides like a ship cleaving through waves.

In less than ten minutes, the pangolin had dug a vertical shaft over a dozen meters deep directly beneath the tree hollow. At the bottom, it excavated a dry, blind chamber large enough to accommodate one person and one beast. After Rowan jumped down, it even consciously used soil and rocks to firmly pack and seal the tunnel above them, leaving only a tiny ventilation shaft. Inside the dark, isolated underground stone chamber.

Rowan leaned against the cold dirt wall, waves of agonizing, drilling pain radiating from the broken bone in his left arm.

"Cough... Spit the meat out." He gestured. The pangolin was already very familiar with this motion. The crystal scales on its belly rippled, and it spat the unfinished chunk of premium crocodile meat onto the ground. Rowan didn't start a fire. He grabbed the raw, blood-streaked meat with his right hand. Like a feral beast backed into an absolute corner, he viciously tore into it, swallowing the chunks raw. The Furnace Melding Art was forcefully activated in his severely wounded state.

Massive life essence detonated in his stomach, transforming into a scalding torrent that flowed rapidly toward the horrifying wound on his left arm. An intense itching and burning sensation followed. Under the nourishment of the pure mana, the bleeding miraculously stopped. The necrotic flesh that had been carbonized by extreme heat began to slowly regenerate. The excruciating agony that normally would have caused someone to pass out was immensely alleviated.

But when Rowan touched his left elbow with his right hand, the bone was indeed severed halfway through. He couldn't exert any force with it whatsoever. He was acutely aware that the technique could only stabilize the injury. To truly recover from damage like this, he absolutely had to return to Terra and undergo surgery by a professional cybernetics doctor or a black-market surgeon!

"The injury is temporarily stable..." Rowan exhaled a breath of stale air mixed with bloody foam. His left arm hung limply; his right hand gripped the unexpectedly acquired D1-grade mana crystal in a death grip.

"That was too damn close! Those two guys... they absolutely weren't Tier 1!" Recalling his narrow escape, lingering fear gripped Rowan's heart. Feeling relatively secure for the moment, Rowan recalled the knights from earlier. They seemed to have been drawn away by some unexpected anomaly. But he had no further information beyond that. Once his injuries stabilized and the life energy could no longer facilitate further physical recovery...

Rowan used his single good hand to pull the faintly glowing data crystal disc of the Mind-Splitting Art from his robes. He prepared to continue cultivating the Mind-Splitting Art exactly as originally planned.