Beyond the Timescape

Chapter 16: You Ask When I Will Return, But There Is No Date Set

Bathed in the fading light of dusk, the youth’s silhouette sent a cold shudder through Fire Crow’s heart.

Had he been a greenhorn instead of a veteran scavenger, the sheer psychological pressure would have broken him, despite his superior cultivation. Even now, Fire Crow felt his resolve waver, though he quickly crushed the feeling beneath a desperado’s ferocity and the burning sting of his wounds. Murderous intent flared in his eyes.

“Little wolf pup. I’m going to rip your teeth out, one by one, and string them up as trophies.”

As Fire Crow snarled, he tore off his ruined shirt, revealing a gaunt, sinewy torso. Ignoring his severed ear and the gaping hole in his chest, he rapidly formed hand seals. His face flushed a deep, congested red as a fireball—even larger than the last—roared into existence.

Xu Qing’s pupils contracted. He moved, a blur of motion.

“Scatter!” Fire Crow bellowed. The massive sphere of flame fractured into five smaller fireballs, streaking straight for Xu Qing.

Explosions rocked the clearing. Flames swallowed the earth. From the inferno, Xu Qing burst forth, his momentum unbroken. He threw two consecutive punches, shattering the spiritual energy barrier before him.

Though the recoil forced him back and the searing heat blistered his skin, Xu Qing’s speed didn’t drop a fraction. His killing intent remained absolute. He fought with a suicidal disregard for his own body, locking Fire Crow into a brutal, deadlocked melee within the jungle.

The battle escalated.

Xu Qing was outmatched. Fire Crow’s spiritual energy barrier kept him at bay, and the fireballs were a lethal threat. But Xu Qing’s regenerative abilities were monstrous. The Purple Crystal knit his flesh back together almost as fast as it tore, keeping his combat efficiency at its peak.

Furthermore, growing up in the slums had forged his pain tolerance into something inhuman. The agony of his wounds was just background noise.

Most importantly… the ambient spiritual energy, thick with toxic Mutagen, meant nothing to Xu Qing. For Fire Crow, it was a death sentence.

A fifth-layer Qi Condensation cultivator couldn’t sustain this level of output without drawing in ambient energy to replenish his reserves. And with Xu Qing pressing him relentlessly, Fire Crow had no time to filter the energy. The Mutagen in his blood spiked, accumulating at a terrifying rate.

His initial rage curdled into panic. He realized something was fundamentally wrong with this boy. Any normal third-layer cultivator—even a fifth-layer one—would have been reduced to a charred husk by now under this barrage. Yet this kid, dripping blood and covered in burns, hadn’t slowed down.

The creeping dread in Fire Crow’s chest tightened as the Mutagen pushed him dangerously close to the edge of mutation. His breathing grew ragged.

“Fire Crow, you useless trash! Finish him!”

The Blood Shadow Captain roared from a distance, momentarily distracted from his duel with Captain Lei. He tried to break off and assist, but Captain Lei seized the opening, launching a ferocious counter-offensive that pinned him down.

Captain Lei had already deduced Xu Qing’s strategy: drag Fire Crow into a lethal mutation. He didn’t know how the boy was resisting the Mutagen or fighting through such catastrophic injuries, but in this wasteland, everyone had their secrets. Lei had his own. He didn’t pry; he just held the line.

The battle raged on.

Fire Crow hurled three more fireballs, all of which failed to put Xu Qing down. Cursed by his captain and pushed to the brink by the Mutagen, his panic boiled over into sheer madness.

He slammed his right fist into his own chest, coughing up a mouthful of dark blood. Before it hit the ground, his left hand snatched it from the air. He chanted rapidly, the blood in his palm turning a pitch, venomous black.

Xu Qing sensed the escalating threat and lunged forward to interrupt the spell. But Fire Crow was too fast. His face twisted in a savage sneer, he hurled the black blood forward.

It swelled mid-air into a boiling, head-sized sphere of corrupted gore, shrieking toward Xu Qing.

“Die!” Fire Crow rasped, his legs trembling from the spell’s toll and the rampant Mutagen tearing through his veins.

Xu Qing’s eyes went cold. Captain Lei was right—he was stalling for mutation. But Xu Qing never intended to just wait. He had been hunting for a fatal opening. And Fire Crow’s momentary weakness was it.

As the black blood sphere closed in, Xu Qing didn’t retreat. He accelerated, pivoting slightly toward Barbarian Ghost’s charred corpse. Beside the fallen shield-bearer lay his shattered iron shield.

Xu Qing snatched up the largest fragment, hoisting the heavy iron over his small frame as he charged headlong into the blood sphere.

*BOOM!*

The sphere detonated against the iron. The shield disintegrated into shrapnel, but it absorbed the brunt of the blast. Splattered with corrosive black blood, Xu Qing gritted his teeth and pushed through the pain, shooting toward Fire Crow like a loosed arrow.

Fire Crow sneered, not even bothering to dodge. He formed a seal, and the scattered drops of black blood behind Xu Qing began to levitate, preparing to skewer the boy from behind.

Xu Qing had nowhere to run. He didn’t want to.

Closing the distance, he feinted with his left and drove his right fist forward.

*CRACK!*

Fire Crow’s barrier splintered. Xu Qing’s knuckles split open, leaving behind a smear of blood, crushed scales, and mangled flesh on the barrier.

Without pausing, Xu Qing’s eyes flared crimson as he threw a second punch.

The barrier shattered completely. The resulting shockwave threatened to blast Xu Qing backward, just as it had before. Fire Crow’s sneer widened.

But this time, Xu Qing anchored himself. Drawing on a hidden reserve of strength, he fought through the shockwave, his right hand clawing viciously into the gaping, spike-inflicted wound on Fire Crow’s chest.

It wasn’t a fatal blow, and the recoil finally threw Xu Qing back. Fire Crow staggered, laughing at the pathetic attempt. He raised his hands to trigger the blood arrows.

Then, he looked down.

Smeared across his mangled chest was a paste of crushed scales and shattered fangs. The flesh was already bubbling. Black, venomous blood oozed into his veins, rapidly necrotizing the surrounding tissue.

Unimaginable agony hit Fire Crow like a physical blow. He shrieked, his face contorting in absolute terror. Stumbling backward, he looked at Xu Qing, who was now crouching a few paces away.

The boy shook his right hand, flicking off the remaining paste. If reassembled, the scales and fangs would form the head of the highly venomous mutated snake Xu Qing had used to process corpses.

Xu Qing slowly opened his trembling left hand. Shards of amber fell away, revealing the Ghost-Faced Scorpion Tail driven deep into his own palm.

The snake venom coated his right hand; the scorpion tail’s agonizing sting provided the adrenaline spike needed to punch through the barrier’s shockwave.

“You…” Fire Crow gurgled, collapsing as the venom ravaged his system. He clawed frantically at his chest, but the poison had already merged with his blood, draining his life force by the second.

Xu Qing took a steadying breath. His fight with Fat Mountain had proven the Purple Crystal could purge toxins. His uncorroded right hand was proof enough. This was the execution he had prepared.

He stood and walked toward the dying scavenger.

Seeing the boy approach, Fire Crow’s terror gave way to utter despair. “Captain! Save me!” he wailed.

The Blood Shadow Captain saw the gruesome scene but was hopelessly pinned by Captain Lei. He could only watch as Xu Qing closed in.

The catastrophic physical trauma, combined with his shattered psyche, finally broke Fire Crow’s resistance to the Mutagen. Before Xu Qing even reached him, Fire Crow’s body went rigid. The Mutagen violently rewrote his cellular structure.

With a sickening *pop*, he exploded into a cloud of thick, red mist.

Some mutated into blue-black corpses; others simply detonated. Xu Qing stopped, staring at the bloody fog for a second before turning his cold, wolf-like gaze toward the Blood Shadow Captain.

The sun dipped below the horizon, but night did not fall. Instead, the sky bled into a sickly, unnatural crimson.

Bathed in this eerie red light, the blood-soaked, heavily scarred youth stood in the clearing, radiating an oppressive, suffocating aura. The Blood Shadow Captain, despite his superior cultivation, felt a spike of genuine dread.

Fire Crow’s gruesome death had rattled him. Combined with Captain Lei’s relentless assault and this kid’s unnatural resilience, his nerve broke. He threw a desperate punch to knock Lei back and, without hesitation, fled into the trees.

Captain Lei moved to pursue, but as he glanced at the bleeding sky, his face drained of color. He coughed up a mouthful of black blood, his skin taking on a sickly blue-black hue as he swayed on his feet.

Xu Qing rushed over, catching the old man before he hit the dirt. He propped Lei against a thick tree trunk, his eyes tracking the fleeing Blood Shadow Captain.

“Don’t chase him alone,” Lei wheezed, grabbing Xu Qing’s arm. “His squad is dead. He’s finished. But that red sky… I think I’ve seen it before.”

“He’s a loose end,” Xu Qing replied coldly. He despised loose ends. He was confident he could hunt the captain down and bleed him out just like Fire Crow. But Lei’s grip was tight, and his warning made Xu Qing instinctively look up.

Then, the jungle went dead silent.

Every roar, every rustle of the mutated beasts in the restricted zone vanished in an instant. Through the suffocating silence, a song drifted through the trees.

It was faint, like a melancholic sigh, the voice of a woman weeping for a lover who would never return. As the haunting melody echoed, a pale crimson mist began to roll in from the direction the Blood Shadow Captain had fled, swallowing the forest whole.

Xu Qing stiffened. Beside him, Captain Lei began to tremble violently. Both stared into the encroaching fog. Xu Qing’s eyes were wide with hyper-vigilant terror; Lei’s eyes were glazed, lost in a sudden, hazy trance.

The song seeped into Xu Qing’s ears, bringing with it a supernatural, bone-deep chill. It felt like standing naked in the freezing, blood-soaked rain of his ruined city. Even with his third-layer body refinement, he couldn’t stop his teeth from chattering. His muscles locked up. He couldn’t move an inch.

Cross’s warnings about the restricted zone’s taboos screamed in his mind.

In the distance, the fleeing Blood Shadow Captain froze. He convulsed violently, as if an invisible weight had crushed the strength from his limbs.

Right before Xu Qing’s eyes, wisps of white vapor—the man’s very soul and vitality—were dragged from his eyes, ears, nose, and mouth, dissolving into the red mist. The captain’s body withered at a visible rate, turning into a desiccated husk before crumbling into fine ash. Nothing remained.

The mist rolled over his ashes, creeping toward Xu Qing and Captain Lei.

As the fog parted, Xu Qing finally saw the harbinger of death.

A pair of bright red, tattered women’s shoes.

“This…” Xu Qing’s breath hitched. The empty shoes stepped onto the soil, moving rhythmically, step by step, toward them.

There were no legs. No body. Just the shoes, and the sorrowful, weeping song growing louder with every step. It was as if an invisible woman was walking toward them, singing her tragic lament.

The blood-red shoes walked directly toward Xu Qing. His pupils shrank to pinpricks. He screamed at his body to move, to run, but the supernatural frost had paralyzed him completely. He could only watch, his eyes bloodshot with desperate struggle, as the shoes stopped less than two paces away.

The suffocating aura of absolute death eclipsed every thought in his mind. The shoes lifted, preparing to take the final step.

“Peach Blossom Red… is that you?”

A hoarse, trembling voice broke the silence. It was Captain Lei.

The eerie singing snapped to a halt.

The raised red shoe hovered in the air, then slowly pivoted. The invisible entity turned its attention away from Xu Qing, facing the old scavenger.

Captain Lei shook uncontrollably. His breathing was ragged, but a sudden, desperate surge of strength flooded his exhausted frame. A light Xu Qing had never seen before ignited in the old man’s eyes as he stared at the empty space above the red shoes.

It was as if, through the veil of the supernatural, across the insurmountable divide of life and death, he was looking at the woman who meant more to him than his own soul.

Their eyes met.

Tears spilled down the hardened, scarred face of the veteran scavenger.

“You… did you come back?” Lei reached out with a trembling hand, desperate to grasp something.

The red shoes took a slow step forward and bent slightly. It was as if the invisible woman had knelt gently before him, leaning in so his calloused hand could cup her cheek.

But Lei’s fingers brushed only empty air. His hand fell. The tears flowed faster, his quiet, broken sobs echoing in the desolate woods.

A long time passed. A soft, phantom sigh seemed to ripple through the void. The red shoes slowly straightened and took a step back. They retreated ten paces before turning away, bypassing Xu Qing entirely, and walking back into the depths of the red mist.

*You ask when I will return, but there is no date set.*

*Mist obscures the lingering heart, as the phantom song drifts far.*

The singing resumed, its sorrow now tinged with a bitter, melancholic acceptance, fading into the distance. The crimson mist flowed around them like a river parting around a stone, receding into the dark woods until the song was nothing but a whisper, and the mist vanished completely.

The paralysis broke. Xu Qing gasped for air, his chest heaving. His eyes were wide with lingering horror as he instantly spun toward Captain Lei.

The old man sat slumped against the tree, staring blankly into the distance, silent tears carving tracks through the grime on his face.

Xu Qing swallowed the questions burning in his throat. He remained silent.

After a long time, Lei spoke, his voice barely a whisper.

“You must think this is strange.”

Xu Qing gave a slow nod.

“Cross told you before… I’m one of the few who survived hearing the song.” Captain Lei looked into the distance, his voice low and weary. “You know, the song in this restricted zone is a deadly taboo. Most who hear it die. But those who survive… they receive a ‘gift’ from this place. The next time they hear the song, they’ll see the person they most want to see in this life.”

“I always thought it was just a legend. For that legend, I waited in the camp outside for decades… until my hair turned white…”

“And today, I saw her.”

As he spoke, Captain Lei seemed to age decades in an instant. Wrinkles deepened on his face, and a profound weariness settled over him.

“Do you have someone you want to see, someone separated by life and death? If you do, don’t follow my example. Don’t wait here…”

“Seeing her… in the end, it’s still… an empty dream…” Lei murmured bitterly, closing his eyes. Tears streamed down his wrinkled cheeks, soaking into his collar.

Xu Qing remained silent. He lifted his gaze toward where the song had faded, a deep, aching longing surfacing in the depths of his eyes.

He, too, had someone he desperately wanted to see.

Someone he missed, missed, missed with all his heart.