A few minutes had passed, but the other apprentices had still not returned. A letter had already been sent to the sect leader, and no further traces of the creatures had been found. As a result, the sect apprentices were resting and recovering from their wounds at the guard station near the walls.

No one seemed eager to search for their missing companions.

Meanwhile, Tristan thought about the creatures they had faced. The intelligence those shadow beasts had shown had already caught his attention before, but now he was even more curious about it. ‘Most beasts would have treated the city’s people as a feast; these monsters are strangely cautious.’ Moreover, he couldn’t understand why the beasts chose to attack the apprentices instead of going after ordinary humans, who would have been easier prey.

He found the silence strange—it didn’t seem like a tribe of beasts had just invaded the city center.

‘I wonder what’s happening at the other gates. Have the other sects summoned by the city lord faced these monsters yet? If so, what was the outcome?’

He decided to stop thinking about it. In this ancient world, where letters were used to transmit information, knowing what was happening in other places was infinitely slower than in his previous world.

‘Especially in this cursed city that prefers to use humans as messengers instead of birds.’

The wooden door opened, and he saw the guards' leader enter.

From the look on his face, Tristan doubted he brought good news.

“We have a problem. The apprentices—we found them,” the guard leader said.

“What happened? Where are they?” Ai Wen asked, her face contorting in pain as her wounds worsened when she moved.

image [https://i.imgur.com/CJALaUN.png]

After the guard explained what had happened to the other apprentices, only Tristan and Ai Wen decided to see what remained of them.

Tristan frowned as he opened the bag the guard had handed him. There were only a few small pieces of flesh and fabric.

“Where’s the rest?” he asked.

“That’s all we could recover. We found nothing else,” the guard leader replied.

Tristan’s eyes widened slightly as he looked into the bag again.

‘These wounds... could the monster we fought have done something like this?’

He wanted to think the answer was yes, but he knew that if the creature they had killed could cut people like a sword slicing through paper, what had happened to their other companions was more like being thrown into a blender. This suggested there was a far more dangerous beast inside the city.

Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

A dangerous monster he knew almost nothing about could be his next enemy.

He clicked his tongue.

The fear of the unknown was irritating.

After the previous shock, everyone was tense.

Tristan returned to his room, but he didn’t try to sleep this time.

Instead, he decided to use his divine artifact.

In his spirit form, he began to recite the characteristics of the strange shadow creatures he had faced.

He clicked his tongue in frustration when he realized there were still countless pages ahead of him. With a sigh, he started reading, hoping to find some useful information quickly.

After reading dozens of stories without finding anything particularly unusual, one in particular caught his attention. The title of this story was:

| The Origin of the New Green Pheasant Village |

⟨…The sky was covered with dark red clouds, and the sound of thunder filled the air as if an army were marching over the heads of the citizens of Green Pheasant Village.

All the dying survivors of the war between the Demonic Sect and the Celestial Alliance could do was watch their homes turn to ash from the black fire that ravaged everything it touched.

Then, something caught their attention.

They saw a solitary figure walking from afar, moving through the falling ash around her. The visitor was a tall, elegant woman, wearing a long robe and a white veil that not only covered her hair but also hid her eyes.

That sacred beauty stood out in the middle of the ruined village.

Slowly, she approached a child lying on the ground, half of his body completely burned. She extended her hand over the boy’s head.

A white flame emerged from her hand and covered the child's body. In the blink of an eye, his arms and legs, which had been as black as coal, now looked pink and healthy.

Seeing that incredible display of power, the survivors crawled toward the visitor and kneeled before her, begging for her grace.

They watched as she raised her arms to the sky, and a powerful white light spread from her body, enveloping the entire village and fully restoring the hundreds of people on the brink of death.

The grateful villagers began to worship their savior and offered her everything they had left.

But she refused everything they offered her. What she wanted was information.

The venerable lady asked the citizens if they had heard any rumors of a tribe of shadow beasts. She described creatures that had the features of both bears and felines. The villagers told their savior that they knew of a type of monster matching those characteristics.

After they pointed her in the direction where those creatures had last been seen, the strange visitor disappeared as silently as she had appeared.

She was never seen again, but the descendants of the people she saved never forgot the visitor from the West who enabled the New Green Pheasant Village to rise.

...⟩

After reading this story, many questions arose in Tristan’s mind.

“Could this woman be from the Church of the God of Healing?” he wondered aloud, again hearing the echo of his voice in that place.

“From the description of her clothing, all I can think of are the nuns from that church.”

That seemed very unlikely to him.

“But what on earth was she doing in the eastern region? And why was she searching for a simple tribe of beasts?” He had no idea where Green Pheasant Village was, but since this place had been affected by the war between the Demonic Sect and the Celestial Alliance, he was sure the story originated in the eastern region.

But that wasn’t what intrigued him the most.

“She healed an entire village? That’s ridiculous. If the people who created this story weren’t exaggerating, this woman must have been at least a Martial Master to have enough vital energy to do something like that.” He began to doubt the truth of the story.

“It would be easier to believe that a spirit from the Upper Realm appeared and healed everyone than to believe a Martial Master from the Church of the God of Healing did it.” He decided to file this story away in the part of his mind reserved for possible nonsense.

After spending more time reading, another story caught his attention.

| The Incredible Territorial Dispute Between the Bronze Wolves and the Urslurus Nightfurs |