"What's this?" Tristan asked.

He went looking for Jaeng's uncle and his family; after all, they were the only members of his family he knew where to find.

They were greatly relieved to hear he was safe and showered Tristan with thanks, which only served to delay him and ruin his mood.

As he was leaving, Jaeng's cousin approached him, holding out her hands and handing him a paper bag with something inside, smiling as she did so.

"These are bean cakes; they’re my favorite treat. I created the recipe myself; I hope you like them," she said.

Tristan nodded in thanks and bid them farewell.

Walking through the streets, he popped the round treat into his mouth.

The outer layer was soft, and the inner filling was very sweet with a light citrusy touch—a combination he found quite appealing.

There were twenty cakes in the bag, and he devoured them all in less than a minute.

‘Finally, I found a decent treat in this place.’ The people of Zaguhan generally preferred mildly flavored, low-sugar sweets. ‘It’s the first time I’ve found a treat as good as the ones Margaret used to make.’ Tristan planned to look for Jaeng’s cousin to get more bean cakes if he survived.

He felt in good spirits to face the horrors of his next journey.

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

Tristan spent the next few days traversing the woods around Zaguhan.

As he traveled, he noticed a drastic change in the nature around him.

The thin, vibrantly red-trunked trees were no longer there; the landscape around him was now filled with thick, brown, aged-looking trees. The tall green grass was gone, and the ground was as dry as a desert and slightly yellowed.

The sky was dim and somber, and though the trees had almost no leaves, their branches were twisted and entangled, like a crowd of people embracing each other.

Thick, gnarled roots sprawled everywhere, and Tristan’s knee hit some of them. It was an easy place to trip if one didn’t pay close attention.

He opened his leather backpack and took out a map he had taken from the sect’s library. Tristan looked at a place marked Kū Mù Lín. It was a region large enough to contain several human provinces, categorized as highly dangerous and uninhabitable for humans; the notes on the map warned of monsters in the area.

He also saw that it was one of the fastest routes to reach the misty peaks.

Tristan walked slowly through that place, planning to wait for the sun to disappear to proceed more freely.

The place was silent; he heard no birds or other animals around. Looking around, all he could find were small insects.

From the stories he had read in his Divine Fragment, he knew that many creatures in that region specialized in stealth.

Tristan recalled a passage from a tale titled *Journey to the Cursed Prison of the West VI,* ‘In Kū Mù Lín, no species is dominant; all are prey to each other. In that place cursed by drought, only the forest prevails, drinking the blood of the dead.’

He looked left and right, increasingly finding the silence strange and unnatural.

‘Could it be that all the beings in this forest adapted to develop stealth and camouflage skills?’

His heart tightened with a feeling of apprehension; his instincts told him this place would be challenging and that he needed to be careful.

He walked among trees and bushes, always trying to move through spots that blocked the view of potential enemies. He also used his diagnostic ability now and then, trying to locate tracks and estimate the size of the creatures living there.

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

After spending some time scanning the area around him, he decided it was best to rest; it would be much safer for him to travel at night. He couldn’t see the exact position of the sun, but he felt a strange connection with the shadows around him, and his intuition told him it was mid-afternoon now with no doubt.

He used his concealment ability and walked until he found the huge trunk of a fallen tree. After placing some bushes around him in a circle to cover his figure, he laid a cloth in the center and lay down.

However, he didn’t let his guard down. For the next twenty minutes, he focused his senses on the surroundings. Only after nothing happened did he decide to close his eyes and rest.

‘What will haunt my dreams this time?’

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

The sound of glass breaking reached Tristan’s ears, and he looked down to see the food on his plate spilled across the carpet.

Valerie was standing before him with a piercing gaze and a look of disgust on her face.

Tristan clenched his fists in anger. He didn’t want to turn to the chair at the head of the table; seeking any help from that bastard would be utterly useless. Besides, he’d rather eat glass shards than do that. However, he could still hear the sound of cutlery slicing through a piece of meat as if nothing was wrong, which deeply irritated him.

He saw Vivian’s young face looking at the scene with amusement, while Victor pretended to be distracted by something else.

Even the mansion’s servants around seemed uncomfortable with the scene.

Only one person in that room could completely ignore Valerie’s outbursts.

"What’s wrong? Do you think you’re too good to eat off the floor?" Valerie took her wine glass and struck him on the head, shattering it and letting glass shards pierce his skin; purple wine dripped from his forehead along with red blood.

Unexpectedly, the pain stopped, but not only that—all his senses vanished. He couldn’t hear, feel the warmth of the room, or smell anything; even his sense of taste was gone.

Something had changed; he was no longer human.

He was confused by his new body. Before, he had a soft body made of flesh, bones, and blood, but now he had a body as rigid as stone; rubbing his fingers, he felt small fragments of himself crumble from his body and fall to the ground like sand.

A feeling of terror clouded his mind, only stopping when a wave of pain coursed through him, forcing him to face a new reality. Without realizing it, he had changed again; when his body hit the ground, glass shards entered his thin skin without effort, and a slimy liquid oozed from his wounds.

Regaining some of his senses brought a bit of relief to his mind, but it didn’t last long. When he tried to stand up, he realized his limbs had disappeared; his new body was much simpler than the previous one.

"This worm-like appearance suits you well!" Valerie laughed at his suffering.

She kicked him, sending him flying to the other side of the room and crashing into a wall.

He squirmed on the floor in pain; his body felt like a useless prison.

Then something strange happened.

His attention was drawn to an odd sound, like someone beating a drum.

The beats grew louder and faster.

It didn’t take long for him to notice where the sound came from—it was inside his chest; it was his heart, beating abnormally.

The dream world crumbled, and Tristan felt as if he had been pulled back to reality. When he woke up, to his surprise, the strange feeling didn’t disappear.

Tristan opened his eyes, feeling his wet hair sticking to his forehead and his clothes damp; he was drenched in sweat.

His eyes caught movement.

Looking up, he saw dozens of small black dots in the night sky, flying.

He only needed a few seconds to notice the characteristics of those beings.

Bodies divided into three main parts covered by a black exoskeleton, six legs, nearly transparent wings, and a stinger at the back.

‘Wasps?’ he thought.

The creatures before him reminded him of the wasps he had seen on Earth, but these were much larger, each about the size of an adult man’s finger.

Realizing the wasps were coming his way, he tried to step back, but then he noticed his left leg wasn’t responding as quickly as it should. Looking down, he saw a large, round bump on his thigh that stood out even under his loose clothes—there was swelling nearly as big as his fist, with a wasp identical to the ones flying above piercing his flesh.

‘How did I not feel that?’ Quickly, he moved his right hand toward the wasp and used his Dark Blade ability, slicing through the creature's stinger.

‘I need to get out of here!’ Tristan pulled the stinger out.

His left leg was slightly numb, and his heart was still pounding like a racing horse.

Gathering his essence in his right leg, he grabbed his backpack and jumped onto the tree trunk.

With his dark blade, Tristan cut down the approaching wasps ruthlessly; with just one swing of his arm, more than five wasps were sliced in half.

He clicked his tongue, seeing the other dozens of wasps flying his way. This stirred his heart; his leg was still numb, and it seemed his regenerative abilities would need some time to counter this effect.

Expanding his focus and sharpening his mind, he began calculating his chances of defeating the group of enemies before him without ending up incapacitated.

Suddenly, he noticed movement in the tree leaves above his head.

His eyes widened, and a chill ran down his spine.

‘Why don’t they ever end?’

Approaching like a cloud, Tristan saw an uncountable number of wasps in the sky.

He didn’t panic; although cold sweat ran down his back, his mind was clear and undoubted; he knew what he had to do.

With a backward leap, his body spun through the air before he hit the ground. Turning his back to the wasps, he ran as fast as he could with his injured leg.

He didn’t know where he was going, but he thought anywhere was better than staying there.