The youth had spent an entire day walking. He wasn’t entirely out of the woods just yet. But-

“…what the fuck?” he mumbled in a shaky voice.

“Beast tide,” Jian Gong’s words appeared in his mind.

In front of him were the ruins of a village. It seemed to have been destroyed just recently. Some places had smoke rising from them as though they had caught fire before. Other than them, many wooden houses were in shambles.

The youth walked into the village with slow steps. Corpses were littered everywhere, dyeing the roads red. His now wet footsteps, left bloody prints in every unstained place.

Wherever he looked, someone had been brutally killed. An old man with his head cracked open like a coconut, a child reduced to a pile of meat, a woman who had a hole through her bloated belly.

The youth bit his lips and walked around the ruined village. The corpses seemed to go on and on with no signs of stopping.

The youth kneeled next to one of the corpses which was relatively intact. He looked over it once more; only one leg was smashed to bits. He turned the man around on his back. He was a middle-aged man with a pencil mustache and a mole under his left eye. He was still breathing!

“Shit, he’s still breathing. Wait, he’s going to bleed to death at this rate.” The youth started panicking.

“He’s too late to save,” Jian Gong appeared next to him.

“What do you mean!?” the youth snapped his head towards him.

“Look-” he pointed at the middle-aged man, “-his breathing is shallow and his face is pale. These are clear indicators that he’ll die any minute now. But there’s a bigger problem- even if he wasn’t at death’s door, how would you treat him?”

“I…” his words were caught in his throat. Jian Gong was right. He had not considered this. He shook his head and stubbornly persisted, “Still, am I really going to watch him die in front of my eyes?”

“You should think about this. While you try to save someone you can’t, someone you can save might die.”

“You- Wha- Ugh…fuck!” stumbling with his words, the youth angrily ruffled his long hair and sighed in hopelessness. He took a last glance at the dying man. With a heart full of regrets, he stood up and continued walking.

“…I did not expect you to have the heart to save him,” Jian Gong admitted honestly.

“He did not attack me nor did I have any enmity with him. If I can save someone, I will save someone.”

“Then are you the kind of guy who will maximize his efforts to save everyone he can?”

“I don’t know,” he shook his head. “But I’ll try my best for those I can.”

Not overly kind, are you? Jian Gong shook his head and smiled. The two walked side by side.

The two walked amidst the corpses as they searched for survivors.

“Oi, do you hear that?” Jian Gong froze and whispered to him.

“I do,” the youth had already started walking towards the sound. With every step, the faint whisper-like sobs became more prominent.

“A child?” his eyebrows jumped. “No, two of them.” He picked up the pace and went towards the origin of the sound. The sounds seemed to be coming from a destroyed house which was bigger than the rest. Jumping over the partially broken wall, he landed inside the interior of the house. The sounds seemed to be coming from below the earthen floor.

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“What?” he looked at the ground flabbergasted. A trace of enlightenment flashed across his face. The sobs of the children would be inaudible to ordinary people. He only heard them due to his enhanced hearing.

He stopped thinking about this for now. Looking around, he found a wooden trapdoor. He pulled on the metal handle in a hurry and the door broke off its hinges. A woman screamed from inside.

Forcibly calming himself down, he approached cautiously. He didn’t climb down the ladder but instead jumped down. The basement was much deeper than he expected though he didn’t take much damage.

As the dust settled from his fall, he looked up to see a middle-aged woman huddling in the corner with her two children. Their eyes were closed in fear.

Another thing he noticed was that the basement was almost pitch-black; only the opening above let in some light. He understood that the woman probably thought that a Deviant Beast had come in.

The youth sighed and said in a worried tone, “Are you okay, ma’am?”

“H-Huh?” the woman was surprised when she heard his voice. She opened her eyes and saw the youth standing in the basement. The light from above illuminated his figure.

“Ma’am, are you okay?” he repeated once again.

“A-Are they gone?” the woman asked shakily. Her body seemed to be trembling involuntarily, as though she had remembered something traumatic.

“Yes, the Beasts are gone.”

The woman’s body slumped. The exhaustion finally crept.

“M-Mama!” when she suddenly let go, her eldest son looked at her in shock. Receiving no reply from her other than a relieved smile, he looked at the youth with caution. “Are you here to save us, big brother?”

“I mean, yeah. Let’s go with that!” the youth nodded. He looked at the woman, “Will you stay here or come up with me? Though I’d like to advise you to leave your children here if you do want to come up. The sight up there is not for children to see.”

The woman inhaled deeply and a thought seemed to pop in her mind as she asked in a hurry, “Have you seen my husband!?”

“I can’t say since I don’t know what he looks like.”

“H-He has a thin mustache.”

“Ma’am, you need to calm down,” the youth advised her to take a step back. “There are a lot of people with thin mustaches.”

“He has a large mole on his cheek!” the woman’s thoughts started becoming more coherent.

“I see…ugh,” the youth scratched his hair. “Now, back to my question, will you come up with me or stay down here? I need to go back up and see if there are any other survivors.”

The woman resolved herself and said, “I’ll go with you.”

“N-No, mama!” the youngest child which was another boy, started crying. “Don’t leave us!” The eldest looked like he was on the verge of tears as well.

“Don’t worry,-” the woman kneeled down and hugged the two, “mama’s not going anywhere.” She stood back up with a gentle smile and looked at the youth, “Can I take my children with me?”

The youth shrugged and turned around indicating that they could do whatever they wanted. He bent his legs and put power in them. With a jump, he leaped out of the basement.

The woman and her children looked in awe. The woman especially, since she knew that the youth at least had power rivaling that of her father-in-law.

After he helped the woman and her children out, the youth asked, “Do other houses have this kind of basement?”

“Not all of them. Our ancestors used to build these kinds of basements in fear of the Beast Tides but as there hadn’t been one in over two or three centuries, some people stopped building them. Others might have built them just for tradition.”

“Thanks for the information. I’ll be going ahead.” The youth cupped his fists and left in a flash. The woman gazed at his departing back with gratitude in her heart.

She felt a tug on the hems of her sleeve. She looked down to see her eldest son look at her with his watery eyes, “Mama, what’s wrong?”

“Many things,” she smiled and looked away. The destruction of her village weighed heavily in her heart. But now was not the time to lament about them.

On the other hand, the youth searched around some more. Just like the woman before had said, not all houses had basements. And some of those that did have basements seemed to have other problems. It seemed that some basements weren’t built properly as they couldn’t withstand the weight of the beasts’ stampede and ended up collapsing.

He saw many holes in the ground with bodies sticking out of the soil. And that’s not taking into consideration how many were buried alive under the soil. Regrettably, most of the ones sticking out of the soil were already stomped into mush.

Unknowingly, it was already dusk yet he had only saved two other people- a man in his twenties and a teenage girl. Just like the woman and her sons, he found them huddled inside the basement. They were siblings with their parents nowhere in sight. Now, he had another task to complete.

The youth left them in their home and continued on his way. He walked slowly whilst thinking deeply. After a while, he opened his mouth and ordered, “Status, arrange the [Status Screen] in line with my thoughts.”

[Understood. The Status Screen has been updated.]

The youth was about to open his [Status Screen] when he heard a hoarse and rough voice behind him, “Who are you?”

He turned around. It was a burly old man with a bald head and flowing white beard. He seemed quite vigilant of the youth.

The youth smiled faintly, “Just a passerby.”