This was the time when evil walked and roamed about the lands, a phenomenon that was always kick-started by another phenomenon; natural disasters of catastrophic proportions…

Behind the aggressively fleeing Dara was a massive hundred meter tall and at least twenty meter wide tornado that was spinning at more than enough speed to shred him into pieces…

Though it was still slightly far away, it was already on the water, and everywhere was already flooding, and if he didn’t get to a higher ground on time, then the only fate awaiting him was utter death…

Dara channeled more and more power into his feet as the water pulsed towards him with immense momentum, as the massive tornado began to pull out trees by the roots and fling them in random directions…

After about five minutes of desperate flight, Dara finally found a cave within the walls of the mountain he had fell from, and happily made a beeline for it…

Ka! Ka! Crack!

Dara heard the sound of branches snapping as he was about to enter this cave, and just as he looked back to check, he saw a massive tree, about ten times his own size shooting towards him with the speed of a bullet…

Dara lurched to an abrupt halt, and the moment that happened, the tree slammed into the cave entrance collapsing everything, as Dara was sent flying into the same river he was running away from…

Tapa!

Dara fell into the raging waters and was instantly flushed out of the valley alongside several rock debris, thick broken tree branches, and some other sharp objects…

But just as expected, it didn’t take long for Dara to get hit in the gut by a massive rock debris, and finally get knocked out by a large tree trunk, as he floated unconsciously with the flooding waters…

After about four hours later, five figures appeared at the vicinity of the cliff, where the intense battle had taken place…

“Damn! This is a total bloodbath…”

One of the figures who was a 5 feet tall brown skinned kid blurted when he got to the area;

“Shut up Lao, just search for both of them, and let us be on our way before the rest of these Obuns come searching for a missing tribe leader!”

Another youth who was about a tad bit taller than Lao ordered with an aura of person of authority radiating off his body, the rest began to comb the area in search for the two people they were looking for, and after a while, Lao yelled;

“Over here boss!”

The boy who had just ordered them and the other three ran over to the edge of the cliff, and there they saw dead bodies strewn all over the floor…

They all belonged to Obuns and there were no other normal person around except for a specific burial mound which was made to the side with the glaive these figures were too familiar with;

“That’s Ji Dai’s glaive…” One of the other boys around revealed;

“You think we don’t know?”

The youth who seemed to be the leader of the group and looked to be about thirteen or fourteen years old, snickered at the boy who just spoke;

“I’m sorry, brother Hai…” The boy apologized to the leader of their group named, Hai;

“Hmph! I have no time for this…”

“Kun, Me, Xie, dig that mound… I want to know if it is Ji Dai or her useless brother…”

Ji Hai spoke with a voice laced with hatred and disgust as he ordered the three boys behind him, as they all gazed towards him with a slight frown that signified reluctance;

“Brother Hai, I’m sorry, but I think it is unethical to dig up the grave of a buried person…” Xie was the first to speak up;

“Especially considering the intent with which we are doing it…” Kun added;

“It is a total violation of the rested ones, and the repercussions might be too dire for us to bear…” Me also joined in as Ji Hai gazed at them with a repulsive expression;

“Bunch of useless thrash!” He blurted before looking to his sidekick;

“Ji Lao, go dig up that grave, now!”

“Yes boss!”

Ji Lao who for some reason was more scared of the disrespecting the living than the dead went ahead and dug up the burial mound as the cold, pale and dirty corpse of Ji Dai was uprooted out of the ground, as everyone gasped in shock before the trio who refused to dig up the corpse looked away with a pained expression…

Though they suspected something fishy going on with the mission they did today, but they couldn’t ask or say anything about it, considering the status of the person who gave them the mission…

But Ji Hai simply stood there with a very deep frown as he thought out loud;

“How can a useless thrash with no hope of cultivating survive such a massive battle between cultivators?”

He asked as he went over to the edge of the cliff, but because it was too dark and the tornado had passed, the water was calm and soundless, thus the only thing Ji Hai saw was a dark abyss, as Ji Lao added from the side;

“Could he have jumped over the cliff?”

“Damn, you guys are so stupid…” Ji Hai cursed as he raged;

“Then did Ji Dai bury herself and stabbed her own weapon over her burial mound?”

“Does that mean it was Ji Dara?”

Ji Lao asked once again, as Ji Hai almost exploded out of sheer rage, but he simply sighed and gave Ji Lao a vicious slap; one that sent the poor sidekick tumbling head over heels about two meters away;

“You all should think well before you speak from now on…”

“I don’t know why the village still give cultivation resources to dumb idiots like you…”

Ji Hai angrily blurted as he walked past the exposed and defiled corpse of Ji Dai;

“He has escaped, and should still be within this jungle…”

“Find him, and being him back, dead or alive!”

He yelled orders at the teenagers in front of him as he added furiously;

“This is a mission and order from the village chief himself, shall I report to him that you all refused his orders!?”

The boys cowered at the last art of Ji Hai’s statement as they pick a partner and scrambled in opposite directions to search for Dara;

“He couldn’t have gone far… though he can flee, there is still a limit to how far he can go on empty stomach…”

“After all, eating anything out here would spell his certain death…” Ji Hai muttered through gritted teeth;

“I hope they find him, and I can retrieve the scroll father had been going crazy about…”

He added as he picked the third unexplored path the four kids left for him…

“You better be dead Dara, otherwise, you will suffer a fate worse than death in my hands!” Ji Hai thought as he increased his speed…

Meanwhile…

About three hours later, when a bit of light reflected across these dark lands…

A middle aged man and woman were on a boat, with several fishing gears, as they looked to catch whatever this stream could offer them for food…

“It’s been almost half a day, and we are yet to make any catch whatsoever, why don’t we simply return and manage what we have for now, and then return when it is exhausted?”

The lady spoke as the middle aged man who seemed to be her husband replied;

“Chu’er, if we return now and eat the last food we have, we will basically spend the all the energy we get from it returning to this place, and what would happen if we can’t find any catch by then, wouldn’t that mean starving to death…”

The man replied as he caught the shadow of a figure moving about ten meters away from him, though he couldn’t make out what it was, but after spending half a day with no catch in sight, and their grumbling stomachs, the man didn’t care if what he was planning to catch was stronger and could kill him, he wasn’t going to pass up this chance…

He grabbed his massive nets and hurled it over the figure, before reeling it in, and due to the sheer weight of the figure within his net, he had to use a little bit of the power he had been conserving for emergency situations, as the muscles in his arms and legs bulged…

Then with a violent tug, the unconscious Dara whose body was being carried by the steady moving stream landed into the boat, and just as the man fished out a dagger to kill his catch before it capsized their boat or kill anyone of them, the lady hurriedly moved over and grabbed his hand as she whispered;

“It’s a human… A little boy… Look!”

Then the man looked past his wife’s shoulders and realized that what he had indeed hurled aboard was no marine beast, but an actual human being…

Then he relaxed a bit, and after a while, his wife walked over to Dara’s unconscious body, but the man grabbed her arm;

“Be careful!”

He whispered as he took the lead with his wife just behind him, looking at Dara from behind…

“Is he still alive?”

She asked as the man placed a blade just beneath Dara’s nostrils, and after getting some sort of weak haze on his mirror-like dagger, the middle aged man nodded his head and added;

“But not for much longer…”

“Please save him!”

The lady blurted as the man froze in shock thinking it was a bad idea to save a random kid who was unconscious in a flowing river within the dark lands…

Who knew if he had offended some strong expert who thought he had died and disposed his body into the river to clear his tracks?

Who knew if he had just jump into the river to save himself from certain death which was more terrifying than jumping into the river at such an hour in the dark lands which is when all the monsters, beasts and Obuns of the Dark Lands are most active?

What if those people were still chasing him?

Several logical explanations stampeded the man’s mind as he stared at the unconscious Dara, and just as he was about to refuse, he saw his wife’s facial expression and understood why she wanted to save him;

“Damn it!”

He blurted before paddling away as fast as his muscle-tensed arms could row, whilst his wife went over to Dara and covered him in thick furs to keep him warm…