Lin Xiao chased after the beast’s roar, but the further he went, the worse his expression became.
Trees had been violently snapped and lay scattered on the ground.
Such destructive force suggested some massive beast had rampaged through here.
Soon, Lin Xiao spotted the first bloodstain.
A few red droplets were sparsely splattered across a broken stump.
Lin Xiao crouched down, dipped a finger in it, and brought it to his nose.
The rusty smell of human blood.
The discovery made his heart sink.
He looked up.
More blood stains appeared, dotting leaves and rocks everywhere.
The surrounding environment was even more heavily damaged.
Tracing the trail of blood, Lin Xiao stopped at a clearing.
There were deep drag marks on the ground, as if someone had been pulled for several yards by an immense force.
At the end of the marks was a shallow pit, with residual traces of spiritual power explosion.
Lin Xiao deduced that Xiao Luoyi had probably used Bronze Skin, Iron Bones to withstand one stomp.
But the opponent was such a huge creature…
“I’m sorry…”
Lin Xiao’s fingers trembled as they traced the cracks on the ground, his voice hoarse.
“If I had been here, we could have fought this beast together…”
He shook his head.
This was no time for self-blame.
He had to find her quickly.
Dead or alive…
No, Xiao Luoyi wouldn’t die.
Lin Xiao started moving again, even faster than before.
He carefully examined every trace.
All clues pointed to the same direction: deep into the Misty Hidden Forest.
The sect had warned them not to venture into the mid-to-deep sections of the forest, where many large beasts roamed.
But Lin Xiao had no choice.
The deeper he went, the darker it became.
Tall canopies blocked the sunlight, and the air was thick with a rotting smell.
Soon, Lin Xiao made a new discovery.
Several black hard quills were scattered on the ground, each as thick as a finger, a yard long, and pitch black.
He picked one up. It was heavy, like iron.
Porcupine quills?
In his game memories, there were two types of pig-like beasts in the Misty Hidden Forest.
One was the Bristle Boar—thick-skinned with sharp tusks.
The other was the Iron Spine Porcupine—slightly smaller, but with hard quills on its back that could be shot out.
But Wu Min had described the beast they encountered as “three times bigger than an ordinary Bristle Boar.”
Could it be a mutated variant?
The guess sent a chill down Lin Xiao’s spine.
Porcupine quills could be launched from a distance, fast and penetrating.
If it really was a mutated porcupine, Xiao Luoyi’s situation was even more dangerous than he’d thought.
He walked further.
His pupils suddenly contracted.
His gaze stopped at a quill sticking diagonally into the ground near a shallow pit.
The quill was embedded in the mud at one end, and halfway up its shaft hung a small piece of light purple fabric.
The edges of the fabric were ragged, as if torn off by force.
Lin Xiao recognized it instantly.
It was the color of Xiao Luoyi’s clothes.
He hurried to the quill and reached out to take the fabric.
The cloth was thin, stained with dark red blood, and the torn edges were very irregular.
“She’s still alive…”
Lin Xiao clutched the fabric tightly.
“That means she’s still fighting, still dodging…”
Xiao Luoyi was clearly retreating while fighting, using trees and rocks for cover, constantly maneuvering.
She wasn’t just taking hits.
Beside a towering ancient tree, Lin Xiao found another large splash of dark red blood.
It didn’t smell like human blood—it had the distinct stench of a beast.
Nearby were a few broken quills, the break points showing signs of being twisted off by force.
Lin Xiao could almost picture the scene:
A girl covered in blood, gritting her teeth, pulling the quill that had pierced her shoulder out of her own body, and when the porcupine charged again, using all her strength to stab it in a vital spot.
Junior sister…
The thought of what she had been through, and how tenacious she was, made him feel even more indebted.
The trail ended at a wide cave entrance.
The opening was large, about two yards high and three yards wide.
Inside the cave was pitch black, with no end in sight.
The ground and rock walls at the entrance were splattered with blood.
The sight made Lin Xiao’s vision go dark, his stomach churned, and he nearly threw up.
How much blood was that?
How could anyone survive losing that much blood?
No…
Not all of it was his junior sister’s blood.
Some must belong to the beast.
Lin Xiao’s eyes grew determined.
He stumbled forward, his feet making a squelching sound in the sticky pool of blood.
He reached the entrance and peered inside.
Only bottomless darkness.
“Luoyi!!!”
Lin Xiao shouted his junior sister’s name with all his might.
The sound echoed in the cave, layer after layer, eventually disappearing into the endless dark.
No response.
Only his own echo and the suffocating stench of blood.
Lin Xiao’s steps hesitated.
He wasn’t afraid of dying.
He was afraid of walking in and seeing the sight he least wanted to see.
If Xiao Luoyi was dead…
Then his so-called survival plan, his self-righteous secret help, would become a joke.
If he had confessed earlier, fought alongside her with his true identity, exposed Lu Renjia’s schemes sooner—would everything have been different?
He had been hiding all along, afraid of getting involved in the plot, afraid of ending up with a bad ending.
But what if Xiao Luoyi never even got the chance to reach the ending?
This wasn’t what he wanted.
If the female lead who was destined to be with him didn’t make it to the end of the story, what was the point of his time travel?
He had tried to convince himself.
That all this was just a game, just a dream—that everything in the dream was just a bunch of data running on code—to warn himself not to meddle.
He had even thought of himself as God, believing that as long as he relied on his foreknowledge of the game, he could hide behind the scenes like an invisible hand and make the world run according to his will.
In reality, he couldn’t.
He couldn’t stand by and watch Xiao Luoyi get bullied without helping.
He couldn’t keep his heart calm after receiving his junior sister’s feelings.
He couldn’t predict that a team hunting instance that wasn’t in the game’s plot would occur.
He couldn’t prevent the Iron Spine Porcupine from coming to the outer perimeter of the Misty Hidden Forest.
He couldn’t even decide how much sugar Xiao Luoyi put in the osmanthus cake she gave him.
All of that was just a single line of code in the game.
No, maybe he could decide the amount of sugar.
All he needed to do was be sincere with his junior sister and tell her what “a suitable amount of sugar” meant.
“I’m sorry…”
“I shouldn’t have pretended to be Yu Lao…”
“If there’s another chance, I’ll definitely get along with you as Lin Xiao…”
“Luoyi…” Lin Xiao murmured the name, his voice echoing at the empty cave entrance, soon swallowed by the darkness.
He took a deep breath.
Then, he stepped into the cave.