As the chief and elders chanted their solemn prayer, every adult warrior stood with grave faces, bowing toward the Scorch-Spirit Pillar. Many women and children hurried over as well, murmuring under their breaths, worry and hope tangled in their eyes. All they wished for was simple—may those who left for the hunt return alive.
The Blazing Wastes were far too cruel.
Once you stepped beyond the pillar's protection, the world changed.
Out there was the outer wilds—domain of raptors that blotted out the sky and mountain beasts that could crush ridgelines.
The Chìlí Tribe's strongest hunters slung massive bows over their backs, hefted black-forged blades and bone spears, and marched off the stone clearing into the folds of the mountains. Wind whipped at them, carrying the tang of blood and savage wilderness.
Only when the hunting party vanished into the ravines did the old chief finally turn away. He waved the children over and had them sit cross-legged on the grass before the tribe.
"All right, you little troublemakers," he said, lowering himself onto a stone, "time to use those heads for something other than butting each other."
The children's earlier excitement vanished at once. Their expressions wilted like leaves under harsh sun. Heads drooped, and they slumped into a loose circle, listless and resentful.
"Chief Grandpa, those twisty bone patterns are like ghost scribbles," one kid muttered. "They're impossible to remember."
"Yeah! My dad's archery is way more useful," another complained. "If I can nail a beast in one shot, that's real skill!"
A chorus of groans and sighs followed. No one looked enthusiastic.
"You brats really don't know treasure when it's thrown in your faces," the old chief snapped, glaring at them. "Bone patterns are the innate sigils carved into the bones of ancient feral bloodlines. They're packed with mysteries. Plenty of people would kill for a chance to study them, and you lot dare to call it troublesome? If you truly grasp even a fragment, you'll outstrip your fathers by more than you can imagine."
"Chief Grandpa, why don't you first show us how powerful these bone patterns are?" a slightly older boy ventured cautiously.
The old chief's eyes narrowed in amusement. Then he suddenly turned his head and shouted into the distance:
"Dou'er! Get over here!"
Not far away, Little Dou'er was busy clutching the tail of a big yellow dog, locked in a serious tug-of-war. At the shout, he blinked, released the dog's tail, and trotted over on his short legs.
"Waa… Chief Grandpa, you called me?" he asked, big eyes shining.
"Show them the bone pattern I taught you," the chief said calmly. "Use it."
"Okay!" Little Dou'er nodded solemnly.
He held up both tiny hands and clenched them into fists, taking a deep breath as if summoning all the strength in the world. His cheeks puffed and turned bright red.
Wummm—
A faint ripple shimmered between his palms, barely visible. On his fists, a dark-gold pattern slowly surfaced, as if glowing through his bones from within. The mark gleamed with a muted, metallic luster. A heartbeat later, the same pattern lit up in his other hand.
Staggering slightly, Little Dou'er waddled over to a large bluestone. The stone was taller than he was. With a soft grunt, he wrapped both arms around it—
—
—and lifted.
"Whoa—!"
The children shouted in disbelief.
They all knew that stone. Even a bunch of ten-year-olds straining together could barely drag it an inch. Yet now, a one-year-old toddler had just picked it up.
"Dou'er, did you use all your milk strength for that?" an older kid couldn't resist teasing.
"Waa… mmh… no strength left," Dou'er chirped honestly.
He gave another small "heave-ho," dropped the bluestone with a thud, then plopped down on his backside, giggling so hard his eyes turned into little crescent moons. The light in his palms faded quickly, the bone pattern sinking back beneath skin and flesh without a trace.
"Chief Grandpa, so this is the bone-pattern power you've been working on all these years?"
The kids who'd been wilting moments ago now stared with shining eyes. Their reluctance evaporated, replaced by raw curiosity.
"Don't get too excited," the old chief huffed. "This is just an entry point. Compared to the innate holy bone patterns recorded in the legends of the Great Wilds, this is nothing."
"Then… Chief Grandpa, can you tell us about the outside world?" one child asked, eyes full of longing.
Everyone in the Chìlí Tribe knew the story. When the chief was young, he'd once left the Blazing Wastes—this edge of the world—with more than a dozen powerful warriors, heading for the deeper lands.
But many years ago, only two figures stumbled back into the tribe, drenched in blood. The other man died not long after. Only the chief had lived on until now.
Since then, he had devoted himself to studying those mysterious bone sigils, sometimes summoning the tribe's strongest warriors into a stone courtyard to experiment. The children had heard the rumors: whenever that happened, terrible screams would echo from within, enough to make one's scalp crawl.
Over time, they developed a strange mix of fear and reverence toward bone patterns.
In recent years, however, the chief's experiments had grown far gentler. He stopped tormenting the burliest men in the tribe, and instead… found Little Dou'er—raised on a hundred beasts' milk and everyone's leftovers—to be the "most convenient test subject."
"The outside world, huh…"
The old man turned his gaze toward the layered peaks in the distance, expression going slightly distant.
"It's a world so vast it makes you feel small," he said slowly. "From one domain to another, the distance is often counted in millions of li, and few ever cross them. Most spend their whole lives in a single domain—and that's already more than many manage. The Blazing Wastes is just a frayed corner. There are wider荒天原 and older battlefields beyond it."
He paused, then went on:
"Domains of the human race seldom exchange with each other—not because they don't want to, but because the journey is too dangerous. Too many powerful species roam the earth. Some ancient beasts have lived longer than mountains. One idle thought, and a city is reduced to ash. Even great cities of a hundred thousand, great tribes of several hundred thousand… can be trampled flat in one night by a few primordial remnants."
The children's faces paled, yet their attention only sharpened.
"Of course," the chief added, "our race also has existences beyond imagination—humans who can stand against those ancient terrors. Such people are called human overlords… or heaven-chosen prodigies."
The kids shivered, but their eyes burned.
"Then, outside… are there places or treasures that can make someone strong overnight?"
A boy with the brightest eyes blurted out, "Like, take one sip and bam—reborn on the spot?"
The old man laughed.
"Keep dreaming. And even if such treasures do exist, they won't be waiting around for a little brat who gets winded from shouting to come slurp them up."
The children burst into laughter.
"You want to know how strong the greatest prodigies of our race can become?" the chief asked, his tone turning serious again. "First, make yourselves harder to kill. Then we can talk about bone patterns."
His gaze swept over them.
"If you can truly engrave a Sourcebone Imprint into your bones and blood, then when you finally take a step beyond this place, you won't be chewed to pieces by the first thing that comes crawling out of the hills."
"If we learn the bone patterns…" another child asked, eyes glowing, "does that mean we'll have a chance to travel to other domains?"
The old chief reached out and ruffled his hair.
"Forget other domains for now. Even in this one Blazing Wastes Domain alone, anyone who can walk from one end to the other—crossing even half its land—would already be someone legendary."
The children fell quiet. It was hard to imagine what "half a domain" truly meant.
"All I can do," the old man said softly, "is push the door open a crack for you. How far you go after that… is up to you. What I teach you will be no worse than what your peers are learning out there."
As he spoke, his hand moved unconsciously to his chest, fingertips brushing against a piece of bone hidden beneath his robe—dark-white, cold as iron. Faint, natural lines were carved across its surface, patterns that had not been made by any human hand.
The children drew in closer around him, finally settling their wandering hearts. They listened as he explained how to sense and circulate the Sourcebone Imprint, how to catch the faintest whisper of a sigil within their bodies. They listened from bright morning light… until the sun climbed high into the sky and heat shimmered off the stones.
"Too hard," someone muttered later, rubbing his aching head. "Chief said it'll take years just to let a few people engrave the tiniest trace of bone pattern. Most might fail their whole lives…"
"But Little Dou'er is that small," another child murmured, glancing towards the distance, "and he's already done it."
Little Dou'er blinked, confused by the sudden attention. Then he quietly trotted off to grab the yellow dog's tail again. The dog barked in protest, frantically trying to yank its tail free, looking even more miserable than the child harassing it.
The sun dipped westward. Evening light draped itself across the land. The entire Chìlí Tribe was soaked in a gentle gold glow. In the distance, apes cried and tigers roared. The simple stone houses, under the slanting light, took on a sense of ancient gravity and quiet sanctity.
Then, at the edge of the horizon, a dozen tall silhouettes appeared.
They walked against the sunset, their shadows drawn long across the ground. The dying light rimmed their outlines in gold. Almost every one of them dragged a massive mountain beast behind them, the bodies leaving dark trails of blood in the dust.
"They're back!"
The women and children who had been watching the frontier all afternoon erupted in cheers. The fear that had sat like a stone on their chests dissolved in an instant. They rushed forward, shouting at the top of their lungs.
"Dad is safe!"
"Look at all that game—this has to be a huge haul!"
The hunt had gone far better than anyone had hoped. Nearly every warrior returned with prey. Among the carcasses were gray-armored beasts with bony horns jutting from their brows—Hornridge Beasts; black-striped bulls whose single hoof boomed like thunder with each step—One-Hoof Thunder Bulls; and serpents as thick as barrels, with fleshy wings along their ribs—Wing-Spine Pythons…
The elders' faces shifted the moment they recognized the creatures. These were not easy targets. Some were already considered true fiendbeasts—monsters the hunters usually avoided at all costs. Today, they'd been dragged back in a line, blood still dripping, a sight that stunned everyone.
Hornridge hides were harder than stone; regular spears barely scratched them. Their bone horns could shatter boulders with a single charge. Thunder Bulls' roars could rupture eardrums at close range. Wing-Spine Pythons were invisible killers in the forest, apt to strike from cliff edges without warning.
Among the prey were also a twin-headed, flame-red Blazehorn Rhino, and a nightmare-touched Dread Tapir carrying faint traces of ancient blood…
Those last two were truly terrifying creatures. Ordinarily, spotting one meant only one wise option: go the other way, fast. Yet now, they too lay bound among the day's spoils. The scene was impressive—but also deeply unsettling.
"We've had good luck these last few days," Líshān said, laughing as he approached the chief. "Something far more terrifying passed through the mountains. Every step it took made the ridges tremble. A lot of beasts were crushed or crippled in its wake. We tracked the blood trail during the day and… picked up the leftovers."
"Yeah," another hunter added quickly, "we saw a few enormous footprints in the mountains. They kind of looked… human. But they were absurdly huge—nearly a hundred zhang long, I swear."
"S–so big?"
Gasps rippled through the tribe. Faces went pale.
Even the elders' expressions turned grave. Their suspicions hardened: something had changed deep within the Blazing Wastes. Certain primordial remnants that had slumbered for ages… might be waking.
For now, though, the overriding emotion in the tribe was joy.
Whatever thunder rolled beyond the far mountains, what stood before them at this moment was a bounty piled like a small hill—a buffer of food and safety for the days to come.
Amid the noise and laughter, the chief led several men to carry a dozen freshly killed fiendbeast corpses toward the stone platform beneath the Scorch-Spirit Pillar.
That was the tribe's sacrificial altar.
They laid the heaviest and most dangerous of the beasts upon it with careful hands, arranging them in a solemn row.
The Chìlí Tribe would not simply feast first.
Before anything else, they would offer blood and flesh to the guardian spirit—
and begin the ritual that had protected them since before any of them were born.