She rubbed the gold coins in her hand, her white, focus-less eyes, rolled back and forth in her head. “Taohua Village was slaughtered by the monsters 10 years ago, and someone has blocked it to both humans and monsters since then, no one could get in. Who is this young man, and what did he have to do with the destroyed village?”

    She turned up her mouth and removed her old lady disguise. Taking off her dirty linen frock, a pretty face emerged, she was a young woman who wore light blue. Ten years have passed, the seven- or eight-year-old girl has since grown up, but she was still recognizable. She was none other than the girl who was at Taohua Village, the daughter of the Que (Sparrow) family, Quesi Yu. Her family was one of the four hidden families of the Domed Moon Kingdom.

    Quesi was still distraught about the slaughter at Taohua Village, and the death of Bird Three. Now that she had heard something about the village, she was excited, maybe she wanted to learn more to prove that Bird hadn’t died.

    Quesi listened for Bird’s movements, chasing after him behind the kitchen toward the mountain.

    The mountain had a robust forest. Deeper in the forest was a morass covered by trees and rarely had sunlight. Many dead bodies were tossed here. After hundreds of years, the decay has covered the area with a foul scent, and was known as the “Morass of Ten Thousand Bones.” The morass was despised by both monster leaders at Cloud River Island.

    After a while, with the way monsters gossiped, this morass became a place of adventure for thrill-seekers who wanted to look for a supposed buried treasure, and the surrounding forest became a perfect place for monsters to ambush any human adventurers.

    “Inside the forest is the Morass of Ten Thousand Bones, he’s not looking for that rumored treasure too, is he?”

    Quesi followed Bird, and was not noticed inspite of getting close to him. Before she could stop tracking him, she heard a few yelps in the forest, and then the voice of the man she was following.

    “Whoa, a little monster!” Bird ignored the couple of grown men in the carnage, and looked at who was yelling yelp. It was a young monster of about seven- or eight-years old, who was under the knife of another monster and about to be slaughtered. He waved at the monster who was struggling.

    “Help! Help!” The monster struggled even more as he panicked.

    “If you have the strength to yell, why can’t you save yourself?” Bird shook his head at the monster.

    When Bird came over, the monsters who wanted to kill the little monster froze. When the little monster realized its enemies were frozen, it used the opportunity to run and get away.

    Bird watched the little monster run out of the forest. He ruffled his messy hair and dirty clothes before heading deeper into the forest, but then a sound came from behind him. Someone stopped him from leaving.

    “Hey, that little monster didn’t even thank you. You saved him for nothing.” The person who controlled him was Quesi, who was disguised as an old lady earlier.

    “He got away on his own, I had nothing to do with it.” Bird watched the red shadow on the ground and thought of what his teacher said. The only people who could control others’ minds from a long distance in Canghun was a Mind Master like his teacher, but since his teacher passed so quickly, he never learned the skill. “You are the one who pretended to be an old lady. Aren’t you afraid of being eaten by monsters?”

    “I didn’t think there were people who didn’t know how to use spiritual fire in this world. You know abusing the spiritual fire would only make your life shorter and self-immolate.” The young man had used spiritual fire to conjure the illusion of a demon behind him, what kind of hatred has made him create this kind of terrifying image? Quesi quirked her lips before continuing, “what a pity. Aye, those two monster leaders are coming soon, you better leave if you want to stay alive. If you didn’t know something I wanted, I wouldn’t bother with you.”

    “Monster……”

    “What are you mumbling about, you better run before they show up.”

    “Are you talking about the monsters who fought?” Bird’s voice was hoarse but not thick. “They can’t come into this morass.”

    “There’s many kinds of monsters, with nine levels in three grades. These two are bottom of the second grade, but they’ve still been around for more than a hundred years. How do you know they can’t come into the morass? Their target is you!” Quesi’s white eyes rolled a few times, a disdain filling her young voice.

    “So this is that Morass of Ten Thousand Bones? My teacher has said monsters didn’t step inside graves or burials. They hate the decaying smell. Mind Master, am I right?” Answered Bird.

    “If you learned so much from your teacher, how come you don’t know how to control the spiritual fire? Your teacher didn’t really teach you enough.” Quesi complained.

    “It’s not that he didn’t teach me, he didn’t have a chance.” Thinking of his teacher, who was killed by the human-monster blood contract, Bird hated the monsters more than ever.

    Meanwhile, two gusts of dark energy arrived. The Faceless Girl and the Snake Woman were here. They stared at the morass deep in the forest and angrily shouted.

    “The kid went into the Morass of Ten Thousand Bones?” The Faceless girl twitched her face.

    “Your getting mad won’t do anything! You may be the leader of the Black Mountain Village, but you can’t go into the morass! Ha ha!” The Snake Woman chortled as she twisted her flexible torso flying out of the forest, her whip slashing many ancient trees.

    “How dare this Snake Woman ridicule me! It’s just a young human, I don’t need to catch him from the morass myself!” The Faceless Girl gritted her teeth as she watched the Snake Woman leave. Motioning her underlings to watch the forest, she too flew away, heading for the Cloud River Springs at the foot of the mountain.

    The two monster leaders left, leaving only about ten little monsters to guard outside the woods. Some other flying monsters were hovering in the air to see from above. They were waiting to catch Bird if he ran out.

    In the woods, Bird was walking on a small road. At first, the environment was quiet and peaceful. But when he entered the middle of the wood, he found the color of the grass became darker, and the leaves of the trees were bare of leaves. The black mist was thicker, and the air cold and freezing.

    “Hey, do you know which way led to the grave?” Siyu asked Bird. The fog was so heavy that it made everything in the wood hard to discern. If they were heading in the wrong direction, even she had no way to escape.

    “Who said I want to go to the grave? If my calculation is correct, after a while, we will pass the morass and go out of the wood.” Bird sped up as he spoke with her.

    “The fog is so thick, I can’t even find my fingers. Did your teacher teach you how to know the direction in this kind of situation?” Siyu was trying her best to follow him. She could see something of the eight-year-old little boy on him.

    They two were hurrying in the wood, when they heard a noise on the ground ahead. When they kept hearing the sound, the mist disappeared and they were out of the trees.

    Bird took a long look at the morass, which was totally black with some bubbles floating up. Finally his eyes focused on some men who were wearing deep-green clothing, armed with different weapons. They were lined up beside the morass, discussing something.

    “A thief wants to enter the grave! Are you leaving？Or, in fact, are you lying to me? It was your desires that led you here?” Siyu felt the irony and regretted that she had mistreated him as the little boy.

    “The morass is inevitable, thus we need to go straight forward.” Bird’s movements were still restrained to about 100 meters under Siyu’s control, thus he didn’t turn back to take a look at her. He did not know that her eyes were white and unfocussed, unable to see any living things.

    “Your target is the tomb, right? But you don’t even know how to use the spiritual fire; why not leave before humiliating yourself?” Siyu yelled at him.

    Her voice was so loud that all the men around the morass heard her. Though the young man and girl looked weak, they did not take them as incapable people. Whoever entered this wood alive was competent.

    “Damn it! Why can the woman enter this place?” A strong man took a bit of the meat from a little monster. He was their leader.

    “Shall we . . . ?” One of his underlings gestured to him, indicating killing the two.

    “Driving them out is enough,” the leader said.

    “Got it.” The underling went for Bird and Siyu, and shouted to them, “The morass is controlled by us! If you don’t want to die here, leave!”

    “What a poor explanation!” Siyu sighed and took back Bird, then raised her leg to give the guy a sweeping kick. This movement was as quick as a lightening, and the man was pushed, knocking into a big tree, where he fell to the ground by the great power of her kick. He sagged, losing consciousness.

    “Shameful!” The leader ordered all his followers to fight her together.

    Soon his followers understood the power of a Mind Master, and their ends were worse.

    “The fire of Sparrow? You are from the Que Family?” The leader was shocked by the beautiful red light on her forehead. It was a fresh light of life and hope, different from the dead red light in Bird’s bag.

    "The Que Family?”

    Bird could not stop from turning his back; ten years had passed since they were separated.

    “Que Siyu? Is that you?” he asked.