After the usual session of cultivation and training that lasted for a couple of days, Han Bei decided it was finally time to get of his ass. If he wanted to break through the 2nd realm bottleneck some preparations were in order.
" First time around those little jerks always needed something so my seclusion got delayed again and again. It took me a month before I could focus on my own matters and Master was furious with me, " he fondly remembered his time at the Yellow Valley sect. " Now there are no juniors to delay me. " After releasing a single long sigh he shook his head and left the nameless ravine.
He swiftly moved through the Scavenger plains in his own graceless, brutish manner. He was slowly becoming accustomed to the surroundings and had already memorized several of the safer paths through the planes, so he moved with greater speed and confidence than before. Had there been any beauty to the place he would have had enough attention to spare to take in the sights. But just as it was before, the only thing on Myris worthy of his admiration was the starry sky above, although now Han Bei looked at it with less innocent intentions. " Hope Heaven smiles my way and no easy prey falls down to the plains, " he grumbled. " I would hate it to reach the 2nd realm only to see another force grown strong enough to replace that damnable Skeleton manor. "
Han Bei quickly ran through the shining green planes. Wrecks of old and forgotten spirit vessels passed by him as he moved further west. Kilometer by kilometer he casually kept up a pace that would have driven a mortal body into the grave and soon the amount of wreckage around him lessened and the ever-present light beneath his feet dimmed while the surroundings were enveloped by a thin cover of green, humid fog.
It has been said that west of the Scavenger plains a great swamp was located. It spaned beyond the horizon and was a home to a slew of unwholesome creatures. Poisonous hydras with their many heads, drowner zombies with their rigid grasping hands, hives of white nightmare wasps that feed on the living and turned them into undead, and swift frog beastmen that can take a life in a single heartbeat. Yet for all its dangers the cursed swampland attracted many souls because beyond the foul bog of the swamp laid the Tombstone mountains. A place, if legends are to be believed, where the ancients gods that ruled before the time of the Far Heaven empire were buried together with all their treasures.
Han Bei didn't give a damn about the legends, he held no desire to cross the foul stretch of land either. The creatures and monsters are what held his interest. One beast, in particular, occupied his mind while he quickly moved and the surroundings around him changed further.
It became darker as the glowing grass was replaced by a warm green sludge and the mist around him thickened together with a rancid smell that clung to everything around him. " I should be close, " he thought. There were rumors that circulated around Last light. Of a beast that had grown fat with the flesh of the weak. Too insignificant to catch the attention of the strong and too powerful to be beaten by the weak, Han Bei found it to be good prey. Easy to find and if rumors were to be believed enough of a challenge for him to matter.
As he entered deeper into the swamplands he found that the few flying vessels around him were all damaged in a similar manner. It didn't matter if it was wood or metal all the wrecks were misshapen and resembled melted candles as they slowly lost their form and their base materials slowly dripped down to the ground like hot wax. Unfortunately or not Han Bei found more than just metal and wood. He smelled the decaying flesh even over all the other stinks and It didn't take long to find the source.
With each step that he took, he found gory signs of the beast that awaited him. Torsos with their ribcages torn open, Lines of maggot-infested intestines sloppily left on the mushy ground, heads with parts of their face chewed off. All of it simply left to rot and fester. " A picky eater that one, " he noted with disgust. " Yes, I'm definitely doing this world a favor, "
Amidst the dead silence all around him, the warm winds carried over a sound from somewhere nearby and Han Bei finally slowed down. It was an anguished and inhuman sound. It was a roar of wrath and pain produced from a ruined throat by a creature embraced by death. He now moved forward slowly, carefully. One step at a time.
Han Bei almost missed it thanks to the hodgepodge of human viscera all around him, but there was something. Not alive, but animated. A ruined thing with yellowed dry skin that flaked of from whatever was left of its body. It was on its stomach, crawling forward with ruined stumps of raw flesh in place of limbs.
Its roars of pain and wrath were never aimed at him but Han Bei still felt the absolute malice within those sounds, reserved for some distant target. He also quickly noticed that the undead crawler's path coincided with his own. " I must be close now. "
He walked toward the crippled thing that heedlessly of him continued its painfully slow march. " Had you been alive your determination would be worthy of nothing but praise, " he said out loud. " But now you have no need of vengeance, so the death of your foe will further my goal instead. " Emotionlessly he brought down his foot on the crawler and its head split into pieces like overripe fruit. The zombie finally stopped, while Han Bei moved forward without looking back at the field of limbs and guts behind him. " The dead don't get second chances. "
After another 15 minutes, Han Bei finally sensed his prey. As he got closer the humid mist retreated from a small clearing where there was nothing save for a single moss-covered mound surrounded by a field of bones. He looked at the skeletal remains with undisguised distaste as he noticed each bone, human and beast alike, was covered in teeth marks. " The beast has remained unrestrained for far too long. "
He closed his eyes and his spirit sense drifted over the second field of remains he had seen that day toward the mound in the middle. Surrounded by ghostly wails of wandering ghosts still bound to the place of their death the beast squatted inside gorging itself on the meat of a fresh kill. Han Bei could have sworn even through the earth walls of the mound and over the field of bones he heard the beast's teeth pass through soft flesh and scrape against the bones beneath.
The animal should have detected his probing, as Han Bei expected it was sufficiently strong somewhere at the initial 2nd realm, it must have detected him. Yet the damn animal still ate. He released a small laugh, " Am I being looked down upon by this animal? " His expression turned savage with a small twinkle of joy in his eyes, roused by the prospect of battle. " Then perhaps I should make my presence known properly. "
Han Bei withdrew his spirit and instead released qi from his aperture that slowly gathered in his legs. He exploded into motion scattering the sludge of plant matter beneath him and then a second later white bones crunched beneath his heavy steps. Bones turned into powder and scattered through the air as more power coursed through his body and Corpse grinned as he launched himself at the moss-covered mound [death leap]. With a radical increase in speed, his refined body turned into a cannonball and easily broke through the thin walls of the mound and collided with the beast inside, that was still on its ass with a human arm in its mouth.
Han Bei broke through one side of the mound and it exploded into pieces as something different, something large was launched through another. He bellowed, " Notice me now beast? " The savage animal rose from the ground and released a single deafening roar of rage.
