Chapter number 7 ( visitors )

  Adam stepped out of the cavern, his movements slower than usual. Dirt clung to his skin, and his clothes were torn and stained.

  Red sat at the entrance of the cave, ears perking up the moment he saw him. He rose and approached, stopping just in front of him.

  Adam met his gaze and gave a faint nod. “I’m back,” he said, voice low.

  Red tilted his head slightly, then circled around him once before settling at his side. His tails wrapped around his legs, eyes watching him quietly.

  Adam let out a quiet breath and sat beside him. For a while, neither of them moved. Just the sound of the breeze and the distant hum of the forest.

  ---

  A low wind stirred the trees.

  Adam stirred in his sleep, only half awake, when a sharp crack split through the silence—followed by a roar so loud it seemed to press against the cave walls.

  He opened his eyes, his heartbeat steady but alert.

  The forest didn’t settle. Leaves rustled in a chaotic rhythm. A distant thud reverberated beneath the ground, then another, like something massive was moving.

  Red stood at the cave mouth, tail still, ears pricked.

  Adam got to his feet quietly, stepping beside him. Together, they looked into the tree line.

  Another screech—high, shrill, but buried under a deep-throated rumble. Something was fighting out there.

  Walking to the cave’s edge, he let his gaze sweep across the dark island.

  That’s when he saw it.

  Near the shoreline, a ship—massive, sleek, with intricate patterns faintly glowing along its sides—stood anchored, like it had always belonged there.

  Adam blinked, stunned for a second.

  Then his lips curved up, excitement rising in his chest.

  “Finally!”

  “Red, it’s finally time to get out of this island”

  “Let’s go and meet them. “

  Adam runs into the forest with Red by his side

  As Adam runs through the forest. The cold hit first—unnatural and biting, sharp enough to freeze the edges of the leaves.

  Adam moved through the undergrowth, eyes narrowing as he followed the faint sound of crashing branches and something… hissing.

  In the clearing ahead, moonlight revealed the source.

  A massive snake, easily the length of a semi-truck, coiled tightly around a patch of frozen earth. Its scales shimmered with a frosted blue sheen, mist curling from its body like steam from dry ice. Every breath it exhaled froze the grass beneath it.

  Near the base of a tree, an old man lay half-frozen, his leg caught in a thick slab of ice that crawled slowly up his thigh. He was muttering under his breath, too weak to move.

  Adam looked around for something he could use something he could throw.

  His gaze landed on his sword for a left hand and a small tree.

  “That’s perfect”

  Adam used his strength to slice the base of the tree, his sword sliced through the tree like Butter.

  Adam grabbed the tree like a javelin and hurls it using every bit of muscle toward the snake, he wastes no time and starts sprinting following the tree

  The snake sensing turns towards him. The tree smashes into the snake’s head with a loud crack, stunning the creature and whipping its head sideways. Frost burst into the air as it hissed, disoriented and snarling, its massive coils lashing across the forest floor.

  Adam was already sprinting, muscles straining as he closed the distance.

  The snake turned toward him, its eyes locking onto his figure—but then a sharp burst of blinding light erupted from the side.

  Red.

  The little white fox stood on a rock nearby, fur bristling, body tense. From the mouth, a blinding flash of white-blue light shot directly into the snake’s eyes.

  The snake recoiled violently, hissing, momentarily blinded.

  That was enough.

  Adam seized the moment. He dashed in close, ducking beneath the thrashing coils, his left sword arm humming.

  He made contact.

  His blade pressed against the serpent’s scaled body—just enough—and in that instant, Adam focused.

  A surge of pressure flooded his mind as his ability activated. His consciousness latched onto the snake’s memory threads. He didn’t aim to harm. Just one thing—

  “Forget how to move, forget all its attacks”

  The moment stretched, silent and tense. Then, the snake’s body shuddered.

  Its muscles slackened. The coils, once twitching with tension, dropped heavily to the ground with a dull thud. It was conscious. Breathing. But frozen in place like a statue, eyes wide with primal confusion.

  Adam stepped back, chest heaving.

  Red jumped down beside him, watching the unmoving creature carefully.

  The forest was silent again.

  “You… What did you do to it?”

  Adam glanced back at the snake

  “I made it forget”

  The old man stared

  Adam didn’t elaborate

  “Let me take care of your leg first Old Man”

  Breaking the ice covering his leg Adam used restoration.

  Old Bao’s leg which was frost-burned returned to normal

  “What is happening here, old man”

  Old Bao winced as Adam finished healing his leg. The frostbitten flesh twisted, twitched, and slowly began to mend. He looked up, eyes narrowing as he caught a glimpse of Adam’s left arm—the strange, metallic sheen of it.

  “That arm of yours…” Bao muttered, squinting. “You one of those kind of weapon cultivator?”

  Adam stood up, brushing frost from his sleeves. “It’s better if you don’t know.”

  Bao’s lips pressed into a thin line. He didn’t ask again.

  “I was following a group,” he said after a moment, shifting to sit against the cold rock. “Disciples from the Grand Harmony Sect. Inner ones, mostly. Two Foundation Establishment Core Disciples led the team. Seemed competent enough.”

  Adam said nothing, but his eyes flicked back toward the trees.

  “We were scouting,” Bao continued. “Just a quick sweep through this part of the island. Then we saw it.”

  He shuddered. “A giant mantis. Metal plates across its limbs. Quiet thing. Didn’t even twitch until we got too close.”

  Adam finally looked down at him. “And then?”

  “Then the disciples attacked. Surrounded it like they’d done this before. Maybe they had. But that thing—” Bao swallowed. “—it was in a different league.”

  He pointed weakly toward the trees. “They’re still fighting it. At least, they were when I ran. I didn’t see anyone drop, but… it wasn’t looking good.”

  Adam’s gaze sharpened.

  Bao looked up at him, hesitation clear in his expression. “You seem… capable. Think you could help them? They might not last much longer.”

  Adam exhaled slowly. His sword arm flexed, the metal faintly humming with tension.

  “Where?”

  Bao raised a shaky hand and pointed into the woods. “Not far. Ten minutes that way.”

  Adam looked toward Red, who nodded, already ready to move.

  “Stay, it’s safe here,” Adam said.

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  “That snake will not be able to attack or move. As long as it is here no other beast will dare to come here. “

  “Let me go there and see what I can do.”

  Then he vanished into the trees

  The sound of battle rang through the dense forest, loud enough to make birds scatter from the treetops.

  Adam crouched low in the shadows of an enormous, twisted root, only his eyes visible through the gaps in the foliage. His gaze was fixed on the clearing ahead, where chaos erupted around a towering giant praying mantis, its dark green carapace shimmering faintly with spiritual energy.

  “Foundation Establishment level,” Adam muttered. “That thing’s no joke.”

  The mantis hissed and lashed out with one of its scythe-like arms, slicing through a chunk of stone-like paper. Surrounding it was a group of six cultivators, their robes bearing the same crimson-and-gold trim—clearly from the same sect.

  Two of them radiated stronger auras. One was a tall woman with sharp eyes, barking orders that the others mostly followed clearly a support type, whispering incantations and pulling injured allies back with plant vines. The other was a muscular man wielding earth Qi, fists wrapped in golden rock. He fought up close, absorbing blows others couldn’t.

  The rest—four Qi Condensation cultivators—moved more erratically. One tossed fire from a long spear, laughing a little too loud. There was a girl with silver eyes who hurled shards of ice from a distance and a reckless one who charged the mantis with electric punches. One boy zipped around with wind-assisted movements, throwing talismans like paper darts.

  Adam watched carefully, silent.

  “They’ve got teamwork, but no coordination,” he thought. “Those two Foundation disciples are keeping them alive, barely.”

  A sudden crack split the air.

  Adam’s eyes sharpened as the mantis moved with unnatural speed, its body blurring. One of the Qi Condensation disciples—the one who had been throwing talismans—was a second too slow.

  Shhk—!

  A scythe-like limb raked across his side, slicing through flesh and cloth with ease. He screamed, tumbling across the ground like a ragdoll, his chest torn open from shoulder to hip. Blood sprayed in a dark arc, and one of the Foundation Establishment cultivators shouted in alarm.

  “Zhou!” the woman called out, voice tight with fury. She tried to draw its attention away, but the beast didn’t budge. It loomed over the downed disciple, serrated claws raised for the finishing blow.

  “Damn it,” Adam muttered.

  Adam started already moving.

  He slipped from the underbrush in a blur, low to the ground like a panther, silent. The wrapped sword arm glowed faintly under the cloth as Qi surged through his body.

  The mantis’s claw came down—

  CLANG!

  A shockwave rang out.

  Its claw met something solid mid-air. A moment later, sparks danced across the jungle floor.

  Standing between the mantis and the downed boy was Adam, one knee bent, one foot dug into the dirt, his wrapped arm raised. The cloth had burned away in places, revealing glimmers of a silvery blade fused with skin and bone.

  The mantis reeled back slightly, as if confused. So did the disciples.

  “Who—?” the ice girl whispered.

  “Someone just blocked that… with their arm?”

  Adam didn’t speak. He glanced down at the injured talisman user, blood still pouring from the wound.

  “Still alive” he said quietly.

  He had tried to erase the mantis’s movement and attack from reality, as he had done with others before. But this time… something resisted. He could feel it—a pressure, ancient and malicious. The Titan’s will had seeped into the creature, warping it. Corrupting it. The mantis wasn’t just a beast anymore—it was a puppet driven by a greater force. And that force was fighting back.

  The usual silence that accompanied Adam’s memory erasure was replaced with a low hum in his head. Like a distant scream echoing through time.

  Then, Red moved.

  From the shadows above, the fox opened his mouth and unleashed a flash of searing light. Radiant beams stabbed into the mantis’s faceted, jewel-like eyes, refracting off their surface with blinding brilliance. The beast screeched—a shrill, chittering noise—and reeled back, its serrated, sickle-shaped limbs slicing the air in a storm of disoriented rage. Plates of chitin clicked and shifted as it flailed, its segmented body twisting with unnatural speed.

  Adam didn’t waste the moment.

  He lunged forward, grabbing Zhou by the collar of his torn Robe. With unnatural precision, Adam twisted and weaved around the mantis’s wild strikes, dragging the injured disciple toward the others. The wind roared past him, and one of the mantis’s blades missed his head by inches.

  “Hold on,” he muttered, not knowing—or caring—if Zhou could hear him.

  Once they were behind the group’s defensive line, Adam gently lowered Zhou to the ground. Without hesitation, he placed his hand over the cultivator’s mangled chest. The torn flesh from shoulder to hip gaped open, organs barely Held together by shreds of muscle.

  A dull glow pulsed from his hand.

  “Hold still,” he muttered.

  The bleeding stopped. Flesh pulled itself together. Bone snapped back into place. In less than five seconds, the wound was gone—no scar remained.

  “Who are you?” the ice cultivator asked, keeping her gaze fixed on the mantis, but her voice, sharp and pointed.

  Adam didn’t look up. “Let’s focus on the mantis for now,” he said. “I and the fox will help you out.”

  “Judging by your Qi, you’re barely in the third minor realm. Same with the fox,” one of the Foundation Disciples said sharply.

  “What can you do besides heal? And once that Qi runs out, you’re done.”

  “Our spells aren’t even scratching it,” added the lightning-hand cultivator, fists crackling in frustration.

  “Bo Jin’s earth punches didn’t leave a dent.”

  “Yeah,” grunted the one with the fire spear.

  “Bug-type beasts are already tanky, but this one’s got metal and darkness attributes too. This bug bastard is toying with us.”

  Hearing this Adam began to immediately brainstorm anything that he could use against that malice-filled mantis.

  A solution came to his mind

  “I might have a way to weaken that metal shell,” Adam said, eyes locked on the mantis.

  “What is it?” asked the woman with the vines, tense but curious.

  “You’ll need to trust me on this.”

  He turned to the ice cultivator. “Silver-hair—how cold can your attacks get?”

  “Cold enough to freeze your arm solid,” she replied flatly. “And it’s Mei Lan”

  “Fire spear guy?”

  “Han Feng,” he muttered. “I can heat things till they glow white.”

  “Zhou, can you and Mei Lan freeze the mantis solid if you work together?”

  “It’s Zhou Ren,” he replied quickly. “The vine-user is Lian Hua, and the hot-headed lightning brawler is Shen Xinyi… And yeah, we could freeze it—but only for a short time. It won’t last long.”

  The ground trembled as the corrupted mantis shrieked, its mandibles snapping open in a rasping clatter. Jagged plates of obsidian chitin rippled with streaks of dark Qi, each armored segment gleaming like forged metal. Spindly limbs flexed and clicked, and then, with a blur of motion, its form fractured into four—three twitching illusions and one real predator lurking among them.

  A flicker of unease passed through the group—silent, shared—as the mantis split into four.

  “They’re fake!” Han Feng called out, raising his spear.

  Adam stepped forward. “Doesn’t matter. Treat them all as threats.”

  The illusions scattered. Four of them moved one towards Lian Hua, one towards Hei Feng and Bo Lin, and one toward Shen Xinyi. one charged at Adam, Mei Lan, and Zhou.

  Lian Hua reacted first. Her hands formed a complex spell, a glowing green spell diagram blooming like a flower. Vines burst from the ground, writhing toward one of the mantis approaching her.

  "Got you," she muttered.

  But her vines passed through harmlessly. An illusion.

  She clicked her tongue, already forming a second spell diagram.

  Meanwhile, Bo Jin had thrown himself in front of Hei Feng, who had been mid-chant.

  “You are not getting past me!” Bo Jin roared, raising his earth coated arms .

  The mantis’s scythe slashed cleanly through the rock—and through nothing. The fake vanished in a haze.

  Shen Xinyi narrowed her eyes as one of the shadows lunged for her. Lightning crackled across her knuckles.

  "Dodging is what I'm best at."

  She sidestepped, graceful and sharp, her fist trailing sparks. Her counter-punch struck the mirage, shattering it into wisps of darkness.

  That’s when the real one struck.

  The true mantis dashed toward the trio of Adam, Mei Lan, and Zhou Ren. Blindingly fast.

  It slashed at Mei Lan first.

  Adam stepped in, sword flashing up to block—but the scythe-like limb curved around, stabbing his shoulder. He grunted, blood bursting as he was knocked back like a doll.

  Mei Lan gasped, barely avoiding a follow-up blow as Adam crashed into her, both of them hurtling toward a boulder.

  Just before impact, Red—the white fox—grew massive and soft in an instant, cushioning the blow. Fur swallowed them whole, saving them from being crushed.

  The mantis screeched and turned to finish what it started.

  Zhou Ren, who had only just recovered from his brutal wound, saw it coming.

  "I won’t be making the same mistake twice."

  Wind surged under his feet as he dashed back, narrowly evading the strike.

  The group regrouped behind the fox, the illusion shattered but the fight far from over.

  Healing his impaled shoulder Adam gives an advice

  “foundation establishment level beasts vitality is too much we do not have the energy to cook it from the inside either.”

  “Then maybe… just maybe… if you super freeze the mantis’s armor, and then hit it with extreme heat right after, it could fracture. Thermal shock. It might not kill it, but it could give us a chance to break through or force it back.”

  The others exchanged glances—and almost in unspoken agreement, their eyes turned toward the mantis’s head.

  The mantis moved like a nightmare—shadow mirages whirled around them, bladed limbs cutting through stone, wind, and wood alike. Its carapace gleamed like dark metal, nearly unbreakable. Every blow the team landed had glanced off or been dodged. They were on the back foot.

  But now they had a plan.

  Zhou Ren landed beside Mei Lan, breath ragged. “Time to chill this bug bastard.”

  She nodded, her eyes frosted with determination. “Don’t miss your mark.”

  Zhou Ren activated his talismans, creating a vortex of wind mixed with freezing Qi. Ice began forming on the mantis’s legs, slowing it slightly.

  Mei Lan placed a talisman on the ground and channeled her Qi into it. In that instant, Mei Lan’s attack released a bitter chill that swept over them all, a silent frost that made even the fallen shiver. Thick frost formed quickly, making the mantis’s movements heavier and more sluggish.

  The mantis shrieked—a grating sound—its movements slowing. Frost webbed across its carapace. Limbs twitched, slower than before.

  That was the cue.

  Hua Feng roared, spear igniting with fiery talisman light. He lunged forward, planting the spear like a stake, and channeled fire Qi in a focused burst. A column of blazing flame erupted, colliding with the frozen mantis.

  The sudden heat clashed with the freezing cold. Steam hissed violently. A sharp CRACK echoed across the battlefield as fractures spiderwebbed across the mantis’ head and left limb.

  Bo Jin smirked. “Time to break some bugs.”

  He rushed in as the mantis stumbled, his body glowing with earthy energy. His fists, wrapped in rock-like armor, slammed into the ground—creating tremors. Lian Hua’s roots burst up again, grabbing the mantis’ fractured limbs and pinning it mid-air, unable to dodge this time.

  Shen Xinyi appeared above in a flash of lightning. “Here comes the thunder!”

  She launched downward, lightning arcing off her body, fist clenching. Bo Jin roared up at the same moment and leapt—his earth-enforced punch slamming up into the mantis’ jaw.

  And then—

  BOOM.

  Shen Xinyi’s fist crashed down from above, both punches meeting at the mantis’ skull.

  The metal carapace shattered.

  Its head exploded inward with a shriek of twisting spirit energy. The body convulsed, then collapsed in a heap.

  Shen Xinyi landed hard, falling to one knee. Her right arm hung limp, broken at the elbow. She grit her teeth, sweat dripping from her chin. “...Worth it.”

  Bo Jin stood, shaking his fist. “Bug meat’s on the menu.”

  The world froze.

  Time, once a roaring flood, collapsed into stillness. The fluttering leaves paused mid-air, the dust from the shattered mantis suspended like ash in a frozen storm. Even the sounds of battle were silenced, as though the world itself was holding its breath.

  From the void between moments, Zayk emerged—arms crossed, expression unreadable, his gaze fixed on Adam.

  “Well, well, well,” Zayk drawled, voice echoing in the dead air. “It hasn’t even been a full day, and you’ve already broken the rule.”

  Adam, chest heaving with adrenaline, blood still humming from the chaos, snapped back instinctively. “I didn’t kill! They’re the ones who decided to kill, not me.”

  Zayk’s eyes narrowed. “You can’t make others kill for you either."

  "It’s not my fault they chose to kill that bug," Adam shot back, tone defiant. "My intention was to escape, not to kill. They acted of their own free will. So, technically, I didn’t break any rules."

  A flicker of annoyance crossed Zayk’s face, the faintest twitch at the corner of his mouth. "I have to say," he admitted, exhaling slowly, "I didn’t think about this loophole. I’ll give it to you—well played."

  Then his tone hardened, final and absolute.

  "But from this moment on, there’s a new rule: you cannot contribute to the death of a sentient being. Directly or indirectly."

  Time creaked as the world prepared to move once more.

  Around them, steam and dust settled. The corrupted will faded away—silent.

  The battle was over.

  “let me heal your arm” Adam said to Shen Xinyi.

  “Thank you for the advice you proved to be more useful than I thought” Lian Hua replied.

  “you welcome, that old man asked me to help you guys.

  “That old man is still alive?”

  “yeah I saved him from a ice snake. He is now in a safe place.”

  “What happens to you arm” Han Feng asked.

  “circumstances, it’s better if you didn’t know.”

  “before you start buddying up to him let me ask an important question” Mei Lan voiced.

  “who are you”