Qingfeng Town was surrounded entirely by great mountains — ancient trees soaring into the sky, primordial dense forests spreading in every direction. Deep within those mountains lurked countless fierce beasts, and ordinary people dared not venture far inside.

Only after living in Qingfeng Town for a period of time did Ye Fan learn that this boundless mountain range was the outer region of the Ancient Forbidden Land.

The Yan Kingdom stretched two thousand li from north to south and three thousand li from east to west. The Ancient Forbidden Land lay in the heart of the kingdom, encircled and surrounded by endless great mountains. This primordial region spanned well over eight hundred li in circumference.

Six blessed sanctuaries — Lingxu Cave Heaven, Yanxia Cave Heaven, Yunding Cave Heaven, and three others — all encircled the outer boundary of this primordial region.

At this moment, Ye Fan plunged headlong into the deep mountains, sprinting continuously through the dense forest. He wished he could immediately charge into the Ancient Forbidden Land. He felt his life was under threat, and he desperately wanted to put distance between himself and the small town behind him.

“I hope my premonition is wrong…” After running for more than a full hour — crossing over who knew how many great mountains — he finally stopped on a stretch of mountainous terrain to catch his breath.

Suddenly, he heard the roar of a savage beast. The sound was deafening, like a clap of thunder splitting the heavens, rolling and reverberating toward him.

“That’s the direction of Qingfeng Town…”

Like an agile ape, Ye Fan swiftly scaled a cliff face, parted a curtain of vines, and slipped into a hidden stone cave. He held his breath and suppressed his life energy to its very lowest, his body turning ice-cold, utterly devoid of vitality.

Before long, through the curtain of vines, he watched a fierce beast covered entirely in cyan scales streak across the sky, carrying a Jiang Family knight as it shot past.

“They really did come chasing after me…”

Ye Fan’s pupils contracted sharply. His heart turned to ice. He had personally witnessed just how terrifying the Jiang Family’s knights were. If he were discovered, death was certain.

A moment later, that powerful knight rode his beast back, circling endlessly between the distant mountain range and this area.

“He’s locked onto this region. Has he discovered me?”

Ye Fan felt cold all over, as though death were drawing near.

At the same time, fury surged within him. The other party had certainly come for the precious treasure on his person — if discovered, there would be absolutely no way to survive. Yet he dared not let his emotions run wild. He stayed perfectly still, his life energy reduced to near nothing, his entire being hidden in the stone cave like a withered log.

A full two hours passed before the cyan beast finally departed, gradually vanishing on the horizon. But Ye Fan did not dare move. Only when darkness had completely fallen did he nimbly climb out of the cave and dash swiftly toward another mountain range.

“The Jiang Family…” Ye Fan gritted his teeth.

That night, Ye Fan did not light a fire. He picked only some wild fruit to stave off hunger, then burrowed into a dense thicket of thorns to hide.

Through the night, the howls of nameless wild beasts rose and fell without ceasing — deeply unsettled. The stars and moon were dim, yin energy pervaded the air, and the trees on the barren hills and wild ridges swayed like savage ghosts baring their fangs.

Suddenly, the howling of beasts in this area fell silent. The mountain forest went quiet in an instant. Ye Fan’s heart tightened at once. He suppressed his body to near desolation and dared not move a single muscle.

At some unknown moment, a beast had appeared in the sky, circling with a rider on its back, filling every creature below with a sense of danger.

Not until past midnight did the knight finally vanish from this region. Ye Fan felt himself drenched in cold sweat from head to toe. This could not go on — sooner or later he would be tracked down.

“A direct confrontation means certain death. How can I shake him off…”

Ye Fan found he had no solution whatsoever. For now, he could only keep running.

In the two days that followed, Ye Fan weaved and dodged through the mountain range without stop, narrowly escaping detection several times — brushing past the edge of death again and again.

Then on the third day, he faced his greatest crisis yet. The pursuer seemed to sense that he might be hiding somewhere in this region, and struck with vicious ferocity — unleashing a spirit-linked weapon that sliced through several stone cliffs, shattered vast stretches of forest, and demolished wide swaths of thorny undergrowth, leaving this stretch of mountain terrain bare and exposed.

Ye Fan lay hidden in a swamp not far away, not daring to move an inch. His entire body was wrapped in mire and rotting dead leaves. He held his breath and waited quietly for the knight to leave.

But the knight did not spare even the swamp. That spirit-linked weapon flashed like a bolt of blue lightning through the wetland, carving out great gaping trenches that completely tore the swamp apart.

“Spit—!”

The spirit-linked weapon, blazing like blue lightning, slashed through the mud no more than a meter away. Though it did not strike his body directly, a sliver of blue light grazed his abdomen. Ye Fan felt a searing burst of pain but forcibly endured it, not daring to move. Had his constitution not been extraordinarily superior, that terrifying blue light would have been enough to cleave an ordinary cultivator clean in two at the waist.

Not until half an hour later did everything finally fall quiet. Ye Fan bit down hard and wrenched himself out of the mire, blood flowing freely from his abdomen, staining the mud a vivid crimson.

“Jiang Yichen — sooner or later I will cut you down. Not even an ancient clan can shield you!”

Ye Fan felt the world spinning around him. He had lost too much blood. His abdomen had nearly been split completely open. Had the mud not been packed against the outside to seal it while he lay there motionless for so long, he would long since have bled out and died.

He quickly found a mountain spring to clean the wound, then stripped off his mud-caked outer robe. He tore the comparatively clean clothing beneath into strips and wound them around his injury. But the wound to his abdomen was far too severe — his intestines were nearly visible — and the blood simply would not stop.

From the excessive blood loss, Ye Fan felt utterly drained of strength. His hands were soaked in blood. He tore apart every clean scrap of clothing he had left and pressed them against the ghastly wound. Still the blood continued to seep through, and his lower body was dyed red; his skin had gone distinctly pale.

With both hands pressed against the wound, blood seeping through the gaps between his fingers, Ye Fan bit down on his lips and fought to keep himself conscious, to keep from passing out. He silently circulated the Dao Scripture, mobilizing the life energy throughout his body, attempting to stabilize his injuries.

“The way of heaven diminishes the excessive and supplements the deficient…”

Just as he was on the verge of losing consciousness, from the deepest depths of his mind’s sea came the resonance of those words. Hundreds of ancient characters flowed like a gentle stream through his mind, and his faltering awareness gradually sharpened once more.

Ye Fan slowly returned to calm. His consciousness revived. He grew clear-headed again. At the same time, the Dao Scripture continued circulating in silence, and his life essence surged toward the wound. At last, from that terrible wound curled up at the edges, threads of blue light emerged — the dreadful killing intent that had penetrated his body was driven out, life essence flowed freely, and the bleeding finally stopped.

Utterly exhausted, Ye Fan nevertheless bit down and forced himself upright. Swaying and staggering, he moved through the mountain forest. He had to find a concealed place to hide. His injuries were extremely severe — he could no longer run.

Originally, he had planned to escape into the Ancient Forbidden Land during these past few days. Only then could he make that knight hesitate, afraid to venture deeper inside. But he no longer had the strength. After thinking it over carefully for a moment, he turned and stumbled back the way he had come.

At last, he came to a stop in a field of chaotic rocks that the knight had devastated — hiding himself in a crevice between two stone peaks.

This area had already been searched. Ye Fan worked through the knight’s reasoning and concluded that for a time, this place would become a blind spot.

Ye Fan went without food or water, hiding in that stone crevice for two full days and nights before his injuries were fully brought under control — though vigorous movement remained impossible.

Throughout those two days, the knight continued circling overhead through the deep mountains, reducing many stretches of forest to ruin.

On that night, Ye Fan crawled out from the stone crevice, gathered a good number of wild fruits, and shifted to a new hiding spot — a place the knight had just ravaged, where trees lay broken and boulders had split apart, everything reduced to wreckage.

“I’ll slowly follow in your wake. Wherever you’ve already searched, that’s where I’ll hide.”

In such a dangerous predicament, with his life hanging by a thread at every moment, Ye Fan could only think carefully and move with extreme caution — seeking out the blind spots of that knight’s search pattern to shelter himself.

And so, a full five or six days went by. Only then did he gradually recover. It was a form of torment — over those days, between the scarcity of food and the suffering of his wounds, he had grown visibly thinner.

“If my constitution weren’t far superior to that of ordinary cultivators, that blue light would surely have extinguished my life energy long ago.”

Ye Fan gazed toward the horizon and murmured to himself: “I must survive this ordeal. I cannot die here.”

“The Jiang Family…” He gritted his teeth.

His strength was insufficient for now. Perhaps the only way to shake off that knight was to brave the risk and enter the Ancient Forbidden Land. Once his body had recovered sufficiently, Ye Fan began taking a roundabout path, working his way toward the Ancient Forbidden Land.

“Having eaten the sacred fruit, perhaps I can resist the curse within. Entering the life-forbidden zone might actually be an opportunity for me!”