Harold Gray and Edgar Gray took the lead, clearing the way, while Alice Clark carried Eleanor Clark on her back, following behind them.

This time, Eleanor Clark did not refuse, and instead held tightly onto the girl, pressing himself close against her and subtly adjusting his posture. In this way, the two of them moved as one, allowing her to conserve a great deal of energy while running.

The three jogged along, and in the blink of an eye, more than an hour had passed. Because they carried the scent of the ape demon, their journey was smooth, without any harassment from wild beasts.

After running for a while longer, the girl said, “Hang in there a bit more, the camp isn’t far now. Are you alright?”

“I’m fine. Can you keep going?” Eleanor Clark asked in return.

The girl was breathing heavily, sweat streaming down her face, and her body trembled slightly. But her speed did not decrease in the slightest; like a cheetah, she sprinted swiftly through the rainforest. Branches, trunks, vines, and even the stems of some giant grasses all became tools for her to propel herself forward.

Eleanor Clark could feel every contraction and relaxation of her muscles, sensing the flow of power within—there was a kind of primal, wild sharpness to it.

She was already quite exhausted, but still said, “I’m fine. We have to run fast on this stretch, or we’ll leave too much scent behind.”

“Why not take the meat and skin, and only bring back the head and the organs?”

“Our settlement has never killed an ape demon before. We have to bring the head back and make it into a totem, to preserve it forever. Next time those big settlements send people over, let’s see if they still dare to look down on us. The heart and liver are treasures for the ritual, especially the heart and liver of an ape demon—they’re extremely rare and precious. If we use them in the ritual, the souls of our ancestors will surely appear! Then we can receive their legacy and make our tribe a little stronger!”

The girl spoke excitedly, not noticing the strange look on Eleanor Clark’s face.

The word “ritual” had not only disappeared in the Imperial era, but even if you traced back to the Second and First Federations before the Empire, it wasn’t included in the common dictionary. It only appeared in ancient cultural texts, and ordinary people would never encounter it.

It was said that in the era of the homeworld, when civilization was not yet fully developed and technology had not yet dominated people’s hearts, rituals like this existed.

During the great expansion of the Empire across the vast star domains, they encountered many races, some of which still maintained ritual traditions. But those were mostly primitive races, still countless millennia away from stepping out into the stars.

He never expected that, ten thousand years later, he would still encounter people who preserved ritual traditions. From the girl’s words, it was clear that they worshipped their ancestors deeply, and it seemed their ancestors could even appear in some form to impart knowledge, making their descendants stronger.

This was clearly beyond Eleanor Clark’s understanding. Besides, he couldn’t see what kind of knowledge couldn’t be passed down through an intelligent brain or old books, and had to be inherited through some obviously unreliable ancestor ritual.

The girl and the two hunters all spoke Imperial, and though their grammar was a bit odd and some words were pronounced differently, it was unmistakably the common language of the Empire. How could people who had absorbed Imperial culture live like a primitive tribe?

Full of doubts, Eleanor Clark lay on the girl’s back as the three continued on their way. He didn’t ask any more questions—talking while traveling would only waste the girl’s energy, and he had a feeling these mysteries couldn’t be unraveled in just a few words.

After running several more kilometers, the three finally stopped. The girl pointed ahead and said, “Look, that’s our settlement’s camp.”

Chapter Five: Holy Radiance

Eleanor Clark got down from the girl’s back and looked ahead, his view filled with forest after forest. The direction the girl pointed was an especially dense patch of woods.

Eleanor Clark quickly noticed the difference: between the giant trees, vines crisscrossed everywhere, and some massive roots snaked through the air. In Eleanor Clark’s eyes, these were all natural pathways and lookout posts.

On the ground, thick tall grass and bristling, thorny shrubs blocked the way in and out. Even the most agile small animals would have trouble passing through.

The thorns on the shrubs were as thick as fingers, their tips all sorts of bright colors. By common sense, anything that grows especially bright in the rainforest—no matter what it is—is almost always highly poisonous.

These shrubs were natural barriers, and the tall grass growing among them probably wasn’t as ordinary as it looked either. At the very least, it must have extremely tenacious vitality to compete with the shrubs for space.

In this area, aside from the dense vegetation swallowing most of the natural light and making it especially gloomy, there was nothing outwardly unusual. The types and density of plants were no different from the rest of the rainforest.

The three circled around the area for a bit, then the girl bent down and crawled under an arched tree root.

Tall grass grew thickly beneath the root, showing no sign of a path. But the girl beckoned to Eleanor Clark and disappeared into the grass. Eleanor Clark bent down and followed her in.

Unlike the razor-sharp grass in the rest of the rainforest, these blades looked exactly the same on the outside but were unexpectedly soft.

Once Eleanor Clark crawled in, he discovered a tunnel several meters long beneath the tree. He walked hunched over for a few steps, then emerged from the grass to find a whole new world before his eyes.

Beyond the tall grass was a valley.