Eagles do not fear ants; in their eyes, ants are nothing but black dots. Ants do not fear eagles, for they are not even qualified to become food for an eagle’s beak. In their world, such a powerful creature as an eagle simply does not exist—they cannot see it, nor can they touch it.

Yet over millions of years, surely there have always been a few ants in the colony who, for some mysterious reason, decide to lift their gaze from the decaying leaves and shells and glance up at the azure sky. And then, their world is forever changed.

Because to see is to fear.

Beneath the tree, three young people lifted their heads, looking toward a shallow ditch on the ground several dozen meters away. The ditch was naturally not deep; inside, there was nothing but blackness, making it stand out starkly against the mottled surface of the wasteland.

This ditch had suddenly appeared two hours ago, stretching abruptly to the horizon as if an invisible celestial demon had cleaved it with a mountain-sized axe, or as if a divine craftsman had drawn it with a giant brush. It sent chills down the spine, filling one with dread and confusion.

The youth with the wooden sword on his back stared at the black line and said, “I always thought the Immovable King of the Underworld was just a legend.”

“Legend has it the King of the Underworld has seventy thousand children. Maybe this one just happened to end up in the human world.”

“A legend is just a legend,” the youth with the wooden sword said expressionlessly. “The legend also says that every thousand years a sage appears, but in these past several thousand years, who has truly seen a sage?”

“If you really don’t believe, then why don’t you dare cross that black line?”

No one dared to step over that black line, that shallow ditch—not even these proud and powerful youths.

Ants could crawl across, long-legged insects could jump over, gazelles could leap over, eagles could fly over—only humans could not cross.

Precisely because they were human, they dared not cross.

The youth with the wooden sword looked up toward the horizon and asked, “If that child really exists, then… where is he?”

By now, more than half the setting sun had sunk below the earth. Night was surging in from all directions, the temperature on the wasteland plummeting rapidly, and a chilling atmosphere began to envelop the world.

“Night has fallen, it’s everywhere—where could you possibly go to search?”

The youth clad in animal hide broke his long silence. His voice was deep and rough, belying his age, buzzing and vibrating like a river in constant turmoil, or like rusted blades grinding against hard stone.

After saying this, he left—in a most unusual way.

Suddenly, several tongues of flame burst from his two sturdy, bare legs, shrouding his lower body in crimson. The howling wind sent pebbles skittering across the ground, and then, as if some invisible force had seized his neck, his body was lifted a dozen or so yards into the sky, then came whistling down to crash into the earth, only to bounce up again—like a stone skipping erratically into the distance, clumsy yet incredibly swift.

“All we know is his surname is Hawkins; we don’t know his full name.”

The youth with the wooden sword mused, “If we met at another time and place, only one of us would survive. If the disciple is this formidable, how powerful must his master be?… I’ve heard his master has been cultivating the Twenty-Three-Year Cicada these years. I wonder, after breaking through, will he carry a heavy shell on his back?”

Silence fell. No one answered. He turned back, a little puzzled.

He saw the young monk with his eyes tightly shut, eyelids trembling rapidly, as if pondering some troubling question. In fact, ever since the youth in animal hide had spoken of the night, the young monk had been trapped in this strange state.

Sensing the gaze upon him, the young monk slowly opened his eyes and grinned. The original firmness and calm in his smile had been replaced by a compassion from who knows where. Inside his parted lips, flesh and blood were a mangled mess—his tongue had been chewed to pieces.

The youth with the wooden sword frowned.

The young monk slowly removed the prayer beads from his wrist and solemnly hung them around his neck. Then he strode away, his steps heavy and steady. Though he seemed to move slowly, in a flash his figure blurred, about to vanish into the distance.

No one remained beneath the tree. All emotion faded from the youth with the wooden sword’s face, leaving only absolute calm—or perhaps absolute indifference. He looked northward, at the shadow bouncing and crashing like a stone in the dust, and called out in a low voice, “Demon.”

He looked westward, at the back of the young monk walking away with head bowed, and said, “Heretic.”

“Not worth mentioning.”

Demons and heretics—not worth mentioning.

After saying this, the thin wooden sword on the youth’s back began to vibrate for no reason, emitting a strange buzzing. With a hiss, it soared into the air, turning into a streak of light that sliced the little tree on the wasteland into 53,333 pieces—branches and trunk alike reduced to powder, drifting down to cover the ants who had forgotten life and death.

“The mute speaks, sprinkle some salt on the cake.”

Singing, the youth walked eastward, the slender wooden sword floating silently a few meters behind him.

In the first year of Tianqi of The Hawkins Dynasty, a strange phenomenon appeared on the wasteland. Wanderers from all sects gathered here, unable to make sense of it.

From that day on, the successor of Hanging Monastery, Evan Hawkins, practiced the Zen of Silence and never spoke again. The successor of the Demon Sect, surnamed Hawkins, vanished into the desert, his whereabouts unknown. The successor of Zhishou Temple, Brian Hawkins, broke through the gate of death and traveled the lands. Each of the three gained something.