The Dawn of the New World

*Crunch*Crack*

The sound of leaves being stomped on and branches being broken came from the darkness.

"What?!" Hao Xuan went on full alert and took out a sword, holding it in front of him in an attacking stance.

He didn't notice before but somehow the night had gotten so dark that even seeing more than five meters away was arduous. This was far from normal...

"Come out, I know you're there," he yelled towards the source of the noise while circulating Sundering Qi through the sword. The red-colored energy covered the entirety of the blade and seemed to be cutting the very air apart.

*rustle*

He stared intently into the darkness but there was no response other than the rustling of trees and bushes that weren't even visible anymore. He held his breath and looked at the spirit band but nothing was showing up on it.

"God damn it, that bastard gave me defective equipment. Something is clearly there but why the hell isn't it showing up on the detection formation?!" he cursed Lex under his breath while looking left and right hoping to catch a glimpse of something.

*sss*

Black and White who were on his shoulders still had confused looks on their faces. They looked into the darkness and then back at Hao Xuan, not understanding what the problem was. They looked up at him as if saying, "It's right there, can't you see it?" but he wasn't paying any attention to them.

He bent down and picked up a few rocks from the ground and started tossing them outside in random directions.

*rustle*

The first one sounded like it went through some bushes and landed on the ground not far from him.

*rustle*

Same thing with the second one. Those two places were where the sounds had come from earlier but whatever it was had moved by now. He breathed a sigh of relief as only from these two locations could something have come from.

Hao Xuan had made the camp on the side of a small hill. To the back and left were rocks, leaving only the front and the right sides facing the jungle. If there was nothing there then it had probably left. Telling himself that it was a small animal and nothing dangerous, he calmed down and went back to the campfire.

Because of the illusionary formation, no one should be able to see him from the outside anyway. So there was a pretty good chance that something had wandered near the camp accidentally and then left, hearing his voice come out of nowhere.

But he did not let down his guard and kept the sword unsheathed in his left hand.

"Haha, did that scare you?" he chuckled and rubbed Black's head who was on his left shoulder.

*ssss*

Black let out a long hiss with a satisfied smile on its little face. Hao Xuan relaxed upon seeing the expression of the little worms and started telling them stories of his childhood.

Time passed extremely slowly. Every second seemed like an eternity. Hao Xuan who was still chatting away like a magpie was covered in sweat from head to toe.

It was about 3 a.m now and for some reason, Hao Xuan could not calm down at all. His heart was beating at two or three times the normal speed and it seemed like he was running a marathon. His own body was not under his control.

He had become aware of this about 30 minutes after the noises had been heard initially. So for the last two and a half hours, he had been sitting there in front of the campfire surrounded by bone-chilling coldness but his body was boiling hot and he was sweating like a pig.

He tried to get up several times but an unknown force kept pulling him down. His knees felt so weak that even standing seemed like an impossible task.

*huff*huff*

"What the fuck is.....going...on...?" he mumbled while trying to catch his breath.

"Okay, Okay, calm down. Deep breathes, inhale, exhale," he started doing breathing exercises and they seemed to be working. About ten minutes later he had regained his composure and was in a much better condition.

"If you see anything, let me know yeah?" he jokingly said to Black and White and stood up with some effort.

*ssss*

They both hissed at the same time and looked towards the extreme right of the camp. Hao Xuan who still had a smile on his face, froze.

"E-Eh? D-Do you see something there?" he pointed where they were looking. It was where he had thrown one of the stones earlier.

Both Black and White nodded at exactly same the time, making his heart skip a beat.

"Oh god, why did I even ask?? Ignorance is bliss. If I don't know what's there then it can't hurt me!" he almost cried looking at their innocent faces.

"Hehe, sillies. There's nothing there, look," he said to the snakes and threw a pebble that was in his hand where they had pointed.

*Clack*Thump*

But the rustling sounds he was hoping to hear didn't come, and instead, the sound of one hard object hitting another was heard.

"Fuck me," without even the slightest hesitation, he jumped back several feet and landed right next to the other edge of the camp.

"This was a bad idea. Why the hell did I leave Green and Red in Fortuna? What the fuck is wrong with me," he muttered to himself and went into the wooden cabin which was for sleeping. There was a single window on the right side which showed everything clearly.

From there he could still see the area where the rock was thrown just now.

"No way in hell I'm going outside. I don't know what the hell that thing wants but if it's not attacking then we don't have a problem," he told himself while hiding like a coward in the cabin.

What Hao Xuan was scared off was not the monster itself, but what it's existence represented. He had read the instruction manual for the portable camp cover-to-cover and knew almost everything about it.

The detection formations would pick up any life signs within a 50-meter radius of the camp. The rock he had thrown earlier was less than 10 meters away from the boundary of the camp.

Meaning, either A, whatever he hit did not have a pulse, or B, it was so high level that the detection formation was not able to measure its life force.

For option A, he was not about to mess with any undying monster at 3 a.m in a jungle where he couldn't even see a few meters ahead. As for option B, only creatures higher than profound realm would not be detected by the camp's formation and he was no match for them whatsoever.

Either way, it was not a good end if he chose to engage whatever that thing outside was.

He sat in his bed and covered himself in blankets from head-to-toe like a scared child hiding from the boogeyman. If any of his so-called 'fans' could see him right now, what would they think? The great captain Deimos hiding like a b*tch.

Seconds passed one by one, ticking away like a hammer on his poor heart.

*woosh*

"Again!" he suddenly got goosebumps all over his body. The same fluctuation he had felt earlier in the night came again, only much stronger.

"Ah, I remember now!" he finally remembered where he had felt this 'feeling' before.

*Ding*

But the sound of a bell interrupted his thoughts. It was the same bell he had heard back on the day when he came upon the town that was spirited away.

As if an unknown force made him look outside, he turned his head bit by bit until a figure came into a view.

It was about 6 feet tall and had long human-hand like limbs and was down on all four (check authors note). Its face was that of a goat but there were no eyes in its socket and instead, blood was dripping down drop by drop.

*drip*

Hao Xuan followed the blood drops and looked down to see a small pool of blood under it. Judging by the size of the stagnant blood that was already freezing up, the creature must have been standing there for several hours.

It was looking straight at Hao Xuan dead in the eyes, or at least seemed like it was.

****

Authors Notes:

Imagine a human figure like this but with a head of a goat: https://i.ytimg..com/vi/5Pr-I0V0ZOc/sddefault.jpg