Chapter 3: The Holy Land

[The Wilderness]

A naked man, gripping a curved blade, lay sprawled across the back of a red-and-white mottled horse with no saddle, fleeing desperately into the depths of the mountains.

The man lashed the warhorse with his blade as he frantically glanced behind him, as though being pursued by some terrifying beast.

This man was none other than Chi Lian—a noble of the Jin clan, an arrow officer of the Terdon Tribe, and a close attendant of the Fire Keeper.

Because he had long been assigned to guard the sacred territory, Chi Lian rarely participated in raids, thereby avoiding the carnage of the Bloody Mire battle by sheer luck.

Yet it was precisely because he had not witnessed firsthand that disastrous battle, which turned frozen earth into a quagmire, that he failed to grasp the need to fear the Blood Wolf.