The next morning...
The people of Saccharine Soil gathered to see off the village of Sickos. They accompanied them all the way to the mouth of the valley.
Lạc Trần lifted the window curtain and peered outside. Strewn across both sides of the cliff face were scattered skeletons - some human, some beast. Each bone was pitch-black, as if soaked in ink, almost blending seamlessly into the stone wall.
Each villager of Saccharine Soil held a torch. As they passed the bones, they set them alight. The blackened remains caught fire easily, and soon smoke filled the air in a dense, swirling fog. Even the cripple stepped out of the valley with a torch in hand, lending help in cremating the bones.
He moved with astonishing speed - so swift it was almost imperceptible. One moment his body shuddered slightly, and the next, flames flared on the mountaintop where beast bones had lain undisturbed. The firelight reached all the way down to the narrow mountain path.
"Butcher, why burn the bones?" Lạc Trần asked, letting the curtain fall.
In Aparagodānī, cremation wasn't practiced. It was customary for the dead to be buried three feet deep, a return to the earth to ensure peace. The best-case scenario would be burial in one's birthplace or within a family mausoleum.
He knew this wasn't Aparagodānī.
He also understood that each place had its own customs.
Still, seeing the cripple torch those bones left a sour taste in Lạc Trần's heart.
Perhaps if he understood the reason, he'd feel less uneasy.
The butcher answered matter-of-factly: "If you don't burn black bones, they'll crawl back into the village at night to eat people."
Lạc Trần immediately thought of the "darkness" everyone feared.
On his first day in the village of Sickos, the village chief warned that the darkness in Dry Sea devours humans. Now, as he looked at the black bones, he realized the color wasn't the result of any dye.
It was as if the bones had soaked in shadow.
So he asked no more.
The ox-legged palanquin resumed its journey. Behind them, only the faint glow of fire on Saccharine Soil's ridge remained.
Around them, fierce winds howled, and waves of yellow dust surged endlessly.
From above came eerie cries, like the distant wailing of children - mournful and haunting. The butcher identified them as the calls of "Sand-Rice Birds," feral beasts native to Dry Sea. The largest of them could stand five meters tall, with wingspans approaching twenty.
They had powerful legs but weak beaks. Their hunting method was simple: snatch prey into the sky, drop it to the ground to shatter it, then descend in flocks and lap up the pulverized flesh with long, snaking tongues.
Two hours after leaving Saccharine Soil, a giant wolf leapt onto the path and blocked their carriage.
Calling it a "wolf" didn't do it justice - it was larger than an elephant, nearly eight meters from snout to tail. Sprouting from its forehead was the upper half of a human torso, though malformed - skinless, faceless, and with an incorrect number of fingers on each hand.
The butcher stepped down from the cart, bow in hand.
The cripple, however, chuckled and said,
"Sick Boy, never been to the Northern Continent, have you?"
"No."
"Then watch closely. See that half-human thing growing from its forehead? That's a sign - it's about to fully take human shape."
"You're well-read, cripple. I'll be counting on your guidance from now on."
"Easy enough."
The cripple was basking in the compliment when the deaf man's voice rang out from behind:
"Of course he knows. That guy slept with anything. Sick kid, steer clear of him. You don't want to end up picking up his habit of getting laid with anything that breathes."
"Hey! You can't say that! Deaf freak, explain yourself! What do you mean I'd bang anything? They're fully shapeshifted beasts, no differences from any human, stop making it sounds like I'm some kind of freak!"
"Oh? You're saying you're not?"
The silent maiden raised a brow and wrote a single line on the air with her embroidery needle.
The cripple clutched his chest and groaned:
"Ow. That cut deep. My own blood kin stabbing me like that… I am truly pitiful."
"Who's your blood kin? Scram!"
Inside the cart, laughter echoed among the four.
Outside, the battle had already ended.
The butcher climbed back in, gripping the nape of a tiny gray pup, no larger than a palm, its eyes shut tight. He tossed it to Lạc Trần.
"Here. Take it. Raise it if you want."
"Oh? You're going soft? Not only did you spare a beast, you spared one that started the fight. Don't tell me the sun's rising from the west today and I missed it?"
The cripple shielded his brow with both hands and leaned out to "check."
After the wolf was dealt with, no other beasts dared confront the Sickos on their journey.
---the separator line got a fine for going to work late---
Their next stop was a colossal Buddha.
Carved directly into the cliffside, it loomed with serene grandeur. A sunwheel was etched into the stone behind it, and in its left palm rested an enormous bronze sphere.
At its feet sat a village called The Ranch.
Lạc Trần found the name unsettling. There was something vaguely malicious about it.
The villagers here were enormous.
Back in Aparagodānī, Lạc Trần would be considered tall and striking, but here he looked like a shriveled squash. The women were a full head taller, and the men... well, they dwarfed him entirely.
They wore beast-fang necklaces, leather garments, and bore bronze-tinted skin.
The village chief was a hulking man, over four meters tall, with waist-length snow-white hair. Watching him walk was like watching a beast move.
He seemed to recognize the cripple and greeted him with unexpected warmth. They spoke in a strange tongue - at least, strange to Lạc Trần.
After their exchange, the chief welcomed the whole group into the village.
The Ranch lay nestled beneath the Buddha statue, surrounded by packed earth walls. Except for the southern cliff face, it was bordered on three sides by massive gates. The Sickos entered through the east gate.
Unlike the village of Sickos, the people here lived in fabric tents, with large animal hides drying on wooden racks. To the left of some tents were fenced enclosures, housing robust six-legged horses.
These beasts had bone spurs on the heels of their hind legs, and a third eye - bloody red and snake-like - on their foreheads. Occasionally, they reared up and neighed, exposing rows of jagged fangs.
The chief called them Trục Nhật - sun-chasers. Carnivores, capable of traveling thousands of miles a day. They hunted by smashing prey skulls with vicious hind-leg hooks. The villagers had tamed them for cattle hunts.
Lạc Trần didn't like the way he pronounced "cattle." It sounded… off. But he kept quiet. Suspecting someone who'd offered shelter from Dry Sea's darkness felt inappropriate.
By dusk, herds of monstrosities began pouring in from the west gate.
There were buffaloes ten meters tall, moss and vines trailing from their backs, their heads crowned by trees heavy with glistening fruit.
There were turtle-like creatures the size of bulls, their translucent shells filled with water. Through a hole at the top, tiny fish and shrimp could be seen darting between swaying algae.
There were monkeys the size of a child's hand, with tails twice their body length ending in a fifth hand-like appendage.
There were limping dogs with swollen, hole-ridden bellies - swarms of black wasps flew in and out of their bodies, a nightmarish sight.
Each beast calmly entered the village and settled into its own space. Birds perched on the Buddha's shoulders, buffalo rested beneath the lotus dais - none stirred up trouble.
Nor did the villagers harm them. It seemed the two sides had an unspoken pact.
That night...
Lạc Trần lay alone in his tent.
The others - cripple, butcher, deaf man, and silent maiden - had gone out. Rumor was the village chief invited them to view the Buddha up close.
He looked out the open flap of his tent.
His tent sat on high ground, with a clear view over the entire village.
And there he saw it - the Dry Sea infamous Darkness.
For the first time, Lạc Trần witnessed it with his own eyes.
Now he finally understood what the villagers meant when they said darkness here wasn't like anywhere else.
If the night outside Dry Sea was like a silent curtain...
Then the darkness here was a tide. It surged, it churned, it pressed in on all sides with violent hunger.
It wanted to drown everything. Swallow it whole.
The darkness lunged.
Toward The Ranch.
Then, the Buddha statue seemed to sigh.
Behind it, the sunwheel blazed, casting a warm golden light.
The light formed a shield, a golden cage protecting the village from the encroaching dark.
The darkness screamed.
From its depths, massive silhouettes began to rise - shadowed figures of impossible size, their crimson eyes fixed upon the Buddha.