Seeing that his words had the desired effect—his disciple was completely stunned by his barrage of nonsense—Bai Zhou was satisfied.

This was exactly what he wanted.

"Take your time and digest this. Human knowledge is vast and profound. If you still don’t get it, that just means you haven’t fully mastered what you learned before. When that happens, you need to go back and review, and you’ll learn something new in the process. Got it?"

"I understand," the disciple replied, still in a daze.

"Good."

Bai Zhou patted his disciple’s root-covered shoulder encouragingly.

...

Time passed quickly. After Bai Zhou finished handling some matters on the island, he prepared to leave by boat.

The Chali Race had repaired his small fishing boat. They even used the knowledge Bai Zhou had taught them to upgrade and reinforce it.

Not only that, but they had also prepared a great deal of food, packing the boat to the brim. They even brought him a strange object.

"This is a relic," his disciple told Bai Zhou, explaining how to use it.

During his days on the island, Bai Zhou had learned about these peculiar items in the Abyss. Although he had never seen one, he knew that relics were incredibly precious treasures for every race.

"This is too valuable." Bai Zhou had no intention of accepting it.

"Take it, Master." His disciple pushed the relic into Bai Zhou’s hands.

"You can give it back to me next time we meet..."

The roots of the Chali Race intertwined and clung to Bai Zhou, and from within them came all sorts of heartfelt farewells.

Bai Zhou’s eyes reddened. He couldn’t bring himself to look at his former students any longer. He turned, boarded the boat without a backward glance, and sailed away, toward the human island...

Just as Bai Zhou had guessed, the island was indeed the one inhabited by humans. He recognized it the moment he saw land.

His heart pounding with excitement, Bai Zhou drew close to the shore. But something was wrong.

The pier, where many boats should have been moored, was in ruins. The boats themselves were wrecked beyond recognition, as if something had destroyed them.

The pier, which should have had people maintaining it, was now completely deserted. The windows on the wooden huts had been blown off by the sea wind.

What’s more, all sorts of dock equipment and items were strewn about in disarray.

Seeing this, Bai Zhou immediately became vigilant and stepped ashore with caution.

After searching the pier for a while and finding not a soul, Bai Zhou had no choice but to take the relic and head toward the human village.

The village wasn’t far from the shore, but he didn’t see a single person on the way. It was as if the entire island had been deserted.

The path, which should have been well-maintained, was overgrown with weeds. Bai Zhou’s heart sank with every step.

’What on earth happened?’

Finally, upon reaching the village, Bai Zhou found his kinsmen.

But they didn’t greet him.

They had become charred, dried corpses, casually tossed to the side of the road.

At this sight, Bai Zhou could no longer contain himself and sprinted into the village like a man possessed.

In the clearing at the center of the village, Bai Zhou saw a scene that shocked him beyond belief.

Everyone from the village had been turned into those same charred, dried corpses and piled in the clearing.

Some were holding weapons, some were cowering on the ground with their hands on their heads, and others had been hiding behind houses...

Without exception, the unrecognizable faces of his people were all frozen in expressions of unspeakable terror, as if they had seen something horrifying right before they died.

There were elders, and there were children... But whoever had done this showed no mercy, slaughtering every last one of them.

Trembling, Bai Zhou ran through the entire village, checking house after house. He found only more bodies, some in well-hidden places, but not a single survivor.

’The whole village... is gone?’

After searching the last house, Bai Zhou stumbled back to the clearing, his head buzzing. He felt his breathing become incredibly difficult, and the air itself was filled with a charred smell.

The charred corpses seemed to stare at him in terror, as if questioning where he had gone. In his daze, Bai Zhou seemed to see the dead villagers lunging toward him in agony.

They gathered around him, wrapping their withered arms around his legs and crawling up his body.

He turned his head to see a little girl, half of her head burned away, tugging desperately at his hand, begging him to take her and run.

"Where were you?" someone behind him demanded in anguish.

"I..." Bai Zhou opened his mouth, but his throat felt as if it had been scorched dry by fire, unable to utter a single word.

"Where were you?" the little girl holding his hand asked weakly.

"Where were you?"

He looked up, and all his people, now like figures of charcoal, turned to look at him in unison...

A pungent, charred smell suddenly shot into his nostrils. Bai Zhou coughed painfully, the force of it making his head spin and his vision fill with stars.

But the foul taste in his throat lingered. An uncontrollable itch tickled the back of his throat, and Bai Zhou began to cough again, this time rackingly, unable to stop.

He coughed until he couldn’t breathe, his vision whitened, and he collapsed heavily onto the ground.

When he awoke, it was already night. Bai Zhou found his eyes were incredibly dry and his throat was raw.

He sat there dazedly in the clearing, amidst the corpses, for the entire night...

Only when the sun rose did he silently get to his feet and walk toward his old house.

For a long time after, Bai Zhou remained on the island, living among the dead.

Every morning, he would go to the mountain to dig graves. Every afternoon, he would move the bodies and bury them.

The routine never changed.

During this process, he slowly began to find clues about the killers.

There were some broken weapons in the village. Bai Zhou didn’t know what they were. They looked like Bronze artifacts engraved with runes, but their color was strange.

Some lay on the ground, while others were embedded in the walls of the houses.

He also found marks from these weapons on some of the bodies.

Bai Zhou guessed that they were like some kind of arrow, piercing through the bodies of his people and then burning them to charcoal from the inside out.

Meanwhile, Bai Zhou also began to study the relic the Chali Race had given him.

It was a small figurine carved from a root.

It had a featureless face, its arms were crossed over its chest, and its entire body was entwined with rings of roots, giving it a rather bizarre appearance.

But the relic’s power was formidable. Much like the ability of the Chali people, the small figurine could communicate with Soul Spirits.

The price, however, was terrifying. As long as one carried it, the user would be tormented by visions of various Soul Spirits.

Bai Zhou suspected that the vision he’d had of his people coming back to life was caused by this root-carved figurine.

He walked to a large tree by the village, placed the figurine tightly against the trunk, and set it on the ground.

The roots on the figurine slowly squirmed and drilled into the tree trunk.

Immediately, vague facial features materialized on the figurine’s face.

Its tiny eyeballs darted around a few times before suddenly snapping to look at Bai Zhou...