When the Shallow Night came, the village stirred — every household hurrying to the fire spring for sunstones.
Qin Ming was already dressed for the road: hunting fork, short knife, bow and arrows. He had eaten the flatbread Lu Ze brought him, but he did not mention his plans to go out. He did not want to be talked out of it.
He was not reckless. He meant to try a relatively safe zone, and he had thought about it long. In autumn, he had glimpsed a certain creature in the mountain woods, and by its habits it should den nearby.
*I hope it's still there,* he thought. *That it will bring me something good.*
Outside, the village quieted. No one else went for sunstones.
Qin Ming set out. He passed two villagers, smiling in greeting, and was gone before they could respond. He walked past the fire spring and into the black world.
The wilds were brutal. He trudged through snow that buried him to the chest, only his upper body above the surface. The cold bit hard; his breath froze into frost on his brows and hair.
Even in Shallow Night, the world stayed dim. He could not see far.
Fork in hand, he pushed on, step after painful step. After about four li, he neared his goal.
Ahead loomed dense forest, still distant, but he could already make out its outline. His target was the forest's edge — no deep penetration.
He entered the woods, sinking into drifts. Most trees stood bare except for a few species, branches heavy with snow.
Qin Ming stopped and reconstructed the creature's movements from memory. He remembered a hollow in a tree in that area — possibly one of its dens.
*Its body was bigger than others of its kind. Probably mutated. If I find the main nest, the haul could be considerable.*
He pushed on.
The forest was pitch black. Strange birds cried out abruptly, making the empty place deeply eerie.
Suddenly Qin Ming's body went rigid. Faintly, he caught it: a thin smell of rot. That was wrong.
He gripped his fork in both hands, sweeping his gaze in every direction.
Then, without warning, he stabbed the steel fork straight up over his head.
He had heard the abnormal sound of wind, and he had placed the source of the smell. Looking up, he saw it: a dark shape hanging upside down from a branch a dozen meters up — a corpse-pale old man's face — dropping toward his head.
In this deathly forest, the sight was enough to freeze a man's blood.
But Qin Ming's reflexes were sharp. He had sensed trouble early, and the fork met the creature in mid-air.
A piercing shriek tore through the woods, raising the hairs on his neck. The creature did not push through. A few meters out, it veered aside.
Cold wind gusted as it spread its powerful wings, burst through a gap between the trees, and spiraled into the night sky. It circled once, then vanished.
Even in the poor light, Qin Ming had identified it: a corpse-faced vulture. A scavenging raptor with a gray-black eagle's body and a face — aside from the beak — like a wrinkled, pale old man's. It rarely weighed more than forty jin.
Normally it would not attack a living adult, only feed on the dead. Was prey so scarce now that even they had turned?
A chill ran through him. The wilds were changing — and the hunger would only get worse.