In a high-level martial arts game, a wife is given to you at the start.

Lin Qiye woke up early in the morning, before dawn.

Without disturbing anyone, he tiptoed through the courtyard and washed his face by the stone well in the corner. The cold well water jolted him awake. He looked up at the sky; it was overcast, as always, the dawn in the holy city always came a little late.

I heard soft footsteps behind me.

He knew who it was without even turning around. Luo Sheng, wearing an overcoat, stood under the eaves, holding a bowl of steaming porridge. She walked up to him, said nothing, and simply handed him the bowl.

He took the bowl, drank it in a few gulps, and then handed the bowl back.

"Kugu Ridge is two hundred li from the Holy City," he said. "If nothing unexpected happens, I'll be back in two or three days."

Luo Sheng nodded without asking any further questions.

She reached out and smoothed a wrinkle in his shirt, then suddenly said, "I'm pregnant again."

Lin Qiye stopped moving.

He looked down at her and remained silent for a long time. The morning light filtered through the cracks in the eaves and fell on her face. Her expression was calm, as if she were talking about something as ordinary as everyday life.

When did this happen?

"It was confirmed a few days ago," Luo Sheng said. "The doctor saw me; it's been almost two months."

He looked at her, then at the old tree in the yard.

Under the tree, the little girl was still asleep, her tiny body curled up in the blanket, breathing evenly.

The faint sound of Lin Xi's sleep-talking could be heard from inside the room.

He reached out and gently placed his hand on her lower abdomen, feeling it for a moment.

"Wait for me to come back."

Luo Sheng looked at him, a slight smile curving her lips: "Mm."

He withdrew his hand, turned around, and pushed open the courtyard gate.

At the end of the bluestone alley, in the shadow of the old locust tree at the alley entrance, there was no one around.

But he knew that there were eyes watching this courtyard from the shadows, eyes that had been watching ever since he entered the city.

He ignored them, blended into the early morning crowd, passed through the outer city, and exited through the west gate.

After leaving the city, he increased his speed.

The Dry Bone Ridge, two hundred miles southwest of the Holy City, is much closer than Black Wind Valley. He walked along the official road for more than half an hour, then turned onto a dirt road worn into the ground, and the surrounding scenery began to change.

The grassland gradually thinned out, and more and more stones appeared. A faint, fishy smell lingered in the air, as if something had been rotting deep in the ridge for a long time.

He arrived at Dry Bone Ridge in the morning.

Dry Bone Ridge is not high, just a series of undulating gray-white hills, but the scenery within the ridge is strange—everywhere there are huge skeletons half-buried in the soil, some resembling beasts, some resembling humans, and some that are indescribable, scattered haphazardly among the rocks. This ridge is called "Dry Bone Ridge," probably because of this.

He took out his detection compass. A silver halo covered most of the surface, and the central pointer was slightly deflected, pointing directly towards the ridge. Around the edge of the compass, countless red dots were slowly moving—these were hordes of strange beasts, more numerous than those on the outskirts of Black Wind Valley.

"It's quite lively." He put away his compass and, instead of rushing in, walked around the outer perimeter of the ridge.

After walking for about 15 minutes, he stopped at the edge of a depression.

In the center of the depression, a wide, dark, and bottomless crack appeared in the ground. The rocks at the crack's edge were charred black, as if scorched by intense heat, or as if they had been split open from the inside by something. A humid, hot current carrying the smell of sulfur was rising from below the crack, accompanied by subtle, unsettling tremors.

Underground passage.

Lin Qiye squatted at the edge of the crack, not going down immediately.

He circled the depression again and found three animal carcasses in the rubble pile in the northeast corner. The wounds on the animal carcasses were extremely clean—not bites, not claws, but smooth cuts, as if they had been killed instantly by some extremely sharp weapon.

Someone has been here.

And just recently.

He crouched down and examined the wounds. A faint, cold, metallic aura lingered at the wounds. He had never seen this aura before, but he could sense that the person who had attacked him was quite powerful.

He stood up, retreated to the edge of the depression behind a boulder, held his breath, and waited quietly.

About 15 minutes later, a muffled tremor suddenly came from deep within the crack.

Immediately afterwards, a figure emerged from the crack, staggered to the ground, and knelt on the edge of the depression.

She was a young woman.

She was dressed in a tight-fitting dark blue outfit, a narrow-bladed slender sword hanging at her waist. Her face was pale, a trace of blood at the corner of her mouth, and a tear in the fabric of her left shoulder revealed a deep, bone-revealing wound from which blood was seeping. Behind her, a low, beast-like roar came from the depths of the tear, rapidly approaching.

The woman gritted her teeth and stood up, staggering two steps. She looked up and saw Lin Qiye standing next to the boulder.

Her hand instantly gripped the sword hilt: "Who?!"

Lin Qiye didn't move, his gaze calmly sweeping over the wound on her shoulder, then at the approaching roar behind her: "You're injured. It's about to come out."

"I know," the woman's voice was cold and hard, "so you'd better not be one of them."

Before she could finish speaking, the rift behind her suddenly exploded open.

A massive black shadow shot into the sky from the crevice, carrying with it a shower of rubble, before crashing into the center of the depression. The creature was several meters tall, resembling a pangolin magnified many times over, its entire body covered in jet-black scales, from which a dark red light emanated. Its eyes were bloodshot, and it breathed scorching air from its mouth and nose, its target fixed on the young woman.

The woman gritted her teeth and forced herself to raise her sword to meet the attack.

Lin Qiye stood aside, not making a move, but simply watching.

The beast's attacks were haphazard, purely driven by the instincts of a wild animal, each pounce kicking up clouds of dust. Yet its strength was terrifying; the woman's rapier, piercing its scales, only left a shallow white mark, failing to penetrate its defenses. Her steps grew increasingly unsteady, and she narrowly escaped being struck several times by the beast's sharp claws.

After observing for a while, Lin Qiye had roughly figured out the beast's patterns—thick hide, slow speed, and a weak point in the area of ​​its belly where the scales were thinner. As for the woman, her swordsmanship was not bad, but she was too badly injured and wouldn't last much longer.

He's still watching.

The woman finally succumbed to her injuries and was swatted away by the giant beast's claw, crashing heavily into a boulder. She coughed up blood and slid to the ground. The beast let out a deep roar and pounced on her.

Just a moment before its claws were about to strike the woman's head—

Lin Qiye moved.

He didn't use a gun; instead, he casually picked up a three-foot-long animal bone protruding from the rubble and held it in his hand. Dark golden Origin Qi spread along the bone, wrapping it into a makeshift bone spear. He raised his hand and threw it.

The bone spear pierced through the giant beast's abdomen and emerged from its spine, spraying out a cloud of dark red blood.

The colossal beast froze on the spot, looking down at the piercing wound in its abdomen, letting out an incredulous roar before crashing to the ground, kicking up a cloud of dust.

The woman leaned against the boulder, looking at the bone spear that had pierced the giant beast, then at Lin Qiye, and remained silent for a long time.

"You…" she gasped, her voice hoarse, "You've been standing there watching the whole time?"

"Hmm." Lin Qiye withdrew his gaze, his tone flat. "Let's see if you die."