Chapter 4: The Outrun
The fleeting urge to stand his ground faded as quickly as it had arrived.For a fraction of a second, the raw, intoxicating rush of the newly fused Universal Vessel pulsing within his soul plane had filled Leon with an irrational, impulsive surge of confidence.
The dense Qi rolling off the charging monsters felt like a banquet, and a wild, reckless part of his hyper-fixated mind had actually considered throwing a punch just to see what would happen. Then, his logic snapped into place. The Universal Vessel didn't grant him magical muscle mass. It wasn't a separate machine hidden inside him; it was him. It was the permanent reshaping of his very soul, granting him near-infinite comprehension talent, super adaptability, perfect control , great absorption capability and hyper intuition.
Right now, the survival instinct stemming from his hyper intuition was screaming a very clear, data-driven fact: his physical body was still just a 61-kilogram human. He had zero cultivation. If that car-sized scythe hit him, he would split into two neat pieces. Defeating them sounds fun, Leon thought, his honey-colored eyes widening as his clinical sanity instantly overrode his impulsivity. If only I could actually do it.
The dangerous smile on his face turned into a sharp, mocking smirk. "Time to run," Leon muttered under his breath, his eyes darting across the barren landscape. "Adios, bitches." He spun on his heel with athletic grace, his black sneakers kicking up a flurry of crimson snow.
His sharp gaze instantly mapped out the trajectory of the dispersing crowd. He identified the slowest, most physically unfit individuals in the group—specifically, a heavily panting Arthur Vance, whose shoes were slipping comically on the cracked, frozen earth, and the woman in the pencil skirt who was stumbling over every jagged rock.
If he couldn't outrun the car-sized crab monster or the pulsing purple eye, he only needed to follow the oldest, most brutal rule of survival: outrun the person next to you. With explosive, agile strides, Leon sprinted directly past the panting survivors. Within seconds, he easily caught up to the middle of the pack, pushed past them, and moved toward the very front of the line, leaving the slowest targets behind to act as a natural, tragic buffer.
Behind them, a sickening, wet crunch echoed through the freezing air, followed by a brief, horrified shriek that was abruptly cut short. The giant crab monster had claimed its first meal. "Help! Someone help me!" Arthur Vance gasped, his face pale as a sheet, his lungs burning from the supernatural chill.The survivors ran blindly, their strength rapidly evaporating. The biting, unnatural cold was no longer just an inconvenience; it was actively killing them.
Support creative writers by reading their stories on NovelPhoenix, not stolen versions.
The frost was settling into their joints, making their breaths come in ragged, agonizing wheezes. Their muscles were locking up, and the sheer terror of the chase was draining their adrenaline at an unsustainable rate. They couldn't keep this pace for more than a few minutes.
Leon's lungs burned too, but his sharp instinct kept his eyes moving, scanning the jagged rock formations ahead. There. About two hundred meters away, a deep, narrow fissure cut into the side of a massive stone cliffside. It was a jagged, hidden cavern opening, barely wide enough for two people to squeeze through at once. It was a perfect hiding spot—a natural bunker that would block the howling, freezing wind and hide them from the floating purple eye. "In there! Move!" Leon barked.
Nobody stopped to question how he had found the cave so quickly. In a panicked crowd, certainty was contagious. The moment one person changed direction, another followed, then another, until the entire front of the stampede group in that direction instinctively flowed behind Leon.
They dove headfirst into the narrow crevice, scraping their shoulders against the rough stone as they violently packed themselves into the darkness. Leon slid in right behind them, pressed deep into the shadows near the entrance where the air was tight, claustrophobic, and marginally warmer than the open wasteland.
Out of the thirty original survivors, only about twelve managed to scramble into the cavern before the entrance was effectively hidden by the shadows. Outside, the howling wind covered their heavy breathing.
Inside the cave, a man began to wail, his hands shaking violently. "They're gone... oh god, they got eaten, they're going to find us, we're going to die here—".
"Shut up," Leon snapped, his honey-colored eyes flashing with a cold, terrifying intensity in the darkness. The sheer confidence in his voice caused the weeping man to choke on his next sob, freezing instantly and calming down.
Leon didn't look at them. He stood near the lip of the stone crevice, peering out into the crimson snowfall to ensure the monsters hadn't tracked their specific path yet.
Listening carefully to the distant shouts of the other survivors being torn, he started calculating. The predators would finish off the stragglers outside and begin hunting the perimeter. He turned back to the shivering, terrified group, his face completely expressionless.
"Stand on the lookout," Leon commanded softly, pointing at the entrance. "Watch the ridge. Don't make a sound. I'm going to solve this."
The cave fell silent.
No one laughed.
Under any other circumstance the sentence would have sounded insane. Yet for some reason they couldn't understand their breathing calmed down and their shoulders relaxed.
Before anyone could ask how he was going to solve a cosmic monster problem, Leon slid down against the frozen stone wall. He crossed his legs, letting his hands rest lightly on his knees. He closed his eyes, completely cutting off the external world.
His mind dove deep into his soul plane, locking onto the brilliant, dense nucleus of the Universal Vessel. The raw, dense environmental Qi of the Spirit World was pooling inside the cavern, drawn naturally to his presence.
His hyper-intuition was already mapping out the basic pathways of energy, understanding the fundamental rules of cultivation with terrifying speed.He didn't have time to slowly ponder the mysteries of the universe. The clock was ticking.
I need to start cultivation and breakthrough at least once, Leon thought to himself, his internal voice steady and calculating as his body began to drink the raw Qi, before the monsters kill the others and find us.