Migration and Resettlement

Mo Fan had wanted to help Xu Dahuang as well, but they were simply too far away — his Blazing Fist couldn't reach that distance. And with Demon-Beasts swarming all around Xu Dahuang and his companion, whether they would survive was anyone's guess.

After landing that strike, Mo Fan hoisted Xinxia onto his back and got out of the building fast. The Demon-Beasts weren't blind — anyone who disrupted their hunt this openly wouldn't be forgiven, not even an Intermediate-Level Mage.

An Intermediate-Level Mage was powerful, yes — a clean hit could kill in an instant. But the Demon-Beasts had numbers on their side, and sheer swarm tactics could overwhelm any single human mage. And if that failed, they could always call for their superiors. Battle-General-class Demon-Beasts had never feared human Intermediate-Level Mages.

Sure enough, barely moments after Mo Fan's attack, over a dozen Demon-Beasts had already closed in on the building, with more converging by the second.

Thank god he'd moved fast. Saving someone only to get himself killed would have been pointless — he had just one Star Chart Book left. Unless those dozens of Demon-Beasts were obliging enough to form a neat circle and let him punch through them all at once, a single Intermediate-Level spell wasn't going to finish them.

Mo Fan knew when to cut his losses. He ran.

Before long, he reached the Jiamei Overpass, where a military Dark Stone motorcycle sat waiting. As long as they didn't cross paths with any Battle-General-class Demon-Beasts, the road back to camp was manageable.

The night deepened around them. Wind shrieked past Mo Fan's ears as the black motorcycle — sleek and dark as a panther — tore through the desolate city, nearly swallowed by the bleak landscape.

From the Jiamei Overpass, Bo City sprawled before them, smothered in darkness. Here and there, bright flares of magical light ignited in some distant street; from some building, a bestial shriek echoed out into the night. After decades of peace, who could have imagined a city falling to such ruin? Or perhaps this world had never truly been peaceful — perhaps conflict was always inevitable. In Mo Fan's old world, it was human beings waging war against each other. Here, it was humans and Demon-Beasts, locked in an enmity that left no room for coexistence.

Mo Fan didn't know whether the next dawn would bring any change to Bo City, or whether the Mages would ever drive the Demon-Beasts out for good. All he knew, as Xinxia curled exhausted against him and drifted off to sleep, was the conviction he had made his own — the same words Zhang Xiaohou had once spoken through tears: *I will become stronger. No matter what.*

He was lucky — everyone he cared about most had survived. But Mo Fan knew better than to assume his luck would hold.

*If I had reached that freezer and found her cold and still in my arms — I would have spent the rest of my life screaming at myself. Why weren't you stronger? Why?*

"Xinxia, we're almost there." Mo Fan kept his eyes fixed on the Safety Barrier ahead, his heart still not fully at rest.

"Mm." Xinxia drew a slow, involuntary breath. *It felt so good to be alive.*

"I heard there's a type of Wing Enchanted Gear," Mo Fan said. "If your legs still can't be healed, we'll turn you into a little flower fairy."

"Those are very expensive."

"Expensive? Please — your big brother here has *plenty* of earning power. I'll get you different styles too: feathered wings, butterfly wings, fairy wings, bat wings — oh, wait, no. That last one's revolting. Completely ruins our whole adorable aesthetic."

They finally made it back inside the Safety Barrier. The night slipped quietly past.

At dawn, the morning sun parted the mist, and clean shafts of light spilled across mountains, rivers, and the battered city below.

Mo Fan was slumped against a wall, eyes half-open, when the sound of cheering drifted to him. He lifted his gaze toward the light — and his breath caught.

An enormous flock of snow-white Celestial Eagles was soaring out of the dawn.

Reinforcements.

*Reinforcements had finally arrived.*

A flock that size meant every eagle carried an Intermediate-Level Mage. A catastrophe this sudden in Bo City — a city sitting so far from the main routes — of course the military had needed time to mobilize. But judging by the sheer scale of the formation, the upper command had clearly been furious. Nothing short of that could have prompted them to deploy an entire elite Celestial Eagle Mage Corps.

Bo City's own Intermediate-Level Mages had always been limited in number. Zhankong's nine Celestial Eagle subordinates had gone up against the Wing-Azure Wolf alongside him, their fates unknown — leaving precious few Intermediate-Level Mages to handle the Demon-Beasts rampaging through the city, especially the nightmare-grade Battle-General-class ones.

The Celestial Eagle Mage Corps swept over Bo City in formation and landed at the watchtower from before. Watching those proud white eagles descend one by one, feeling the aura that radiated from the Military Mages astride them — it was clear. Bo City would hold.

The Celestial Eagle Mage Corps had a simple mandate: hunt and eliminate every Battle-General-class Demon-Beast still roaming the city.

Once the Battle-General-class threats were gone, the remaining Servant-class Demon-Beasts stood no chance against Bo City's full Mage force. The night before, most Mages had been sheltering inside the Safety Barrier, playing defense against the tide. Now they assembled into hunting squads and fanned outward, using the Safe Zone as a launching point to sweep through the entire city.

The Demon-Beasts' tunnels were demolished one by one. Every Demon-Beast killed was one fewer in the world — and the city entered full mop-up operations.

The sweep lasted an entire week. Even the sewers were scoured multiple times. A few might have slipped through the net, but none dared show themselves on the streets again.

After hunt after relentless hunt, Bo City finally fell silent.

But Bo City was no longer the city anyone remembered.

Destroyed buildings everywhere. Collapsed bridges everywhere. Wreckage and ruin everywhere. Occasionally a curious child wandered too close and stumbled across the scattered remains of a corpse, fleeing in shrieking terror. This was not the Bo City of before. That night of rain had left its shadow over too many people — sleepless nights, and a dread of downpours that lived somewhere deep in the chest.

The entire city was steeped in ashen gray. Too many people had lost someone. Too many had given their lives. Even standing, the city felt little different from dead.

"Everyone's leaving," Mo Jiaxing said quietly. He sat indoors with a cigarette between his fingers, looking out at nothing in particular.

Mo Fan's aunt Mo Qing had survived. Her husband was another matter — still unaccounted for, his name absent from the official death lists, though everyone quietly understood what that absence most likely meant.

"The government is planning to relocate us," Mo Fan said. "Settle Bo City's people in other cities."

"Feels like being refugees." Mo Qing's face was dark and hollow. "Drifting from place to place, living under someone else's roof. I'm staying here. The rest of you go."