Earlier, everything had seemed full of life and hope. In just a few hours, the once promising situation had deteriorated beyond recognition. No one had anything to say because a suffocating weight had settled over everyone’s hearts.

Ji Jue coughed, breaking the silence. “The situation might not be as we think.”

“Is there still a chance for things to turn around?” Jiang Xuan asked, shocked and suspicious.

“No. I mean, it might be even worse.”

After thinking it over for a long while, Ji Jue reached into his pocket and took out the trophy he had looted from the ruins. It was a palm-sized piece of skin he had peeled off the guy who had pretended to be dead and launched a sneak attack. 

The pitch-black tattoo branded across it made everyone stare at it in silence. It was an ominous-looking one-eyed emblem, flanked on both sides by scaled wings markings. It was the...