It had been a little over an hour since Jax arrived at the town with the native boys and the now partially disabled mercenaries.
It was a small encampment at first, situated on the side of a forest, near the south end of the tallest mountain within a hundred kilometers.
It was so small in fact that it did not even have a name. There were just a handful of old cabins and huts there.
The only people who lived in this place were retired hunters and those folks that did not fit in anywhere else or had nowhere to go.
These scant few men and women lived simple lives. Hunting and gathering most of the day and eating what they had gathered or preparing it to be eaten in the remaining time.
But since the cultivators arrived en masse, many people had migrated here.
And soon after, the cultivators had followed suit.
First came the beautiful youngsters with their new ideas, educating the natives about the world outside. Then most of them left, leaving only the mercenaries behind that made sure that every native was properly inducted into their respective roles, reforming them from the ground up.
There was safety here, more food than they could ever need, and a chance to start a new life. They were promised many things if they chose to side with any of the three main powers.
Jax was in his early forties, some would say still in the prime of his life. He was a great hunter and a better person.
He had moved here after losing his only son to a rare disease some years back. He often thanked that his son passed away before any of this nonsense started otherwise he would have suffered in vain.
On the first night alone after his son's passing, Jax had a strange dream. He then saw the same dream several times over the course of the next few years, stopping only when he moved here.
In the dream he was always a bird. An unremarkable and insignificant species of bird that was found almost everywhere on their planet. It was too small to even eat and posed no threat to anyone else.
It would be equivalent to a sparrow from earth.
He flew around from one place to another, seeing the flames of war burn every town and city to the ground. Here, death and destruction were as commonplace as furniture in a house.
He saw new threats emerge. Some came from the water they drank, some came from the earth they lived on. And some from the dead.
It always ended the same way, with the death of his people.
They were sold and bartered like cattle and in the end, were left without a home. They died surrounded by a cold darkness, surrounded by monsters and demons he never knew existed.
And he was always powerless to do anything but watch. It was a cruel dream, one that haunted him even when he was awake.
And when the first cultivators arrived, that dream started to become a new reality.
The same cities and towns he saw in his vision were the first ones to fall. Some to foreign influences, many to infighting and discord among his own people.
And then came the new threats.
In many places the ground opened up and hideous creatures crawled out. The cultivators called them 'entrances' to some sort of a tomb buried deep underground.
In a few places there were rumors of the dead coming back to life. They crawled out of their graves and fed on the flesh of the living but were gone by daylight.
He never could confirm the validity of these stories. Every place mentioned in the rumors had already fallen and was nothing but ruins by now.
One of the most dangerous threats especially to his own people was supposed to come from the lake near his new home.
In the dream he had seen an army crawl out of the water, led by a four-eyed creature that was always shrouded in a black fog.
There were a few times where the dream ended prematurely when he got too close to this creature was then killed by it. Even in the dream he did not dare get too close to this monster for it could react to his presence.
How that was possible he could never even begin to imagine.
From the sky, he could see an entrance at the bottom of the lake. Or was it an exit? Either way, an endless stream of bipedal creatures crawled out of this lake and spread in every direction.
He had seen it a thousand times…
And the arrival of this army signaled the beginning of the end for his people.
Determined to change these dreams that had all come true until now, he started spreading rumors of a treasure located at the bottom of the lake.
Unfortunately, none of the powerful youngsters really listened to him. Only a few of their washed-out guard dogs were interested.
When they felt the earthquake that day, that was the first thing that came to their mind. A great treasure finally showing itself!
And when they got there, a young man casually laid waste to all of them.
Jax was shocked to his core.
He had never seen Hao Xuan in any of his dreams.. He did not exist there.
