The Ancient Capital

The sky hung like black velvet — dense and suffocating, blotting out every trace of sunlight.

No rain fell. The world simply dimmed to gray, and the season's dead colors, ash and withered brown, stripped the landscape of whatever life it had left.

The final passenger jet descended slowly through the black clouds, its landing marking the arrival of the last wave of travelers foolhardy enough to make for the Ancient Capital in the midst of the Undead uprising. They had made their choice. Now they were in the thick of it.

"They're shutting down air travel entirely. Thank goodness we made the last flight." Liu Ru stepped off the plane and let out a quiet sigh.

Her eyes — bright with an understated beauty — swept across Xianyang Airport.

In truth, this was her first time traveling far from home — her first real glimpse of the Ancient Capital, and of just how utterly different its atmosphere was from the cosmopolitan energy of Shanghai's Magic City.

"Excuse me — both of you." A uniformed man stepped into their path at the exit, his expression grave. "All arriving passengers are required to present identification and state their purpose of visit."

Mo Fan frowned. "Did I land in a foreign country? Nobody told me anything about a checkpoint."

"Extraordinary circumstances. Please cooperate."

"Tourist," Mo Fan said simply. "And this is my mistress — her identity isn't convenient to disclose."

Liu Ru's face went scarlet the instant the words left his mouth.

*Could you not lie like a normal person? His mistress — seriously?!*

The uniformed man's expression froze. He had never in his life seen someone bring their side piece to the Ancient Capital and act so completely unapologetic about it.

The reality was that Liu Ru had no valid identity to show. According to the official records, she was already dead — a neat piece of work courtesy of the forensic pathologist Nie Dong. She had since become a member of the Blood Clan and slipped quietly out of her old life, so her documents had never been updated.

As for boarding the plane — she had used her original ID. Curiously, the airline's systems had a gap: the documents of officially deceased persons could still clear check-in without a problem.

Blood Clan technically fell under the Undead classification, of course. But in all the time Mo Fan had spent around Liu Ru, nothing about her read as anything other than human — except for what she needed to eat. Her warmth, her presence, even the fresh vitality of a woman in her prime were all still there, perfectly preserved. She was, frankly, a feast for the eyes.

It was still broad daylight. The Undead slept in their graves.

Xianyang was some distance from the Ancient Capital itself. Mo Fan and Liu Ru couldn't be bothered to take a car — they summoned the Swift Star Wolf and tore along the edge of the highway, arriving at Xi'an without delay.

It was immediately apparent that the Ancient Capital was under strict wartime control. Even the outer districts were now encircled by towering walls.

Xi'an had always had its ancient inner city walls, and the area within them was considered the historic center. Beyond those walls lay districts like Yanta and Beilin. In ordinary times, the inner walls served mainly as a tourist attraction.

What was far from ordinary was the entirely new outer wall raised beyond them — massive in scale, its diameter roughly five times that of the ancient inner walls. Everyone previously living across the outer districts and suburbs had been ordered to relocate inside its perimeter.

"I've never seen a Safe Zone this enormous." Liu Ru tilted her head back, gazing up at the outer wall stretching across the horizon like the spine of a mountain range.

"Must have taken more Earth Element Mages than I can count to build it," Mo Fan said. "It's extraordinary — and it tells you exactly how serious things have gotten out here. I doubt there's a square meter of safe ground beyond those walls."

Looking out from where he stood, the outer wall stretched on in both directions until it vanished from sight. The ancient inner walls had measured barely fourteen kilometers in circumference, yet this structure dwarfed them utterly — it had swallowed most of greater Xi'an within itself, a fortress on a scale that defied easy comprehension.

At the city gates, Magic Association personnel and Military Mages stood watch, conducting checks.

During the day, movement in and out was monitored but not barred. As evening drew near, however, the military effectively sealed the exits — because everyone understood what lay outside those walls. Any ordinary person who stepped beyond the perimeter was nothing more than a meal waiting to be claimed.

Inside the walls, the city was another world. The streets were lively, no different from any major city in peacetime. If anything, the forced consolidation of people from the surrounding areas into the central districts had made the place unusually vibrant — crowds thick, noise constant.

The great new outer wall coiled around the city like the body of a vast dragon. The citizens sheltered inside had no reason to fear whatever was unfolding in the blood-soaked world beyond. Perhaps they had simply grown used to it by now. Life carried on as it always had.

Mo Fan had no interest in lingering in the outer districts. He went straight to the Bell Tower Magic Association.

The Bell Tower Magic Association and the Drum Tower Hunters' Alliance sat at the very heart of Xi'an, standing within the ancient inner walls. Mo Fan had initially thought to visit Zhang Xiaohou's military unit first to gather the full picture — but he thought better of it. There was no real need. He went directly to find the person who had sent him that death notice.

That person told him: Zhang Xiaohou had vanished during a rescue operation. No remains had been recovered, no follow-up rescue dispatched. What could be confirmed was the last known location — somewhere between the Peril-Dwellers' settlements of Yangyang Village and Hua Village.

In this era of rampant Undead activity, the only people still living beyond the outer walls were the Peril-Dwellers. Their villages had so far remained intact. Unfortunately, these communities used no modern communications equipment, which made information travel at a crawl — getting a single message through could take a very long time.

The report of total casualties had been hand-delivered by one of the villagers. The military had never been able to independently verify it.

Mo Fan spent a long time talking with Feijiao, Zhang Xiaohou's instructor. Feijiao told him everything he knew, holding nothing back. It was plain to see that the man genuinely cared about what had become of Zhang Xiaohou — but he had pressing duties of his own and couldn't go looking for answers himself.

"So where do we go?" Liu Ru asked.

"We find a few experienced people to come with us to Yangyang Village," Mo Fan said.

He knew nothing about this region. In many ways, the Undead were more dangerous than Demon-Beasts — less predictable, harder to put down. Whether the goal was to uncover the truth or to bring someone home, a reliable team behind him was not optional.

Mo Fan first tried the Magic Association, but no one there had any appetite for venturing outside the walls. He ended up at the Drum Tower Hunters' Alliance instead.

Among Hunter-mages, reckless courage was never in short supply.

The Hunter Hall was packed.

Hunters went where the danger was. And where the danger was worst, the rewards ran deepest. The Ancient Capital's Hunters' Alliance was buzzing.

Mo Fan glanced up at the scrolling bounty board. "Rescue" commissions dominated it by a wide margin.

The Undead riots had left countless people stranded beyond the walls. Those who had made it inside were putting up serious sums to bring their loved ones in.

"Almost every single one is a rescue commission," Liu Ru murmured to Mo Fan. "There must still be so many people out there in danger."

"Rescue?" A raspy, duck-like voice cut in from beside them, flat and knowing. "Those are body-retrieval jobs."

Liu Ru turned. Standing nearby was a short Hunter-mage in full explorer's kit — so short that she had to look down to meet his eyes. He caught her glance and launched smoothly into the depth of his experience:

"The people posting those commissions just don't want their family members joining the ranks of those *things* out there. So they pay us to go collect whatever's left. That's all it is. Honestly, the Ancient Capital Hunters' Alliance might as well rename itself the Corpse Collection Alliance at this point."