In Su Yang City, Magistrate Fang used his Official Seal to lock down Bibo Lake. Liu City God waved his banner, summoning eight thousand Yin Soldiers and eight thousand Yang Soldiers to form the Four-direction Yin Yang Array!

An unprecedented battle raged, shaking the very heavens and earth, causing the winds and clouds to change color.

The sheer scale of the scene was beyond anything most common folk could ever imagine, even if they spent a lifetime listening to storytellers in teahouses.

Before, some people listening to stories would lament that a small southern city like Su Yang had so few Cultivators, and top-tier experts were even rarer. As a result, people’s lives were considered dull, and the stories around them were all clichéd, old, and uninteresting...

Only now, seeing the Flood Dragon being tortured and Bibo Lake evaporating—seeing mountains and rivers contained within an Official Seal, and Yin Soldiers rampaging through the Mortal World with the wave of a banner—did people finally understand: isn’t an ordinary, uneventful life a blessing in its own right?

When a cataclysmic disaster strikes, all those heroic tales seem like nothing but fantasy!

So how did people survive?

No one knew, it was hard to say... Perhaps it all came down to who had better luck?

The area around Bibo Lake was utterly devastated. Countless houses had collapsed, and more and more people were being brutally whipped by wildly growing willow roots before falling into chasms in the earth in despair.

Cries and wails filled the air as the sky seemed to fall and the ground gave way.

Farther away, civilians who had yet to be affected were fleeing for their lives.

Where were they fleeing to? They didn’t know that either. All they knew was that the farther they got from Bibo Lake, the better.

"Father! Save me..."

"My wife! Little Lang, Second Brother..."

"SOB, SOB... Celestial Lord, what sins have we committed to deserve this? Why... AHH!"

People screamed and shouted.

The passing of the Yin Soldiers brought waves of chilling cold.

Some people’s limbs grew numb without them even realizing it. Then, they would suddenly twist an ankle, or be accidentally crushed by a falling beam, or even be murdered by wicked people taking advantage of the chaos to loot their homes...

Tragedies of every kind unfolded in the Mortal World, a veritable pandemonium.

It was a scene impossible to fully depict or describe.

But there were also touching scenes of mutual aid and true affection. Parents for their children, children for their parents, between siblings, between close friends, or even just the helping hand of a stranger...

In the chaos, the panicking masses failed to notice that those who showed love and helped one another, despite facing the same dangers, always managed to narrowly escape death.

It was as if an invisible halo of good fortune protected them, making their lives more resilient and allowing them to survive longer.

Above Bibo Lake, the Flood Dragon hovering in mid-air had been flayed of layer after layer of flesh, revealing the stark white of its Dragon Bones.

The Golden Blood had boiled the lake dry, and countless Water Demons were burned to charred crisps, littering the cracked and desiccated lakebed.

But dark golden lines began to form on the lakebed. The lines crisscrossed and meandered, looking strange at a glance, and even stranger upon closer inspection!

What did they look like?

"It’s like... a Human Meridian Map!"

These words were spoken by Chi Hua Fairy. She too had rushed to the center of Bibo Lake to collect Dragon Blood when the Flood Dragon first started shedding it.

Later, when the Flood Dragon’s Golden Blood began to rain down, she was a step too slow to escape in time.

However, she was protected by the Sword Qi of the Beichen Sword Immortal, so the falling drops of Golden Blood did not kill her. In fact, relying on a great treasure she carried, she even managed to collect a single drop of the Golden Blood!

But that was all. One drop of Golden Blood was Chi Hua Fairy’s limit.

Though her treasure was powerful, her own cultivation level was limited, and she couldn’t unleash the treasure’s true might.

And so, in the next moment, just as she muttered the words, "It’s like a Human Meridian Map," a dark golden light shot out from that very "Human Meridian Map."

Chi Hua Fairy was enveloped by this golden light and plunged into an unknown space.

It wasn’t just Chi Hua Fairy. In fact, everyone who had been dragged underground during this catastrophe and had been lucky enough to survive was plunged into that same unknown space at that exact moment.

What kind of space was it?

It was a world where red clouds filled the sky and the barren, crimson earth stretched for a thousand li.

In the one hundred and twenty-seventh year of the Yun Country, a great drought afflicted the entire nation.

The people fled from north to south in droves.

At first, they traveled with their families. Then, death and injury plagued their journey. Eventually... most of the survivors had become lone wolves, having lost their relatives, their homes, and everything they had to live for.

These refugees then gathered together, their numbers swelling like a snowball rolling downhill as they headed south, eventually becoming a terrifying force akin to a plague of locusts.

Wherever they passed, they consumed everything.

The locals either died or became refugees themselves, joining the "locust swarm" and continuing the sweep toward the next place of survival.

After falling into that unknown space, Chi Hua Fairy had become one of these refugees.

Though she was dressed in a pristine Magical Robe and should have stood out starkly from the other refugees, neither she nor anyone else seemed to notice.

In the eyes of others, Chi Hua Fairy was bedraggled and filthy, and in her own eyes, she was the same.

Not only that, but she had also forgotten her own origins, remembering only her identity as a refugee and the experience of fleeing...

It wasn’t just her; everyone who survived this "refugee disaster" was in the same state.

Yes, were there really any refugees?

Weren’t the people who survived this "flight from famine" the very same people who had survived the cataclysm at Bibo Lake?

The same was true for Song Ciwan.

Before the Golden Blood fell, she sensed that the Paper Soul Puppet on Aunt Zhou had been triggered three times. She immediately used an Escape Technique to go after Aunt Zhou.

And just as she found Aunt Zhou in a fissure in the ground, at that same moment, a burst of dark golden light erupted from the center of Bibo Lake, sweeping over everyone in the area!

Song Ciwan only had time to grab Aunt Zhou’s hand before she was plunged into a dizzying spatial and temporal shift.

When she came to her senses, she vaguely felt as if she had forgotten many things. At the same time, a hazy set of memories that didn’t belong to her tried to force its way into her mind!

’Who am I? Where am I?’

’Oh, I’m an ordinary villager from Bixi Village.’

’My parents are both dead, and life is quite hard, but it’s simple and uneventful, and I can just about get by.’

’Until one day, a horde of refugees from the north stormed into Bixi Village.’

’They looked like people, but they weren’t really people... They were jackals, tigers, vermin, Demons!’

’They plundered everything in the village—ate all the food, stole all the goods, killed all the living... Oh, actually, they didn’t kill everyone.’

’If someone was willing to abandon everything they had, grab a tattered bundle, and join the ranks of the refugees, then that person became one of them and naturally wasn’t "killed."’

That was how Song Ciwan had survived in a daze. Her neighbor, Aunt Zhou, had survived with her.

Aunt Zhou had always helped her a great deal, and the two of them supported each other, struggling to stay alive.

Until, clutching their tattered bundles, they followed that group of "enemy-companions," continued south together, and found another village!