15: Chapter 15 The Fire-Stealing Prophet with Gray Eyes

The moment those grey eyes opened, the entire abandoned pit felt as if someone had grabbed it by the throat.

The thermal fissures stopped roaring.

The grey fire fungus stopped pulsating, too.

Even the ring of black fire on the outer edge of the wanji ember furnace retreated by half an inch, as if making way for something.

Lu Jin stood in the center of the sacrificial grounds, his palm still dripping blood, yet his gaze did not waver in the slightest.

From deep within the furnace chamber, the first thing to reach out was a hand.

No, it was a claw.

It was thinner than that of a Gray-tailed Burrowing Rat and shorter than a human hand, with slender knuckles and pitch-black, glossy fingertips that looked like bone needles repeatedly seared by fire.

Following closely, a lean figure slowly crawled out from the black fire.

When it landed, it made not a single sound.

Short, greyish-black fur clung to its body, and its spine was marked with a dense pattern of scorched scars, as if someone had used fire to carve words into its bones.

Its hind legs were longer than those of an ordinary Gray-tailed Burrowing Rat; when it stood straight, it was nearly half the height of a human.

Most conspicuous of all were its eyes.

Grey.

No crimson, no turbidity.

They were like two cold beads buried deep within the ashes.

It stood before the furnace, steam still rising from its body, yet it held a strip of unburnt flag fabric in its mouth.

That strip of cloth was a corner of the tattered ignition flag, which it had forcefully snatched from the furnace fire.

The pack of rats in the outer circle collectively prostrated themselves even lower.

Several adult Ambush Rats instinctively retreated, their tails trembling.

On the furnace wall, new dark red characters slowly emerged.

[Hero Embryo Formed]

[Unit: Fire-Stealing Prophet]

[Status: Initial Awakening]

[Traits: Decree-Listening, Fire-Returning, Ancient Text Fragment Knowledge]

Lu Jin stared at those lines of text, his gaze slowly falling back onto the creature.

Fire-Stealing Prophet.

Just hearing the name was enough to know that this thing was no longer the same kind of creature as the ordinary kin.

That figure was watching him as well.

Its grey eyes were excessively calm, devoid of the panic and bewilderment expected of a newborn kin. Instead, it looked as if it had just awakened from a very long dream and was reconfirming the world before it.

Two breaths later, it suddenly lowered its head and placed the strip of flag fabric from its mouth onto the ground.

Then, it knelt on one knee.

Its forehead pressed against the ground.

The movement was crisp, without a hint of hesitation.

The cave was very quiet.

Lu Jin did not let it rise; his voice fell coldly.

"Look up."

The figure raised its face.

Its Grey Pupils contracted slightly in the afterglow of the black fire, meeting Lu Jin's gaze directly.

Lu Jin pressed down with his mental sense, probing over without ceremony.

He wanted to see how much this thing had awakened, and how much corruption remained within it.

The moment his mental sense descended, a wisp of extremely faint black fire flashed across the depths of the figure's eyes, like a lingering shadow of the whispers from the furnace.

But that speck of black fire only flashed once before being suppressed by a grey intent from even deeper within.

It did not resist.

It merely rolled its throat slightly, emitting a very low, hoarse syllable that fell somewhere between the squeaking of a rat and a human voice.

"Fire... is very noisy."

As the first sentence was spoken, the rat pack in the outer circle stirred in agitation.

They could not understand the words, but they instinctively felt that this voice was different from theirs.

Lu Jin's eyes narrowed slightly.

It could speak.

Although not yet fluent, this was enough to prove the point.

"What did you hear in the fire?"

The figure was silent for a moment, its grey eyes turning gently, as if recalling or perhaps filtering memories.

"Heard strife."

"Heard hunger."

"Heard dead things wanting to borrow me to live again."

It raised its head; its voice remained hoarse, but its tone was astonishingly steady.

"I did not let them in."

A hint of coldness flashed in Lu Jin's eyes.

Good.

This thing was not only clear-headed, but it also knew what it was contending against.

Just then, an injured Ambush Rat in the outer circle suddenly shrieked.

Half of its ear was scorched black, and its eyes were rolled back, as if the corruption from the ritual hadn't fully receded. It suddenly lunged madly toward a pile of grey fire fungus nuclei nearby, teeth bared, ready to bite.

Before Lu Jin could even raise his hand, the grey figure had already moved.

It was as fast as a wisp of smoke skimming across the ground.

It darted in front of the mad rat in one step, its pitch-black, glossy claw-tip slicing across the creature's throat.

"Ssh."

A line of blood sprayed out.

The mad rat twitched twice and collapsed on the spot.

The entire rat pack fell into instant, deathly silence.

The figure shook the blood droplets from its fingertips and looked down at the corpse, its grey eyes devoid of any fluctuation.

"Fire-thief, return to ash."

The voice was not loud.

Yet the Gray-tailed Burrowing Rats in the outer circle acted as if they had been struck by a hammer, all pressing their heads to the ground in unison.

Lu Jin watched this scene, his brows twitching imperceptibly.

Ruthless.

And precise enough.

It hadn't just killed a mad rat; it was establishing the rules.

This was getting interesting.

Lu Jin raised his hand and retrieved that black shard from his bosom.

As soon as the shard appeared, the black fire in the cave trembled slightly.

The grey figure, having just killed the mad rat, turned its head almost instinctively. Its Grey Pupils contracted violently the moment they saw the shard, and it immediately knelt again—this time even lower, pressing its forehead directly into the tawan iron sand.

"Ancient Fire."

For the first time, its voice showed a noticeable fluctuation.

It wasn't fear.

It was reverence.

Like a burrowing rat seeing true celestial fire for the first time—daring not to look too long, yet daring not to look away.

Lu Jin stared at it.

"You recognize it?"

"Not fully," it said in a low voice. "There are broken characters in the fire, old paths, and many severed names."

"They all avoid this piece of fire."

Lu Jin's palm tightened slightly.

The black shard his father left behind was, as expected, not coincidentally encountered with this furnace.

And this thing was born with reverence for the shard.

The dark red characters on the furnace wall emerged for a moment, then vanished. The figure, however, suddenly turned its head, stared at the spot where the text had disappeared for a moment, and whispered two disjointed words.

"Steal... Fire."

"Return... Nest."

After reading them, it paused, stunned, as if it hadn't expected to actually be able to read them.

Lu Jin's eyes finally showed a slight change.

"You can read the characters on the furnace?"

"I can read a little," the figure raised its eyes, its Grey Pupils very calm. "It's incomplete. It looks like someone smashed it many times, leaving only the edges."

After it finished this sentence, Lu Jin understood completely that the thing before him could no longer be treated as an ordinary kin.

It could read ancient texts, resist corruption, establish rules, and speak human language.

This was a blade fresh from the furnace.

The edge was still hot.

Lu Jin looked at it for a long while, his voice very faint.

"The fire didn't give you a name."

The figure knelt, head bowed.

"Please, Master, bestow a name."

Lu Jin lowered his eyes to look at those Grey Pupils, and after a moment, spat out two words.

"Grey Pupil."

The figure repeated it in a low voice.

"Grey Pupil."

As if carving this name into its bones.

The next moment, it stood up again and turned toward the rat pack in the outer circle.

No one taught it what to do.

Yet it seemed to know naturally.

It walked to the edge of the black stone circle, raised a claw-tip, and quickly traced three rune-like marks on the ground.

As the first mark was etched, the Digging Squad immediately split into two columns, left and right, to open secret passages along both sides of the thermal fissures.

As the second mark was etched, the Transport Team began to stack the tawan iron sand, Armor-Splitting Rock Badger bone armor, and moth sacs by category, clearly organizing even their height and placement.

As the third mark was etched, the Ambush Squad sank like water into several key fissures, their defensive positions even more ruthless and cunning than before.

The chaotic rat pack, under its three marks, became orderly almost visibly to the naked eye.

Lu Jin stood in the center of the sacrificial grounds, watching this scene, the black fire in his eyes slowly settling.

The same pack of Gray-tailed Burrowing Rats had previously been more like a grey tide that knew only how to bite.

Now, they began to have order, rank, and division of labor.

The embryo of civilization had finally poked its head out from the earth.

Grey Pupil walked back to Lu Jin, knelt on one knee, and using its claw-tip dipped in the dust on the ground, quickly drew a rough map on the black stone floor.

Several thick lines represented the old mining layers beneath the Abandoned Zone.

Several dots represented the thermal veins, fungus zones, and iron sand wells they had just occupied.

Then, its claw-tip moved outward, pointing directly at the largest Central Sinkhole in the very center of the Collapsed Star Mining Field.

"The people on the surface are fighting for ore, fighting for shares, fighting for things they can see."

Grey Pupil looked up, its grey eyes as calm as if they had no temperature.

"They cannot see below."

It drew a long line downward at the bottom of the sinkhole and tapped heavily at the end.

"A path is buried here."

"And a map is buried here too."

Lu Jin looked at that point, his voice dropping half a tone.

"What kind of map?"

Grey Pupil was silent for a moment, as if listening to something very far away.

The wind from the thermal fissures blew past its back, gently lifting the layer of scorched black short fur on its shoulders.

Its Grey Pupils contracted slightly, and it spoke very slowly, yet with exceptional clarity.

"Half a remnant map."

"In the map, there is a nest, and there is a pool."

"If the rat pack obtains it, the path will change."

The Gray-tailed Burrowing Rats in the outer circle seemed to understand the word "pool," suddenly becoming restless in unison, with even a few mother rats instinctively inching half a step closer.

Lu Jin's heart stirred.

Something related to incubation.

And something very large.

Grey Pupil raised its claw and drew an intersecting line beneath the sinkhole.

"People will die above."

"Many people will die there."

"They will clog the pit entrance, their eyes fixed on that bit of light on the surface."

It looked up at Lu Jin, its tone calm to the point of cruelty.

"We will go from below."

"Let them fight until their eyes turn red above."

"Whoever bleeds first, yields the path first."

The cave was very quiet.

Only the sound of the thermal veins breathing rolled outward in waves.

Lu Jin stared at the rough map on the ground, saying nothing for a long while.

What he wanted had never been a rat that was merely better at biting.

What he wanted was someone who could revitalize the entire subterranean area for him and play out the next step in every battle.

Now, this thing had crawled out from the furnace.

And it had even casually pointed out the juiciest piece of meat in the mining field for him.

Lu Jin raised his hand, pressed the black shard back against his chest, and let his gaze fall upon the point marking the Central Sinkhole.

"How far?"

Grey Pupil's grey eyes moved slightly.

"Using the current path, three days."

"Using the old mining layers, one and a half days."

"If you want to be even faster..."

It paused, its claw-tip etching an even deeper line along the edge of the thermal fissure.

"We must consume another battle."