The cold wind was like a knife, cutting to the bone.

Black Pine Forest got its name because the pine needles here were pitch black like ink and hard as iron. Snow piled on the branches, and with the slightest disturbance, large clumps of snow mixed with ice shards would crash down, making dull thuds.

Su Ming knelt in the snow, breathing heavily. With every breath, his fourth broken rib protested, as if someone was sawing back and forth inside his chest with a blunt blade.

"Cough..."

He covered his mouth, a pool of glaring crimson staining his palm.

Su Ming propped himself up on his knees, swaying as he stood.

The cold here wasn't just about the low temperature; it was a deathly silence that seeped into the marrow. In the distance, the direction of Iron Wall Pass was lit up by towering flames that dyed half the sky red. The faint, heart-palpitating rumble of earth veins could still be heard, but within this pine forest, it was as quiet as a massive tomb.

"Cold is right," Lin Yu's divine sense swept the surroundings. "This place is thirty miles from Iron Wall Pass, part of the 'buffer zone.' According to the cultivation world's parlance, this is a backwater that neither demon beasts nor cultivators like to stay in."

Su Ming didn't respond. His gaze fell upon the crude teleportation formation before him, formed by three ancient stone tablets.

The formation lines were ancient, even somewhat incomplete, covered by a thin layer of snow. The groove at the core was empty. The spirit stone originally embedded there had clearly long since exhausted its spiritual energy, turning to dust.

"Elder Mo... truly calculating without a single oversight."

Su Ming reached out, his fingertips lightly brushing over the cold patterns on the stone tablet. Although this teleportation formation was crude, its formation line structure was extremely exquisite. It was clearly a one-way, fixed-point teleportation modified by a master, specifically designed for emergency evacuation from desperate situations.

"Stop sighing. Hurry up and check if this thing is still usable," Lin Yu urged. "Although the probability is low, if those bugs trace the spatial fluctuations and come here, we'll have to prepare for a second round."

Su Ming nodded, forcing his injured body to mobilize the pitifully small amount of water spiritual energy within him, letting it travel along the formation lines for a full circuit.

"The formation base is intact, but seventy percent of the spiritual energy circuits are broken. The core spirit stone is depleted." Su Ming withdrew his hand, his expression turning ugly. "To reactivate it, we'd need at least three high-grade spirit stones, and it would take half an hour to repair the circuits."

"High-grade spirit stones?"

Not far away, Lu Jun, who was slumped in the snow, heard these words and jerked his head up, his eyes filled with despair. "Where would we get high-grade spirit stones? We even used up all our mid-grade ones during the breakout!"

His shout caused the surrounding survivors, who were still reeling from shock, to stir uneasily.

This hastily assembled group numbered about twenty. Besides Su Ming and Lu Jun, the rest were mostly wounded soldiers scattered from various defense zones, along with a few formation apprentices like Lu Jun. Now, they all looked ashen-faced. Some hugged broken arms, groaning softly; others stared fixedly towards Iron Wall Pass, their bodies trembling uncontrollably.

It was fear of death, and also confusion about the future.

Su Ming ignored Lu Jun's breakdown. He turned, his gaze shifting towards the low stone hut beside the stone tablets.

The stone hut was half-buried in the snow, its wooden door hanging askew as if ready to fall off at any moment. The snow on the roof was piled thick, clearly indicating no one had been here for a long time.

"Come, let's go inside."

Su Ming tightened his tattered blue robe, gripped the long sword with its rolled edge, and trudged step by step towards the stone hut.

"Instructor Su..." Lu Jun struggled to his feet, stumbling as he followed. "We... we're not running? This place is too close to Iron Wall Pass! The insect swarm will definitely chase us here!"

"Run? Run where?"

Su Ming didn't look back, his voice as cold as the wind in this forest. "Do you have a flying boat? Or an earth escape talisman? Can you, in your current state, outrun those winged Dark Gold Hunter Insects?"

Lu Jun opened his mouth but couldn't make a sound.

Pushing open the half-hanging wooden door, a musty smell mixed with dust assaulted their senses.

The furnishings inside were extremely simple. A stone bed, a wooden table missing a corner, and a few long-dried meditation cushions. Thick dust had accumulated in the corners.

But Su Ming's gaze was instantly drawn to a well-hidden trapdoor in the corner.

That trapdoor had already been opened, revealing dark stone steps below. A chilly wind was blowing up from within.

"This is the way we came out," Su Ming murmured to himself.

The secret passage Elder Mo mentioned, its exit was right under this stone hut.

"Disciple, look at the table," Lin Yu suddenly reminded.

Su Ming quickly walked to the wooden table.

A layer of dust covered the tabletop, but one spot was exceptionally clean, as if someone had hastily wiped it. In that clean area, a line of hastily carved characters was etched deeply into the wood, clearly made by someone in a frantic hurry.

"Insect disaster erupted suddenly. No path north to return. Heading south to seek survival. Sleeper agent already withdrawn. — Seventh day of the twelfth lunar month, Year Bingyin, left by Border Guard."

Su Ming stared at this line, his pupils slightly contracting.

"Seventh day of the twelfth lunar month..." He silently calculated in his mind. "That's yesterday."

"Seems this fellow ran faster than a rabbit," Lin Yu clicked his tongue. "Yesterday was the initial outbreak of the insect disaster. Iron Wall Pass wasn't in complete chaos yet, but the sleeper agent here had already withdrawn. What does that mean?"

"It means the insect swarm's encirclement is larger than we imagined."

Su Ming reached out and touched the corner of the table. There was a small patch of long-dried, blackened blood there, cold and hard to the touch.

"He was injured, and not lightly," Su Ming analyzed calmly. "'No path north to return' means the road back towards the sect has been cut off by the insect swarm. He could only run south, to the edges of the Demon Tribe's controlled territory to try his luck."

"Instructor Su!"

Lu Jun and several other wounded soldiers also squeezed into the hut. Seeing the words on the table, their already pale faces instantly turned deathly white.

"The sleeper agent withdrew? No path north to return?" Lu Jun's voice trembled. "Then what do we do? We went through so much to escape, only to find it's a dead end?"

"It's over... it's all over..." An old soldier with a broken leg leaned against the doorframe, his eyes unfocused. "I said it... those bugs are everywhere, covering the sky and earth... where is there any way out..."