Seeing that the large bird had gone still, Rulu immediately stopped summoning the ice storm to attack it. W.W. also flew back and rejoined the others.
Kallen looked at the bird's head she was holding in her hands, her heart still racing, and said, "That strange bird was really something — it recovered from such severe injuries. Good thing W.W. was here to help us. If it had just been Rulu and me, we really couldn't have beaten it."
Rulu let out a long breath and said, "Alright, now that the Emperor's sentinel has been taken care of, the other Strange beasts probably aren't as tough as this bird. We can travel in peace."
C.C. said, "Rulu, don't celebrate just yet. Even though we defeated this bird, that only means it won't cause us trouble for the time being."
Rulu was taken aback. He glanced at the bird's motionless corpse lying in the distance and said with puzzlement, "What do you mean 'for the time being'? Isn't the bird already dead? Can it actually come back to life?"
A mysterious smile spread across C.C.'s face. "You're exactly right — it can indeed come back to life."
"Huh? C.C., you're not joking with me, are you?"
"Why would I lie to you? If you don't believe me, take a close look at the bird's head."
Rulu immediately examined the bird's head that Kallen was holding. He noticed that its shape had changed — the head appeared to be expanding, like dough beginning to ferment.
Then the tip of the bird's severed head began rapidly disintegrating, dissolving into something like dust that slowly dispersed into the air. At the same time, the bird's distant corpse on the ground also began to swell and break apart. In no time at all, both the head and body crumbled entirely into dust and vanished into the air.
"What… what's going on?"
"The bird just disappeared on its own?"
Kallen and Rulu stood wide-eyed, utterly stunned by what they had just witnessed.
"I forgot to mention," C.C. said, apparently having anticipated this all along, her expression perfectly calm. "None of the living creatures in this region can be killed or permanently destroyed. Even if you kill them, they can resurrect somewhere else. I'm afraid it won't be long before that bird comes flying back toward us again."
"No way?!"
"Can something that absurd really be true?!"
Upon hearing C.C.'s words, both Rulu and Kallen's first instinct was disbelief — but they quickly felt that C.C. didn't seem to be joking, and everything she had said before had come true. That left them no choice but to believe her.
Kallen's face filled with unease. "Then… if that bird resurrects and comes after us again, what do we do?"
C.C. said, "I don't know either. In any case, let's just move as fast as we can. As long as we reach that place before the bird revives, we'll be fine."
The group continued on their way. Along the route, they did their best to avoid the Strange beasts living in the area; those they couldn't avoid were driven off or killed by force. They rested a few times along the way, eating some of the food they had brought, then pressed on. Gradually, the sky grew dim and evening set in. C.C. announced that they were now very close to their destination — just a few more hours, and they would arrive.
"Screech——"
A familiar cry rang out from the sky. Everyone who had been moving stopped in their tracks, startled. They halted and looked up to see an orange-yellow bird appearing in the distant sky. Rulu and the others recognized it immediately as the very bird they had killed earlier — the one that had vanished.
"The bird really appeared! It actually came back to life," Kallen cried out in alarm.
C.C. furrowed her brow. "This is trouble — it still caught up to us."
Rulu said, "It's fine. We beat it once before, and we can beat it again. The moment it comes down, we'll deal with it the same way as before."
The group held their ground, waiting for the bird to swoop down and attack. But the bird simply kept circling high in the sky, letting out strange cries again and again without descending to strike.
"What's going on? It keeps staying up there — why does it just keep crying out like that?" Kallen waited a good while without seeing the bird make any move, and couldn't help but find it strange.
"Watch your surroundings — something else has appeared," W.W. said. At those words, everyone immediately pulled their gaze away from the bird in the sky and looked around. They spotted two strange creatures nearby. Looking more closely, they saw that one was a long-armed gibbon standing upright like a human, its entire body covered in long white fur, while beside it stood a yellow leopard.
Kallen studied the yellow leopard carefully, and suddenly she realized something. "That leopard looks really familiar — it looks just like the one we killed before. Could it have come back to life too?"
Rulu's expression grew grim. "It must be the same one. This is trouble. That big bird, plus the leopard, and now that white gibbon — if they all attack us at once, we'll have a very hard time holding them off."
"Come on, are these things really that smart? Can they actually team up like people do? Ha… ha…" Kallen tried to crack a joke to ease the tension, but she couldn't quite manage to laugh.
Sensing that things were turning dangerous, the group's nerves grew taut. They stared intently at the Strange beasts in the distance, on guard for an attack. Suddenly, the leopard's hind legs drove hard into the ground, and it broke into a high-speed charge across the earth, racing straight toward Rulu and the others.
"Damn beast — it's really coming," Kallen muttered under her breath, gripping her spear and charging toward the leopard. The leopard swiftly veered to the side, dodging Kallen, and lunged toward Rulu and the others behind her.
Rulu summoned a powerful gust of wind to slam into the leopard, slowing its movement. At the same time, W.W. directed a large boulder to crash down onto it, sending the leopard flying.
A sharp whistling sound cut through the air — "whoosh," "whoosh" — as several crystal-clear ice spears materialized in the distance and came hurtling toward Rulu and the group. Their attention had been fixed on the leopard and they hadn't noticed the ice spears coming. One of them grazed across Rulu's chest, slicing through his outer clothing and leaving a shallow wound on his chest.
Rulu pressed a hand to his chest — the cut wasn't deep, the injury not serious. He looked toward the direction the ice spears had come from and saw the white-furred gibbon continuously swinging its arms, with several half-meter-long ice spikes forming in the air around it.
A clear, sharp cry rang out from the sky. The bird that had been circling above burst into a strange orange-red radiance, its entire body consumed by flames, transforming into a fire bird. The blazing bird folded its wings and dove straight toward Rulu and the others. W.W. hastily directed a boulder to fly at it. The flaming bird swerved and wove through the air, dodging the stone while simultaneously lunging toward W.W., and the two erupted into fierce combat high above.