Chapter 1451 Fatal Instincts Rowan spent hours walking slowly through the fields of bodies, observing how they all died, he should have passed more than three hundred thousand dead bodies at this point, all impaled at the torso and staked to the ground, and with the meticulousness of this act, he inferred that this was not the work of many people but of a single person. He could detect the touch of a singular consciousness dictating this slaughter, despite the savagery of it, there was a constant note of sadism that was eerie. With all the madness and horror he had seen over the years, he was not surprised that something as virulently evil as this was dwelling inside of him. The bodies all appeared to be in the same condition, all savaged beyond common sense with their entrails mostly hanging outside their bodies, and their blood drained from their bodies to cover the earth, making his two legs as he walked through the field of bodies to be covered with red up to his knees. It did not take long for Rowan to begin coming across bodies of women and children; however, it was odd that even this group of people had signs that they all bore arms, and this was not just a slaughterhouse, it was a battlefield, but one where it seemed that everyone came to fight. Whatever they had been up against must have been so terrible that they collectively decided to bring everyone to war for even the slightest chance of success. He had not seen another group of individuals or creatures here who could have been their enemy, and so either their enemies collected their dead, or they were up against a single entity. The memories of the body that he inhabited were blank, the only thing he could glean from it was simply long stretches of white haze like a fog and flashes of terror and hunger that lasted for too long, also fear, a deep and intrusive fear that had pervaded every portion of this man's life seemingly from the time he learned how to walk. His destination was apparent, it was towards the screams he could hear ahead of him. Hoarse and spine-chilling, the cries were pure nightmare fuel, and anyone who heard them would run in the opposite direction, but Rowan did not have the luxury of running away from his problems, even if they would kill him. The time he spent walking had been used to familiarize himself with this body, without the ability to call upon his powers that would fix every injury he got in an instant, he had to draw upon everything he knew about the human body, and Rowan knew everything, and that was how he could easily discover that although this man was a mortal, he was not ordinary, and learning about this difference did not require much knowledge when it was extremely apparent. His bones were stronger, muscles tougher, and his flesh was thick like leather; it would be difficult to cut him with an ordinary sharp blade without putting a great deal of effort behind the blow. Even after walking for hours, he did not sweat or feel any form of fatigue, instead, he seemed to be recovering, and with all this observation he became piqued with interest in what had transpired to make this mortal become this strong when he had checked the bodies along the way and none of them possessed this quality. Without his eyes that could see through reality at a glance, he could not peer into the cells and observe the flow of energy inside his body so he had to do it with mundane tools, using the senses of this body, from his eyes down to his skin to understand what was happening inside of him. He touched his chest, his heart was strong, beating slowly, steady. He drew breath into his lungs for up to ten seconds at a single go, and when he held it, he discovered that it had been nearly forty minutes, and he had no desire to take in another breath. The blood flowing in his veins was thicker than normal, almost the consistency of wet clay, and only a heart as powerful as what beat in this body could have circulated it through his frame, and except for his heart and brain, the rest of his organs were small, almost shrunken, it was as if his body was meant to take a ridiculous amount of punishment while still maintaining effectiveness. Although he knew of many cultivation methods that could do such a thing to a body, something about this warrior he inhabited seemed… off, Rowan could not just place his fingers on it, and he decided to let this intuition stew at the back of his mind and expect inspiration would sort out the answer for him in time. This observation about his strength did not bring him any sort of relief, because he had learned that the more advantages he had inside these fractures, the greater the danger he was going to be facing. What would necessitate this fracture to give him a body that was almost equal to that of a legendary state Dominator, with his attributes equal to ten times that of an ordinary man inside a fracture where he should be a mortal? His strength, speed, and recovery were ten times of a normal man, and he had observed that except for the missing eye and the three fingers and two toes that did not regrow, all of his wounds had healed to a state where he was nearly at the peak of his strength. He threw several slow jabs in the air, and the fluidity of his joints coupled with the way his fist created a blast of wind around him as he swung them brought a small sense of relief to him, Rowan would simply have to use the advantages he had to prevail over what was to come, no matter how great it would be. The path he was headed was at an incline, sloping upward, he should be climbing a gentle hill, and he was approaching the end of the field of bodies, and the screams were becoming clearer. He looked back and noticed that he had been on an incline for a while, and he had woken up near the top of this slope, for further behind was a field of bodies that stretched into the horizons before being swallowed by the mist. He had not been walking through a field containing a hundred thousand bodies, instead, they were millions. ® The cry came again, sounding even more pained and drawing Rowan's attention away from the endless rows of bodies. It came from a singular source and judging by its pitch, it should be a man, and if he could hear his cries of pain from miles away, then it meant the source was supernatural, and while inside this mortal shell, there were few things he could do to truly analyze this danger before he faced it, but he knew that the owner of this voice must be many times stronger than him. Reaching the peak of the hill, he climbed over the top and the World opened up for him, and Rowan witnessed the devastation. As a powerful immortal he had witnessed hundreds of universes being destroyed by a casual swipe of an Old One's claw or tentacle, and so he was quite used to seeing destruction on such a large scale that mortal mind could not fathom, and yet being placed inside a mortal's body without his supernatural perception had forced him to view destruction that was relatively on a smaller scale in a new light, and his understanding of what being in such a position took a drastic change. You see, even though Rowan could see through the eyes of his mortal children, lived their lives with them, and experienced their wars and suffering, he was still a powerful presence above it all, and he was experiencing it from two perspectives, and even though he could glean every detail of their anguish, he could not truly experience it in a manner that would shock him to the core, his immortality had been a barrier over his senses that he was not aware of, and now standing on top of a mountain and seeing an entire continent laid to waste, made his spirit shudder, even the endless fields of bodies behind him was a backdrop to watching a continent washed in red and bodies piled up in piles that formed mountains. Horror and fear filled his heart, as the steady heartbeat of this warrior began to increase as adrenaline and various exotic hormones began to run rampant through his body. Usually, Rowan would have easily cut out all of this distraction, but now he had to learn to flow with it. Fear and pain were something that every mortal lived with, but some of them had learned to take advantage of that state, and so that was what Rowan was doing: taking advantage of his body, increasing its physical activities, and collecting as many details of the horror as he could gather. Of course, the first thing he was looking out for was the origin of the screams, and it did not take long for him to find it. His breath caught in his throat, and his body was frozen in place; he could not help the reaction from his body; it was as instinctive as breathing. Hanging like a falling sun not far from the earth, a broken blood-red ball of flesh hovered over the shattered continent, and at the center of it was the cry of a man.