Jared halted. With a whisper, he told the little Fire Unicorn—now nicknamed “Uni”—to mask its presence. Together they melted into the bramble’s shadow, inching forward until a gap in the thorns framed the scene like a secret window.
A broad, bowl-shaped hollow stretched beyond the thicket. There, five cultivators in identical black robes hunted two fugitives.
Golden thread at each sleeve embroidered a warped demon skull, the icon of the Infinite Soul Demon Sect, gnashing as though devouring souls.
The quarry were beast-folk, not full humans. The male stood nearly ten feet tall, bronze skin striped with faint tiger markings. A king’s sigil blazed on his brow. He wielded a door-wide axe, every sweep roaring with sovereign ferocity.
Beside him, a lithe huntress moved with panther grace. Wheat-brown skin, wild beauty, eyes of vertical amber slits. A ring-banded leopard tail flicked behind her.
Twin daggers flashed in her hands like falling stars. Their auras were strong yet disciplined—cultivated beast energy, not the mindless rage of forest fiends.
But both were spent.
The man’s palms were split; blood soaked the axe haft. Deep wounds scored his frame, and one ragged claw mark across his back revealed glimpses of organs. He gasped like bellows.
The leopard woman fared little better. Her left shoulder smoldered black, poisoned. Blood foamed at her lips, yet her slit pupils still blazed with defiance.
“Haha… You stubborn beasts,” the leading black-robed man rasped. “Hand over the map to the Beast-Soul Crystal Vein, or my next strike will rip out your spirits and bind them to my Ten-Thousand-Soul Banner for all eternity!”
He stood at Heavenly Immortal Realm Level Five, swirling a banner of choking midnight mist. Countless twisted faces writhed on the cloth, howling without sound. As he shook the banner, a mind-piercing screech rose, and his smile turned colder than grave dirt.
“Filthy robbers of the Infinite Soul Demon Sect!” the tiger warrior thundered, voice booming, though blood flecked his teeth. “Level Ten is vast. You have lands of your own, yet you raid the Myriad Beast Mountains again and again. How are you different from demons from beyond the sky?”
Another black-robed attacker sneered. “The strong eat the weak; that is the universe’s law.”
He hurled a sickly green skull forward, and corrosive Netherworld Ghostfire sprayed toward the leopard huntress.
“We guard these mountains. We will die before we yield!” With that cry, the leopard woman crossed her daggers.
Two icy arcs slashed outward, deflecting most of the ghostfire, yet the impact pitched her backward, stumbling on wounded legs.
Infinite Soul Demon Sect…
The name thundered across the gulch like a war drum. Hidden among the thorny undergrowth, Jared felt his gaze hone to a predator’s edge.
An icy surge of killing intent erupted within him, flooding veins and thought alike. Every trace of caution, every plan to lie low, blew away like ash on the wind.
That mutt Soul Devourer is nesting inside their lair after all. So much for searching; fate has brought him back to me…
Ahead, the impatient black-robed commander raised his Ten-Thousand-Soul Banner.
Black light ballooned, knitting itself into a colossal spectral claw that shrieked with the agony of bound spirits. It hurled toward the tiger man’s skull, intent on ending resistance in a single squeeze.
Jared moved.
“Uni, now!” Even as the words left his tongue, he burst from the brambles like a loosed arrow.
Mid-air, the Dragonslayer Sword flashed free, its chill gleam bathing the dim valley floor.
“Five-Element Cycle! Annihilation Edge!”
He held nothing back. The strike was forged from his deepest comprehension of the Five-Element Law and driven by raw chaotic energy.
A beam of Prismatic Sword Aura, its surface rippling with microscopic worlds birthing and dying, tore open the air.
It crossed dozens of yards in a heartbeat, aiming unerringly for the black-robed leader’s brow—his consciousness field.
One slash. Fast. Merciless. Precise. And within it, an intent that judged and ended all things.
