The night wind over Zhongnan Mountain carried a bone-piercing chill as it swept through the forest, making a sound like mournful sobbing. Ying Zheng's black-clad back had already vanished around the bend of the mountain path leading to the temporary camp, and his steady footsteps gradually faded from hearing.
Cheng Xi stood alone in place, gazing up at the starry sky stained by blood-colored Mars. Yet he felt not the slightest relief at having survived the disaster—only a heavy pall of gloom. The Human Sect, Lu Buwei, Underground Devil Claws, Mars Guarding the Heart... and Ying Zheng's unfathomable schemes, along with the ancestral dragon lurking within him, were like a vast, invisible net tightening around him from all directions.
He spread open his palm. The Jianmu Fragment remained warm and gentle, emitting a faint aura of life that soothed his exhausted body and mind. The dark golden scale stuck to it glimmered with an eerie sheen beneath the blood-red starlight, its lingering chaos and destruction like a bone-clinging maggot. The immense power of the Xirang Crystal lay hidden deep within the fragment. It was currently his greatest support, yet it was also like a bomb that could explode at any moment.
[System Energy: 15% (stable)... Passive scan range: fifty zhang... Weak Spatial Fluctuation residue detected... Bearing: nine o'clock, distance: twenty zhang... Properties: Mirror Scrying/Moonlight Power... Correlation assessment: Yin Yang School inheritance mark...]
The icy notification sounded in his mind like an alarm bell!
The Yin Yang School?!
Alarm bells rang wildly in his heart! Almost the instant the system gave its warning, he sharply turned his head, his gaze like lightning as it shot toward the gnarled branches of an old tree swaying in the night wind at the nine o'clock direction!
There was only a patch of deep shadow there, twisting and swaying beneath the blood-red moonlight. Nothing seemed unusual.
Yet Cheng Xi's instincts told him that something had been watching him from there just moments ago! Moonlight Power... Mirror Scrying... Was it the Yin Yang School's Sky-Peering Mirror? Or some profound Illusionary Arts?
Was it Eastern Emperor Taiyi? Or... that mysterious Moon Goddess?
Without changing expression, he tucked the Jianmu Fragment back into his arms. Yet his fingers quietly clutched a talisman—the very Spirit-Attracting Talisman he had drawn in cinnabar and obtained only after narrowly escaping death! Though damaged, the fierce baleful aura within it could barely be activated now that the system's energy had recovered!
Drawing in a breath of icy air, Cheng Xi suppressed his churning thoughts and turned toward the direction Ying Zheng had gone. The camp lay in a sheltered valley not far ahead, where the flickering glow of bonfires was vaguely visible.
He had only taken a few steps when an exceedingly faint yet unusually distinct sound of fighting drifted over intermittently on the night wind, mixed with stifled cries of pain and the crackling of burning flames! It was not coming from the camp, but from a deeper mountain hollow behind and to the side!
Cheng Xi halted. That sound...
[Audio analysis... Voiceprint match... Target One: young female (pain/anger)... Target Two: unknown creature (roaring/nonhuman)... Ambient sound: explosive flames...]
A woman? A nonhuman creature? Fire?
Cheng Xi frowned deeply. Were Mountain Folk in danger? Or was it... a trap? He instinctively looked at the camp, but Ying Zheng was long gone.
Should he go? Or not?
The woman's stifled cry of pain came again, carrying the piercing misery of someone on the brink of a desperate situation. It instantly struck a chord in his heart. He suddenly Gritted his teeth, and his figure flashed as he slipped toward the source of the sounds like a phantom! System energy circulated through his whole body, and he concealed his presence to the extreme, blending into the shadows of the forest.
After circling around a dense thicket, the sight before him made Cheng Xi's pupils contract sharply!
A forest clearing was lit as bright as day by raging flames! Seven or eight corpses dressed in tight black outfits lay scattered across the ground, their deaths gruesome. Some had been torn apart by immense force, while others were scorched black from head to toe. At the center of the clearing, a petite figure staggered as she battled a monster!
The monster resembled a giant ape, but its entire body was covered in blue-black scales. Its fangs jutted outward, its eyes were crimson, and it spewed scorching sulfurous breath with every attack, stirring up a fetid wind! Even stranger, thick black vapor like ink coiled all over it, giving off a sickening, sinister aura!
The woman fighting it had a slender figure and wore a crimson combat outfit, though it was torn in many places, exposing bloodstained skin. She wore a silver mask that covered the upper half of her face, revealing only tightly pressed pale lips and a sharp, delicate chin. Most striking were her hands—long, slender fingers whose tips danced with lively, blazing orange-red flames!
Those flames were no ordinary fire. They were extraordinarily nimble, sometimes Turning into a long whip to lash out, sometimes condensing into a fire shield to block attacks, and sometimes bursting into flaming arrows filling the sky! Every collision with the monster's scales produced a sizzling burn, leaving behind patches of scorch marks!
However, the woman was clearly at the end of her strength. Her movements had slowed, and her flames flickered dimly. A claw wound on her left shoulder, deep enough to see bone, continuously oozed Black Blood. The black vapor invaded her body through the wound like a living thing! Every time she summoned flames, her body trembled in pain, and a stifled groan escaped from beneath her mask.
"Roar!" Seizing an opening, the scaled monster swung its enormous claw at the woman's head with a shriek that tore through the air! The woman barely raised both arms wreathed in flames to block it!
Boom!
The flames were scattered by the immense force! The woman flew backward like a broken string kite and slammed hard into a tree. Her mask was knocked off, and she spit out a mouthful of blood, revealing a face beneath it that was pale yet breathtakingly beautiful! Her eyes in particular burned with pain and fury, like two dancing flames!
The monster roared as it pounced, its gaping jaws biting toward the woman's vulnerable throat!
This is it!
A cold gleam burst from Cheng Xi's eyes! This was the very instant he had been waiting for, when the monster's old force had faded but its new force had yet to arise!
"Burn!"
With a low shout, the damaged Spirit-Attracting Talisman already clutched between his fingers ignited instantly!
There was no earth-shattering display! Only a dark red baleful aura, cold, savage, and condensed almost into substance, Shot Out soundlessly through the air like an arrow released from its bow, accurately shooting into the scaled monster's open mouth!
"Aooow—!!!"
The monster's forward charge abruptly froze! It let out a distorted, miserable howl! As though thrown into boiling oil, its entire body convulsed violently! Beneath the tough blue-black scales on the surface of its body, dark red baleful aura wriggled and swelled madly like countless tiny venomous snakes! Its eyes bulged, and its crimson pupils were instantly swallowed by scarlet, filled with chaos and pain!
Puff! Puff! Puff!
The hard scales could no longer restrain the violently clashing baleful aura within. They cracked apart inch by inch! Dark green blood mixed with Fetid mucus Shot Out like fountains from countless fissures!
Rumble!
The enormous body collapsed to the ground as though its bones had been removed. After twitching a few times, it became completely motionless. Dark red baleful aura still flickered over its body surface like dying embers, giving off faint sizzling sounds.
Only the crackle of burning flames and the woman's stifled breathing remained in the clearing.
Only then did Cheng Xi emerge from the shadows and cautiously approach. His gaze swept across the black-clad corpses on the ground before falling upon the woman's pale, bloodstained face.
The woman struggled to rise, but tugged at her wound and sucked in a cold breath from the pain. She raised those flame-burning eyes and stared at Cheng Xi as he approached, her vigilance mixed with the dazed confusion of having survived disaster. Her voice was hoarse with weakness, yet it still carried a strange rhythm.
"Who... are you?"
Cheng Xi did not answer. His gaze passed over the woman and landed on the trunk of the tree behind her, its leaves still rustling down from her impact.
There, beside the blood the woman had splashed moments ago, was a crude totem painted in some kind of dark red pigment, one that carried an ancient, savage aura—a dancing flame, with an abstract eye symbol at its center!
A witch rune! And it was... the mark of a fire witch!
This woman... was from the Witch Clan?!
Cheng Xi's heart shook violently! He recalled the Jianmu Fragment bearing Spatial Coordinates in Ying Xi's box, the strange mist within Zhongnan Mountain, the warning carved on the stone cavern remains—"Tongtian Road is severed"—and the system's analysis of the woman's flames: "Not pure fire-element spiritual power; contains faint Bloodline Power."
All the clues seemed to faintly connect at this moment!
Just then!
"Screech—!"
A cold, sharp sound that seemed capable of cutting through souls suddenly came from the high night sky without warning!
Cheng Xi and the fire witch woman simultaneously looked up in horror!
Beside the blood-red waning moon hanging in the western sky, a thread-thin stream of azure light, dazzling to the extreme, tore through the dark red night curtain like a sword of judgment descending from the ninth heavens. At an indescribable speed, it slashed fiercely toward the depths of the Zhongnan Mountain range—the direction of the collapsed stone cavern!
Wherever the azure light passed, space seemed to freeze and split apart! It left behind a void-like rift that lingered for a long time!
A majestic, boundless sword intent that also carried the supreme will to destroy all things and Seize a Thread of Life swept through heaven and earth like a tsunami!
This sword intent...
The system, dormant within Cheng Xi's mind, seemed as though it had been cast into molten lava. It suddenly erupted with an unprecedentedly piercing cry, almost reverent in its intensity:
[Detected ultra-high-dimensional Law Fluctuations! Property: Sword Dao laws (ultimate)! Correlation assessment: Supreme Clarity Immortal Light/Sky-Severing Sword Intent!... Match rate: 99.99%!... Warning! Energy level exceeds scanning limit!...]
Supreme Clarity Immortal Light! Sky-Severing Sword Intent!
Lord Tongtian?!
Before you continue