Chen Wuya slammed both palms downward. Misaligned Source Force erupted with a thunderous roar, racing out along the earth veins. The gray-blue current slithered through the rock fissures like a serpent, reaching the old wound on the beast's right hind leg within one-thousandth of a breath. But just as the force was about to pierce flesh and bone, the beast's four limbs suddenly left the ground. Its spine arched into a black curve, and every remaining scale exploded, turning into a skyful of black thorn-rain that plunged down from above, blanketing the entire battlefield.
Every thorn shrieked as it tore through the air, their crisscrossing paths weaving a net that sealed off every route of retreat.
Bai Zhi's sword tip was still embedded in the ground, its lightning not yet dispersed, when the sudden assault left her unable to pull free. She wiped the blood from the corner of her lips, then slammed her left hand against the ground, using the recoil to shift her body three feet sideways and narrowly evade a cluster of flying thorns. Yet one still grazed her shoulder, carving a deep gash that instantly soaked through her clothes with blood.
Mo Feng leaned against a broken pillar, with only half the framework of his folding fan left in hand. Gritting his teeth, he drove the fan handle into the end of the waterline. His essence blood seeped into the break, barely keeping the guiding path from severing. But the narrow thread woven from water and blood had begun to dry and crack, on the verge of snapping apart.
"The force is about to disperse!" he growled.
Chen Wuya did not answer. He sharply drew back his right palm and thrust his left palm sideways, forcibly retracting the Misaligned Source Force that had been charging straight