"Phew..."
The wind around them suddenly died down.
The Thousand-legged Scorpion's Spiritual Energy fluctuation, originally at the Second-Order Peak, now churned like boiling water.
The air all around began to warp. Even the loose stones on the ground were lifted by an invisible force, floating around it.
"What... what is this?" Zheng Cheng's expression changed first when he saw this scene.
He abruptly grabbed his companion's shoulder, his voice trembling.
"The Spiritual Energy fluctuation is growing stronger... Is that mutated beast breaking through?"
Everyone's mental power instantly focused on it. The next second, gasps rang out one after another.
Someone staggered back a step and struck a broken tree stump with a thud, crying out in shock.
"Third-Order Initial Stage!"
"That mutated beast... actually broke through in the middle of battle? How is that possible? This has to be fake!"
However, mental-power perception could not lie.
The Spiritual Energy radiating from the Thousand-legged Scorpion grew denser and denser, while a pale golden halo circulated around its ruined carapace.
Its originally staggering legs steadied once more. Even the wound where one of its pincers had been severed began slowly secreting viscous fluid, as if repairing the injury.
Zheng Cheng and the others went deathly pale, fear drowning them like a rising tide.
Over all these years, they had experienced countless dangers, yet they had never seen a Third-Order mutated beast. They had only heard storytellers say that mutated beasts which broke through to the Third Order possessed unmatched strength, and that Second-Order Cultivators were no more than ants before them.
Now that they had witnessed this crushing power with their own eyes, no one dared linger for even a moment.
Without anyone giving an order, everyone instinctively retreated, their panicked footsteps nearly tripping them over the heaps of scorpion corpses.
However,