Grudge

Wu Dao's guess was not wrong.

Zhao Wei had not returned all night, his life or death unknown.

The three pugilists left behind in Panshui Town—Zhang Long, Li Hu, and Cui Shan—waited anxiously through the night before finally realizing something had gone wrong, rushing into Canyun Mountain before the sky had even brightened.

Three pugilists.

All were experts at the peak of Internal Strengthening, with footwork, eyesight, and perception far exceeding that of ordinary people, and they quickly discovered the tracks left by the group the previous night.

With uneasy hearts, the three followed the trail, and by the time the daylight was fully bright, they finally reached the final forest battlefield from the night before.

The pungent smell of blood.

It permeated the air once more as the wind blew past.

The ground was littered with severed limbs and broken arms; most belonged to the Red-Armored Bat Fox, but there were also fragments of human bodies mixed in!

"Disaster has struck..."

Zhang Long leaned over to pull a scrap of Zhao Wei's clothing from the muddy swamp of flesh and blood, his square face turning deathly pale.

"There's some here too, it should be Meng Qingshan's..."

"Fang Tianliu's broken sword!"

"And Mao Ba's damaged talisman paper over here."

"That Wu Dao's clothing scrap."

"Hiss, the Cocoon-Breaking Realm Yingsha is also dead!"

The three searched for a while.

They discovered more relics left behind by the group, their hearts filled with shock and fear.

It was hard to imagine.

What kind of cruel slaughter had taken place in this area last night?

One Cocoon-Breaking expert.

Five peak Divine Strength experts.

All of them had actually perished here!

Yes.

In the eyes of Zhang Long and the others, Mao Ba and Wu Dao were also dead, because they too had left behind "relics."

"Over here!"

Suddenly, Li Hu in the distance let out a strange cry, as if he had encountered something extremely horrifying.

The other two hurried over.

Deep in the forest, trees had collapsed and earth and stone had disintegrated and exploded, causing a massive area of destruction, as if two Ancient Ferocious Beasts had fought here last night.

And at the end of the battlefield.

A deformed monster corpse, having lost its upper body and its spiritual nature, already turned into pus and rotting flesh, lay quietly on the ground.

Scattered around were some foul-smelling fragments of its upper body tissue.

It seemed.

It had been killed in a single strike!

Its upper body had been blasted apart in one blow, resulting in instant death!

Who had this kind of strength?

Zhang Long and the others were shocked, immediately thinking that someone must have played the role of the oriole behind the mantis and the cicada, catching Zhao Wei and the others off guard.

Furthermore.

The strength of this oriole had already surpassed the Foundation Establishment Realm!

"Cough cough, stop guessing, it should have been that fellow Wu Dao who did it."

Just as the three were filled with suspicion and uncertainty.

A somewhat weak voice came from the shadows.

"Who?!"

The expressions of the three changed, and they shouted in panic.

But when they saw the figure walking out from behind a tree, their expressions stiffened.

If not for the fact that the person was clearly a living human in their perception, they would have almost thought they had encountered a corpse coming back to life.

"Daoist Mao Ba, what happened to you..."

The three looked at Mao Ba, who was walking out from behind a massive tree that would take several people to encircle, their expressions somewhat strange.

Because.

At this moment, Mao Ba's appearance was truly grotesque; his head was tilted ninety degrees onto his left shoulder, and he looked at people with crossed eyes, like a ghost.

"Sigh, my skills were not refined enough, I apologize for the embarrassment."

Mao Ba adjusted his posture so he wasn't looking at people cross-eyed, his face filled with bitter self-mockery.

After fleeing in the first half of the night.

He had been on the verge of death.

Had he not brought enough contingency measures with him when he left, he might have been destined to sleep forever in some nameless wilderness.

But even after paying a huge price to purge the Demon Smoke left in his body by the Flesh Tai Sui, he was still left with a permanent injury—

his neck was crooked.

For a long time to come, until he broke through to the Dao Fire Realm (Cocoon Breaking) and reshaped his physique, he would be forced to look at everyone with crossed eyes.

The reason he risked returning to the battlefield

was because after recovering, he had reactivated the Green Crane, only to find that the Green Crane had completely lost its target.

Such a phenomenon

could only mean one thing—

the Flesh Tai Sui was dead!

Upon learning this news, Mao Ba was stunned, ashamed, and felt an incredibly complex mix of emotions.

He had assumed that Yun Tianliu and the others had found a way to survive against the odds and killed the Flesh Tai Sui.

And yet he, Mao Ba, who prided himself on being from an Immortal Sect and had descended the mountain with the sole intention of slaying demons and upholding the righteous path, had abandoned Yun Tianliu and become a shameful deserter!

To escape the condemnation of his conscience, he had returned to this forest, hoping to do whatever was within his power to make amends.

As for sharing the spoils, he hadn't even considered it.

Who would have thought...

"Sigh, it is fate, all a matter of timing."

Mao Ba sighed mournfully; one wrong step had led to another, and the twists of life were simply too surreal.

"Daoist, why do you say it was Wu Dao who did it?"

When Zhang Long and the two others saw the grief on Mao Ba's face, they realized that Zhao Wei and the others had indeed been killed.

But what they couldn't understand was, Wu Dao was only in the Divine Strength Realm; where would he get the strength to play the role of the oriole snatching the mantis's prize?

"You will understand once you look at the surroundings; I have never in my life seen a heart as ruthless as this man's."

Mao Ba's expression was grim as he pointed to a row of bite marks on the ground not far away, as well as several fragments of human tongues scattered about.

And all around them, if one looked closely, one could also find scraps of clothing left behind by Wu Dao, human tissues, and even half a face that had been torn off.

That appearance—

who else could it be but Wu Dao?

They were all quick-witted people.

Based on these clues, how could they not understand the horrific scene of the final battle from last night?

Wu Dao was indeed in the Divine Strength Realm.

But he had hidden his true depth too well.

He must have used some unknown method, paid an extremely heavy price to kill the Flesh Tai Sui, and finally dragged his dying body away with the spoils.

Seeing the others fall silent, Mao Ba gritted his teeth and said, "When I left, the Flesh Tai Sui was already at the end of its rope; it was impossible for it to still have this level of destructive power.

Do you know what this means?

This devil watched as the Flesh Tai Sui killed them, and then waited until the Flesh Tai Sui had fed and fattened itself up before he made his move!!"

"This... that can't be, right?"

Zhang Long and the others were startled, their hair standing on end; even though they didn't consider themselves purely good people, what Mao Ba was suggesting

was still too terrifying for them.

How was this any different from cannibalism?

No matter how chaotic the world was or how dark the human heart could be, cannibalizing one's own kind was something only those driven to the absolute brink of despair would ever do.

Although it is true that the anomalies of Demons and Monsters are indeed harmful to one's growth, since what the eye doesn't see the heart doesn't grieve over, cultivators usually automatically ignore these issues when subduing them.

Nowhere like Wu Dao.

After watching a monster eat a person with his own eyes, he then ate the monster; he was practically no different from a wild beast, and a normal person simply wouldn't be able to get past that psychological hurdle.

But...

Zhang Long and the other two couldn't help but look at the tooth marks and tongue fragments on the ground again; just looking at them made them feel a sharp sense of pain.

Wu Dao was clearly not a normal person!

In that case.

It actually explained why he was so ruthless.

A person who could be so cruel to himself would naturally use every means necessary against outsiders.

They couldn't even imagine it.

If one were to become an enemy of someone like Wu Dao, the kind of inhuman retaliation they would suffer—just thinking about it was enough to make one's blood run cold.