"Old man."
Yang Mie caught up with the second wave. Before he had even steadied himself, he noticed something wrong with Yang Wudi's expression.
"What happened?"
Yang Wudi did not turn around. He raised a hand and waved it backward.
"Take everyone and retreat."
Yang Mie froze for a moment. Why was the man who had just shouted to pursue them to the bitter end suddenly ordering a retreat?
"How far?"
"As far as possible."
Yang Mie opened his mouth, but before he could speak, the ice beneath his feet exploded.
Cracks spread in every direction from where Yang Wudi stood, racing outward. Shards of ice flew thirty to forty feet high, pelting everyone from head to toe.
Yang Mie darted aside to shield the disciples behind him. Ice shards struck his spiritual energy shield with a barrage of cracks and snaps.
"What's going on?"
From the distance came the sound of bones and ice being crushed together, mixed with a piercing howl, like wind rushing through cracks in stone amplified a hundredfold.
The Demonic Beasts that had fled deeper into the Ice Plain suddenly stopped.
Yang Mie saw it with his own eyes.
The three large Demonic Beasts at the front braked and turned around, their six legs planted motionlessly on the ice.
Then they knelt.
The Demonic Beasts knelt on the ice, pressing their heads against its surface, their bodies curled up and trembling.
Yang Mie's hair stood on end.
Demonic Beasts could run, bite, and even kill people. The one thing they never did was kneel.
In all his years fighting Demonic Beasts in the Northern Lands, Yang Mie had never seen anything like this.
Farther away, the scattered smaller Demonic Beasts fleeing across the ice also flattened themselves against the ground, all facing the same direction.