Monster

The rumbling from underground drew closer and louder, as if some colossal thing were about to burst out of the earth.

The entire ground began to shake violently, dead branches and fallen leaves rustling.

"Not good! Back!"

Yu Chong's expression changed drastically. With a sharp shout, he was the first to retreat.

The others also snapped awake as if from a dream and hurriedly tried to fall back, but it was already too late.

Bang!

The ground suddenly exploded, soil and shattered stones spraying everywhere!

A thick, blood-red "strip of flesh," slick with mucus, shot out from underground like a venomous python, lightning-fast, and coiled around a member of the Nine Layers Gang.

The man let out a shrill scream of utter terror and swung the long saber in his hand with all his might, hacking viciously at that disgusting strip of flesh!

He had cultivation at the fifth layer of Body Tempering, and the force of one slash was fully three thousand jin, fierce and powerful to the extreme. But when the blade struck the strip of flesh, it only let out a muffled "thud," as if it had chopped into incomparably tough old oxhide. The long saber was actually bounced away, the shock numbing his arm.

The next instant, a large stretch of earth around him exploded with a crash!

The owner of that "strip of flesh" revealed its true form.

It was a monster over five meters long, pitch-black all over, its entire body covered in black lumps of flesh.

It had a huge mouth packed with sawtooth-like fangs, and that terrifying "strip of flesh" was actually a dreadful long tongue it could shoot out.

The long tongue snapped back, dragging the man toward the huge mouth filled with sharp teeth.

Pfft!

The sawtooth-like teeth snapped shut with savage force, and the man was instantly bitten in two at the waist, blood splashing all over the ground.

Bang, bang, bang...

Immediately after, the surrounding ground kept exploding. In the blink of an eye, another four or five equally horrifying monsters burst out of the earth, hissing as they launched a frenzied attack on the crowd.

"Help! Save me! Gang Leader! I'm begging you, save me!"

A heart-rending scream echoed through the mountain forest, filled with endless fear and despair.

It was the young man whose wrist Lu Lin had twisted broken earlier. He had also been caught by a blood-red long tongue and was being dragged toward a huge mouth full of fangs.

He struggled madly, but it was all in vain. The next moment, blood burst out, and he followed in the former man's footsteps.

Aside from him, those menial martial artists who had been abducted by the Nine Layers Gang and had already lost their arms also had no strength to resist. One after another, they died miserably beneath the monsters' sharp teeth.

Whoosh!

The sound of something tearing through the air came rushing over!

A blood-red long tongue stabbed toward Lu Lin like lightning.

Lu Lin's figure swayed slightly, and he avoided the strike as lightly as a falling leaf.

But that long tongue was like a living thing. It twisted strangely in midair, turned direction once more, and stabbed at him again with even greater speed!

"Endless..." A cold light surged in Lu Lin's eyes. He no longer dodged. The vast blood and qi in his body instantly roared, and he pushed Spirit Cat Step to the limit. In just a few steps, his figure flashed like lightning, and in an instant he had already closed in on that monster!

His right palm suddenly turned as red as blood, carrying the force of ten thousand jun as he struck the monster's ugly forehead with one palm.

The monster's reaction was also extremely fast. With a hissed roar, one sharp claw swept out with a reeking gust, meeting Lu Lin's palm!

Bang!

Palm and claw collided, actually producing a dull explosive sound like metal striking metal.

The monster's enormous body shook violently. It was sent flying backward by Lu Lin's palm strike, rolling several times across the ground before it barely steadied itself.

One of its foreclaws was twisted and trembling unnaturally; clearly, it had been forcibly broken by that incomparably fierce palm force!

But the vicious, bloodthirsty light in its eyes did not lessen in the slightest. Instead, it grew even more frenzied. Its blood-red long tongue whipped rapidly through the air, giving off sharp "hiss, hiss" shrieks, and it actually lunged at Lu Lin again without fear of death.

"What the hell is this thing?" Lu Lin's brows knitted tightly. He had no desire to get entangled with it any longer.

He leaped up, nimbly jumping onto the thick branch of a nearby great tree. Using both hands and feet, like the most agile of apes, he climbed in a few rises and falls to the branches and leaves of the canopy more than ten meters high.

He looked down, and his pupils abruptly contracted.

At this moment, the clearing below was already a scene of utter devastation, like an Asura slaughter field.

Half of the Nine Layers Gang's people had already died miserably in the monsters' mouths. Broken corpses had been tossed everywhere at random, and blood had nearly dyed the black soil red.

However, an even more heart-chilling scene occurred...

The blood flowing across the ground seemed to be drawn by some invisible force. It gurgled together into thin streams, quickly seeping underground and vanishing.

Even those broken corpses were shriveling at a speed visible to the naked eye, as if all their vital blood had been drained dry in an instant!

Lu Lin could even clearly see faint strands of extremely thin black qi drifting out of those rapidly withering corpses, only to sink beneath the ground as well.

The sight made Lu Lin's scalp prickle and a chill run down his spine.

"What exactly is going on? Is Four Underworld Mountain itself strange, or... is there another reason?"

Yu Chong below had clearly also noticed this terrifying abnormality. His face was ashen as he shouted sharply, gathering the remaining experts of the Nine Layers Gang into a battle formation and launching a fierce breakout.

Yu Chong's strength was indeed formidable. With cultivation at the peak of the ninth layer of Body Tempering, clad in the sturdy "Black Demon Battle Armor," and tempered by more than twenty years of bloody experience in the Martial Army, he had long since cultivated the essence of the Demonic Ape Blood Qi Art to the point where the furnace fire burned pure blue.

Not only had his "Demonic Ape Palm" reached the peak of major accomplishment, close to perfection, even the second killing move, "Demonic Ape Dragon-Capturing Hand," had likewise been cultivated to the realm of major accomplishment!

Using himself as the core, his palms flipped and flew, his qi and blood surging wildly, and he actually beat the several monsters surrounding him into retreat step by step.

In the end, he seized an opening and brought down a "Demonic Ape Palm" as heavy as a mountain, smashing a monster's skull to pieces and killing it outright. Taking the chance, he tore open the encirclement and led the remnants of his men in a desperate charge toward the depths of the mountain forest.

Behind them, the remaining monsters let out furious hisses and pursued relentlessly.

Even farther away, rumbling sounded from the ground once more. Clearly, even more monsters had been alarmed and were closing in on this direction.

Hiss, hiss, hiss...

Below, the monster whose foreclaw Lu Lin had broken with one palm still had not given up. Using its intact claw and long tongue to assist it, it climbed up along the tree trunk, its scarlet eyes locked firmly on Lu Lin.

"Courting death!"

Lu Lin's eyes turned cold, and he held back no longer.

His figure swooped down from the canopy like a great bird, the ten thousand jin of immense strength in his body erupting to the limit in an instant as he struck out with a palm in midair.

The palm wind howled, stirring up a terrifying low pressure. The black leaves around him were swept down by the fierce gust, wrapped in a force vast and irresistible, charging toward the monster like a flash flood bursting from the mountains!

Pfft!

That palm struck the monster's massive head squarely!

With a muffled boom, the monster's head exploded like a rotten watermelon. Red and white matter splattered in every direction, and its headless corpse crashed heavily to the ground, twitching a few times before it stopped moving.

After killing this beast, Lu Lin's figure did not pause at all. He darted out lightly like a civet cat, landed precisely on the horizontal branch of another large tree, tapped the tip of his foot, borrowed the force again, and leapt farther ahead...

The direction he advanced in was shockingly the very direction in which Yu Chong and the others had broken through and fled.

In front of Yu Chong and the others, he had already exposed part of his strength. If these people were allowed to leave alive, they would inevitably become a grave threat in the future.

If those monsters failed to finish them all off, then... he would personally take action.

The defeated remnants of the Nine Layers Gang now numbered only seven.

Four of them were Martial Army elites above the seventh layer of Body Tempering, while the other three were also capable fighters at the sixth layer of Body Tempering. The seven gathered together, and under Yu Chong's lead, they risked everything as they fled for their lives toward the outer edge of the mountain range.

Behind them, the monsters' hisses and heavy pounding footsteps chased after them without pause. Those monsters' eyes were bloodthirsty and crazed, looking as if they would not stop until one side was dead.

"We can't go on like this. Sooner or later, they'll catch up and wear us to death!" Yu Chong sprinted madly while growling hoarsely. "Head for the outside! As long as we escape the range of this mountain range, these monsters most likely won't dare chase us out!"

"Escape outward?" The others' expressions all changed when they heard this.

"But... the Immortal Masters gave a strict order. No one is allowed to leave the mountain within three days, and violators are to be executed!" a young man reminded them while running and panting, his face filled with fear.

"You think I don't know that?" Yu Chong's expression was frighteningly dark as he gritted his teeth and said, "But there are only a few dozen Immortal Masters, while this mountain range is boundlessly vast. How can they monitor every place? We won't return by the original route. We'll deviate from the direction we came in, find a hidden spot to escape and hide, then sneak back into the mountain when the three-day limit is nearly up. The Immortal Masters aren't gods. How could they know?"

The others' eyes instantly lit up, as if they had grabbed hold of a life-saving straw, and they all nodded, feeling that this plan could work.

Immediately, the seven abruptly changed direction. They no longer went deeper into the mountain range, but fled with all their might toward what they believed was the outer edge.

The Demonic Ape Blood Qi Art imitated the ancient demonic ape. Not only was its strength fierce and forceful, its running speed was not slow either.

With Yu Chong and the others madly driving their qi and blood regardless of the cost, their speed suddenly increased, and they actually began to gradually pull away from the monsters pursuing them from behind.

A moment later, the trees gradually thinned, and they could already faintly see the relatively normal mountain scenery in the distance. It seemed they were about to charge out of this eerie region shrouded in black fog.

Hope was right before their eyes!

However, at this very moment...

A huge black banner embroidered with the image of a hideous evil ghost descended from the sky without the slightest warning.

With a loud dong, it plunged deep into the ground in front of them, blocking their path!

The banner moved though there was no wind, flapping loudly as it gave off a chilling aura that made one's heart palpitate.

Immediately after, an indifferent voice drifted faintly from within that black banner:

"Those who leave the mountain without permission... die!"