Thunderstorm Peak

"The thunderstorm zone was forbidden territory for ordinary soul masters. If a level-seventy-five Soul Sage didn't understand the principles of conductivity and rashly pursued them in..."

Su Chen did not finish.

The conclusion had already been written within those terrifying thunderclouds that crackled without end.

Pursue them.

Thunderstorm Peak was not the finish line. It was a battlefield.

The closer they got to the foot of the mountain, the hotter the air became.

It was not geothermal heat, but static electricity.

Every hair on Su Chen's skin stood on end, while his own hair rose upward with restless crackling sounds.

Beside him, Chu Yao forcefully pressed down her hair, but the strands refused to cooperate and stubbornly frizzed outward.

Yan Wuji turned his face aside, hiding the curve at the corner of his lips just in time.

At the foot of the mountain, purple-white lightning struck three times in succession within a hundred-meter radius. The thick stench of sulfur and ozone filled the entire area, making their noses sting.

Su Chen stopped and raised a hand.

"Iron Wall."

Ten Dark Golden Terrorclaw Bears stepped out of the void. Their enormous bodies hit the ground with dull, thunderous booms. Under the flashing lightning, their scale-like hides reflected a cold, heavy metallic sheen.

A command through their mental link was branded directly into the consciousness of the ten Fearclaw Bears.

—Spread out. Form a horizontal line. Keep three meters between each other.

They silently deployed like a moving wall, instantly covering a width of more than thirty meters.

A bolt of lightning as thick as a bowl tore vertically through the clouds and struck the back of the middle Fearclaw Bear with perfect accuracy!

Boom!

Blue-white currents raced madly across the dark golden scales, yet like a stream washing over the sturdiest boulder, they ultimately dispersed into the ground through the bear's massive paws and vanished without a trace.

That Fearclaw Bear did not even blink.

"Move." Su Chen's voice remained calm.

Mo Qianye shifted his gaze away from the completely unharmed Fearclaw Bear. "Have you tested this before?"

"No," Su Chen said. "But the scales of Dark Golden Terrorclaw Bears possess metallic properties, and their physical defenses are absolute. In theory, they are perfect lightning rods."

Mo Qianye fell silent for a second.

This was not a guess. It was a precise judgment founded on absolute understanding of his own summons.

At that moment, a fourth bolt of lightning struck, landing squarely on the back of the same Fearclaw Bear.

It seemed somewhat annoyed. Turning its head, it glanced at Su Chen and let out a low roar from its throat.

As if to say—Master, your judgment was correct.

The trouble began halfway up the mountain.

The Shadow Leopards scouted the flanks, but the higher they climbed, the stronger the electric field became.

The shadow concealment they took such pride in began suffering severe interference. Static electricity disrupted the stability of the shadows, causing their forms to flicker between solid and illusory, leaving them fully exposed.

An even greater problem came from above.

Su Chen first heard the sound of wings beating at high speed. Not one pair, but an overwhelming mass of them.

They burst out of the thunderclouds!

Their bodies were covered in purple feathers, their wingspans exceeded two meters, and their long, snake-like necks accumulated visible charges of electricity. Their pupils were vertical golden slits.

Thousand-Year Soul Beasts, Purple Lightning Thunder Eagles!

There were thirty-seven of them!

Su Chen issued a mental command at once, but it was not to engage.

The Shadow Leopards' strengths lay in their speed and uncanny footwork, but within such an intense electric field, static electricity would disrupt their movement paths and slow them down.

No matter how fast they were, they could not outrun lightning.

The first dive came!

Three Thunder Eagles slanted down from the flank, folding their wings sharply and transforming into three dazzling purple arrows as they shot toward a gap at the side of the Fearclaw Bear formation.

That was the Shadow Leopards' operating area.

"Withdraw."

With a thought from Su Chen, the two outermost Shadow Leopards were instantly pulled back into the summoning space.

But they were still half a beat too slow.

The third bolt of purple lightning struck with precision, instantly scorching through the last Shadow Leopard's fur and leaving behind a charred line of blood. After landing, it convulsed violently, and a heavy, dull pain surged from deep within its consciousness.

Su Chen closed his eyes briefly and recalled it as well.

All eight Shadow Leopards retreated.

For the first time, the weakness in his aerial combat capabilities tore through his army formation with such raw and brutal clarity.

"Our turn?" Yan Wuji stepped forward, a composed smile on his face.

Su Chen nodded.

Roar—

The massive phantom of a Profound Ice Dragon unfurled behind him, and an invisible domain of frost activated instantly!

Within a radius of twenty meters, the temperature plummeted. Moisture in the air directly condensed into fine ice crystals.

A massive curved Iceglass Barrier formed out of thin air high before them. Its translucent crystalline surface was edged with blade-sharp facets.

Another wave of diving Thunder Eagles slammed into it!

Boom! Boom!

The electric currents refracted and scattered across the ice, exploding into a brilliant spray of ice crystal fragments.

The main body of the barrier remained completely intact.

"Ice has extremely poor and uneven conductivity," Yan Wuji explained calmly, as though teaching the most basic principle in a classroom. "The current cannot form an effective path. It will only keep dispersing and will never be able to directly penetrate it."

Su Chen silently took note. This man had clearly tested it before.

Mo Qianye's figure flickered as he entered position.

Six streams of deep crimson, nearly black flames flowed between his fingers, eerie and deadly.

Nether Phoenix Flame!

It did not burn physical matter. It directly scorched living consciousness!

Three Thunder Eagles diving the fastest were swept by invisible flames in midair. Two immediately veered off course and fled toward the sky in terror. The last suffered the worst—it spun in circles in the air, completely losing its sense of direction before crashing headfirst into the mountainside.

Chu Yao tipped the mouth of the gourd in her hand upward, and a cloud of colorless, odorless mist drifted upward with the air currents.

The poisonous mist was not lethal, but it could create an extremely subtle sensation of sluggishness in the muscles of the Thunder Eagles' wings.

Their diving speed was forcibly reduced by twenty percent.

Twenty percent was already a death sentence.

A Thunder Eagle that had slowed during its dive had just passed over the ice shield when a Fearclaw Bear below abruptly rose onto its hind legs!

It swung its enormous fan-like forepaw into the air and seized the Thunder Eagle!

Crack!

The dark golden claws closed, and the scales easily conducted away the residual electricity on the Thunder Eagle's body.

That Thousand-Year Soul Beast did not even have time to let out a complete cry of grief before its bones were crushed, and it went limp.

The corner of Chu Yao's eye twitched. "...It just crushed it to death?"

Su Chen said, "The order was to eliminate threats."

The horizontal line of Fearclaw Bears slowly advanced, while Yan Wuji's Iceglass Barrier followed like a shadow, always pressing overhead in front of them.

The Thunder Eagle flock repeatedly dove, only to be repeatedly dismantled. Not once did they truly break through this defensive line of steel, ice, and death.

Yet Su Chen's gaze had already moved past this chaotic battlefield.

He noticed a detail.

The Thunder Eagles' dives appeared frantic, yet they always followed a certain sequence.

One particularly massive individual had been circling high in the outer air the entire time. It never joined the assault, merely observing everything below with its cold eyes.

That was not a beast's instinct. It was the judgment of a commander.

One hundred seventy meters from the summit.

One hundred twenty meters.

Ninety meters!

The thunderclouds overhead exploded amid violent flashes, and the last stretch of mist obscuring their vision completely vanished.

The outline of the mountaintop was laid bare before them.

And at that very moment, the leading Thunder Eagle finally moved.

It slowly descended.

Its wingspan exceeded eight meters!

Its feathers were a deep, dark purple, as though they had condensed ten thousand years of thunder.

Its eyes were an even purer, high-pressure dark violet, filled with terrifying electrical charge, rather than the golden slit pupils of ordinary Thousand-Year Thunder Eagles.

It did not dive. It merely hovered twenty meters directly in front of Su Chen, displaying itself before him and everyone behind him with the bearing of a sovereign ruling the world.

Ten-Thousand-Year-Class Soul Beast (approximately 75,000 years of cultivation).

The Eagle King.

The true master of Thunderstorm Peak.

Su Chen watched it as the Iron Wall legion behind him let out a low hum in unison.

All ten Fearclaw Bears halted, the same vibration rumbling from deep within their throats.

It was an instinctive signal of battle readiness, triggered when they sensed an apex predator far above their own rank.

Could Yan Wuji's Iceglass Barrier withstand the full-force strike of a Ten-Thousand-Year Purple Lightning Thunder Eagle?

The answer was no.

Su Chen gently rested one hand on the scales at the back of Iron Wall's neck beside him.

Warm, thick, and brimming with the sense of life's power.

You will be my third Spirit Ring.

As though sensing his will, the Eagle King in the air folded its wings, and the charge across its body began gathering wildly toward its wingtips.

It was not diving. It was charging power.

In an instant, all the thunderclouds above the mountaintop roiled in response!

This was no longer Thunderstorm Peak's lightning.

This was the Eagle King calling forth lightning that belonged to it—lightning that belonged to it alone!