In the sky, the most terrifying mutated spirit beast of all appeared.
It had no fixed shape, resembling a mass of constantly writhing black mist.
At the center of that mist, an abyssal maw remained perpetually open.
That mouth seemed capable of devouring everything!!!
Soul masters, city walls, houses, even martial souls and soul power—anything that mouth targeted was sucked inside, people and their martial souls alike, without so much as a scrap remaining.
News of this reached the three great empires with all possible speed.
The Heaven Dou Empire, the imperial palace.
Xue Ye held the secret report, his brows tightly knitted and his eyes unfathomable.
"Three major border towns... three days... completely wiped out in just three days?"
The assembled ministers below knelt with their heads bowed. Not one dared look up.
The Star Luo Empire, the imperial palace.
Crack!
The Star Luo Emperor's face was livid as he smashed the armrest of his throne with a palm strike.
"Issue my command! Assemble every soul master in the nation! Seal the rifts at all costs! Kill every mutated spirit beast!!"
The Spirit Hall Empire, Spirit City.
Bibi Dong stood at the highest point of the Papal Hall.
She gazed at the glaring, blood-red rift in the distant sky.
"This isn't a beast tide."
"This is... the end of the world."
In just seven days.
Three more major towns were reduced to ruins.
Meanwhile, Heaven Dou City, Star Luo City, and Spirit City—the capitals of the three great empires—simultaneously went on their highest alert.
For the first time in centuries, the three great empires set aside their differences and joined forces against the mutated spirit beasts.
But there were simply too many mutated spirit beasts, pouring endlessly from the rifts.
They moved in packs, utterly fearless of death, feeding exclusively on humans and the continent's native spirit beasts...
A hundred-thousand-year spirit beast even appeared.
With a single strike, that hundred-thousand-year spirit beast leveled half a city wall!!
The common people were driven from their homes, their wails rising to the heavens.
Soul masters suffered devastating casualties and fled in panic.
Even Titled Douluos began to fall.
In a tavern in Heaven Dou City.
The storyteller stood onstage, no longer recounting the legendary lives of soul masters.
His eyes red, he held a list of fallen soul masters and read their names over and over.
The listeners below were on the verge of tears.
Lu Yuan did not drive Big Luck straight onto the main road.
He chose a more secluded path instead. The main road was already packed with people, hopelessly congested.
Besides, he had a feeling that the places that truly needed him were often not these heavily guarded cities.
Rather, in these little places that did not even have names, more ordinary people might be suffering even greater hardships, facing attacks from mutated spirit beasts they had no way to fight.
Rumble!
The overloaded Big Luck rolled over a barren slope, kicking up clouds of dust.
Lu Yuan chewed on a piece of beef jerky as he drove, surveying his surroundings.
The farther he went, the fewer people he saw.
The village in the distance should have had pale wisps of cooking smoke rising gently above it.
Instead, thick black smoke billowed into the air.
"Something's wrong."
His brows drew together slightly, and he pressed harder on the accelerator.
Big Luck immediately picked up speed, approaching the village ahead.
As Big Luck drew closer, Lu Yuan soon heard cries drifting from the distance.
Even from so far away, he could hear the despair in those voices...
Lu Yuan's gaze turned cold, and he floored the accelerator.
Roar!
Big Luck surged forward, racing toward the thick smoke.
It crested a slope.
The sight before him made Lu Yuan's pupils contract and his expression shift.
A village lay utterly destroyed.
More than half the houses had collapsed, with flames leaping skyward and thick smoke billowing everywhere.
On the open ground at the village entrance, dozens of villagers' bodies lay strewn about.
Some had been torn in half. Others had only their lower halves remaining, their upper bodies nowhere to be found. Streams of blood had soaked the earth a dark red.
At the center of this field of corpses.
A ten-thousand-year mutated spirit beast the size of an ox stood with its head lowered, tearing into a body.
Around it were dozens of slightly smaller mutated spirit beasts, each with roughly a thousand years of cultivation.
They chased the fleeing villagers in every direction, gobbling them down one at a time as though savoring delicious treats.
"Help!"
"Run! Run up the mountain!"
"My child... my child!!!"
The surviving villagers screamed and wailed without end as they fled desperately toward the hillside behind the village.
But how could their two legs outrun these pursuing mutated spirit beasts?
A woman carrying a child tripped and fell heavily to the ground.
The child slipped from her arms and rolled a long way before lying on the ground, bawling.
A thousand-year mutated spirit beast immediately pounced, opening its enormous, barb-lined mouth toward the child's head...
Bang!!!!!
A deafening crash rang out.
The thousand-year mutated spirit beast never even completed its lunge.
As though struck by a massive hammer, its entire body flew backward and slammed into the wall of an earthen house, bringing the building down.
Buried inside the house, the thousand-year mutated spirit beast lay motionless, already reduced to a pulp...
The woman stared, stunned.
The child stopped crying.
As the dust dispersed, a pitch-black steel behemoth appeared before the woman and child, an Armor-Piercing Ram welded to its body and a cannon mounted atop its Cargo Box.
"Roar?"
An enormous roar answered the impact that had just sent the beast flying.
The ten-thousand-year mutated spirit beast, a Soul-Devouring Shadow Leopard, abruptly raised its head and instantly locked onto Big Luck.
Seemingly sensing danger, it released a low growl from its throat.
Then the Soul-Devouring Shadow Leopard pushed off with all four paws and actually attacked first!
"Bring it on!"
Watching from the cab, Lu Yuan grinned.
He did not even unleash a soul skill. He simply floored the accelerator.
Bang!!!
The Armor-Piercing Ram on the front of the truck struck the ten-thousand-year Soul-Devouring Shadow Leopard head-on!
There were no flashy soul skills!
Not even a ripple of soul power!
Just a single, brutally straightforward collision!
The instant the Soul-Devouring Shadow Leopard collided with Big Luck, its bones snapped and its skin split!
Its enormous body was knocked three feet off the ground and hurled more than a hundred meters backward, smashing through three earthen houses before hitting the ground and sliding another dozen meters to a stop.
At the sight, all the other thousand-year Soul-Devouring Shadow Leopards stopped chasing the villagers.
Several of the thousand-year Soul-Devouring Shadow Leopards charged at Lu Yuan.
Big Luck likewise smashed them into pulp.
A few other thousand-year Soul-Devouring Shadow Leopards seemed intelligent enough to realize they could not fight Big Luck, and actually turned to flee...
But a massive cannon on the front of Big Luck began firing shell after shell.
Every thousand-year Soul-Devouring Shadow Leopard attempting to escape was hit, blasted into the air, and killed.
From entering the village to wiping out every Soul-Devouring Shadow Leopard.
Barely half an incense stick's worth of time had passed.
As Big Luck came to a stop, Lin Yuan honked the horn.
"When Big Luck sounds, your life turns around!"
Once the survivors saw that every Soul-Devouring Shadow Leopard had been killed, they collapsed onto the hillside, gasping for breath and wiping the heavy sweat from their foreheads.
At first, they were silent, not saying a word.
A moment later, the survivors began to sob and wail, overwhelmed by grief.
A perfectly good village was gone, just like that...
Before you continue