A Sudden Turn

Jin Changyu had sharp eyes. In the dimness of that desperate place, he was the first to spot Chu Bai standing on the stone ridge. His cry had the raw desperation of a drowning man grasping a piece of driftwood.

Chu Bai did not answer at once. His gaze passed over the four of them and settled on the billowing smoke behind them.

Although Superintendent Su had strictly forbidden cooperation, Chu Bai sensed that the Mind-Link Mark in his sea of consciousness had issued no warning as they approached. It had not reacted at all.

That wrongness sent his unease climbing to its peak.

"What happened?"

Their cries were too urgent to be a trick, but he still did not know what had happened.

Then everything changed.

Within the roiling smoke, an ink-black shadow took shape beside the student at the rear without the slightest warning.

It was the Shadow Beast's demonic art—Shadowfire Burial.

A pillar of black flame formed from pure Killing Intent surged out like a venomous python rising from the abyss and swallowed the lagging student whole.

"Aaah—!"

The scream tore through the stifling air.

Chu Bai's pupils contracted. He watched helplessly as the student thrashed in the sea of fire.

His defenses had broken almost the instant the attack struck. His spiritual energy was depleted; he had no strength to resist.

Yet the white light of teleportation that should have appeared at that moment never came.

In the scorching gray flames, the student wailed for more than a dozen breaths.

The spiritual energy protecting his body swiftly dissolved under the fire poison. Amid the deathly silence, the sounds of flesh shriveling and bones cracking rang out with terrible clarity.

In a few dozen seconds, a living person had burned down to ashes that scattered on the