"Oh no, Boss Huang's been spotted!"
Everyone turned to look. The Demon Beast sprang up, almost as though it could fly, and landed in the crown of a tree several dozen feet tall. The entire tree lurched to one side, as if bowed beneath a raging gale.
Though the Tiger Demon Chief was enormous, its leaping power was astonishing. It also possessed an innate lightness and agility, climbing steadily up the trunk. Hiding in the treetops was nothing like the safe refuge most people imagined.
Everyone watched anxiously from the sidelines, but none dared act rashly.
They could only trust Huang Yuan'an and hope this veteran demon hunter could handle the unexpected turn himself. Rushing down to help would only mean throwing their lives away.
Huang Yuan'an did not disappoint them. He extended an arm, and with a soft whoosh, a steel wire shot from his hand. Its little anchor-shaped hook caught around another nearby tree. Before the Tiger Demon Chief could reach him, he swung down like a nimble ape.
"Come on, you beast!" Huang Yuan'an rolled to absorb the impact, swiftly drew a hunting knife just over a foot long, and roared at the Tiger Demon Chief clinging to the trunk.
Only then did the others send their Combat Puppets charging forward in unspoken coordination. The Stake-Mounted Repeating Crossbows also pivoted, bringing the tree where Huang Yuan'an had been hiding into their firing arcs.
Attack!
Whoosh! Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh, whoosh!
They triggered their mechanisms almost simultaneously, unleashing another wave of arrows like driving wind and torrential rain.
The Tiger Demon Chief roared as three more Armor-Piercing Arrows struck it, but all the ordinary arrows bounced off, like wooden shafts striking iron plating.
"This isn't working! We're barely hurting it!"
Li Chen could see it clearly. At most, the ordinary arrows left red marks on the Tiger Demon Chief's body, causing it a little pain.
The Armor-Piercing Arrows forged from black iron could breach its protective gang essence, seemingly thanks to a trace of spiritual potency within them. Yet most of their force dissipated on contact, leaving them embedded barely an inch into the tiger's body.
The Tiger Demon Chief merely jumped down from the tree, and the arrows already lodged in it began to tilt. With another shake, they all fell out.
Its muscles tightened, immediately stopping the bleeding.
It seemed that even if the Armor-Piercing Arrows posed some threat, they had no chance of killing it.
Only now did everyone truly understand what Huang Yuan'an had meant when he described its copper hide and iron bones.
He had not exaggerated at all. Even without deep cultivation, a Demon Beast with such an innate gift could roam the mountain forests on animal instinct alone, sweeping all before it.
"We have to get close and fight!"
Weapons like arrows were convenient, but imbuing them with gang edge was difficult. Once blocked by protective gang qi, their killing power dropped drastically.
Melee weapons, by contrast, could be imbued far more easily. Even in the hands of the most common Wooden Soldier Mechanism Automatons, they could unleash considerable power.
Thus, everyone sent their Mechanism Puppets charging in without a word of discussion. Their palms opened and Wrist Blades extended, swords and blades chopping down amid a shimmer of hazy light.
Clang, clang, clang!
Another flurry of metal-on-metal impacts rang out. The Tiger Demon Chief took several cuts, but still fought back ferociously.
Roaring, it nearly overturned a puppet with a single swipe. In just a few blows, it smashed through their formation and charged up to Huang Yuan'an.
"Boss Huang!"
Everyone's heart leaped into their throat.
But Huang Yuan'an's expression remained grim and cold as he slashed the Tiger Demon Chief across the forehead.
Clang!
Sparks flew. As the Tiger Demon Chief shut its eyes and turned its head aside, Huang Yuan'an rolled away.
In the flash of a spark, he whipped his arm forward and hurled an egg-sized black object at point-blank range, far too fast for the Tiger Demon Chief to react.
It was a Thunderclap Bomb! A gunpowder product first discovered by chance by occult practitioners while refining elixirs, it had developed over thousands of years into an explosive of formidable power.
This world also had gunpowder, called Thunderfire Thunderclap. Blended with spiritually potent minerals, it could even breach gang qi defenses to some degree.
Huang Yuan'an had spent many days searching the Market Fair. He must have paid a hefty price, determined to use it at the crucial moment to kill this Tiger Demon Chief.
The others had known a little about this beforehand, but seeing him dare use it at such close range left them both astonished and shaken.
He was practically gambling his life. He really had the nerve!
Boom!
The powerful blast hurled Huang Yuan'an bodily away. The Tiger Demon Chief, struck directly by the Thunderclap Bomb, was left utterly dazed. With no time to check whether Huang Yuan'an was safe, the others hurriedly sent their puppets forward, hacking wildly.
Li Chen's Armored Warrior Puppet was among them. Through the feedback of his divine sense connection, he felt the shock of impact. The Wrist Blade extending from the Armored Warrior's palm struck the beast's body as though it were chopping at a statue cast from metal!
Li Chen was secretly appalled. What on earth did this monster eat to grow like this?!
"Roar!"
An instant later, a tremendous force struck. Before Li Chen could direct his puppet with a thought, he saw his Armored Warrior and several other people's Wooden Soldiers knocked flying.
Before a Tiger Demon Chief of this size, everyone's Mechanism Puppets were like rag dolls in a grown man's hands. They could not withstand it head-on at all.
"This can't go on! Our puppets can take a blow or two, maybe three, but any more and they'll fall apart!"
"Someone has to keep it occupied!"
"And Boss Huang still hasn't gotten up! Once that beast comes to its senses, he'll be in danger!"
As they exchanged hurried words, several figures had already slid down the tree trunks.
They were Old Lou, Old Hou, and two Rogue Cultivators who had answered the recruitment call.
They boldly charged into the battlefield with their own flesh-and-blood bodies, raising their arms together. The sleeve-arrow mechanisms linked to their arms fired in unison.
Thud! Thud!
With muffled impacts, the arrows sank deep into the Tiger Demon Chief's body. But one of the men was pinned beneath the beast as it charged straight at him. A swipe of its paw burst his head on the spot.
A crimson torrent sprayed from his neck, mingled with white brain matter, splattering across more than ten feet of ground.
"You beast!"
Old Hou roared. Seizing the moment when the Tiger Demon leader paused, he advanced instead of retreating and thrust his mechanical right arm into its cavernous, bloodstained maw!
"I'll take you down with me!"
The Tiger Demon Chief turned its head without hesitation and clamped its teeth around his arm.
Crunch! Crunch!
Deep gouges immediately appeared in the prosthetic limb forged from blacksteel.
Amid spreading gunsmoke, fire spouted from Old Hou's palm, and the segments of his little finger, ring finger, and middle finger all fired together!
At that instant when his life hung by a thread, he triggered the firearm mechanism. Three fingers shot straight into the Tiger Demon's mouth, followed immediately by a violent close-range explosion inside its throat. He, too, was blasted away.
When everyone looked at the Tiger Demon Chief again, its mouth was charred black. At last, its body swayed, then crashed down like a golden mountain toppling and a jade pillar falling.