The silver pillar of light had yet to fully disperse when the Golden Core pressure to the north began moving.
It moved as fast as a streak of gray lightning, snapping silver-gray tree trunks along its path. White Snow's Star Pupil saw it clearly-it was a hunchbacked old man whose gray-white eyebrows hung down to his cheeks. He coughed, yet every step carried him a hundred feet. His murky eyes resembled two dried-up wells.
"Mo Huaigu," she murmured.
A tremendous crash came from the southeast, and the Maze Formation's golden light burst apart. The Seventh Elder's voice rang out amid the explosion, hoarse but powerful:
"White Dumpling! Run!"
White Snow did not run.
She spread her wings, silver runes racing wildly between her feathers. The power of the inheritance surged through her veins, and the flood that threatened to burst its banks at any moment found an outlet. The vertical slits in her golden eyes narrowed. With Star Pupil working at full strength, she saw the paths along which Mo Huaigu's spell power flowed.
There, in his left shoulder, was a dim node-an old injury, a weak point in the circulation of his Golden Core spell power.
"So you've been hurt before too." White Snow opened her beak in a cold sneer that did not belong on a bird. "Then I won't hold back."
Mo Huaigu stopped a hundred feet away. He studied the white bird before him, her slit pupils and the silver ribbons of light winding around her. Surprise flickered in his murky eyes, then turned to bitterness.
"The star phoenix bloodline." He coughed twice. "The Pavilion Master was right. Someone really did obtain the inheritance."
"Are you here to steal it?"
"I'm acting under orders." Mo Huaigu took a black Formation Flag from his sleeve. Dark red