The dust settled.
Bei Feng's head was stuck in the mud like a rotten radish, his body still twitching spasmodically.
Shi Hou strode over in a few steps, bent down, and reached out, all in one smooth motion.
He scooped up the deathly white Treasure Bone, hefted it, then deftly tucked it inside his clothes against his chest. While he was at it, the still-usable Broken Bow on the ground didn't escape his clutches either.
When it came to cleaning up a battlefield, he was a professional.
"Not a bad haul."
In high spirits, Shi Hou dusted off his hands and turned toward the great bird shaking out her feathers. A somewhat "kindly" smile instantly spread across his face.
"Auntie, you've been hiding your light under a bushel!"
He sidled over and gave the Green-Scaled Eagle's hard-scaled neck several heavy smacks, so forceful that the sound alone set teeth on edge.
"Those Wind Blades sliced cleaner than I chop vegetables! Who would've thought? You act so demure normally, but you get downright wild in a fight!"
The Green-Scaled Eagle had been holding her head high, basking in the praise, but those slaps made the corner of her eye twitch violently.
Ouch! Were this brat's hands made of iron?
Seeing Shi Hou still chattering away, apparently ready to deliver a few more affectionate slaps, the Green-Scaled Eagle instinctively flicked her wing.
Her enormous green wing swept outward.
Whoosh!
Just like swatting away an annoying fly.
"What the fuck? This is how you repay-"
Before Shi Hou could finish, both his feet left the ground. Like a kicked ball, he traced an arc through the air.
Yet the instant he lost his balance, his gaze shifted and met the Green-Scaled Eagle's eyes.
Where was the earlier arrogance in those golden, slit-pupiled eyes? Now there was only suddenly swelling terror!
She stared fixedly behind Shi Hou, every feather on her neck standing on end, as though she had seen some indescribable horror.
Shi Hou's scalp prickled. An icy chill shot from his tailbone straight to the crown of his head.
"Skinny Monkey!!!"
In the distance, Shi Shoushan's heart-rending roar nearly cracked his voice.
Shi Hou tried to look back, but momentum was still carrying him backward.
Too late.
A nauseating stench enveloped him like something solid.
Directly behind where he would land, an aged yet utterly vicious giant wolf had silently appeared clinging to a tree trunk.
Not a phantom. His true body.
Bei Village's Sacrificial Spirit!
His greasy green eyes brimmed with malice and mockery. His forelegs were short and crooked, his cavernous, bloody maw gaped wide, and black mucus dripped from his fangs.
"Whoosh-"
A mouthful of incredibly dense black mist spewed straight at Shi Hou, who had nothing to push off against in midair.
Venomous Breath!
Wherever the black mist passed, dead leaves hanging in the air instantly dissolved into drifting black ash. Even the rocks below hissed as they corroded.
Shi Hou watched helplessly as that roiling cloud of "biochemical weaponry" swallowed him.
Got careless. Didn't dodge.
That was the only thought in his head.
Sizzle!
Shi Hou vanished completely into the deadly black mist, without even having time to scream.
Thud!
A heavy object struck the ground with a dull sound, followed by utter silence.
"Heh heh heh..."
Old Vulture let out a grating, sinister laugh, his eyes cruel and gleeful.
"You savages thought you could lay hands on my children? Dissolve into pus!"
"Skinny Monkey!!!"
Shi Shoushan's eyes instantly reddened, thick with bloodshot veins. He nearly crushed the great sword in his hand as he roared and made to charge into the black mist.
A withered but powerful hand held him fast.
"Let go of me!" Shi Shoushan turned back and bellowed, like a crazed tiger.
Shi Yunfeng's face was deathly pale, and the hand gripping Shi Shoushan shook violently, but he gritted his teeth and refused to let go. "Don't throw your life away! That's the Sacrificial Spirit's true body! That's the power of runes!"
Amid that desperate struggle...
A tiny figure had already shot forward like a cannonball.
Shi Hao's little face was cold as ice. His large eyes held no tears, only killing intent that surged to the heavens.
Two silver moons spun furiously above his little fists, lightning bursting around them-the potential his extreme rage had unleashed.
Screee!
The Green-Scaled Eagle went berserk too. With a mournful cry, she disregarded her wounds, her talons tearing through the air as she lunged resolutely for Old Vulture's head.
"Courting death."
Old Vulture cast a contemptuous glance at the child and bird.
It pushed off with its hind legs, its figure darting like a ghost. Though aged, the mystical power of the Runes wielded by a Sacrificial Spirit was far beyond ordinary strength.
Pff!
He casually spat another stream of black mist to force the Green-Scaled Eagle back, then turned and swiped a claw at Shi Hao.
Shi Hao neither dodged nor retreated, meeting the blow head-on. His little body shook violently, and a trickle of blood escaped his mouth, but like a stubborn little savage beast, he fought to the death without backing down.
"Today, all of you will die and become my food!"
Old Vulture laughed wildly. His domain of black mist spread again, about to swallow everyone remaining.
Shi Shoushan sank to his knees in despair, his heart reduced to dead ashes.
It was over. All of it was over.
Yet...
At that moment of despair...
A sudden fit of violent coughing came from within that thick, deathly still poison mist that should have corroded everything.
"Cough, cough... urgh... that fucking reeks!"
"Old dog, haven't you brushed your teeth in centuries? That stench is worse than canned fermented herring!"
Old Vulture's wild laughter cut off abruptly, like a drake seized by the throat.
His greasy green eyes flew wide as he stared incredulously into his own poison mist.
There, a pitch-black figure was swaying to his feet, waving a hand to fan the air.
The black mist dispersed.
Shi Hou dusted himself off.
His beast-hide clothes had indeed rotted into ragged strips, hanging from him and fluttering in the wind.
But his exposed skin... still had its signature dark-gray color and metallic sheen.
Forget rotting-not even a red rash had appeared.
To him, that poison mist powerful enough to corrode stone had apparently been nothing more than a foul-smelling sauna.
"Th-this is impossible!"
Old Vulture shrieked, his voice filled with fear.
Even a pure-blooded descendant wouldn't dare take his innate poison breath head-on. Was this brat cast from divine iron?
"Brother Skinny Monkey!"
Shi Hao could finally no longer hold back his tears. They welled in his eyes as he cried out in delighted surprise.
Ignoring Old Vulture's shock, Shi Hou wiped his face in disgust and pulled out the Black Pig who had been playing dead inside his clothes all this time.
Kang was awake now too, sneezing madly. Clearly, that breath foul enough to stink someone to death had broken through his defenses as well.
"Stop sleeping. Get to work."
Shi Hou grabbed the pig by one ear and hoisted him up, aiming his dark nostrils at Old Vulture.
"That old dog wants to stew you, and he doesn't even want to add seasoning. What do you say to that?"
At the word "stew," every black hair on Kang's body stood up like a hedgehog's spines.
A vicious gleam shone in his tiny, mung-bean-sized eyes, and his two great nostrils suddenly flared to their limit.
"Oink-snort!!!"
A thick, brilliant blue beam blasted out instantly, carrying a pig's fury.
Too fast! Point-blank fire!
Old Vulture was still reeling from the collapse of everything he thought he knew. He had no time to summon his runes.
Pff!
Blue light hit him square in the face.
The terrifying paralysis that instantly interrupted the flow of his runes made Old Vulture's body go rigid. The sinister energy he had just gathered for another breath dispersed completely, and he couldn't move so much as a finger.
"All flash and no substance."
Looking at Old Vulture frozen in place, Shi Hou sneered, his lips spreading to reveal a mouthful of chilling white teeth.
He reached into empty air with his right hand, his gaze becoming utterly focused, as though he were picking up the kitchen cleaver that had accompanied him for years.
"I'll give you a thirty-nine-meter head start."
"Take my blade!"
Humm!
The air shuddered violently.
A dull gray stone knife appeared in his hand, initially no bigger than a kitchen cleaver.
But as Shi Hou slowly raised his arm, his blood and vital energy thundered.
Boom!
The stone knife swelled explosively in the wind!
One meter, five meters, ten meters... forty meters!
In the blink of an eye, a gigantic, forty-meter-long stone knife stretched between heaven and earth, carrying the vast, primeval aura of ancient times.
Its blade was massive as a mountain, with no dazzling glow of precious techniques-only suffocating physical pressure.
Its enormous shadow enveloped Old Vulture.
For the first time, his lupine face showed the true terror of confronting death.
He wanted to run, wanted to beg for mercy.
But that damned pig beam had frozen his body. He couldn't even blink.
"No-"
Old Vulture's desperate howl stuck in his throat.
"Remember to brush your teeth in your next life!"
Shi Hou held both hands around the knife's handle, the muscles in his arms bulging like coiled dragons, and chopped down viciously.
Mincing meat!
BOOM!!!
An earth-shattering crash rang out. The ground shook violently, as though a magnitude-ten earthquake had struck.
Dust billowed dozens of meters high. A terrifying trench, dozens of meters long and too deep to see the bottom, appeared in the ground.
As for Old Vulture...
Shi Hou panted heavily. The giant blade in his hands rapidly shrank back into that plain, unadorned kitchen cleaver.
He leaned forward and peered into the trench.
A piece of Old Vulture's hind leg.
Before you continue