Blood Wing

Lin Shan took several steps back, away from the lakeshore.

His gaze was icy as he watched his surroundings.

It had been an ordinary lake during the day. Why had it turned into a lake of blood at night?

And... its size... calling it a sea would be no exaggeration. If the entire Fallen Forest formed its shores, this lake had to span at least a thousand kilometers!

"Could it be the Red Moon in the sky?"

Lin Shan looked up at the Red Moon hanging high in the heavens. It was indeed blood-red, but far more lurid.

Suddenly.

Lin Shan jerked backward.

The entire surface of the lake was rising-or rather, moving!

In just a few seconds, it advanced several meters and was about to flood over his feet.

Just then, a blood-red hand reached out of the lake, followed by an arm, a head, a body, and finally feet.

A humanoid creature emerged, standing silently on the lake's surface.

What happened next made Lin Shan's hair stand on end. Across the entire blood lake, a dense, endless expanse of blood-red arms rose from the water.

Countless red figures stood packed together on the lake!

At the same instant, they took a step forward, and the sea of blood expanded with them. As they advanced, it spread at a tremendous speed.

Lin Shan rode his sword into the air and stared at the scene before him. It was utterly staggering. As the figures moved in unison, the blood lake spread into the forest, drowning everything in its path. Everything within his five-hundred-meter field of vision was swallowed and assimilated in less than a second.

Just then.

"Chirp."

A bird's cry rang out from the forest. Its call pierced through space and swept across the lake, instantly halting the advancing blood.

The next second, daylight broke.

An enormous silhouette that blotted out the sky and sun approached with searing white light, piercing through the ash fog and arriving in the blink of an eye.

It never paused along the way. Lin Shan saw only a streak of white light flash past and plunge headfirst into the blood lake.

"Bubble, bubble!"

Then the entire surface began to bubble. The whole blood lake boiled, its bloody waters evaporating at a rate visible to the naked eye. Every figure on its surface melted like a candle.

Only when the blood lake receded to its original boundary did the beam of light turn back, and everything returned to normal. But the light had grown extremely dim, as though it might go out the next second.

It had all happened in less than five minutes. Only the ground, now like fine sand, bore witness to what had just occurred.

Standing on the Heart Light Sword, Lin Shan looked up into the sky. That sinister chill remained, and the anomaly called Blood Wing was still in the same spot, without having moved at all.

He looked back at the blood lake. It, too, had become calm again.

"A war between anomalies and the Fallen... or perhaps a battle by the Fallen to defend its territory," Lin Shan murmured.

He did not know what Sequence the blood lake or the unknown Fallen within that beam of light belonged to. The gulf between them was simply too vast. The blood lake was one thing-it had no self-awareness-but in that Fallen's eyes, he might not even qualify as food. Eating him would offer no nourishment at all.

He remained seated cross-legged on the sword until the Red Moon disappeared and the sun rose.

Lin Shan opened his eyes, and the Heart Light Sword carried him slowly upward.

He was going to begin hunting Blood Wing.

Heart Light could not split apart. While it carried him, it could not attack, so he had to find a way to bring Blood Wing down.

A bundle of willow branches and the Red Lantern lay at the front of the sword. These were the only two objects he currently had that could deal with anomalies.

His plan was to use the willow branches to pull the anomaly down and restrict its movements.

As for whether they might snap, he was not worried at all. These branches had come from a Sequence 8 willow tree. He had hacked at it with the Heart Light Sword for three hours just to cut off a single branch.

To be on the safe side, Lin Shan took out Parchment.

Lin Shan: [What is Blood Wing's weakness?]

Parchment: [Payment of one month of lifespan is required.]

Lin Shan: [Pay.]

Parchment: [An anomaly in its complete form has no weaknesses.]

Lin Shan felt an urge to curse. He had been fleeced of a month of his lifespan, though he had also gained an extra piece of information, which he quietly committed to memory.

Since it had no weaknesses, he could only fight it head-on.

Lin Shan stood up, holding the willow branch in one hand and the Red Lantern in the other. He had already filled it with lamp oil.

A thousand meters in the air, Lin Shan stared at the strangely shaped anomaly before him.

It had a pair of enormous wings, with a vertical-pupiled eye between them that looked about from side to side. Soft feathers covered its snow-white wings. As they beat up and down, black blood occasionally dripped from them, only to rise slowly again midway through its fall. This repeated endlessly, as though a waterfall of blood hung beneath it.

It had no physical substance. Its entire form seemed to be made of illusory light and shadow.

Lin Shan was two hundred meters away from it. Perhaps he had not yet entered the range of its supernatural influence, as he had suffered no attack.

He gradually drew closer. When he came within fifty meters, his vision suddenly darkened as something blocked the sunlight.

He looked up, his pupils abruptly contracting. Blood Wing was less than five meters above his head, its outstretched wings spanning nearly ten meters.

"When did it...?"

He looked ahead again. The Blood Wing there flickered, then abruptly vanished.

An afterimage!

It was fast enough to leave an afterimage!

It was so fast that Lin Shan had no chance to react. In the next instant, he felt his blood slip out of his control.

Bang!

Every blood vessel in his body burst. Blood scattered around Lin Shan, but instead of falling, it rose! All of it gathered beneath those enormous wings.

"This is bad!"

Losing all his blood had no effect on him. Aside from excruciating pain, he felt no other discomfort...

But losing his blood meant he could no longer replenish the Red Lantern's oil. That was the most lethal problem.

A battle between beings of Transcendence was decided in an instant, leaving him no time to dwell on it. With a mere flicker of thought, he instantly set Blood Wing above him ablaze.

The two supernatural powers immediately began to clash. The air hissed, and the blood around Blood Wing began to burn. It was not real blood, merely a manifestation of its supernatural power.

Lin Shan felt the pressure abruptly ease. Without hesitation, he flung out the willow branch in his hand. Blood Wing was resisting the Red Lantern's supernatural power, and the branch looped squarely around it.

Lin Shan yanked hard, instantly tightening the loose loop into a fixed knot.

Seeing that the lamp oil was about to run out, Lin Shan tied the other end of the willow branch to the Heart Light Sword.

Then he sent the Heart Light Sword diving downward. A monstrous force came from those wings, and Blood Wing did not budge.

With only the last tenth of the lamp oil remaining, Lin Shan decided to gamble. He extinguished the Red Lantern's flames and jumped off the Heart Light Sword.

Blood Wing moved above Lin Shan's head at an even greater speed, seemingly trying to draw out his blood again, only to discover that there was none left to take.

The vertical-pupiled eye between Blood Wing's wings rolled once, and its formerly snow-white wings abruptly turned red.

A blood-red radiance rushed toward Lin Shan.

It intended to erase Lin Shan directly with pure supernatural power!

Lin Shan had nowhere to dodge and was engulfed by the red radiance. His flesh, organs, bones-everything was being eroded by that supernatural power, rapidly rotting and decaying.

By the time Blood Wing withdrew its supernatural power, Lin Shan was utterly dead, his body riddled with holes. Scraps of flesh clung to his ruined skeleton.

The next second, a gentle breeze blew past.

The skeleton broke apart, scattering toward the ground.