Many people felt they had heard the howl of a wounded beast, but did not know where it had come from.
The woods between the peaks and the cliffs behind the clouds were silent.
The sound seemed to have rung out directly inside their minds.
Jian Ruyun heard the howl too.
He knew where it had come from, even though Liu S sui had not opened his mouth.
Even from three hundred zhang away, he could see the anger on Liu S sui's face and the trace of resolve in his eyes.
That look of resolve soon became a tiny flame, incomparably scarlet and extraordinarily eerie.
An extremely powerful aura, filled with the wildness of the wilderness, emanated from Liu S sui's body.
At that moment, he seemed to have become an ancient demonic beast.
The air around Liu S sui began to circulate at high speed, and his surroundings grew scorching hot, as though countless invisible flames were spewing out.
With a series of hisses, the clouds and mist that had followed the flying sword were burned away completely before they could even touch his body.
Sensing danger, Jian Ruoyun's flying sword tried to veer away, but an invisible force trapped it. It trembled incessantly, letting out shrill whistles as it struggled desperately, yet it could not escape, suspended in the air before the stone pillar like a moth caught in a spiderweb.
"Demon fire!" someone cried out in alarm.
The Shangde Peak elders maintaining order at the Sword-Testing Assembly grew solemn, ready at any moment to rise on their swords and open the formation surrounding the Stone Forest.
With a tremendous boom, the stone pillar beneath Liu S sui's feet could no longer withstand the tearing force of that intense heat and sword intent, and countless stones and