Song San and I sat on a jade platform flying above the sect grounds. He stared straight at me while I pretended not to notice, keeping my eyes fixed on the snow-covered earth rushing beneath us, pretending it wasn’t uncomfortable.

Since he was low on Qi, we were traveling like this to conserve what little he had.

"Hmmm…" he hummed.

"What?" I turned toward him.

"Normally, I’d keep something like this to myself, but since we’re clearly going to be the best of friends, I have to tell you," he said, far too cheerful for his raspy voice.

Though he’d built himself new arms, he was still severely injured. Song Song had wrecked him and probably crushed a few ribs, so it wasn't strange that his voice came out a bit weird.

"Okay?" I said.

"You're someone cautious. Someone who never puts his life in a situation he doesn’t understand," he said. "So the one thing I don’t get is why you were so calm, even under the threat of being mind-controlled by me?"

Fuck. This was exactly why I disliked dealing with intelligent and scheming individuals like him. Song Song and Ye An had overwhelming talent, but they didn’t have his kind of mind.

"You know what I think?" He chuckled, looking in the distance. "I think you have a mental-type technique. Normally, I’d guess Earth Grade… but with that level of confidence? It’s gotta be Sky Grade."

I just stared at him. No use pretending otherwise. He already knew he was right.

"That’s a very interesting theory," I said. "Want to hear one of mine?"

"Sure, go ahead."

"Why are you so calm, even when you know that if Song Song grows stronger or reaches Nascent Soul before you, she’ll absolutely get rid of her troublesome older brother?" I said. "Unless, of course, you have a Sky Grade cultivation technique. Passive-type. One that relies on poisons clashing inside your body. That’s why no one can figure out a cure for your toxins. That same technique also recently became stronger because someone who knew it died. Which is also why the array that was supposed to seal you was corroding."

He turned his masked face toward me.

"That’s scary as shit."

He looked at me, then continued, quieter. "You just figured out how my technique works and that it grew stronger recently..."

Then he added, with a nervous chuckle, "Hey, there’s no bad blood between us about what happened before, right? It makes me really nervous having an enemy like you."

"I doubt our goals are going to clash," I said. "It’s better if neither of us gets in the other’s way."

"Thanks for forgiving me," he said. Then, after a pause, added, "So you already feel the bonds of friendship forming? Because I do."

Song Song and Ye An joined us, flying alongside the jade platform at supersonic speeds. The air around them boomed with every movement, a display of power that would’ve been comforting if they weren't looking at each other with such heated gazes.

They didn’t seem to have heard our conversation and were too focused on scanning the front lines, but I was planning to tell Song Song about her brother’s Sky Grade technique soon.

And I had a feeling I knew where it came from. Somehow, Song San had stumbled upon that guy’s inheritance.

When Hu Jin returned, it was going to be interesting to watch him confront Song San.

Wait. If Song San’s technique got stronger, didn’t that mean Hu Jin’s master was dead?

Unless there was a third person in on the secret?

No. That would dilute the technique too much, and Song San's recent cultivation results wouldn't make much sense.

Maybe Hu Jin was now in the part of his arc where his master dies, and he’s forced to stand on his own for the first time?

We arrived at the marble-covered outer walls of the sect. Inside, near the gate, over a thousand Qi Gathering disciples had taken position, led by a handful of Foundation Establishment elders.

Some disciples stood ready to defend, while others cast arrays or brewed pills and prepared supplies we’d soon desperately need.

Atop the walls stood the sect’s true powerhouses: the Core Formation and Foundation Establishment elders. The air was thick with murderous intentions, and their eyes burned with massacre.

Yet even this show of strength paled before the horror in the distance.

An endless wave of monstrous beasts poured from the forest, their roars and screeches fusing into a deafening tide of chaos. They surged forward like a living flood, kicking up snow and earth in their wake.

Wolves the size of oxen, with frost-matted fur and glowing eyes. Beetle-like creatures with armor-thick shells and mandibles big enough to snap a man in half.

Serpents thicker than tree trunks slithered between the larger beasts, and massive boars crashed forward with tusks like scimitars.

Above them, hawk-like monsters soared, talons like spears glinting in the light, their cries sharp enough to pierce Qi defenses.

The forest behind them twisted and swayed with more horrors waiting to emerge.

And still, they came, relentless as a flood.

The Foundation Establishment and Core Formation beasts were staying hidden, camouflaged among the weaker creatures. Likely to avoid being singled out and eliminated early, while using the lower-tier beasts as buffers.

They were using learning tactics and forming strategies. They had begun to think.

I could stomach killing beasts when they still looked like beasts. But after Foundation Establishment, they were essentially just humans in monster skins.

Still, I couldn’t afford to hesitate. If I did, they wouldn’t. They’d rip me apart without a second thought.

The jade platform hovered above the wall, and Song San and I stepped off, joining the ranks of Foundation Establishment and Core Formation elders.

I looked at our formation. Aside from the defenses at the front gate, where the disciples were preparing to face anything that might break through, we weren’t exactly in a strong defensive position.

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But maybe I was thinking about this from the limited militaristic perspective of my previous world. Guns didn’t exist here and usually weren’t needed. So, war strategy functioned differently.

At least they looked prepared to rotate anyone whose Qi ran out.

I turned my gaze toward the Core Elders around us, spotting a few familiar faces.

My teacher was here too, hands clasped and muttering under his breath like a man in prayer, but I knew he was casting an array. Zun Gon stood beside him.

Usually, I’d greet them, but this wasn’t the time.

Zun Gon frowned when he saw that Song San had been released. He knew the guy had threatened to poison the sect just to survive. But he didn’t bring it up. He probably didn’t want to stir up unnecessary conflict.

Song San chuckled under his mask. “Now it’s my time to shine.”

He lifted his porcelain mask just enough to expose his scarred lower face, burned, twisted, barely healed. Gross.

Then, with a long, slow breath, he exhaled.

A thick stream of purple mist spilled from his mouth. It curled like smoke but sank like poison, hissing as it hit the snow. Blackened slush formed in its wake. The mist pulsed with dark Qi, warping the air in slow, oily waves.

The nearest beasts faltered, snarling in confusion. One, a saber-toothed feline with bone protrusions, inhaled a single breath of the mist and then dropped like a stone, convulsing as veins bloomed violet beneath its skin.

Song San let the mask click back into place.

At that exact moment, it felt like death itself swept across the battlefield.

The air grew heavy, thick with malicious intent. From the forest’s edge to the sect walls, monstrous beasts began collapsing. First one. Then dozens. Then hundreds. Then thousands.

Their roars died. Their bodies convulsed. Their eyes glazed as their life force bled out.

Holy shit.

In the span of a single breath, over ten thousand Qi signatures flickered and vanished.

The snowy plain was now a graveyard. Corpses littered the field, and silence fell like a blade. Even the surviving beasts staggered, hazy and confused.

Song San stood motionless atop the wall, a faint wisp of purple still curling from his mask.

One of the larger beasts, a falcon-feathered, six-legged bird with glinting talons, spread its wings and shrieked.

The air twisted. There was an intelligent glint in the beast's eyes as it glared at us.

A gust exploded outward, not random, but controlled and infused with Qi. The technique churned the battlefield, sweeping away the poison mist like a tide parting for stone.

For a moment, the death halted. The mist thinned, diluted.

The beast shrieked again, and its intelligent eyes locked onto us. Around it, several other high-grade beasts surged forward, capitalizing on the reprieve.

Song San tilted his head slightly, the gleam of his porcelain mask catching the sunlight.

“Oh? That one thinks it’s clever,” he said. “I truly love it when it’s this easy to kill weaklings.”

“Just keep poisoning them. Some of the beasts weren’t hit by the first wave,” I said.

“Let’s wait a bit,” Song San replied. “You might not be able to sense it, but your teacher’s using an array that strengthens with each death.”

That was when a suffocating pressure descended.

Boom.

An invisible force slammed into the earth as if a mountain-sized beast had dropped from the sky. The shockwave expanded outward in a perfect circle, the ground cracking like brittle clay.

At the epicenter, a three-headed minotaur-like creature was crushed into a pulp before it could so much as blink. The beasts around it were splattered across the earth, their intestines and flesh melding into a grotesque soup.

A second boom struck an instant later, targeting a serpent-like creature with plated armor.

It didn’t just explode; it imploded. Crushed into paste. Bones shattered like porcelain. Its Core Formation Qi signature vanished so abruptly it felt like a blade slicing through my perception.

The beasts nearby shrieked in terror. Some dropped dead on the spot, bleeding from their ears.

Silence fell again for half a breath.

This kind of force, killing Core Formation beasts so easily… it had to be a Level 7 Array.

“I think your teacher and I make quite the team,” Song San said, Qi fluctuating violently around him. “Let’s charge up a few more of those booms.”

“You should make use of this while you can,” he added. “Because I won’t be able to do this again today.”

He raised both arms, palms outstretched.

Dark purple Qi surged forward in a violent wave, coalescing above the battlefield. It twisted like a storm cloud, reshaping itself into a massive, gaseous, and almost alive. A nine-headed hydra, formed entirely from poison Qi, roared at the sky.

The beast formed entirely from poison Qi loomed above the Blazing Sun Sect, its presence casting an eerie, murky shadow over the battlefield. Each of its nine heads opened wide, fangs dripping with condensed, vaporous venom and then, all at once, they lunged toward the monstrous beast army.

The effect was immediate.

Qi Gathering-stage beasts didn’t even have time to scream. The mere touch of the poisonous breath corroded their flesh and reduced their bodies to puddles of bubbling, liquefied tissue. A third of the army was wiped out in the blink of an eye.

Foundation Establishment-stage beasts fared only slightly better. Some managed to dodge, leaping out of the hydra’s reach. But many weren’t fast enough. Dozens were struck, their bodies swelling with black veins before collapsing mid-run. Roughly twenty percent of the Foundation beasts perished instantly.

Even Core Formation beasts weren’t immune. A massive lizard with serrated scales was grazed on its forelimb. It roared and, without hesitation, crushed its own limb under its weight, severing the infected flesh before the poison could spread. It writhed, but lived.

In seconds, the battlefield had thinned dramatically.

Before the hydra could unleash another volley, one of the more intelligent Core Formation beasts retaliated. A large, bull-like creature with a small head and hulking body let out a roar, its Qi erupting in golden radiance as it activated its Core Technique. The air shimmered and beside it, a colossal, translucent golden bull took shape, snorting steam and pawing the air.

The bull charged.

The two constructs collided mid-air with a thunderous crash. A shockwave tore through the sky as the golden bull rammed into the hydra’s central head, shattering it, then barreled through the remaining ones, disrupting the poison Qi structure.

With a final bellow, the golden bull exploded in a burst of radiant energy, purifying the air and obliterating the hydra. The skies cleared once more.

The constructs vanished.

But the damage had already been done.

Most of the beast army was dead.

And then Cai Hu, my teacher, activated the Level 7 Array once again. That same suffocating pressure descended over the battlefield. Its first target was the bull-like beast that had destroyed the hydra.

I focused, trying to see the attack in action. The space around the creature twisted and then shattered with a deafening crack. It slammed into the ground and was crushed into a pulpy mess.

The second strike followed instantly. The lizard-like beast that had amputated its own limb was flattened, its Qi snuffed out before it could even react.

Why was Cai Hu targeting weakened enemies? Was he already reaching his limit of how long he could use a Level 7 Array?

Whatever the reason, one thing was clear: Cai Hu’s fighting power was terrifying.

Song San sat down, pulling spirit stones from his ring and draining their Qi to aid in his recovery. Though his mask hid his expression, I could hear his ragged breathing. He was clearly exhausted.

I turned my attention back to the battlefield.

The surviving beasts were still advancing. Many had begun channeling their Foundation and Core Techniques.

I swallowed the lump in my throat and braced for combat, instinctively checking that Song Song was beside me.

We were finally at an advantage against their Core Formation forces; our number of Core Elders exceeded theirs.

The defense had held strong. But whoever planned this, Zun Gon or someone else, had done a masterful job.

Beasts might have human-like intelligence, but they lacked human experience. They didn’t understand arrays the way we did. They’d likely never encountered a Level 7 Array before. How could they know what to expect?

“Prepare to activate your Core Techniques!” Zun Gon shouted, snapping me out of my thoughts.