The horse was galloping at full speed when he gave it a sudden, brutal yank, wrenching its head to the side. It was not any fine-bred steed, just a common draft horse unused even to carrying a rider. Thrown off balance, it toppled with a long, piercing neigh, skidding across the ground as if forced into a sliding tackle.

The rider’s seat dropped sharply, scraping the ground before they were then flung clear. The silhouette’s target vanished in an instant; still hurtling through the air, it lashed out a snake-like appendage straight toward He Chunhua.

Its target suddenly vanished beneath it. Still hurtling forward, it lashed out a thin, snakelike appendage that shot straight toward He Chunhua.

One strike from that thing would mean certain doom.

So, the mastermind had laid a double trap: one killer blow for Ke Jihai, and another for He Chunhua.

However, the He couple rolled with the momentum, tumbling into some undergrowth. The snake-like appendage missed He Chunhua’s face by barely several tens of centimeters, and then the distance grew wider and wider.

Madame Ying let out a scream.

Though her husband had shielded her in his arms during the fall, he could not protect her completely. A branch drove straight through her calf, piercing from front to back.

The dark figure landed with a catlike bounce, weightless as a shadow, twisting mid-air to spring once more at He Chunhua. It ignored everyone else entirely.

That brief pause finally gave the others a clear look at what it was.

“What in the… A werewolf? Or is it a wereleopard?” He Lingchuan’s heart lurched. He had never expected to see, in this world, something straight out of movies back home.

Well, almost.

Its head resembled a wolf’s, but with a shorter muzzle and broad jaws. Four oversized fangs jutted up and down, unforgettable in their menace. Its body was humanoid, being slender and elongated, but its knees bent backward like a leopard’s hind legs.

Strangest of all was the tail, sprouting not from its spine but from the back of its skull. It was as long as its body, whip-thin, and its tip gleamed with a razor edge. The strike just now had been from that tail.

Standing, it could fight like a man with fists and palms. Dropping to all fours, it ran with the speed of big cats or panthera.

Now it dug its foreclaws into the ground, body whipping in a graceful arc as it adjusted its line, and charged again!

It shot forward like an arrow loosed from the bow, too fast for the naked eye to follow.

But He Lingchuan had been waiting. The instant it lunged from behind the stone outcrop, he snatched out his broken saber and hurled it like a throwing knife.

Life and death hung in the balance in this moment. It was time to test whether his half-month of relentless practice had been worth it.

Every day, he had drilled thousands of throws, even aboard ships on the Hongchuan, using the mast as his target. Even a fool would have improved after so much practice, so how could he not?

He calculated the angle, predicting where the creature would land, and threw with all his strength.

In that instant, his mind emptied of all else. His gaze was steady, his breath still. Every shred of his will and power was poured into that single throw.

And the blade flew true—its power, angle, and arc were all flawless.

It was the best throw he had made since he began practicing.

He Lingchuan held his breath, watching the cold gleam streak toward the monster—

And miss.

Missed!

The creature had veered at the last second, ruining all his calculations. His perfect throw… had been wasted!

He Lingchuan nearly spat blood in frustration. That was basically half a month of effort in vain!

But at that very heartbeat, the broken saber’s uncanny self-guiding trait activated once more.

In mid-air, it swerved. It was just a short, sharp adjustment, but that was all that was needed.

The saber sank straight into the creature’s shoulder joint.

It had been rotating on that very arm as a pivot. The sudden, searing agony burst through its socket. With a roar, the creature lost its footing, skidding across the ground on its face before tumbling sideways until it came within a hair of crashing into He Yue’s horse.

He Yue yanked his reins, skidding his horse to a halt as his hands formed seals while he chanted in a frantic rush.

His cultivation was meager, but he knew a few spells. Normally, he was too embarrassed to display them before his elder brother. But tonight, with the He Family staring death in the face, he could not just cower. However feeble his strength, he would give it all.

“Father, origin energy!” He Lingchuan urged. Spurring his horse hard, he shot past the commoner youth ahead and veered toward the trees. The horse had barely steadied when He Lingchuan vaulted from the saddle, saber flashing like a rainbow, cleaving down toward the creature’s skull from above!

Fortune had turned, and now he struck from the higher ground.

He Chunhua, having rolled to his feet after dismounting, wasted no time tending his wife. He whipped out his Yuan Coin, held it aloft toward his son, and shouted, “By origin energy, I empower He Lingchuan!”

In the dim light, the azure kite carved on the coin seemed to stir.

He was an official of the royal court, the governor-general assigned to Xia Province, a commander with authority over both civil and military affairs. Even without his army present, his mandate and his prestige carried weight. With the will of the people and the blessing of the state, he could draw on origin energy.

With that, light surged straight into He Lingchuan.

Already holding a command within the Coordinating Army, now strengthened by his father’s blessing, his body blazed with fresh origin energy, a sudden wellspring of power filling his limbs.

At that instant, a thunderous roar split the night. It was the enraged bellow of the giant ape.

Then came a voice, high with relief, “It’s General Ke! General Ke is alive!”

It was the commoner youth.

In truth, when Ke Jihai had heard He Lingchuan’s earlier thunderous warning of “Ambush!”, his heart had already clenched. Then he saw the great stone crash down with his own eyes. He knew at once the attack would not stop there.

There was no time for hesitation. Without a second thought, he had leapt from the carriage window, moving toward the cliffside.

One of his retainers, equally seasoned, followed him out.

That side of the road dropped sheer, so no sane foe would expect anyone to flee that way. But crouched at the cliff’s edge, the overturned carriage shielding them, they were tucked safely into a blind spot. Whether it be arrows, rocks, or fire, none could reach them there.

Ke Jihai had lived on campaign for decades. This was not his first ambush, but his seventh or eighth. His instincts were honed razor-sharp; his body reacted faster than he thought.

Even so, he had underestimated his foe.

A giant beast had descended in fury, reducing the carriage to splinters. Had he waited a breath longer, he would have been crushed flat like the retainer who never made it out. He would have been silenced in an instant.

But fortune favored him. The lantern had been snuffed, the light dim, and so the giant beast never noticed the two men clinging to the cliff.

When the ape lifted the wreckage overhead and bared its chest in the motion, Ke Jihai struck.

He launched upward in a single bound, long spear manifesting in his grip, its tip flaring with killing intent.

He no longer hid his strength. His body blazed with orange light, every vein coursing with origin energy. A roar split the air as he drove all his fury into that single thrust.

He was the monarch’s most trusted general, the Grand General of Chariots and Cavalry who bore the fate of the realm, the strategist upon whom a hundred thousand troops relied. The purity and force of his origin energy dwarfed that of He Chunhua.

Backed by his formidable martial power, his thrust was devastating. Even before the spear’s point hissed through the air, it was already buried in the ape’s chest.

He was but one man with one spear, yet he drove the ape monster back seven full meters, nearly staggering it to the ground.

His retainer wasted no time. Snatching out a signal arrow, he loosed it skyward. The shaft shrieked like a banshee as it burst into a spray of sparks overhead.

Ke Jihai had been forbidden to march into the capital with an army, but he had brought a dozen of his finest men, and they were simply lying in wait for any situation where they were needed at a post station at the foot of the mountain.

To those men, the flare screamed into the night: the general is under attack, rally to him at once!

The giant ape clutched at its chest, then seized the spear shaft and wrenched it free with a violent tug. With its other hand, which was as broad as a millstone, it swept down to snatch at Ke Jihai.

If that blow connected, it would crush him like an egg.

However, Ke Jihai did not retreat. The red-glowing spearpoint flicked, twisting upward to stab directly into the giant ape’s palm.

The weapon was a cavalry spear. It was over three meters long and built for fighting atop a horse, yet it also just so happened to be perfectly suited for fighting against this towering creature. And in Ke Jihai’s grip, even without a mount, it moved like an extension of his body.

The giant ape had tasted its sting once before. Unwilling to let its hand be skewered, it sprang back and, with a sweep of its arms, tore up a tree thick enough that two men together could barely encircle it. With a roar, it swung the trunk at him like a club.

Every move carried weight and cunning. This was no mindless brute force.

Not far off, the commoner youth and two men could only stare, eyes wide, mouths agape.

Ke Jihai was no giant, and beside the giant ape, he looked even smaller. But in battle, he only grew fiercer. Strike for strike, he pressed his foe backward, his spear clashing against the massive trunk again and again. After a dozen exchanges, it was the giant ape who yielded ground.

Each time it loosed a bestial roar, the air itself trembled. The force was like a lion’s roar, a sonic shockwave that made the three distant watchers reel with dizziness and nausea. Yet Ke Jihai, face-to-face with the bellow, did not even blink. To him, it was as though the sound scarcely existed.

They all knew the reason for this was origin energy.

Ke Jihai was a commander of armies, a man who bore the monarch’s trust, so he carried rich and plentiful origin energy. The energy amplified his martial techniques and movement techniques, and most importantly, it suppressed the divine techniques and monster techniques of his foes.

The rules of heaven and earth determined the thresholds, and it was the one with stronger origin energy who was bound to prevail. Those without comparable origin energy, or those who wielded a weaker form of energy, were bound to suffer.

That was the very root of humanity’s supremacy over the monster clans and races. It was the reason their civilization flourished.

The giant ape’s roar was an innate divine technique, driven by its monster energy. But before the weight of Ke Jihai’s origin energy, its force was crippled. What should have shattered courage now reached him with not even a fifth of its supposed power.

How could such tricks unsettle a veteran who had carved a path through battlefields for more than a decade?

Yet even as he fought, doubt pricked at Ke Jihai’s heart.

He had poured his all into that first spear thrust. Had it been an elephant, the beast would have been skewered through. And yet this ape had torn the weapon free and fought on.

Its bone plate armor isn’t merely for show. Could it be some new war equipment produced by the northern monster state?

No, the more he watched, the more certain he became. This armor had not been forged or crafted. It had grown.

And the wound itself was shallow. His spearpoint had pierced the bone, but only sunk a finger’s depth into the chest. Against such a massive frame, that was nothing.

This monster’s body was unimaginably tough, such that even a strike infused with origin energy had not brought it down.

Ke Jihai’s eyes flashed. He flicked his wrist and sent three iron caltrops flashing through the air.

The caltrops were made of ordinary iron, yes, but each one was infused with his origin energy. They struck with a hiss, biting into the giant ape’s flesh. One landed on its foreleg, while the two others landed on its back.

At once, its monster power faltered. The suppression took hold so strongly that even its towering bulk shrank before their eyes.