At the ruins near the village entrance, the roar of clashing spiritual force was deafening.
Mo Fan had every scrap of his consciousness nailed inside 003's body—enduring the soul-tearing agony and pushing his control to its absolute, inhuman limit.
But against a Foundation Establishment old monster who had gone completely frenzied, the margin for error was razor-thin.
BOOM.
Another dark red poison-fire pillar swept through.
003 wrenched its frame sideways with everything it had—but its spine still let out a sickening crack.
Hairline fractures spreading across the bone like a spiderweb.
It was running on empty. Even without pain receptors, the physical structure was failing. Its movements were starting to lag.
And then—just as Mo Fan gritted his teeth and steered 003 toward the cover of a collapsed stone building nearby—Venerable Miasma Dust stopped.
The barrage of mindless, carpet-bombing spells simply ceased.
He hung in midair, those clouded, bloodshot eyes locked onto the ghost-like white bone beast weaving through the ruins below.
The fury in his gaze slowly gave way to something far more profound.
Suspicion.
"Something's wrong..."
His withered fingers twitched. He'd finally caught it—that gnawing sense of wrongness he hadn't been able to name.
A low-tier mutant demon beast with no real intelligence. A mindless undead that had spontaneously formed.
Either way—how could something like that possess such terrifying combat IQ?
It had used broken walls to exploit the blind spots in his spellcasting.
It had timed its harassment to the exact gaps in his spiritual force cycling. And just now—it had executed a feint.
A deliberate, calculated feint and retreat.
That was not the mindless, blood-drunk savagery hardwired into a Qi Condensation demon beast. That was tactics.
The moment the thought fully formed, Venerable Miasma Dust broke into a cold sweat—as if a bucket of ice water had been dumped over his head.
The side courtyard!
He snapped his head toward the back of the village.
His cultivation was already unstable.
If something went wrong with the "offerings" on top of everything else, he wouldn't just fail to recover—he'd suffer a severe backlash!
"You! Get over here!"
No time to think.
He flung his sleeve with hateful fury, unleashing a storm of blood-red spells that hammered 003 back into the depths of the ruins.
Then he reached down and grabbed Fang Tong—who had been cowering in a corner, clutching his severed arm and shaking—by the collar like a broken sack.
"Keep that beast busy. Half a quarter-hour."
Fang Tong stared blankly. He looked at his empty sleeve.
He looked at the terrifying bone monster in the ruins, pale blue ghost-fire still flickering in its eye sockets.
Every drop of color drained from his face. He let out a sound like a chicken being strangled.
"Ah?! ME?!"
Venerable Miasma Dust didn't spare the cannon fodder another glance. He hurled Fang Tong in front of 003 and shot toward the side courtyard at full speed.
Damn it. The old bastard figured it out. This is bad.
Through the shared field of vision, Mo Fan watched that figure streak directly toward the courtyard and felt his stomach drop. Every alarm in his head went off at once.
If that old monster cornered him in the courtyard, his real body was dead. Ten deaths, zero survival.
"003—hide."
Mo Fan issued the final command without hesitation, sending the nearly disintegrated bone frame moving rapidly toward the outskirts of the village.
He knew exactly what Fang Tong would do.
You could give the one-armed man ten times the courage, and he still wouldn't have the nerve to chase a bone monster into the dark on his own.
With that settled, Mo Fan didn't waste a single breath. He severed the link.
Bzzt—
His consciousness dropped like a stone into an ice cave—a nauseating, weightless plunge—and slammed viciously back into his body in the side courtyard room.
"Hah—"
Mo Fan's eyes snapped open. He gasped like a drowning man breaking the surface, lungs heaving.
However, his awareness had barely returned. His body's senses hadn't even had time to fully wake up.
THUD. THUD. THUD.
Heavy, chaotic footsteps—carrying a wave of deranged, violent spiritual pressure—were already right outside his door.
BOOM——!!!
No warning. No time to react.
The already rotting wooden door exploded into a storm of splinters, shredded apart by a surge of wild, chaotic spiritual force.
And through the wreckage, a blade—slicked with dark purple lethal poison—shot forward like a viper's tongue.
Carrying a screaming, unhinged killing intent, aimed straight at Mo Fan's face!
CLANG— Sparks flew everywhere!
At the last possible instant, Mo Yan—hidden in the blind spot behind the door this entire time—executed its standing order to "hold the line" with cold, mechanical precision.
It glided sideways like a ghost, the rusted cold-iron sword sweeping upward from below, narrowly catching the poisoned blade at the very last moment.
Sizzle, sizzle—
The highly toxic liquid splashed off the blade and hit Mo Yan's bone arm.
The sound of corrosion followed immediately—a teeth-grinding sizzle, purple smoke curling upward.
And the sheer berserk kinetic momentum behind the ambusher's strike was actually enough to push Mo Yan—jade-bone frame and all—back half a step!
Mo Fan's vision was full of stars.
He fought through the vertigo of the severed link and forced his head up to see the face of the attacker who had kicked his door in.
His brain stopped.
"Wu Feng?!"
Mo Fan's eyeballs nearly popped out of his skull.
He felt the spiritual pressure rolling off the man—chaotic, unstable, barely contained—but unmistakably, solidly at peak Qi Condensation!
What the hell happened?!
But there was no time to figure it out.
Dodge!
His combat instincts screamed frantically.
He threw himself off the bed on reflex, intending to execute a tactical roll to avoid Wu Feng's ensuing mad slashes.
His brain sent the command. His body sent back something completely different.
For the past incense stick's worth of time, his entire consciousness had been submerged inside 003's beast frame.
That high-intensity sustained spiritual override had left his nervous system suffering a severe neurological desync.
So Mo Fan's body did not execute a clean, decisive tactical barrel roll. His left foot caught his right ankle viciously.
The smooth evasion he'd anticipated became, in reality, a spectacular, deeply undignified, comical face-plant.
SPLAT.
Mo Fan hit the cold stone floor flat—all four limbs splayed, body twisted into an extremely contorted, almost non-human crawling posture.
He proceeded to scramble frantically and chaotically across the ground.
To any normal observer, he would have looked like a patient suffering a sudden medical seizure.
However.
This extremely bizarre, comical picture, falling into the eyes of Wu Feng—whose mind had been completely shattered, whose perception had been warped beyond recognition by Qi Deviation and the illusion array...
It produced a miraculous hallucination!
"Heh... hehehe..."
Wu Feng's eyes were so scarlet they almost dripped blood. He stared dead at Mo Fan, who was crawling contortedly on all fours across the floor.
In his fractured, greed-consumed vision, what he saw was not a person at all!
Those contorted limbs. That low, scrambling posture. It matched perfectly with the "demon beast guarding the supreme treasure" his delusion had conjured!
"It really is a beast! HAHAHA! IT REALLY IS A BEAST!"
Wu Feng's laughter was not a human sound.
His poisoned blade became an airtight net of steel, slashing down in a frenzied, overlapping barrage toward Mo Fan flopping on the floor.
And as he hacked, he called out—in a voice of unbearable tenderness, full of deep, genuine affection—to the empty air beside him:
"San Niang, don't be scared! The treasure you always wanted is right there on this thing!"
"Your husband's going to kill this beast for you right now! Skin it, gut it, and pull out every last treasure inside for you!"
CLANG! CLANG! CLANG!
Mo Yan chased after him with the sword, blocking and deflecting desperately from behind, trying to force the madman away from Mo Fan.
But Wu Feng in full Qi Deviation was fast—as fast as a rabid dog!
He ricocheted around the cramped room with no pattern, completely ignoring Mo Yan's sword edge.
Even when the blade opened a gash across his back, he felt no pain, relentlessly chasing and hacking at Mo Fan rolling across the floor.
What the actual f—
Mo Fan was rolling across the ground like a deranged, oversized frog—humiliated, frantic, dodging poison-laced steel by inches—and screaming internally with every ounce of outrage he had left.
WHAT THE HELL IS HAPPENING RIGHT NOW?!