Venerable Miasma Dust hung in the air, those clouded old eyes locked onto Mo Fan as he slowly straightened up in the rubble below.
He didn't immediately move in for the kill.
For an old fox who had died once already and had his foundation shattered to nothing, suspicion and extreme caution were carved deep into his bones.
His greatest fear was capsizing in a gutter he'd overlooked—which was exactly why, sitting on top of an ancient array this powerful...
He'd still only dared to send Fang Tong and his lackeys to quietly post bounties at the market, luring in low-tier wandering cultivators one at a time to slowly bleed dry.
No getting greedy. No big moves.
This boy in front of him was wrong in too many ways.
No spiritual force signature. Yet he'd tanked a Foundation Establishment strike head-on. And he'd casually thrown out a terrifying bone colossus like it was nothing.
Could he be a core true legacy body cultivator from some reclusive major sect, out on a training run?
Venerable Miasma Dust's heart was hammering with uncertainty.
He forced down the volcanic rage boiling up from his forcefully locked cultivation and cleared his throat.
When he spoke, his voice was raspy and measured—even carrying a thin veneer of courtesy.
"I wonder which fellow Daoist graces this place? Why conceal your cultivation, disturb my peace, harm my servants, and destroy the cornerstone of my array?"
He paused. A thread of veiled threat wove through his next words, though he left room to maneuver.
"Surely, fellow Daoist... does not truly wish to exchange blows with this one?"
Inside Mo Fan's chest, his heart was beating like a frantically pounded war drum. Cold sweat poured down his spine.
It was only now, having personally eaten that strike at close range, that he truly understood just how terrifying the Foundation Establishment stage was!
He also finally had a sudden realization: The reason 003 had managed to hold this old monster off at the village entrance for so long...
Wasn't because 003 was overwhelmingly heaven-defying.
It was purely because the old monster had been holding back the entire time, terrified of damaging his own array, and didn't dare to output his full DPS!
But now? The old bastard was in an unreserved, completely berserk state!
Still—the moment Mo Fan heard that probing, courteous tone, something clicked.
This old thing was screaming for blood two seconds ago. Now he's suddenly being polite?
Mo Fan's read was instant. He's rattled. He has a guilty conscience and can't figure out my bottom line!
If he showed any weakness right now, the opponent would absolutely pounce like a starving wolf and tear him to shreds.
Mo Fan drew a deep breath. He abruptly straightened his spine.
Then he jabbed a finger at Venerable Miasma Dust floating overhead and unleashed the most arrogant, domineering voice he could manage:
"Are you blind?! Your garbage array trapped ME, and you have the nerve to ask questions?!"
"The fact that I haven't leveled this whole rotten village and scattered your ashes to the wind is already giving you face!"
Mo Fan threw his chin up, arrogant to the extreme.
"If you know what's good for you, drop this stinking array and let me walk. Otherwise, when my father comes looking for me—you'll be in for a world of hurt, you dried-up old fossil!"
Venerable Miasma Dust's expression shifted. The apprehension in his eyes deepened.
This boy was staring down a mid Foundation Establishment cultivator and not only showing zero fear—he was pointing at his nose and calling him a fossil?
And looking again at that broken skeletal behemoth... This was absolutely not the kind of foundation an ordinary rogue cultivator could possess.
Could he actually be the descendant of some mighty figure?
"I wonder, young friend..." Venerable Miasma Dust swallowed his fury and ground the words out through his teeth. "Where do you study? Who is your master?"
"Say the name and it'll scare you to death." Mo Fan bluffed even louder, pulling a father out of thin air without his face flushing or his heart skipping a beat. "My father is Venerable Zishan!"
Venerable Zishan?
Venerable Miasma Dust frantically ransacked his memory—searching for the titles of every Nascent Soul elder and Golden Core powerhouse he'd ever heard of across the Central Continent.
He came up empty. No one by that name.
But the cultivation world was full of hidden dragons and crouching tigers; it might very well be some old monster living in seclusion.
Coupled with Mo Fan's full-breathed, flawlessly arrogant delivery, Venerable Miasma Dust genuinely began to entertain thoughts of retreating.
Forget it. My foundation is already broken. Provoking some unfathomable enemy right now would be extremely unwise. Better to casually extort two protective treasures from him and let him go, then I disappear...
He was already composing the conciliatory remarks in his head.
And then. At that precise, extremely delicate moment.
From beyond the half-collapsed archway, a set of ragged, stumbling footsteps came crashing in.
"Master! MASTER!"
A figure came tumbling through the ruins—one arm gone, soaked in blood, looking like the world's most pathetic stray dog.
Fang Tong.
He burst in, spotted Venerable Miasma Dust hovering overhead and Mo Fan standing in the rubble, and didn't even stop to catch his breath before pointing and screaming hysterically toward the sky:
"Master! Don't let this little bastard fool you!"
"HE'S JUST A BOTTOM-TIER SERVANT FROM AZURE CLOUD SECT'S OUTER COURT!!!"
Silence. Dead silence.
The air in the courtyard seemed to be vacuumed out the instant those words left Fang Tong's mouth. The temperature plummeted to the freezing point.
The arrogant, imperious expression on Mo Fan's face froze solid and died.
Inside, he let out a howl of pure despair.
FANG TONG YOU ABSOLUTE SON OF A— WHERE WERE YOU BEFORE?! WHY NOW?! WHY DID YOU HAVE TO COME SABOTAGE ME AT THIS EXACT MOMENT?!
Up in the air, Venerable Miasma Dust's face went through an extremely brilliant sequence of expressions in the span of 0.01 seconds.
Astonishment. Humiliated fury. Dawning realization. And then—cold, undisguised, ruthless killing intent!
An Azure Cloud Sect servant?
This lowly status itself didn't matter. What mattered were those three words: Azure Cloud Sect.
This place was remote, yes—but it was nominally under Azure Cloud Sect's jurisdiction!
If he let this kid return alive today to bring the Azure Cloud Sect's Enforcement Hall, or even Golden Core elders, to investigate this ancient array...
He, Miasma Dust, would absolutely die without a burial place!
Silence him! He must be silenced!
"An Azure Cloud Sect junior..."
His voice dropped to something that could freeze the air around it. Every trace of apprehension vanished into thin air.
"You dared to make a fool of this Seat? Then you especially cannot be allowed to live. Die!"
No more probing. No more hesitation.
BOOM!
One hand pressed downward. A cluster of dark red blood-light came down like a cannonball, aimed directly at Mo Fan's position!
"RUN!"
Negotiations had broken down. Mo Fan didn't hesitate for a second, throwing himself entirely into extreme survival mode.
His actual body was here this time. No spiritual override latency, no scrambled nervous system.
He could finally show off his skills—of course, in the aspect of running away.
"Armament!"
He frantically issued the command through his mind. Blue light flashed continuously. [ Bone Armament ] layered over both himself and Mo Yan simultaneously.
Immediately after, with a flick of his fingertip, a smear of death-qi sank into Mo Yan's skull.
"Frenzy!"
Buffed with [ Death Frenzy ], Mo Yan acted like a maddened sword-ghost.
It didn't retreat; it charged forward, the cold-iron longsword swinging directly into the blood-light.
Forcibly using its jade-bone frame to blunt the spell's force through sheer impact.
Mo Fan, meanwhile, relying on his formidable physical body, acted like an extremely agile monkey.
Scurrying and leaping madly through the remaining ruins and broken walls of the courtyard.
BANG! RUMBLE!
The blood-colored spell cratered the spot Mo Fan had just been standing.
He was alive.
And now—all the cowardly rage he'd held back while trapped inside 003's body, plus the ultimate fury of being perfectly sabotaged by Fang Tong just now...
It finally had nowhere left to be suppressed!
He finally had a human throat to make a sound!
While dodging True Lord Michen's continuous spell bombardment as wretchedly as a slippery loach, Mo Fan strained his throat and activated ultimate taunt mode:
"YOU DRIED-UP OLD CORPSE! You've got one foot in the grave and you're still out here learning from others how to lay arrays to harm people!"
"You're nothing but a stink bug hiding in a sewer! I curse your ancestors back eight generations!"
"AND YOU, FANG TONG, YOU ONE-ARMED BASTARD! You're a cheap bone born to be someone else's dog!"
"Mark my words—as long as your father here doesn't die today, I will personally skin you alive sooner or later!"
The vulgar profanity echoed across the ruined courtyard.
Venerable Miasma Dust was so furious smoke practically came out of his seven orifices.
As a grand, former half-step Golden Core cultivator, in a hundred years of existence, when had he ever had a bottom-tier servant point at his nose and curse his ancestors like this?
"Little animal! I will tear your mouth apart!"
His hand seals shifted rapidly. An extremely sharp, blood-colored wind blade shrieked through the air.
Accurately predicting Mo Fan's movement pattern, sealing off all his escape routes.
Just as the wind blade was about to bisect Mo Fan at the waist.
"I'm going to disgust you to death!"
A cold glint flashed in Mo Fan's eyes. His footsteps halted abruptly.
His right hand thrust out fiercely toward a puddle of mangled flesh a short distance away.
It was the broken corpse of the old village head, who had been torn to shreds alive by Wu Feng and San Niang!
[ Skill: Corpse Explosion ]
BOOM——!!!
An extremely unstable burst of necrotic death-qi detonated instantly inside that pile of mangled flesh.
The old village head's remnants went off like a meat bomb packed with explosives!
A storm of reeking blood, blackened organ fragments, and highly toxic bone shards exploded radially in mid-air!
The blast couldn't deal any substantive, fatal damage to a mid Foundation Establishment cultivator like Venerable Miasma Dust.
But the location of the explosion was perfectly caught right in Miasma Dust's diving pursuit path!
SPLAT!
A sky full of stinking blood and rotting internal organs plastered Venerable Miasma Dust's face with extreme precision and extreme disgust!
A few drops of foul-smelling pus even splashed into his mouth, which had been opened wide in anger!
"URGHHHHH! BLEGH—!"
His vision went dark.
That foul stench and slimy sensation that struck straight at the soul delivered an unprecedented psychological critical hit to this high-and-mighty cultivator who considered himself above mortal filth.
He was forced to interrupt his spell, frantically wiping the minced meat from his face in mid-air, letting out a bout of violent dry heaving.
Low damage. Maximum humiliation and disgust value.
However.
The brief respite brought by this disgusting tactic did not change the absolute disparity in strength between the two sides.
Venerable Miasma Dust—his face plastered with corpse filth—went completely insane.
His already sinister face, contrasted against the blood and filth, was now so dark it looked ready to drip black water.
Every single strand of his gray hair stood on end.
His killing intent was so substantial it caused the surrounding air to crystallize into a layer of blood-colored frost.
"You little animal... I will leave nothing of you! Not a complete corpse! Your soul annihilated!"
He stopped chasing.
He abruptly elevated his altitude, hovering dozens of feet in the air.
He abandoned those single-target spells that could be dodged. Spreading his arms wide like an ascending Demon God, he began frantically accumulating Spiritual Qi.
RUMBLE—
The sky changed color.
A dark red spiritual energy storm, several times more terrifying than the one that smashed the room earlier, was brewing frantically between his hands.
This time, he was going to use a map-wide, indiscriminate AoE nuke.
He would flatten the entire courtyard—walls, rubble, and the rat hiding inside it—all at once!
A true desperate situation had descended.
Mo Fan retreated to the deepest corner of the side courtyard wall. There was nowhere left to retreat to.
In front of him was Summon No. 004—its armor shattered to pieces, its soul-fire dim, fundamentally unable to tank even a single more strike.
Beside him, Mo Yan—who had just blocked a heavy blow for him—had several jade ribs on his chest blasted apart.
Half-kneeling on the ground, it could only lean on its broken sword to barely resist the residual spiritual pressure.
In the sky, that massive, meteorite-like blood-colored spell had already taken shape, pressing down like Mount Tai, about to crash.
Mo Fan pressed his back against the cold, broken wall. His chest heaved violently as he dragged in ragged breath after ragged breath.
He stared dead at the red light in the sky that was about to bring death, his fingers turning white against the stone from exerting too much force.
Cursing someone out really does feel amazing.
But...
Am I really going to get a Game Over in this bird-forsaken, broken-down village today?