The colossal skeletal death god slowly curled its scythe-like finger bones.
Within the ghostly blue soul-fire, there was not a trace of fear—only absolute domination and madness.
But as overlords of the primordial age...
Even reduced to a single strand of remnant soul imprisoned within this mystic realm, the fearsome authority of an ancient giant beast could never tolerate such defiance from a puny human.
"ROAR——!!!"
Spurred by a tangible life-and-death crisis, the Heaven-Swallowing Python descended fully into a berserk fury.
Its massive body, seized by the "seven inches" at its throat, stopped struggling to break free.
Instead, it extremely ruthlessly whipped around with vicious precision—like a thick mountain range come alive...
And wrapped itself tight around Mo Fan's colossal skeletal form!
Terrifying constriction force erupted instantly.
Bone grinding against bone let out a spine-crawling, tooth-aching creeeak.
At the same moment, the Kun Peng shade in mid-air unleashed a metal-splitting screech.
Sacrificing the talon that had been crippled, it drove its remaining giant claw—carrying the void-tearing power to shred reality itself—straight down at the skeletal death god's crown!
This last-ditch counterattack from the brink of death...
Had Mo Fan's soul intensity not already far surpassed that of ordinary men, forged through countless absorptions and brushes with death, this alone would have been enough.
For an average Outer Sect disciple, the interwoven primordial malevolence of this single moment would have scattered their soul into nothingness.
And yet, amid such fierce combat...
Aside from the python and the Kun Peng now locked in a life-or-death struggle with Mo Fan, the other ancient beasts in the corners of the arena didn't immediately join the fray to gang up on him.
They merely prowled at the edges, growling low.
It seemed the underlying logic of this trial wasn't to pile on and crush the disciple all at once—but a test of gradual pressure.
Which, conveniently, gave Mo Fan the space to cut loose.
He'd braced himself to fight several ferocious beasts at once. But if he only had to handle two— Then he could go all out without restraint!
"OPEN FOR ME!"
Mo Fan roared inside his mind, driving the cultivation method of the [ Form-Intention Fist ] to its absolute limit in the depths of his soul.
At first, his control over this massive skeletal frame felt stiff; every punch and block carried a sluggish, jammed resistance.
But in the crucible of this high-intensity life-and-death struggle, as his comprehension of "Form to Intent" deepened...
The skeleton gradually became an extension of his own body—nimble and moving with extraordinary grace.
What was even more astonishing: because this was a state of pure soul, without the physical obstruction of flesh and skin to impose limits...
The Form-Intention Fist's transmutation of the bones produced staggeringly exaggerated visual effects!
Crack, crack, crack...
To adapt to the savage constriction, Mo Fan's massive skeletal legs instantly thickened, swelling into two heaven-supporting pillars driven firmly into the void.
His upper limbs twisted and mutated into the form most optimized for generating force.
And at the shoulder blades on the skeletal death god's back, two clusters of extremely dense death energy were converging madly and bulging outward.
That was the memory-imprint of the former [Floating Soul Wings]!
Something was trying to burst free from the body—as if a pair of bone wings wanted to grow from this soul-forged skeleton!
But every time it neared completion, the momentum faltered—stalling out, jammed hard against a breakthrough bottleneck.
Even so, Mo Fan was already deep in the frenzy.
Feeling the aching strain in his back and the two giant beasts still bearing down on him...
Mo Fan thoroughly cast aside all the flashy moves belonging to humanity.
In this pure soul-arena, he transformed into the most primal, most savage of ancient primitive men.
"ROAR!"
Faced with the Kun Peng diving down to bite from overhead once again, Mo Fan did not throw a punch or a block.
The colossal skeletal death god snapped its head back, upper and lower jawbones cracking open to a horrifyingly wide angle...
And met the Kun Peng's phantom wing with a savage, downward bite!
CRUNCH——!!!
A crisp sound of a soul being torn detonated through the arena.
Mo Fan's stark white bone teeth—with brutal, tyrannical, unreasonable force—ripped a massive chunk of congealed soul-flesh clean off the Kun Peng's remnant soul!
"SCREEE——!!!"
The Kun Peng let out a shriek of pure, disbelieving despair, flapping its ruined wings as it staggered backward continuously.
And Mo Fan—after swallowing the torn-off chunk of soul-flesh in a single gulp...
Felt a surge of extremely pure, outrageously massive soul-power explode with a boom inside his skeletal frame!
BOOM!
This was the origin remnant soul of a primordial giant beast!
Even a single mouthful contained energy who knows how many times greater than any of the ordinary low-tier beasts outside!
With the injection of this great tonic, the bone wings on Mo Fan's back—the ones stuck at a bottleneck...
Suddenly, with a spine-tingling squelch, shot outward another significant length!
At the same time, Mo Fan felt it with razor clarity—his soul intensity had exploded upward another full stage out of thin air, all from that single bite!
"Oh, that's refreshing!"
A groan of profound satisfaction rose from within his heart.
He slowly turned that enormous skeletal skull.
And in the hollow sockets, the ghostly blue soul-fire—at that moment—bizarrely shifted into the green glow of extreme hunger and greed!
Bathed in that green light, Mo Fan fixed his gaze on the remaining ancient beasts in the arena.
He was a skeleton. And yet, in that moment, anyone could feel it—from between those stark white teeth, invisible, greedy drool seemed to be dripping down.
After that single bite, the situation had flipped a full one-hundred-and-eighty degrees!
Mo Fan let out a deranged shriek, eyes blazing green, and lunged madly at those prehistoric giant beasts still hanging back in the corners!
"Roar?!" "Whimper——!"
Those ancient beasts—who had once shaken the primordial world with their unmatched dominance...
Took one look at this crazed, biting bone-rack chasing them down, and every last shred of their innate ferocity evaporated on the spot.
In an instant, the solemn, dignified primordial gladiator arena descended into utter chaos!
One giant skeleton howling and giving chase wildly from behind.
Several ancient beasts scurrying like rats and scattering in front, clutching their heads.
The scene was chaotic and comical to the extreme.
"Gotcha! You old turtle!"
Riding his explosive burst of speed, Mo Fan finally cornered a turtle-shaped ancient beast into a dead end.
He opened that abyssal skeletal maw, aimed it at the creature's impossibly thick turtle shell—radiating dense soul fluctuations—and bit down hard!
Time to feast! Time to gorge myself absolutely stupid!
But—
The very instant Mo Fan's bone teeth tore into it, at the exact moment he was about to swallow that sweet, sweet soul...
Up in the arena's sky, the last luminous grain of fine sand in the massive golden hourglass drained through—with impeccable, agonizing timing.
HUM——
A cold, emotionless, and profoundly ill-timed mechanical chime abruptly rang out across the entire mystic realm arena:
"The time of one incense stick has arrived. Stage One—The Soul's First Cry—trial concluded."