“ROAR!!”

The deafening roar swept across mountains and sea. The jade waves reared back and slammed hard into a tall mountain.

The mountain was crawling with panicked cultivators. Some, faces twisted, still forced themselves to stay calm and worked the grand formation, hoping to hold out a little.

But far more of them took out escape treasures they'd paid a fortune for, trying to grab the last thread of life in this demon calamity—even though they were stewards of this sect, even elders, respected by thousands every day, with their whole families rooted here.

Before the terrifying menace of a Dao-merging great demon, all of that was instinctively thrown to the wind.

And yet… there had never been any thread of life to grab.

The turbid waves smashed through the formation on the mountain with ease. The cultivators working it were all blasted away, blood filling their mouths and noses and every orifice. In the blink of an eye they were barely breathing, clearly about to die.

Without the formation's protection, the figures who had taken to the air on their treasures were all flipped over by the demon's roar. Amid a string of cracks, those precious treasures shattered one after another!

A single howl had all but wiped out a dependent power of some renown in Nanhong, one backed by the Nanhong Seven.

This was what a Dao-merging great demon's slaughter of ordinary beings looked like—utterly crushing.

“What a rush! What a rush!”

The great demon—only a few zhang long, shaped like a leopard but with three heads—laughed wildly. “Fine medicine! All of it into my belly!”

Back in Xihong, every one of these powers would have had an immortal sect behind it. Pull one vine and a whole tangle of melons came up with it, a mess nobody could sort out. Before it could even finish devouring all the living things here, those old things would probably have come flying in on their swords. It would never have dared cut loose like this.

It had thought the West Dragon Palace was going too far, driving it off to…