In the Thousand Demon Den, a waterfall hung like a white silk ribbon, roaring down in a torrent.

In an instant, the flow stopped dead.

A ten-thousand-zhang cliff face tore itself from the ground, the earth trembling, mountains shaking, wielding a mountain peak like a blade — a weapon vast enough to blot out sun and sky — and smashed down with a thunderous crash.

"Raaargh!"

A flood dragon whose whole body glimmered with a dark sheen lashed its tail, striking the cliff face — a torrent of overwhelming force pouring out and shattering the massive mountain to rubble.

The broken stones rained down against its demonic body with dull, heavy thuds, but not one of them so much as scratched it.

When the dust settled, the Dark Flood Dragon raised its head to the sky, its eyes venomous and vicious. "What's gotten into you people this time?"

Where its gaze fell —

a figure sat cross-legged in midair. At eight chi tall, he was powerfully built even among cultivators — yet against both the ruined cliff face and the several-hundred-zhang Dark Flood Dragon before him, he looked vanishingly small.

His hair and beard bristled like steel mane, faintly streaked with white.

His face was knife-cut and sharp-edged — a man in his middle years.

His left hand was locked in a spell-seal; it was obvious that the mountain-shifting technique just now, alarming as it was, had come from his hand.

He looked down, expressionless. "I've been recuperating on the mountain a good long while now, and I was getting a little bored. Can't I come out and have some fun with you?"

At that, the Dark Flood Dragon extended both claws. "You're sure you can walk out of here alive?"

To hear him talk, someone who didn't know better might think Wutong Mountain's Ancestor himself had come. Yu Chao'an — ranked near dead last among that whole crowd of senior and junior brothers — daring to act this brazen.

"And it's not just me who's come, either."

Yu Chao'an raised an eyebrow, saying flatly, "Go ahead and call for…