Just how enormous would a true phoenix’s body be? Ye Tianxie had never seen one, so of course he had no idea — but he was certain the Blood Phoenix before him had to be a great deal smaller than the real thing. At a glance, apart from the terrifying blood-red that covered it from head to tail, its form was no different from the phoenix of Huaxia legend.

The fifth level of the cavern, buried deep underground, had been destroyed outright by its power… to destroy terrain, and destroy it to this degree — what kind of horrifying force did that take? Its body stretched more than ten meters, its gorgeous blood-colored feathers standing on end like clusters of burning crimson flame. Its eyes were the same shade of blood, and they were fixed, unmoving, on Ye Tianxie.

Locked in the Blood Phoenix’s gaze, that savage aura pressed down on his chest like an impossibly heavy stone slab, crushing him toward suffocation. This was a Heaven-Severing-tier creature at minimum — man and beast were not on the same plane of strength at all. Standing before the Blood Phoenix, Ye Tianxie hadn’t a shred of a chance to struggle. The pressure of its aura alone had all but stripped him of control over his own body; he couldn’t move. The shadow of death closed in without warning.

“Ding… You are in combat. You cannot use a Town Portal Scroll.”

“Ding… You are in combat. You cannot use a Town Portal Scroll.”

Two consecutive attempts, two failures — the chimes finally made Ye Tianxie accept his situation. His gaze swept the surroundings, hunting for anything that might save his life… According to the Guping Town chief, the other cave on the fifth level of the Skeleton Cavern was the Blood Phoenix’s nest, because it required absolute silence when it rested. It also lived in perfect coexistence with the undead creatures here, never troubling them. Ye Tianxie couldn’t work out why the Blood Phoenix had gone berserk in its own nest, going so far as to destroy the nest itself… and its target was unmistakably him! Had attacking the Undead Sovereign woken it? That made no sense — if that were it, it would have woken far earlier.

So what was the reason!?

Kreeeeee—

Another shriek that all but shattered Ye Tianxie’s consciousness. The Blood Phoenix launched skyward, dragging up a storm of scattered rubble, then dove — hurtling down at Ye Tianxie’s position with a stunning aura of annihilation.

That colossal force plunging down from above pinned Ye Tianxie’s body to the wall like a raging hurricane; he couldn’t move so much as his little finger. His brow drew tight, his eyes locked on the crimson shadow swelling in his pupils… The gulf in strength was beyond any measure. Against a locked-on strike from a Blood Phoenix, he had no lucky escape available to him. Afraid? No. Unwilling to accept it? A little, perhaps — because he simply couldn’t understand why this Blood Phoenix was attacking him with such fury.

At that moment, a ball of white light appeared beside him, and before her body had even fully formed, Guoguo’s voice came first: “Yee-yaa!! Master, master, Blood Feather… I suddenly smell the scent of the Fate Core, the Blood Feather… aaaaaahhh!”

Then Guoguo’s body came into view, and she got a clear look at the crimson phoenix diving down at them. Her little face went sheet-white with terror on the spot, and a shriek burst out of her wide-open mouth… She had evidently forgotten that her body existed in a strange and utterly unreal state — only Ye Tianxie could see her, hear her, touch her. No other living thing could perceive her at all, and even an attack that struck her would only be striking an illusion.

Blood Feather…

A crimson phoenix…

Could it be…

The sensation of death pressed right up against him. In that sliver of time, countless thoughts flashed through his mind, and not one of them offered a way out. He lowered his eyes in resignation.

“ROOOAR!!”

The space around him convulsed again, and a savage beast-roar even more terrifying than the phoenix’s shriek snapped his head up. Above him, he saw a blue shadow — a blue shadow slamming toward the crimson phoenix.

BOOM!!

With one anguished cry from the Blood Phoenix, the blue shadow smashed full-force into its diving body. The phoenix was hurled violently aside, and an enormous damage number floated up above its head—

-120000!

The pressure crushing Ye Tianxie vanished without a trace, and in that same instant he got a clear look at the blue shadow.

It was a wolf… a wolf, entirely blue, colossal in size. It was this blue wolf that had leapt into the air and rammed the Blood Phoenix aside — and spared Ye Tianxie his life.

A body thicker and more powerful than any ordinary wolf’s, sharper claws and fangs, fiercer eyes, a far more savage presence… and it was blue over every inch, blue without a single impurity. Blue fur, blue eyes, blue wolf-ears. In the real world or the virtual one, it was the first blue wolf he had ever laid eyes on.

A single collision dealing a full one hundred and twenty thousand damage… this wolf — could it possibly be a Divine Mystery beast?

Shaken as he was, he didn’t even choose to burn a Town Portal Scroll and get out. He simply stared, transfixed, at the blue and crimson shapes now tangled together in the sky.

????: ????

????: ????

That was what his Detection returned from both the blue wolf and the Blood Phoenix — an unbroken row of question marks. He couldn’t even detect their names. The gap in strength between him and these two beasts was simply too vast; none of his skills could have produced the faintest effect on either.

And compared to the Blood Phoenix, it was the giant blue wolf that had begun to intrigue him. Its majestic form drew his admiration, and its strength turned out to be not a shred inferior to the phoenix’s. It was because it had burst out when it did that Ye Tianxie had escaped death.

ROAR!!

Kreee…

Boom! Boom! Crash…

The wolf’s snarls, the phoenix’s long cries, wrapped in deafening impacts. The blue wolf slammed its head into the phoenix’s body again and again, seemingly and deliberately driving it away from where Ye Tianxie stood — and under those charges the Blood Phoenix cried out, over and over, its flying body knocked away and wrenched aside strike after strike… In a fight against the blue wolf, it was being thoroughly overpowered.

A great mass of blood-colored flame swept toward the wolf on the beat of the phoenix’s wings, the air itself scorched into churning collapse wherever it passed. Even hundreds of meters away, Ye Tianxie felt an appalling wave of heat crash over his face. The wolf hung motionless in the air for a moment, then its jaws yawned wide and it let out a roar — and a wind, tinted blue, whipped up from all over its body and rushed to meet the flame, a vast surge of cold air sweeping the surrounding space and dispelling the heat in an instant… That blue wasn’t the color of the wind. It was the countless shards of ice-blue frost carried within it.

Blood-flame and blue wind collided in the air, and in that instant the entire sky in Ye Tianxie’s vision was drowned in blue and red. He could not have imagined — could not possibly have imagined — the heights of power these two beasts had already reached. Never mind a few hundred meters; even at a thousand, their world-shaking force would still have swept over him with ease.

The sensation of death slammed in again. Ye Tianxie, who had only just escaped the Blood Phoenix, had barely smelled death’s approach when a blurred shadow flashed past beside him, a hand seized his body, and it carried him away from where he stood.

BOOOOM!!!!

The blast of exploding energy was deafening, enough to scatter a man’s soul. But the direction it came from was clearly farther off than he’d expected — and the sensation of death had vanished. When Ye Tianxie’s vision cleared, he found himself high in the sky, with the blood-red and blue shapes now a full kilometer away. In his line of sight, crimson fire and blue wind still churned together in chaos, not yet dispersed.

Fire burning, wind howling — the entire Skeleton Cavern, including the spot where he had been standing, a full kilometer in every direction, had been utterly swallowed. All Ye Tianxie could see was rampaging blood-fire and wind vortices of every shape. The air had been driven far away; the earth was scorched and scoured into ruin.

Ye Tianxie felt a chill go through him… Immortal Spirit beasts, Heaven-Severing beasts, Divine Mystery beasts — the power they possessed was terrifying to this degree… it could actually reach this degree. No wonder they said any beast above Immortal Spirit rank was flatly impossible to defeat. Power of this magnitude — how could a player possibly provoke it, let alone stand against it?

And the reason he was suspended in midair was that there was a person beside him. A person whose feet touched nothing, simply floating there in the air, one hand holding Ye Tianxie, keeping him aloft. Ye Tianxie had noticed him the instant he appeared — and yet, though the man was right there next to him, he found, to his astonishment, that he could sense no presence from him whatsoever, as though this were not a person at all but a lifeless stone, or a piece of dead wood.

Ye Tianxie turned his eyes to the side, looking at the man who had plucked him out of the disaster of wind and fire. And the moment he saw his face clearly, both his gaze and his heart gave a small tremor.

This person…

A dark gray outer robe, without a trace of ornament. And above it, a face like something carved from a blade — perfect to a degree that was frankly shocking… Ye Tianxie had met more people than he could count, and within the first second of seeing him, he was absolutely certain that this was the most perfect male face he had ever seen. Perfect to the point that not a single flaw or discordant line could be found in it. But on that face, Ye Tianxie could not find so much as a trace of the expression a human being ought to have. No matter how cold and hard a person’s expression might be — natural or put on, it made no difference — so long as they were still alive, it was impossible to erase the vitality a living person carries. But this man’s face was rigid to a degree Ye Tianxie could hardly believe. That utterly expressionless face was as still as something chiseled from stone, without the slightest ripple, his eyes staring straight ahead at the distant battle between phoenix and wolf, his pupils not shifting a hair, his gaze without a shred of luster — the eyes of a dead man. Had he not been physically holding Ye Tianxie up, Ye Tianxie’s first thought would have been that this was a corpse gone stiff.

And the most arresting thing of all was his hair. His hair was a blue as clear and deep as the sky, falling to his shoulders. The unnatural wind born of the energy shockwaves went howling past their ears — and that hair, which should have danced in even the gentlest breeze, was, impossibly, utterly still…

????: ????

What Detection returned was, once again, nothing but question marks. Just like the Blood Phoenix and the blue wolf, he could not detect a single piece of information about this man.

(End of Chapter 103)