“Run!” Ye Tianxie had no way of catching the shift in her expression right now — he hauled her up fast, and just as they got to their feet, a violet shadow came slamming back in on them again, a low, guttural roar tearing out ahead of it.
“Second Brother!!” Zuo Pojun, who’d already stopped running, shouted at the top of his lungs. He’d already been sprinting back this way the moment the Six-Winged Purple-Scaled Sky-Treading Lion wound up for another Flash Thunder Charge — the terrifying damage number that first impact had put up was enough to make his blood run cold… but what shook him even harder was that Ye Tianxie hadn’t died. His health bar had just been emptied down to almost nothing.
His HP pool topped 2,500… and here Zuo Pojun had been bragging to his face about breaking a thousand HP himself. The thought alone made him want to dig a hole and climb into it.
But right now, Ye Tianxie had no way of surviving a second hit like that — he’d just been knocked to the ground, with Su Feifei still tangled around him, and there was no possible way to dodge…
A great roar tore out, and just as the Six-Winged Purple-Scaled Sky-Treading Lion slammed toward Ye Tianxie as he scrambled back up, a massive shadow with a shield raised came barreling in like a small mountain, smashing his shield straight into the lion’s body…
The Guardian class’s signature skill — Heavy Shield Bash, built to knock an enemy clean off course.
“HAAAH!!”
The huge roar carried something more than force behind it — a headlong, unflinching resolve that didn’t care about the cost. He knew exactly what would happen if this unassuming little lion so much as brushed against him… and he charged in anyway.
BOOM!!
The bronze shield slammed brutally into the small Six-Winged Purple-Scaled Sky-Treading Lion’s body with a heavy, muffled crash. The lion’s body was knocked sideways, its charge veering wildly off course, skimming past Ye Tianxie’s body by a hair before it lost control entirely and crashed headlong into the dirt.
Zuo Pojun let out a long breath and hauled Ye Tianxie up by the arm. “Move! Now!”
By the time the little Six-Winged Purple-Scaled Sky-Treading Lion scrambled back to its feet, the four of them had already sprinted the full ten meters clear — but they still hadn’t broken free of its aggro range. Its eyes, blazing with a wild, furious light, locked onto them, and it gave chase like something possessed.
Maybe it was simply too young — its speed wasn’t fast, and rather than closing the gap, the distance between them kept growing. The juvenile Six-Winged Purple-Scaled Sky-Treading Lion’s aggro range was fifty meters; the instant they cleared that fifty meters, they could safely pop a Town Portal Scroll and vanish.
An Immortal Spirit Beast… Ye Tianxie couldn’t help but think back to what the City of Stars’ lord had told him when he’d taken the commission to clear the Golden Sword Lion Beast. He’d mentioned it in an oddly uncertain tone — that the head of some chain business guild on the north street of the City of Stars had been killed by an Immortal Spirit Beast that had no business being there at all… and now that very beast, the one that shouldn’t have existed, was standing right in front of him, undeniably real.
Today, Ye Tianxie had finally, truly felt just how terrifying an Immortal Spirit Beast could be… whether in HP, in raw attack power — a dozen-plus times beyond a Lord-tier boss of the same level — its attack skills were more horrifying than he could have imagined.
The idea that Immortal Spirit Beasts were simply not something players could stand against wasn’t exaggeration in the slightest. And this was just a Level 15 juvenile — already terrifying to this degree. Rumor had it the Lost Continent held somewhere between two and three hundred Immortal Spirit Beasts in total, each one something ordinary people were never meant to provoke. Heaven-Severing beasts numbered only a few dozen. Divine Mystery beasts were rarer still — maybe ten in the entire world. And at the very peak of power sat the Holy Annihilation beasts — existences that human beings simply had no business touching at all.
If an Immortal Spirit Beast was already this terrifying, then a Heaven-Severing beast or a Divine Mystery beast, stronger still, hardly bore imagining.
The four of them ran flat-out until they reached the tree line, pulling more than forty meters clear of the little Six-Winged Purple-Scaled Sky-Treading Lion, and the shaken, breathless terror of the near-death moment finally began to ease… and just as they were about to slip fully out of the terrifying little Immortal Beast’s aggro range, Ye Tianxie suddenly stopped dead.
His stopping brought the other three to a halt as well. Zuo Pojun wiped away a cold sweat and asked, “Second Brother, what’s wrong… let’s get out of here first. That little lion back there is way too dangerous.”
“I was just thinking about why I should run.” Ye Tianxie’s expression was strangely calm. He turned around, his gaze fixing on the small Six-Winged Purple-Scaled Sky-Treading Lion closing in fast… Right. Why should he run? Since when had he become someone this cowardly — chased off by a little lion cub?
Running. He hated that word. He never wanted anything to do with it, ever.
“But Second Brother, that’s an Immortal Beast — there’s no way we can win against it!!” Zuo Pojun said, urgency in his voice. He knew Ye Tianxie well enough to know exactly how much pride the man carried — he’d never allow himself to be the one fleeing in retreat. But if he tried to go head-to-head against a true Immortal Spirit Beast, there wasn’t a shred of a chance of winning.
“Second Brother, falling back for now isn’t cowardice — it’s tactics. Give it some time, and we can come back and finish it off properly… knowing your strength, I’m sure it wouldn’t take long at all.” Murong Qiushui, for once, wore an expression that was genuinely serious.
“Tianxie.” Su Feifei said his name softly, watching him without another word.
The little Six-Winged Purple-Scaled Sky-Treading Lion was closing in fast now. Ye Tianxie raised his left hand, his eyes narrowing into thin, sharp slits.
“Blessing of Holy Light!!”
A burst of pure white light spread instantly from the Holy Dragon’s Fang on his left hand across his entire body, snapping his HP straight back to full. And just as he lifted his head, a voice rang out that made Murong Qiushui’s eyes go wide.
“Ding… You have been removed from the party by player ‘Xietian’!”
“Uh? Second Brother…?”
Murong Qiushui and Zuo Pojun both let out startled sounds at once, and then heard Ye Tianxie’s low, urgent voice: “Qiushui, attack me!”
Murong Qiushui froze, shoulders hunching. “Oh! My dear Second Brother, I think there might be something wrong with my ears…”
“Hit me with Double Shot! Now!” Ye Tianxie kept his eyes locked on the closing lion, his voice suddenly sharpening.
“Ah! Oh!” Murong Qiushui didn’t hesitate any further, raising his bow and firing two consecutive Double Shots straight into Ye Tianxie’s body. It was an absurd request, and he had no desire whatsoever to turn his own weapon on Ye Tianxie — but he knew full well this wasn’t a man who joked around at a time like this. There had to be a reason.
−58, −69, −60, −69…
The two Double Shots stripped away a combined 256 HP from Ye Tianxie — and that number left both Murong Qiushui and Zuo Pojun stunned all over again. They both knew exactly how much damage Murong Qiushui’s attacks were capable of — and yet against Ye Tianxie, the numbers that came up were downright “pathetic.” What monstrous defense.
If they’d known Ye Tianxie had specifically stripped off his shoulder guards and leg guards beforehand just so he could take more damage, there was no telling what they’d have made of it.
“Good! Stop!” Ye Tianxie called out, and quickly re-added Murong Qiushui back to the party. He stared at his own HP bar, a flicker of something bordering on manic light flashing across his eyes for just an instant…
For the sake of a pride he couldn’t afford to lose — even against an Immortal Beast, he was going to go all in. Just this once, he’d go a little mad!
The little Six-Winged Purple-Scaled Sky-Treading Lion had already closed to within ten meters. Ye Tianxie’s body shot forward, and before the lion could get its attack off, his body blurred into a streak of afterimage — a Dragon Shadow Slash crashing brutally into it. No such thing as taking a hit without answering it in kind!
Struck dead-on, the Six-Winged Purple-Scaled Sky-Treading Lion was sent tumbling by the sheer force of the impact, slamming heavily into the ground. Ye Tianxie closed the distance instantly, landing an ordinary, plain slash across its body.
−298!
The little Six-Winged Purple-Scaled Sky-Treading Lion’s defense wasn’t at some absurd level — it only absorbed roughly 400 of the damage. Ye Tianxie’s attacks were more than enough to break through it. The corner of his mouth curled up slightly, and before the lion could get back on its feet, he raised the Hour of Eternal Fate in a plain, unhurried arc, and swung it, plain and unhurried… and in that instant, the Blood Feather set into the weapon’s tip flared with a blinding burst of red light.
The Hour of Eternal Fate cut across the little Six-Winged Purple-Scaled Sky-Treading Lion’s body, and that crimson light poured out from the point where blade met flesh, sinking straight into the lion’s body — and then, with the lion’s body as its center, the crimson light detonated all at once…
−293! −12,000!
Not far off, Zuo Pojun and Murong Qiushui — who hadn’t walked away, hadn’t even taken a step back — stared at that blood-red number and couldn’t bring themselves to trust their own eyes…
Damage in the five figures!
That was a damage number over ten thousand!
Fate’s Seven Kills, First Kill — drawn from the crimson light of the Blood Feather — Life Sanction: ignoring everything, impossible to defend against, forcibly stripping away 10% of the target’s current HP!
“So Second Brother wasn’t just being reckless after all… there’s a lot more hidden up his sleeve than we thought.” Zuo Pojun spoke in a daze. Murong Qiushui nodded in agreement.
Reeling from the massive wound, the little Six-Winged Purple-Scaled Sky-Treading Lion finally straightened up with a furious roar, lightning crackling to life across its body. After a brief moment of spellcasting, a bolt of violet lightning came crashing down from above, striking straight at Ye Tianxie.
“Soul of the Evil Dragon!”
Ye Tianxie neither dodged nor gave ground. On his low growl, colorless flame surged and boiled across the surface of his body, and the Dragon Soul Wall — able to hold back anything in this world — rose up around him. Freed of any further concern, he charged straight in a dead line at the little Six-Winged Purple-Scaled Sky-Treading Lion, Dragon Rend Slash landing again and again on its body without mercy, without pause.
−592, −600, −596…
Ye Tianxie’s attacks came like a violent storm, the shockwave carried in every Dragon Rend Slash driving the Six-Winged Purple-Scaled Sky-Treading Lion back step by step, while its own attacks landed just as relentlessly against him… against that transparent barrier of light wrapped around him. But whether it was the lion’s charge, its claws, or its lightning bombardment, all of it vanished without a trace the moment it touched the Dragon Soul Wall — not only did none of it deal Ye Tianxie a single point of damage, not one of the accompanying effects, the knockback, the paralysis, none of it, so much as touched him.
The Dragon Soul Wall didn’t just block attacks for Ye Tianxie. Right now, even if an entire mountain came crashing down on top of him from the sky, as long as the Dragon Soul Wall held, it would simply prop the whole mountain up — without ever actually touching Ye Tianxie’s body.
(End of Chapter 152)