Blocking the Path

In the darkness-draped expanse of the Dark Night Forest, a column of more than thirty Gene Warriors moved swiftly between towering trees.

These Gene Warriors were extraordinarily large — standing roughly five meters tall — each bearing two heads. Both heads were hairless save for a single horn sprouting from each crown. Their ears were somewhat pointed, like an elf's, though considerably broader and wider.

Their auras were immense. The two at the front were Battle Emperors, and every other member of the column was a Battle Sovereign-rank powerhouse.

The Dark Night Forest suppressed perceptive abilities across the board. Even a Battle Emperor could ordinarily barely sense beyond a hundred kilometers. The column moved at a steady clip — not recklessly fast, but not slow either.

One of the two lead Battle Emperors spoke up:

"Pick up the pace! We're almost at the target location! This operation cannot afford a single mistake!"

The expressions of the Twin-headed warriors hardened as one. They lowered their heads and pressed forward.

As the column passed beside one of the great trees, a branch stirred ever so slightly — and became a Shadow Clone, watching in silence as the warriors moved away.

This was Lu Yuan's Shadow Clone. Through the shared sensory link, he watched the Twin-headed Gene Warriors advancing in precisely the direction his own group was heading.

Back at his real body, Lu Yuan pulled his gaze away and looked at the three women beside him. He asked, with idle curiosity:

"Qinghe, what happens if you run into Gene Warriors from another race out in the wilderness?"

All three paused. Si Tingyu instinctively scanned their surroundings, a thread of wariness entering her eyes, while Li Qinghe and Shuangyue each glanced over at Lu Yuan.

Li Qinghe smiled. "Depends on the race. Some are born predators — they'll attack any Gene Warrior they encounter without hesitation, hoping to plunder their treasures. But a friendlier race? You can exchange a few words, and the odds of conflict are low."

Lu Yuan gave a small nod, thought for a moment, then asked:

"And if a Gene Warrior kills you — can you still revive?"

Shuangyue smiled. "Deaths from ordinary Feral Beasts or other Gene Warriors allow revival. It's only deaths caused by Aberration Feral Beasts that are permanent. Of course, that's no reason to let your guard down — because if those Gene Warriors capture you and drag you to an Aberration nest to be killed there, revival becomes impossible. That kind of thing isn't uncommon in the Upper Layer of the Land of Origin."

Lu Yuan raised an eyebrow slightly. *I see.*

While the four of them talked, the Twin-headed column had already closed to within roughly sixty kilometers.

Then, without warning, a profound and suffocating darkness descended upon the rapidly moving warriors.

Every last one of them — including the two Battle Emperor-rank powerhouses — found their perceptive abilities reduced to almost nothing.

Even the two Battle Emperor Twin-headed warriors could only sense perhaps a meter in front of them.

Their faces went pale with shock.

A frightened voice shattered the silence:

"I — I can't see anything! Is everyone still there?!"

"I'm here! Kress, where are you?!"

"My Lord Bateis! Are you still with us?!"

"…"

The cries of panic reached the two lead Battle Emperors. Their hearts pounded just as hard as anyone else's — but both drew a slow, steadying breath and forced themselves calm.

One of the first Twin-headed Battle Emperor's two heads bellowed:

"Calm down! Everyone hold it together!"

His second head turned, scanning the impenetrable darkness around them, and a look of deep reverence crossed its face:

"We do not know which great Senior is bestowing this jest upon us. We are merely passing through. If we have caused any disturbance, we will immediately alter our course and change our route."

The second Battle Emperor's head nodded emphatically. "Yes, Senior, please do not trouble yourself over us."

Lu Yuan studied the frightened, tense Twin-headed warriors and considered for a moment. He chose not to kill them — he had no way of knowing what manner of beings they were, or whether they counted as a friendly race.

His only goal was to keep them from stumbling into Qinghe and the others and sparking some unwanted conflict. Nothing more.

Had it been anything more serious, the Shadow Sacred Domain he'd deployed wouldn't have left them this much perceptive ability at all. He could have blocked even sound if he'd wanted.

His Shadow Clone sat on a branch high above. Lu Yuan watched the Twin-headed warriors through the Clone's eyes, his voice unhurried:

"Stay here for a while."

Hearing those words, the fidgeting, near-panicked warriors all went rigid at once. The lead Battle Emperor hastily responded:

"Yes! Understood, My Lord! We will wait right here!"

The Shadow Clone offered no further reply, simply watching in silence as the Twin-headed warriors stood frozen within the Shadow Sacred Domain.

On the other side of the forest, Lu Yuan and the three women pressed on deeper. They came across a few ordinary Feral Beasts along the way — all King Grade — which Si Tingyu dispatched with ease, yielding a modest haul of materials and Spirit Crystals.

Before long, the four had covered more than twenty kilometers and arrived in the area where Lu Yuan had earlier sensed the Aberration serpent.

He glanced up at the great tree. The Aberration serpent was coiled on the branches and noticed them at the same moment — its green eyes flickering with cold, predatory light, the tentacles rippling across its body carrying a faint, sinister aura.

Then Li Qinghe suddenly stopped. Her expression darkened.

"Fierce Rain," she said — a nickname for Si Tingyu — "there's a Feral Beast ahead."

Lu Yuan realized Li Qinghe's shadow clone must have already spotted the serpent coiled among the branches.

Si Tingyu reacted instantly. Her expression sharpened; a low, resonant draconic hum rose from her body, and a layer of gold-and-crimson Scale Armor surfaced across her skin, her aura swelling to a markedly higher level.

At that moment, the serpent on the distant branch opened its maw. A globe of green light condensed inside before hurtling toward the four of them.

Sensing the energy packed into that orb, Si Tingyu frowned slightly. Her spear shuddered in her grip, and a gold-and-crimson Scale Armor-plated shield materialized before her.

The green orb detonated against the shield with a thunderous boom. The shockwave fanned outward, rays of green light striking the surrounding trees and eating into the bark.

The instant the serpent attacked, Shuangyue and Li Qinghe moved simultaneously.

Shuangyue gave her Staff a light wave. The next moment, the branch beneath the serpent erupted with thick, tenacious vines — emerging from nowhere, binding the serpent on all sides before it could react.

In the same instant, Li Qinghe vanished from where she stood. She reappeared directly in front of the serpent's branch, space tearing open around her as jet-black sword beams materialized and enveloped the serpent in a cage of slashing light.

Lu Yuan felt the spatial fluctuations radiating from those sword beams and recognized the technique immediately.

Dark Shadow Instant Slash.

A Combat Technique born from the fusion of Shadow Type and Spatial Type — rare and formidable by any measure.

Li Qinghe had engraved it all the way back when she was Battle King Rank.

Against such a concentrated assault, the serpent let out a shriek, its tentacles lashing more frantically. Pinned and unable to move, it could only condense a green barrier of light around itself in a desperate bid to weather the storm.

But the spatial cutting force within Dark Shadow Instant Slash was not something to take lightly — this was a technique that wielded the power of space itself.

The green barrier shredded. Sword beams flashed. The serpent was torn to pieces.

The three women's coordination was seamless. And while all three were Battle Sovereign rank, their practical strength was anything but ordinary — each had engraved Sovereign Grade Combat Techniques. Together, they could likely hold their own against an average Battle Emperor.

An Emperor Grade Aberration Feral Beast was a straightforward kill for this trio.

Lu Yuan knew Li Qinghe's and Si Tingyu's strength well. He hadn't had a clear read on Shuangyue before, but since she ran alongside these two, she clearly wasn't lagging behind. None of it surprised him in the least.

As the Aberration died, Lu Yuan absorbed a strand of unknown energy from the corpse — less than he'd gotten from a B-grade Aberration Entity before, but he felt a quiet satisfaction all the same.

*The Upper Layer is full of Aberration Feral Beasts like this. My future supply of unknown energy is secured.*

Black mist began seeping from the serpent's body. Its flesh corroded, and the entire corpse crumbled to ash and vanished.

No loot dropped.

He'd already been told Aberrations didn't drop items — he took it in stride and moved on.

What they did have was Merits. Under their four-way contract, the Merits were split evenly, and Lu Yuan received 20.

The notification appeared directly in his mind — similar to the Battle-mark Space, it took only a moment of focus to register.

Lu Yuan stared at the number and couldn't help raising an eyebrow.

"An Aberration Feral Beast that powerful, and it only gives this few Merits?"

Si Tingyu gave a light smile.

"Ordinary King Grade Aberration Feral Beasts give somewhere between one and ten Merits. Emperor Grade ones are roughly ten to a hundred — though Aberrations with exceptional bloodlines or particularly formidable strength can be worth considerably more."

"Ah, I see." Lu Yuan nodded, then grinned. "Instructor, you three are something else. You took down an Emperor Grade Aberration Feral Beast just like that — I didn't even get a chance to move."

Shuangyue arched an eyebrow and smiled. "The three of us have spent quite a bit of time in the Upper Layer already. If we couldn't handle an Aberration at this level, it would all have been wasted."

"Shuangyue's right." Li Qinghe gave a small nod, then smiled. "When we run into something stronger, that's when you'll need to step in."

Si Tingyu glanced at the ash on the ground. "Let's keep moving."

As the group pressed on, Lu Yuan reached through his Shadow Clone and let the Shadow Sacred Domain cast over the distant Twin-headed warriors slowly dissolve.

With the domain lifting, the Twin-headed warriors felt their perceptive abilities flow back. A dazed look lingered on every pair of faces.

The two Battle Emperors immediately took stock of their group. Everyone accounted for. Both exhaled with audible relief.

The lead Battle Emperor's first head swept the surrounding trees; the whole figure bowed:

"My gratitude to My Lord for sparing us."

The others snapped back to their senses, residual awe still etched on their faces, and bowed in unison:

"Thank you for sparing our lives, My Lord."

They all understood: anyone capable of wielding a Combat Technique this powerful had to be at minimum a Battle Saint.

They didn't know why a Battle Saint would stop them here — but as long as they were alive, that was what mattered. Had that Battle Saint meant them genuine harm, rounding up a few Aberration Feral Beasts would have been trivial. The warriors wouldn't have been able to put up even token resistance.

Every Twin-headed warrior arrived at the same conclusion. The reverence in their eyes deepened.

Far away, Lu Yuan watched through his Shadow Clone as the frightened warriors bowed, and found himself scratching his head.

*I'm hardly some kind of monster. Why are they so terrified?*

Li Qinghe caught the gesture and gave him a puzzled look. "Yuan, what's wrong?"

Lu Yuan blinked, then smiled and shook his head. "Nothing."

He dismissed the Shadow Clone at the same moment.

The Twin-headed warriors waited a long while with no response. They straightened up, exchanged glances, and an awkward silence settled over the group.

After a beat, the lead Battle Emperor broke it:

"All right — that Senior has likely already left. Let's move. Any more delay and we won't make it in time."

They resumed their march in the direction Lu Yuan's group had been heading — but by then, the four had long since passed through that stretch of forest and gone deeper.

Several hours later, Lu Yuan's group had accumulated a considerable number of kills — ordinary Feral Beasts, with a handful of Aberration Feral Beasts scattered among them.

As Li Qinghe had noted, Aberration Feral Beasts weren't particularly dense in the Dark Night Forest, so the overall danger level remained manageable.

Lu Yuan had to agree. The Aberrations they'd encountered were Battle Sovereign rank at most — well within the three women's combined ability to handle with ease.

He hadn't had a single opening to step in.

Then, at the edge of a low hill within the forest, Shuangyue's eyes lit up.

"That Emperor Grade beast should be just ahead."

Li Qinghe nodded and glanced at Lu Yuan with a smile. "Yuan, looks like your turn's coming up."

"Is it an ordinary Feral Beast or an Aberration?"

Lu Yuan raised an eyebrow, studying the hill.

The question gave all three women pause. Li Qinghe answered:

"An ordinary one, obviously. If it were an Emperor Grade Aberration, we'd already be running — Aberrations are stronger than ordinary Feral Beasts of the same rank, and stronger than Gene Warriors of the same rank too. An Emperor Grade Aberration is way beyond us."

Lu Yuan's expression shifted faintly. His Evolution Cube was trembling inside him. His senses told him quite clearly: whatever was in that hill was an Aberration Feral Beast.

**"ROOAAAR!!"**

While he was still processing that thought, a thunderous roar erupted. Green flames blazed to life, a powerful and sinister aura rolling outward, and the hillside began to shudder — the trees surrounding it swaying with the force.

"What?!"

All three women's faces changed at once.

"An Aberration?! The beast we came here for — it *Aberrated*?!"

Si Tingyu's brow furrowed hard, a sharp cry escaping her.

"Run!" Shuangyue's expression had gone stone-cold.

Seeing all three women on the verge of bolting, the corner of Lu Yuan's mouth tugged upward.

"No need," he said easily. "I'll handle this one. Qinghe — the three of you just watch."

All three turned and stared at him with unmistakably strange expressions.