Death

Before the three women could even process the shock, a massive shape descended from the sky above all four of them.

It was an enormous winged tiger — jet-black from nose to tail, its two great wings covered in densely packed eyes that appeared and disappeared across their surface, some open, some closed, each one flickering with a sinister, eerie light. The tiger's own eyes burned blood-red, radiating savage, mindless fury.

The moment Li Qinghe, Si Tingyu, and Shuangyue saw the beast, all three of them went rigid.

"It's a Celestial Demon Tiger! So it really has Aberrated."

Li Qinghe's brow furrowed slightly. She turned to Lu Yuan beside her.

"Are you going to be alright?"

An Aberrated Emperor Grade Feral Beast — while still below Battle Saint in outright combat power, it outstripped the vast majority of Battle Emperors. Lu Yuan had barely just broken through to Battle Sovereign. The gulf between them was enormous.

Lu Yuan smiled. "I'll give it a shot."

As he spoke, fragments of starlight began flickering around his body, constellation phantoms coalescing in the space around him. Across his forehead, astral markings etched themselves into view.

As the Stellar Body activated, his aura surged dramatically — rising to a level that was, by rough measure, comparable to the Aberrated Emperor Grade beast itself.

Li Qinghe, Si Tingyu, and Shuangyue all stared wide-eyed. Disbelief was written plainly across their faces.

Si Tingyu in particular — she had sparred with him once before, and she had known then that he was holding back. But she hadn't imagined he was *this* powerful.

Beneath the stunned expressions of the three women, Lu Yuan vanished from where he stood and reappeared an instant later directly above the Celestial Demon Tiger. A heavy sword materialized in his hand, Black Steel Force condensing around the blade, as he simultaneously released Heaven-Sundering Slash.

Terrifying stellar power compressed and erupted, transforming into a hundred-meter streak of starlit sword-light that carved downward toward the Celestial Demon Tiger.

The beast's blood-red eyes had lost all reason. It snarled, and every eye across both wings snapped open at once, each one pulsing with a spectral green glow.

An instant later, Lu Yuan felt a faint dizziness brush the edge of his mind.

*A mental attack?* Mild surprise flickered through him.

His mental fortitude, however, was simply too vast. As eerie as the spiritual assault was, it barely registered. The sword-light in his hand drove straight down without pause.

While the eyes launched their mental barrage, the Celestial Demon Tiger itself was gathering a terrifying blood-red energy orb between its jaws. The orb surged with an overwhelming aura and smashed upward to meet the descending sword-light.

**BOOM.**

The collision shook the sky. The pitch-black air blazed with starlight and crimson radiance, and the shockwave rolled outward in all directions like a full gale. The ground shuddered, the nearby hills cracked and fractured, and the trees below were shattered to splinters.

The three women felt that shockwave bearing down and their expressions shifted.

"Back — get back!"

Si Tingyu threw up a series of golden light shields to absorb the blast while she, Li Qinghe, and Shuangyue retreated together. Dozens of kilometers away, the shockwave could no longer reach them. Only then did the three look back up at the sky.

Shuangyue blinked slowly, disbelief overtaking her face.

"...He just broke through to Battle Sovereign? *That* is what 'freshly broken through' looks like? Is this actually real?"

She turned to Li Qinghe and Si Tingyu as if seeking confirmation. Both of them looked equally at a loss.

Li Qinghe scratched her head, dazed.

"I had no idea he'd gotten this strong. Last time I watched him fight, he was still at Battle King Rank."

Beside her, Si Tingyu's expression was serious. "I sparred with him right after he broke through to Battle Sovereign. But he was hiding a lot even then."

All three fell quiet after that. They exchanged glances, and then Shuangyue gave Li Qinghe a distinctly peculiar look.

"Didn't someone say she was going to carry Yuan through everything?"

Li Qinghe: "..."

An awkward flush crossed her face. Then she squared her shoulders with practiced dignity. "Yuan is my little brother. Having him carry me instead — same difference, isn't it?"

Shuangyue rolled her eyes and turned back to watch the fight.

After that first exchange, the sword-light had torn through the energy orb. The remaining force pressed onward toward the massive Celestial Demon Tiger.

The eyes on the beast's wings pulsed once more, channeling wisps of spectral light. This time its speed surged — it vanished from the sword-light's path in an instant. The blade carved through the hills and forest below instead, shearing one hilltop clean in two and gouging a bottomless gash across the forest floor.

The Celestial Demon Tiger roared in fury and materialized directly before Lu Yuan. Black smoke billowed from its body, and in the next instant the darkness condensed into a downpour of dark arrows, unleashing all at once.

Lu Yuan's expression didn't waver. He disappeared and reappeared at the tiger's flank, threading through the barrage without breaking stride. His heavy sword swung toward the beast's torso.

The Celestial Demon Tiger sensed the threat and tried to evade again — but in that precise instant, the space around it froze. Its body locked in place.

The sword-light seized the opening. It struck across the tiger's midsection and green-tinged blood erupted in a great spray. The single blow had nearly cut the beast in two.

From that one strike, the Celestial Demon Tiger's aura collapsed to almost nothing.

The eyes on its wings flickered back to life, their spectral green glow spreading over the wound — attempting to regenerate.

Lu Yuan gave it no such chance. He vanished again and a flurry of sword-strikes burst out in rapid succession, engulfing the tiger completely.

**Shhk! Shhk! Shhk!!**

Blood sprayed in great arcs. The Celestial Demon Tiger came apart in several pieces, drifting slowly to the ground below.

Lu Yuan watched the life drain from the beast, its remains turning to ash as death claimed them. His face was still.

He had only used two Combat Techniques — but both were Saint Grade, and he had seven Saint Grade Combat Techniques to his name. Combined with the fact that both his heavy sword and battle armor Gene Armaments had been engraved to Divine Grade, a mere Aberrated Emperor Grade Feral Beast was no great effort even without drawing on his full strength.

After the kill, a strand of unknown energy seeped into his body and filtered into the Evolution Cube.

He took stock of it. *Decent, for an Aberrated Emperor Grade beast. Not overwhelming, but not negligible either. Hunt enough of them and the accumulated energy will trigger another Evolution Cube metamorphosis.*

Simultaneously, the Will of the Land of Origin surfaced in his mind — three hundred Merits, his share from the kill. Since it was divided equally among the four of them, the Aberrated Celestial Demon Tiger had yielded twelve hundred Merits in total. Fairly meager.

Lu Yuan shook his head and let it go.

In the distance, the three women had watched him kill the Celestial Demon Tiger in barely two exchanges. Their conversation died instantly.

They stared up at him in silence.

The Merit notification from the Will of the Land of Origin came through a moment later, drawing them back to themselves.

Shuangyue's mouth pulled at one corner, something complicated in her expression.

"With strength like that, Yuan probably has no equals at Battle Emperor Rank. If I didn't know him, I'd have assumed that was some Battle Saint."

At those words, Li Qinghe's thoughts jumped unbidden to the powerful Saint who had appeared in the void of space — who had killed the Aberration and vanished without a trace, while Lu Yuan had been conspicuously absent.

Her gaze flickered. She glanced toward Si Tingyu — and found Si Tingyu already turning to look at her. Their eyes met. It seemed both of them had arrived at the same unspoken suspicion.

While the three were each caught in their own thoughts, Lu Yuan had already flown back to rejoin them. He wore a small smile.

"Done."

Li Qinghe cleared her throat with a hint of awkwardness, looking up at him with an expression somewhere between exasperation and helplessness.

"You've gone and gotten so strong, little brother. Now your big sister can't carry you at all anymore."

Lu Yuan smiled. "That's fine. Now I'll carry you."

Shuangyue rested her chin in her hand, studying him thoughtfully.

"Since Yuan is this strong, why don't we move into zones with a higher concentration of Aberration Feral Beasts? Those areas are normally much more dangerous, but with him here... we probably don't need to worry. Though we should revise the Merit split contract — contribution-based distribution from now on."

Si Tingyu and Li Qinghe went quiet at that. After a moment's thought, both turned to Lu Yuan.

Li Qinghe asked: "What do you think?"

"I have no objections." He grinned. "I actually want to explore those higher-density areas myself — ideally somewhere near an Aberration source."

All three women rolled their eyes in unison.

Shuangyue laughed. "Yuan, you're strong, but areas with Aberration sources have Battle Saint-level Aberration Feral Beasts. That is absolutely not something we can handle. Way too dangerous."

Lu Yuan raised an eyebrow, genuine curiosity on his face. "Battle Saint-level Aberrations?"

Li Qinghe's brow creased. "You're not thinking of going to test yourself against one, are you? Absolutely not — it really is that dangerous."

Si Tingyu nodded in agreement. "Wait until you're stronger."

Faced with their united front, Lu Yuan just smiled.

"I'm only curious. We'll be dealing with them eventually anyway... I just don't know much about areas with Aberration sources yet. Where do they actually appear?"

The three women couldn't argue with that — anyone serious about growing stronger would, sooner or later, have to face Aberration sources.

Li Qinghe explained: "Most Aberration sources are deep in the wilderness, far from Sky-Mending City. Those regions don't even have outposts — just crossing through the territories of ordinary Feral Beasts out there is dangerous on its own. Then there's the other type: Spatial Rifts that appear within the Upper Layer itself trigger Aberration phenomena that spread to the nearby beasts, and gradually a new source forms from that. Those are random, though — nobody can predict where they'll appear."

Lu Yuan nodded slightly, a clearer picture forming.

*So the Spatial Rifts that kept appearing near Sky-Mending City — some of those could eventually become Aberration sources?*

His thoughts shifted to the Aberration source he had seen in the Valley of Night, when he had followed the Tianming Sage.

*That must have been the second type.*

But then — *those Spatial Rift-formed sources were said to appear in the Upper Layer. What I saw in the Valley of Night was in the Lower Layer.*

The thought creased his brow slightly.

As Lu Yuan was turning this over, Shuangyue added:

"The first type of Aberration source — practically nobody goes to suppress one unless a Battle Saint-level powerhouse is leading the expedition. The second type is a different story. It's an opportunity for everyone: part of the reason is suppressing the source itself, but participants also earn substantial Merit rewards. The three of us took part in one once. We were only on the outer perimeter, but we still came away with over five thousand Merits."

A faint nostalgia crossed her expression, as if the memory was still vivid.

Lu Yuan did the math against the three hundred Merits he had just split for a single Aberrated Emperor Grade beast. Over five thousand Merits — that was a genuine fortune.

Si Tingyu nodded quietly. "It was extremely dangerous, though. We nearly didn't come back from that one."

Li Qinghe smiled, unconcerned. "If you want to grow quickly, you have to take some risks. And we made it out fine, didn't we?"

Si Tingyu was silent for a moment, then gave a faint nod. No rebuttal.

"If another one shows up," Lu Yuan said with a smile, "let's go."

Shuangyue grinned. "With Yuan along, our gains are guaranteed to be better."

Lu Yuan considered for a moment. "For now, though — shall we head for those higher-density Aberration zones?"

"There's one deeper in the Dark Night Forest," Li Qinghe said. "Plenty of Aberrated Emperor Grade beasts in there. We went once, but ran into a powerful one just on the outer edges. We had to turn back."

"Then let's go."

Anticipation kindled in Lu Yuan's eyes.

Under Li Qinghe's guidance, the four of them flew toward the heart of the Dark Night Forest. Along the way, they revised their Merit contract to a contribution-based split.

They moved at a swift pace. A number of ordinary and Aberration Feral Beasts crossed their path — most at King Grade or Emperor Grade strength, one Emperor Grade ordinary beast among them — but no Aberrations appeared.

Their gains were decent all the same.

Over an hour later, deep within the forest, they heard it — a thunderous detonation somewhere ahead, and a green glow began flickering in that direction.

Lu Yuan raised an eyebrow and glanced at the three women.

"Want to go check it out? Sounds like an Aberration."

All three nodded. After what Lu Yuan had displayed, they were happy to follow his lead.

The four of them moved swiftly toward the source of the green light.

It didn't take long before they arrived.

The fighting had already ended. What greeted them was devastation.

Blood and severed limbs were scattered across the ground. There were even a few severed heads.

These corpses had not dissolved into white light — they lay where they had fallen, permanent deaths dealt by an Aberration Feral Beast, beyond any hope of revival.

Lu Yuan took one look and went still. Those severed heads — no hair, a single horn, wide pointed ears.

The victims looked exactly like the column of Twin-headed warriors he had encountered on the road.