Leave None Alive!

Once the air began to tremble, the five-forked Thunderbolt Yaksha didn't simply obliterate five targets — every inch of ground where each prong landed was pulverized under devastating, crushing force.

Whether a Black-Beast Demon was struck directly by the Thunderbolt Yaksha or merely stood within the Qianjun's shockwave radius, not one of those pitiful creatures had any hope of survival. The difference was only this: those hit dead-on burst apart into countless blood droplets that splattered the ground in dark stains, while those caught in the blast were reduced to a single blob of pulp — hard to say which group suffered more in their final moments.

The power of Qianjun Thunderbolt: Yaksha dwarfed any Mortal Grade Lightning Seed. Under the hammering of this Intermediate-Level Lightning Element spell, virtually every last Black-Beast Demon perished…

One of them had slightly better luck: its legs were crushed, but it survived — only to blunder directly into the path of the Gloom Wolf Beast.

The Gloom Wolf Beast leisurely chewed the creature to death. In those agonizing final moments under the Beast's jaws, the demon may well have been regretting that it hadn't been cleanly obliterated alongside the rest — instead it had been gifted an extra half-minute of pure torment.

In an instant, every Black-Beast Demon had been wiped from the field. Mo Fan, who moments ago had been their quarry, had become an electrified god of death.

These creatures had been more than capable of taking on two or three Intermediate-Level Mages at once. They were cunning, they were fast, they coordinated their attacks — even a skilled Intermediate Mage would be overwhelmed by a pack pressing in from every direction.

Yet watching every Black-Beast Demon become a corpse in such a short span, the four Black Church cultists finally grasped the truth: the target they had come to capture was no helpless sheep. He was a ferocious, bloodthirsty tiger.

Not even remotely in the same league.

The intelligence they had received from that mole inside the school had been completely, hopelessly wrong.

"Retreat — *run!*" Gray Three's face had gone a sickly pale. He spun and bolted.

"Split up!" Gray Two, still relatively composed, called back to the other three.

The four of them scattered in four different directions…

Mo Fan swept a glance around. Beneath his feet, a Star Trail — not quite bright, not quite sharp — was already weaving its intricate pattern.

"Go get that one." Mo Fan pointed toward a gray-robed figure fleeing in the direction of the river and spoke to his Gloom Wolf Beast.

The Gloom Wolf Beast immediately gave chase in the direction Mo Fan indicated. It didn't even bother pushing its speed — as far as it was concerned, it had four legs. How could some slow, two-legged human get away? It was already imagining gnawing off his leg when it caught up, just to see how far he'd get after that.

Mo Fan didn't rush to join the chase himself. The shadow beneath his feet had already transformed into the outline of a mysterious Star Chart, and a strange, dark aura seeped outward from within it.

"Go!"

He thrust his hand forward. The massive Shadow Nail hovering at his chest shot silently through the air.

There was nothing visible to the naked eye — no trace of that dark force streaking through the darkness. Yet the reflective glass panels of the factory walls and the glow of dim safety lights below both caught something sharp slicing through the air in a single flash.

An instant later, Gray Four — who had been posted outside — froze mid-stride. His legs still carried the momentum of a running man, but his body refused to move an inch, locking him into an impossibly contorted pose that made him look like a broken puppet.

Gray Four's face drained of color. He looked back — and found to his horror that something like a blade had pierced straight through his shadow. The Shadow Nail.

Dark tendrils immediately began coiling around his entire body, the shadowy energy wrapping ever tighter, until even his mind felt as though it were under siege.

"Not one of you walks away."

Mo Fan didn't even glance at the man pinned by the Shadow Nail. He stepped into the darkness and disappeared.

A mass of shadow moved swiftly through the pitch-black factory. Within seconds, it reappeared directly in front of Gray Two.

Gray Two was sprinting for his life. He'd been about to look back and check whether the demon was still coming — when he nearly ran face-first into the very man he was fleeing.

"Fire Burst: Char Bone!"

A plume of raging flame erupted from Mo Fan's palm. He drove it point-blank into Gray Two's chest.

The moment the fire touched Gray Two's flesh, it raced across his entire body.

His clothes caught first. As they burned away, the flames devoured his skin — and then something far worse burrowed inside him.

These flames could reduce bone itself to ash. Char Bone fire burned from both within and without, and with Mo Fan deliberately regulating the temperature, they could sustain that burn for a very, very long time…

To show mercy to anyone from the Black Church would be the greatest dishonor to the dead.

Mo Fan turned away, leaving Gray Two's screams of agony echoing at his back as the Char Bone flames did their work. His eyes were already fixed on Gray Five, who had used those precious seconds to put real distance between them.

Gray Five was fast — he was a Wind Element mage, and a long Wind Trail was carrying him forward at speed.

**Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh——**

Raging flames erupted once more from beneath Mo Fan's feet, wreathing him entirely until he looked like a demon born of fire itself. Wild, scorching heat blazed from every inch of him — yet his expression was carved from ice.

Gray Five ran with everything he had.

Few people knew that alongside his life as a Wind Element student at Pearl Academy, he had long been selling his services to the Black Church.

Resources — he couldn't obtain them through legitimate means, but he craved greater power. The Black Church had given him exactly that…

Even with the distance between them, his heart was still hammering. He had known since the Freshman Tournament that Mo Fan was terrifyingly strong, but he hadn't realized that had been barely the surface.

He couldn't begin to understand how someone who already possessed Summoning Element and Lightning Element could also wield Shadow Element. He had to get this to the Priest immediately.

"Blazing Fist: Heaven Shatter!"

The voice rang out from behind him without warning.

Gray Five wrenched his head around — blazing crimson filled his vision. That was all he could see: a howling wall of red roaring toward him.

The fire wave was colossal, shaped like a massive fist, surging out from the direction of that run-down factory. He had already put so much distance between them — and yet the power of that blazing fist had not diminished by even a fraction.

He tried to use Wind Trail to change direction. The heat was so fierce his skin felt ready to melt — but the fist was spreading in an ever-widening fan, and there was nowhere to run.

The roaring flames crashed over him. Gray Five was swallowed whole.

At close range, Blazing Fist could reduce a body to black powder. At this distance, the flames carried less raw heat — but incinerating a Basic-Level Mage into a charred husk was still effortless.

Gray Five had thought he'd put enough ground between them. He had thought he'd escaped.

He never imagined that this campus demon also commanded Fire Element.

Gray Five toppled slowly in the distance, his body wreathed in flames. Even his already-scorched face still wore an expression of pure disbelief.

He would never understand how a single Intermediate-Level Mage could wield four complete elements.