Fight Fire with Fire!
"Hurry, stop him!!" Gray One knew things had gone badly, and he shrieked the order at his Black-Beast Demons.
He had no confidence in withstanding a Spirit Grade Lightning Seed, and the only option now was to force the enemy's Star Chart to collapse before the spell could be Released.
Gray One's command proved effective. Two Black-Beast Demons immediately redirected their attention toward Mo Fan, who was tracing his Star Chart.
They skirted around the Gloom Wolf Beast blocking their path by climbing the walls on either side, using their powerful claws to cling to the surface and scuttle toward Mo Fan like ghostly monkeys.
Cold light flashed. The long claws of the two Black-Beast Demons drew ever closer, while Mo Fan's Star Chart had only traced six Lightning Element Star Trails — one short of completion!
Without all the Star Trails weaving together into a complete chart, an Intermediate-level spell was impossible to form!!
The Gloom Wolf Beast shared a telepathic bond with Mo Fan, and the moment it sensed him under attack from the two creatures that had slipped away, it erupted with a thunderous **ROAAARRR!!!**
The sound had barely faded before its speed ignited. Heedless of the Black-Beast Demons already clinging to its body, it charged straight at the two closing in on Mo Fan.
Mo Fan had been wavering on whether to abandon the Intermediate Lightning Element spell, but watching the Gloom Wolf Beast charge in with such ferocious abandon, all hesitation evaporated. He turned his full focus back to Controlling the final Star Trail.
**SLASH!!!!**
The Gloom Wolf Beast's heavy paw didn't merely tear — with the force behind those forelegs, a single swipe was enough to shatter a Black-Beast Demon's compact frame to pieces.
It slammed one of them against the wall with a crushing blow, then turned its head without a second glance and snapped down on the one clinging to its back, tearing at its muscles.
With the Black-Beast Demon clamped in its jaws, just as another long-clawed creature leaped into the air toward Mo Fan, the Gloom Wolf Beast whipped its head in a savage arc and hurled the one in its mouth like a projectile straight at the airborne assailant!!
The beast seemed to have inherited Mo Fan's legendary full-marks physics instincts — the thrown creature hit its target dead-on. The two Black-Beast Demons tumbled through the air together and crashed down at Mo Fan's feet.
"Qianjun!!"
A commanding voice rang out, and turbulent lightning energy surged around Mo Fan's body.
The violet-black arcs formed a powerful shockwave around him. The two Black-Beast Demons that had crash-landed nearby still dared to rise against him — the shockwave warped their bodies beyond recognition, as if crushed under some massive metal weight, their flesh flattening and every bone pulverized!!
"Thunderbolt: Yaksha!"
Mo Fan didn't even glance at the two pathetic wretches at his feet. He pointed a finger toward the darkness above.
The pitch-black sky split open with violet-black thunderclouds, spreading over Gray One's head like the exhalation of death itself.
Gray One trembled all over, his concentration on the Ice Lock beginning to slip.
His mastery of it was genuinely formidable — Mo Fan had seen many Ice Element Mages use Ice Lock primarily as a control skill, but Gray One had somehow learned to weave multiple casts of it into a layered defensive barrier...
The moment the violet-black Thunderbolt descended from above, however, every chain-hard lock dissolved into white foam, blasted to fragments!!
Ice Lock was never a true defensive skill — how could it withstand the full force of a Spirit Grade thunderbolt!
Forked violet-black lightning crashed down, and Gray One desperately summoned his Shield Enchanted Gear, clinging to the hope of surviving.
Yet the might of Thunderbolt: Yaksha surpassed even his worst expectations. The lightning fell, the Ice Locks shattered, and even Gray One's million-yuan Shield Enchanted Gear was annihilated in a single strike.
Sheltered behind two layers of defense, Gray One barely managed to hold onto his life — but the powerful spatial shockwave from Qianjun had turned every bone in his body to rubber. He lay face-down on the ground without even the strength to crawl.
He stared wide-eyed, unable to comprehend how the target's strength had reached such a level.
He fumbled weakly toward his chest. Just as his fingers were about to close around a lethal poison vial, Mo Fan had already used Shadow Fade to appear directly before him.
"Fire Burst: Bone Scorch!"
Flames danced in his palm, slipping between his fingers like molten liquid and falling in patches onto Gray One's body.
Gray One had barely begun thinking of taking the poison to end his own life when Mo Fan's boot came down on his wrist, denying him any chance of a final act.
"You—!!!" Gray One glared at him with undisguised fury.
Mo Fan said nothing. He simply waited as the Bone-Scorch flames slowly spread across Gray One's body, waited as that face twisted under the searing heat — from pain into something grotesque.
*As if I didn't know how the Black Church operates.*
*Even without dealing with them personally, TV shows were enough to teach me — an organization built on spreading terror and death like the Black Church almost certainly equips its members with a suicide pill. The moment they're captured or facing certain death, they swallow it to protect the organization and whoever commands them from above.*
The moment Gray One saw Mo Fan unleash the Spirit Grade lightning, he had known he was outmatched. When his opponent followed it with a second Intermediate-level spell and the shockwave shattered his bones, he had already begun plotting his final exit — only for Mo Fan to give him no opening whatsoever.
Death probably wouldn't have been bad at all; that venom would have ended his life in an instant, painlessly. But to have someone's boot pinning his hand as he reached for it, to have even his last act of defiance predicted and denied — being outpowered was one thing, but being outsmarted too? The humiliation of having the final scrap of a villain's dignity stripped away was something mere rage could not begin to describe.
"You're about to burn alive — do me a favor and tell me who your master is." Mo Fan carefully modulated the temperature of the flames.
It was a slow roasting — not enough to kill, but guaranteed to be excruciating. Mo Fan watched the scene with detached interest. Brutal, graphic, not fit for young eyes — but this was his way of dealing with the wicked. Force answered with force: you kill one friend of mine, I'll destroy ten of yours; you raze my home, I'll level your entire organization to the ground.
"Don't even dream of—AAHHH!! AAHHHHH!!" Gray One writhed and screamed in the flames, his shrieks echoing through the dark maze, sending chills down the spines of everyone within earshot.
Mo Fan showed not a shred of mercy.
Because he could never forget — it was this same fire that had taken Xu Zhaoting and his girlfriend from this world.
However agonizing and grief-stricken their deaths had been, Mo Fan would wring that exact measure of suffering and remorse from every Black Church member's dying face.