Mei Yue'er summoned her personal blade, a masterpiece with a hilt of carved onyx engraved with the name "Aurora." The silver steel shimmered with a faint emerald radiance, exuding the unmistakable weight of extraordinary craftsmanship.
Under the laws of Divine Bird City, youths yet to enter an academy were strictly forbidden from carrying weapons in public. But as the city lord's daughter, Yue'er was a rare exception, granted this treasure as a final line of defense.
Channeling her remaining Theríon into the blade, she swung desperately. "Aurora Slash!"
A crescent of green energy tore through the air, slamming directly into the Wight Wolf's brow. The impact drew a thin line of crimson—a shallow sting that did little but ignite the beast's fury.
The shallow wound did not discourage Yue'er. She ignited her Aurora Treading Steps, flickering to the far side of the clearing to pull the monster's focus away from Luotian's hiding spot. Once in position, she poured a double measure of her essence into the blade, unleashing a second arc. The glowing strike bit into the beast's flank, carving a visible wound into its thick hide.
"ROAR!!"
The Wight Wolf's howl shattered the silence of the forest. Its crimson eyes locked onto Yue'er with singular malice, and the crushing weight of its One Talon aura descended like a physical hammer, pinning her movements to a leaden crawl.
Before she could draw a breath to counter, the beast blurred forward, its massive claws arcing through the air—
BAM!
Yue'er's slender frame was launched like a projectile. She smashed through a succession of smaller trees before finally slamming into the thickest trunk in the clearing. She crumpled to the roots, the impact stealing the air from her lungs.
"Pfft!" A spray of crimson erupted from her lips as she struggled to heave herself up, her ribs screaming and her vision swimming.
The Wight Wolf gave her no quarter. It was upon her in a heartbeat, shadows clinging to its fur as it raised a paw for the executioner's strike. Desperately, Yue'er thrust the Aurora upward, pouring what Theríon she had left into the onyx hilt.
BANG!
The silver steel met the obsidian claw. The blade held and deflected the claw, but she could not withstand the force behind it. She was sent tumbling across the forest floor once more. To her absolute horror, she skidded to a halt mere meters from Luotian's hiding spot.
Terror for her friend overrode her own agony. Forcing her battered limbs to obey, Yue'er ignited a final, flickering Aurora Treading Step. She vanished in a burst of dim emerald light, reappearing on a high, swaying branch atop a towering tree several hundred meters away.
Panting in ragged, shallow bursts, Yue'er scanned the canopy for any sign of the predator. "At least... Luotian is safe," she whispered, her voice a fragile tremor.
Her relief barely lasted. The arm that had braced against the wolf's strike now hung uselessly at her side. Even lifting Aurora's onyx hilt was beyond her strength.
Her breath hitched. The Wight Wolf was gone. Its suffocating presence had vanished into the silver mist once more.
BOOM!
A deafening crack made her flinch. An uprooted tree hurtled straight toward her. She threw herself to a neighboring branch just as the trunk obliterated her previous perch, sending a storm of splinters and debris raining into the dark forest floor below.
She spun, her eyes darting frantically through the shifting shadows.
RUMBLE!!
The crushing weight of the aura returned with a vengeance—this time, erupting from the space directly behind her.
"H-How...?" Yue'er gasped, her heart stopping.
"ROAR!!"
The Wight Wolf unleashed its true terror: the Ghost Howl.
A localized hurricane of invisible wind blades tore through the atmosphere, shrieking toward her. Yue'er screamed and raised her sword, trying desperately to shield her vitals.
CRACK!
The silver blade couldn't withstand the pressure. The Aurora shattered into a thousand gleaming shards, flying apart like broken glass. The unrelenting onslaught followed, riddling her skin and silk dress with a hundred shallow gashes before the shockwave blasted her from the sky.
She plummeted, hitting the earth with a sickening thud. When the dust settled, she lay broken and blood-soaked directly at Feng Luotian's feet.
"Yue'er!!" Luotian's voice fractured as he collapsed beside her, tears carving tracks through the dust on his face.
"Luotian… run. Don't let us both… die here," she whispered, her voice a hollow rasp.
Before the words could leave her lips, the Wight Wolf descended with a thundering impact that shook the very roots of the forest. It loomed over them, its gaze fixed solely on the dying light in Yue'er's eyes, dismissing Luotian as nothing more than a stone in the dirt.
Yue'er struggled to her feet. Weaponless and badly hurt, she still refused to give up. The wolf unhinged its massive jaws, the stench of old blood wafting from its throat as it prepared to end her.
Rage and despair overwhelmed Luotian. He could do nothing to stop it. Then the oath he had sworn echoed in his mind:
"I will never let my brothers or sister draw their last breaths before me!"
"NO!!" With a roar of pure resolve, Luotian lunged.
At the last possible moment, as Yue'er closed her eyes and braced for the end, she felt a violent shove. She was cast aside into the dirt just as the Wight Wolf's jaws snapped shut—not on her, but around Luotian's torso. The sickening sound of tearing fabric and flesh drowned out the beast's guttural growl.
Ding.
A single, heavy drop of blood fell, the sound echoing with unnatural clarity against the forest floor.
Yue'er's eyes fluttered open. Luotian hung limp in the wolf's crushing jaws, and for a moment she could only stare.
"L-Luotian… why?" she stammered, the words catching in her throat.
A heartbeat ago, she had steeled her soul for the void, ready to trade her life for his. Now, the world had inverted into an unthinkable nightmare—he had taken her place.
She could not look away. Horror and grief left her speechless, and beneath them came the guilt of knowing he had been caught in her place.
Somehow still conscious, Luotian forced his bloodied lips to move. His voice was a hoarse, wet rasp, yet it carried a terrifying resolve. "Yue'er… just run. This… is the first and last time in my life… that I can finally be worth something."
But Yue'er was beyond the reach of logic.
The only thing her fractured mind registered was the sound of his voice—he was still alive. Ignoring his plea, she launched herself onto the wolf's massive snout. She gripped the upper jaw with every ounce of her remaining strength, her fingers digging into the fur in a frantic, hopeless attempt to pry the beast's mouth open.
"Yue'er, stop! Don't let my sacrifice be for nothing!!" Luotian shrieked, his voice breaking under a crushing weight of despair.
"Shut up, you bastard!!" Yue'er screamed, furious and beyond reason. "You think I'll ever let you die while I'm still drawing breath?!"
"Yeah, shut the hell up, you damnable idiot!!" Another voice thundered from the forest, harsh with anger.
It was Wuji.
He had finally burst through the treeline, his face contorted into a mask of pure rage as Luotian's desperate final words reached his ears.
"How dare you throw your life away so easily?!" Wuji roared. He launched himself into the sky, his stone-encrusted body catching the dim light. High above his head, he hoisted an entire uprooted tree trunk like a titan's club.
"Eat this, you flea-bitten sucker!!"
Channeling every spark of Theríon he had managed to scavenge during his sprint, Wuji brought the massive trunk down in a vertical arc aimed straight for the Wight Wolf's spine.
CRACK.
The tree shattered on impact, sending splinters whistling through the air. But the wolf remained a statue of ashen fur, completely unscathed.
"Oh, come on!!" Wuji bellowed in pure, cracked frustration, his voice breaking at the sheer difference in their strength.
With a violent shudder, the Wight Wolf threw both Yue'er and Wuji from its back like bothersome insects. Its claws lashed out in a silver blur, aimed at Yue'er's throat.
Wuji's eyes went wide. He knew her internal reserves were dry; another hit would kill her. Without a heartbeat of hesitation, he threw his stone-clad body into the path of the claws.
BAM!!
The impact was cataclysmic. Wuji was launched into a nearby rocky incline with such force that the surrounding earth flattened into a crater. Even through his granite-hard skin, the Talon-level strike bit deep. Crimson sprayed across the grey rubble, staining the stones as his transformation finally shattered.
He crumpled into the debris, coughing up thick, dark mouthfuls of blood, his breathing a wet, broken rattle.
By all laws of cultivation, a Five Fangs Fighter without a high-grade treasure should have been torn asunder by a direct hit from a Talon Monster. Yet, through a freakish combination of stubbornness and raw physical durability, Wuji clung to the fraying edge of life.
"Wuji!!" Luotian's voice tore through the air, thick with agony. "Just run! Go as fas—"
The Wight Wolf didn't let him finish. With a brutal flick of its neck, it tossed Luotian's mangled body into the air.
In one fluid, horrific motion, the beast unhinged its jaws. The darkness of its throat rose up to meet him, and the monster swallowed him whole.
Time seemed to stop. The forest fell silent, the wind and birds forgotten. All they could hear was the terrible snap of the beast's jaws.
For Yue'er and Wuji, the world turned hollow.
First came the soul-crushing weight of Despair.
And then, rising from the ashes of their grief, came the Anger.
* * *
On a high, swaying limb not far from where the Wight Wolf reigned supreme, two shadowy figures perched like vultures, observing the carnage below.
One was draped in a cloak of midnight black, the other in stark white, their deep hoods masking their features. Their deep hoods hid their faces in the dim canopy light.
The figure in black spoke first, his voice a low, gravelly rasp. "A most unexpected turn of events, wouldn't you say, Whitey?"
The one in white offered a thin, mocking titter. "Indeed, Blackie. Who could have guessed that the renowned 'God's Crippled Son' would meet such a pathetic, undignified end?"
A soft, dry chuckle escaped the hood of the black-clad observer. "Heh. Still, his demise doesn't shift the scales of our objective, does it?"
Whitey shook his head, the cruel curve of his smile audible in his reply. "Not in the least. One dead cripple changes nothing—not even a ripple in the pond."
"Good, good," Blackie murmured, his gaze returning to the clearing. "Let us continue to observe. This little drama hasn't reached its curtain call, and our true target still clings to a fraying thread of life."
"Indeed, Blackie," Whitey agreed, his voice dripping with dark amusement. "Let's enjoy the performance a little longer."
The two exchanged a low chuckle that barely rose above the rustle of the leaves before they melted back into the deep obsidian shadows of the forest.
* * *
Yue'er and Wuji stood frozen, unable to accept what they had seen. Again and again, they saw Luotian vanish into the wolf's gaping jaws.
Flashes of the past surged through the trauma. They remembered a time before bloodlines and tiers, when Luotian had been the unshakable pillar of their gang. Whether shielding them from the bullies or dragging them out of the Thicket's reach, he had been the living embodiment of his father's creed: the will to protect.
Together, they had sworn an oath under the heavens. They had promised that no one they loved would ever take a final breath while they still stood. They had vowed to be each other's shields.
But now…
That sacred promise lay in splinters at their feet. They had failed. Their brother was gone, swallowed by the dark, and they were still drawing breath.
A searing, unfamiliar agony consumed them—a sense of betrayal not by a person, but by fate itself. Slowly, they lifted their heads. Their eyes began to glow with a terrifying pulse of crimson. No one could tell if the red hue came from the blood weeping from their brows or the unquenchable furnace of fury boiling in their souls.
BOOM!! BOOM!!
With twin detonations of pure, unadulterated rage, the clearing shook. Yue'er's Theríon surged with a violent, chaotic frequency, shattering her bottleneck and propelling her into the Seven Fangs realm. Beside her, Wuji's essence flared like a volcanic inferno, his skin turning to dark, reinforced basalt as he ascended to a Six Fangs Fighter.
Their auras darkened, stained by the shadow of their loss. Blood dripped from their open wounds, but the nerves were dead to the pain. In that heartbeat, the Mei Yue'er and Sun Wuji the world knew were gone. Reborn from the abyss of their despair, they were bloodied devils.
With twin screams of defiance and eyes blazing like dying stars, they launched themselves at the beast that had stolen their heart.