To the north, the mountains were a fortress of eternal ice and snow. To the east, the smoldering heart of Mount Asler beat with volcanic fury. This brutal marriage of extremes birthed a paradox: a rainforest of staggering, feverish vitality. Vegetation in a thousand impossible forms thrived in the choking humidity, a riot of color and carnivorous intent. Nestled within this floral madness, a hot spring steamed, its waters roiling and sending thick, mineral-scented vapor into the already dense air. The mist was a perfect, natural veil. Without specialized ocular magic or heightened perception, one would see nothing but shifting, opalescent clouds.
Unfortunately for discretion, the young man currently in the spring didpossess such sight. His eyes glowed with a faint, pulsating orange light, a side effect of his combat-heightened state. So, when an unexpected projectile—a human-shaped one—crashed through the canopy and plunged into the opposite end of the pool, his head snapped around. His gaze swept over the newcomer: a young woman, now drenched, her form silhouetted through the steam. A flicker of surprise. He registered the details—the sodden clothes clinging to skin, the sharp, wary features—in the span of a heartbeat before his attention was violently recalled.
Behind him, with a sound like tearing metal, an Auramech—a humanoid construct of burnished copper alloy, standing at a formidable Level 50—unleashed a beam of Gamma-Ray Discharge. The air sizzled with the scent of ozone and scorched ions. The young man's body reacted before his mind fully processed the threat. Great wings of crackling lightning erupted from his back, not for flight, but for a brutal, lateral shove. He blurred sideways, the deadly purple beam carving a molten line through the steam where he'd stood.
The Auramech was not a Prohibitionist-class model, thank fate. But a mature Level 50 combat unit was terror enough, its power arguably surpassing a Level 70 human in orange robes through sheer mechanical efficiency and resilience.
As he dodged, his orange-lit eyes flicked back to the woman. An assessment, swift and clinical. Before Yao could even process her landing, a phantom shimmered into existence in the mist before her—an Anima Weapon, a summoned spear, materializing alongside a semi-corporeal Sequence Avatar. The avatar, a blurry echo of the young man, snatched the spear. Its wrist spun, and the weapon became a whirlwind of precise, devastating electricity, weaving a defensive grid that intercepted the shrapnel and residual energy spraying from the Auramech's missed attack.
He's protecting me? Or marking me?The thought was ice in Yao's veins. But her body moved on instinct. Light, pure and potent, burst from her palms. It didn't fire in a beam, but fractured into a thousand luminous filaments, a seeking swarm that ignored the chaotic battlefield and homed in on the young man's body.
She had seen it the moment she landed. He was grievously wounded. Beneath the fierce display of lightning, his life force flickered like a guttering candle.
The filaments of light pierced his skin, not as attacks, but as lifelines. Cellular repair accelerated at a visible rate. The deep gashes across his torso began to knit, the angry red of internal burns fading to pink, then smooth skin.
An alliance was forged, not in trust, but in brutal necessity. No one who survived the wilds trusted strangers. He had seen her rapid regeneration upon impact, identified a combat medic of rare potency, and thrown out a Party Invitation with a thought. Facing the Auramech's indiscriminate hatred for all things human, Yao had accepted with equal pragmatism. Fleeing alone was a gamble with death; the mechanical hunter might well prefer the easier, healing prey.
The Auramech's logic circuits processed the new variable instantly. Priority Target: Healer.While one arm continued to harry the lightning-wielder with searing rays, the other underwent a startling transformation. The forearm assembly disengaged, splitting into two smaller, autonomous drone-like units that zipped through the steam on humming repulsors, their focal lenses targeting Yao.
By then, Yao was no longer a passive recipient. She saw through her Heterochromatic Eyes—one a vortex of silver insight, the other a pool of azure menace—the lightning-user closing the distance, his spear clashing against the Auramech's primary arm in a shower of sparks. He was creating an opening.
She didn't move. Instead, behind his whirling form, she unleashed it. Not a simple fusion, but the Four-Field Meld, channeled into the endless, recursive loops of her Infinite Flow. The air behind him warped, space itself seeming to fold and cycle, a hidden engine of potential violence.
No point in hiding now.The enemy had seen her face. This man, whose pressure alone had made her Golden Yaksa Vines instinctively retreat into subspace, likely hailed from a lineage as potent as the Dongke Violet-Bloods. If he wished to find her later, her visage alone would lead him to the Sage's Clinic. At his level, the secret of her dual-bodied existence with 'Ao Kesi' would be a curiosity, not a shock. The truly powerful lived by different rules.
A glance at the party interface confirmed a name: Yi Ye Han Zhuo. It sounded genuine, not an alias. And that surname… 'Yi Ye' was legendary. A flicker of dark amusement touched her mind. If Qin Minfeng were here, he'd be plotting matrimony regardless of gender.
Yi Ye Han Zhuo felt the transformation. Wounds sealed. Energy reservoirs, nearly drained, flooded back to fullness. The sheer volumeand purity of the healing astounded him. Infinite Flow applied to restoration?The concept was terrifying in its efficiency. Empowered, he unleashed his full fury. At Level 50, with four Sequences maxed, he had forgone multi-element fusion. His path was singular, absolute: Five-Field Lightning Fusion. Pure, unadulterated annihilation. The rainforest canopy above them illuminated as if caught in a perpetual lightning storm.
Enraged, the Auramech's cranial unit split open, revealing acoustic ports. A Sonic Disruption Pulse erupted—a physical-psychic attack that bypassed armor and rattled the brainstem.
Yao's world dissolved into a screeching white noise. Her focus shattered, the streams of healing light faltering.
The Auramech seized the micro-second of vulnerability. It blinked, a short-range spatial jump, materializing directly before Yao. Its right arm reconfigured mid-air, the alloy flowing into a vicious, monomolecular-edged scythe. It swung—a decapitating arc meant for pure, physical bisection. It had calculated: her predictive ocular abilities required reaction time. This did not.
The scythe descended… and passed through empty air.
Miss.
Probability-Based Soul Severancehad fired and failed. The Auramech's innate magic resistance was too high.
The machine experienced a nanosecond of confusion. This human was full of surprises. A healer with offensive capabilities fit for a frontline brawler.
Its confusion was cut short by a sudden, biting constriction around its lower limbs. Golden Yasha Vines, tipped with Arcane-Nullifying Thorns, had erupted from the soggy earth beneath the pool. They coiled, and the thorns bit deep.
Contact-based Nullification.The success rate was always higher than psychic assaults.
Yi Ye Han Zhuo's eyes, now blazing with orange and flickers of deeper violet, saw the opportunity. Misdirection. Beautiful.His primary genetic gift was not his ocular powers, but the intricate, wolf-head-shaped Violet Lightning Sigil that glowed on his right forearm. As he gripped his spear, the sigil howledwith a sound of primal thunder. The air around his arm distorted, warping with condensed power that screamed of devastation.
Violet-Blood lineage?Yao watched, impressed.
The spear became a bolt of judgment itself. He didn't throw it. He becamethe thrust. A sonic boom accompanied the movement as the spear-tip, amplified by his ocular power and the sigil's fury, pierced the Auramech's back the exact moment its systems were scrambled by the nullification.
CRUNCH-THUD.
The tip erupted from its chest, dripping not blood, but sizzling, iridescent Energon Fluid. The mechanical titan shuddered, a grinding groan of metal, and plummeted from the sky, crashing into the steaming water.
The nullification field expired. Wounded but not dead, the Auramech's survival protocols kicked in. On impact, its body disassembled and reconstituted into a sleek, arrowhead-shaped escape craft. With a scream of overtaxed thrusters, it shot through the jungle canopy and was gone.
Neither pursuer gave chase. They made brief, threatening motions, then turned as one. Yi Ye Han Zhuo pointedly kept his gaze averted as Yao emerged from the pool. Without a word, they fled in opposite directions.
Theywere the prey now. The Tonglu Mountains were Auramech and Dwarf territory.
Yao knew, with cold certainty, that Yi Ye Han Zhuo could have killed the Auramech. He'd held back, likely fearing reprisals from the entire mechanical clan. But staying was suicide. A single Prohibitionist-class Auramech would end them both.
The region hugged the skirts of Mount Asler, but the true expanse of the Red-Snow Tonglu Mountains lay to the west. The terrain was a schizophrenic tapestry of jagged peaks, deep ravines, and flora that thrived only in extremes—bitter frost or scorching heat.
They moved like ghosts, cloaked in stealth and silence, erasing their trail. Hours later, in the mist-shrouded lake district of the middle slopes, hidden by a curtain of colossal, dripping ferns, they paused. Yi Ye Han Zhuo sheathed his spear across his back, his posture still coiled for violence. "My thanks," he said, his voice as cool and detached as mountain stream water.
"Unnecessary. Alone, escape was uncertain," Yao replied, her tone equally flat. Her eyes, however, were analyzing the faint, discolored scars that marred his newly healed skin—scars her powerful healing shouldn't have left.
He followed her gaze. "These wounds aren't from the Auramech."
She had suspected. The lingering toxicity was… alien. Not in the Sage's Clinic's extensive databases, nor in her black-market resource catalogs. It had resisted her light, consuming disproportionate energy to heal and leaving these stubborn marks.
"A beast in these mountains with such potent venom?" Anxiety coiled in her gut. Her pre-mission research had focused on the two sentient races. A creature capable of wounding himhad to be Level 80+, at least Orange-tier, possibly higher.
"I never saw it," he admitted, a rare thread of frustration in his voice. "It was distant. But its poison mist enveloped me before I sensed it. My armor… it meant nothing. The corrosion was instantaneous. I barely escaped, weakened. The Auramech detected my distress signature and attacked. Then you arrived."
His description painted a picture far more terrifying than the mechanical hunter. An unseen predator whose very breath was decay.
Yao kept her rising dread from her face. Her chosen destination now seemed like a death wish. Should I leave? Now?
"I see. Thank you for the information." With that, she exited the party and melted into the wall of green without a backward glance.
Yi Ye Han Zhuo stood for a moment, watching the space where she'd vanished. He understood. She was weighing the same terrible calculus. Then he turned and disappeared down another path.
Yao pressed on. Her goal was the Mountain Cleft Chasm, where light and life energies converged with volcanic intensity, perfect for her racial transformation ritual. Her advantages were real: Arcane Nullification on herself, coupled with supreme stealth. Even the Auramech might struggle to find her. Avoid the adult mechanoids and that mysterious beast, and she might yet succeed.
She navigated with predatory caution, a shadow among shadows. The journey was arduous, a constant dance with danger. Once, a violent tremor from deep below sent her scrambling for cover. Later, her Psionic Heterochromia revealed an oddity: the local wildlife, from minor critters to territorial bosses, thrummed with heightened psychic alertness. Either they sense intruders… or something precious is about to manifest.Both scenarios could work to her advantage, drawing attention away from her solitary mission.
But as she neared the chasm, her blood ran cold.
She crouched, fingers touching a dark, sticky patch on a leaf. She brought them to her nose. The coppery, primal scent of a Level 60 Boss—and something else. A stomach-churning sourness. The Boss hadn't just been killed. It had been consumed alive. The drag marks in the soil told a story of futile struggle against an irresistible force.
"Such potent cellular activity… it was still alive when swallowed. Control via venom."
Further in, she found more sites. Seven, eight… all Level 60 Bosses, apex predators of this region, reduced to traces of struggle and digestion. This wasn't hunting. This was systematic, gluttonous eradication.
This thing isn't native.No ecosystem could sustain such a ravenous apex predator. The Auramechs and Dwarves would have mobilized to exterminate it. It must be a recent arrival. No wonder Yi Ye Han Zhuo ran into a lone, young Auramech. The locals are probably on high alert, scouting for this monster.
The situation was deteriorating rapidly. Yao abandoned speed for utter stealth, becoming one with the earth itself, using her vines as subterranean probes. She followed a network of hot springs until she reached a cavern veined with sluggish, orange magma.
The heat was a physical wall. The air reeked of sulfur and… something else. A cloying, reptilian musk.
There, sprawled across a half-cooled magma flow, was a massive, translucent sheath.
Skin.
Serpent skin. Freshly shed, still pliant. The cavern walls were scarred with deep, recent impacts, and splatters of still-hot magma.
"It evolved here. The poison mist Yi Ye Han Zhuo encountered was its defensive cocoon during the molt." She analyzed the scene. "Successful molt. So why the violent thrashing? It should be stable, hungry maybe, but not… frenzied."
The earlier tremor. This was the source.
She approached the wall, tracing the massive indentation where a head had struck. Her fingers came away smeared with sticky residue and… cooled magma.
"It had magma in its mouth." The absurdity struck her. A psychopath drinking boiling water?"Unless… the magma is the problem."
The venom she'd sensed was Yin-aligned, cold and corrosive. Magma was pure Yang fury. The two were antithetical.
Silently, she collected samples: a section of the shed skin, a vial of the contaminated magma. Evidence. Then she fled. The beast's lair was below, but its feeding frenzy was above ground. For now, the depths were safer.
She followed an underground river, her senses stretched to their limits. Finally, the tunnel opened into a vast, echoing space. She had arrived.
But she froze, a cold sweat beading on her neck.
Above her. Directly above. Through three hundred meters of rock and soil, her psionic sight painted the image. Itwas there. Blocking the very entrance to the chasm.
And she wasn't the only one who had frozen. Seven or eight meters away, pressed against the cavern wall as if trying to become part of it, was another figure. After two agonizing seconds, he turned his head.
Their eyes met in the profound, damp darkness.
Fancy meeting you here.
It seemed their destinations aligned perfectly.
In the stifling silence, a shared, desperate understanding passed between them. Yao raised her hands, fingers moving in precise, silent sign language.
Yao: Lure it away.
Yi Ye Han Zhuo: My Sequence Avatar. It's strong.
Yao: I'll cloak its energy signature with Nullification.
Yi Ye Han Zhuo: Agreed. Party lead.
He was handing her tactical control. She didn't hesitate, sending the invite. They moved with synchronized urgency.
High above, the entrance to the Mountain Cleft Chasm was a place of legends and death. The chasm itself was said to be the grave of two titans: the Violet-Blooded Marquis Tonglu and the mythical Red-Snow Demon, whose battle a century ago had shattered space and created hidden, unstable pocket dimensions. Many had sought the Marquis's legacy. None had found the entrance.
Now, that entrance was occupied. A creature of nightmare coiled upon it, a mountain of scale and muscle. A hundred meters long, its body was as thick as an ancient tree, its scales oozing a palpable, purple-black miasma. It rested, eyes closed, a forked tongue occasionally tasting the air. Droplets of venom fell from its maw, hissing and smoking as they ate through stone.
It was this voracious erosion of earth and life energy that had alerted Yao's senses.
Why is it just… lying here?The thought was absurd. Digesting?
Their plan was simple: create a distraction, draw it away, slip in.
Yi Ye Han Zhuo's Avatar, a shimmering echo infused with lightning, shot from a fissure further down the cliff face, streaking towards the chasm's depths.
The serpent's eyes snapped open. Vertical pupils like clefts into a toxic hell fixed on the moving energy signature. With a roar that vibrated the very mountain, it moved, impossibly fast for its size, its tail—a battering ram of scale and bone—sweeping towards the Avatar in a blow that could level a fortress.
"Movement!" In the distant tree line, a group of over thirty figures, led by Wu Gang and Wu Hao, watched intently. They had been stymied by the serpent for an hour. "They're drawing it away!" an underling whispered excitedly.
Wu Gang raised a hand, his brow furrowed. "Wait. My soul sense… detects another presence. Closer." His Violet-Blood lineage granted him profound spiritual perception. "This is a diversion. Observe."
The Avatar danced away from the tail strike, leading the enraged serpent on a chase along the cliff edge.
Now!
Yao and Yi Ye Han Zhuo burst from their hiding place, wings manifesting in flashes of light and crackling energy, diving for the now-unguarded chasm entrance.
They crossed the threshold.
And their souls turned to ice.
Looking up, they saw it. Another serpent. Larger. Five hundred meters of coiled, primordial malice perched on the cliff abovethe entrance. Its head was the size of a manor house. It had been waiting, watching the entire time.
Its mouth opened, not to strike, but to speak. The voice was a grating, sibilant rasp that echoed in their bones. "You think… only humans… possess avatars?"
Yao's heart stopped for a full second. Then survival instinct screamed. She and Yi Ye Han Zhuo didn't need communication. They poured every ounce of power into their wings, becoming two streaks of light plunging into the abyssal darkness of the chasm.
The giant serpent dropped from its perch. As it fell, four leathery, bat-like wings snappedopen from its sides with a sound like tearing sails. It dove after them, faster, far faster.
Its maw gaped. Not to bite, but to exhale.
A cloud of pure, concentrated decay billowed forth, swallowing the light, swallowing hope. It enveloped them.
Their armor, their magical shields, Yao's resilient Golden Yaksa Vines—they corroded like parchment in flame. The nullifying effect was absolute.
We're dead.
And as the colossal predator descended upon them, from the chasm entrance above, another group seized their chance and slipped inside.
Wu Gang and his party had taken the bait.
They were now all in the belly of the beast, together.