Landing face-to-face with a rift serpent about to swallow him whole was not what Wenzhi had expected when he teleported out of the jet.
The beast was enormous, its terrifying maw stretched so wide Wenzhi could vividly see the wet muscle of its tongue and rows of translucent teeth bursting up from the desert sand.
In the exact second before the jaws clamped shut, a massive tentacle of solid dark mist whipped through the air. It wrapped brutally around Wenzhi's waist and yanked him backward out of the impact zone, tossing him deep into the mouth of a nearby cavern.
Instead of dropping him, the shadow tendrils pinned him, suspending him hard against the stone wall. Wenzhi gasped for air as a crushing gravity wave slammed into his chest.
Outside the cave entrance, Xinyuan moved. A massive scythe crafted from dense dark mist materialized in his hands as he launched himself into the sky.
