Drip. Drip. Drip.
The warm yellow liquid pattered down Fang Tong's trouser leg onto the stone ground.
In the silent, dust-choked square, that tiny sound was somehow unbearably loud.
Every drop of blood in Fang Tong's body had gone still. His prized broadsword lay at his feet.
He stood there like a clay figure with its soul sucked out, staring at the massive white-boned beast—metallic cold light radiating off every surface, pale blue soul-flames dancing in its eye sockets.
He wanted to run. His legs had turned to lead.
Back in the dim room of the side courtyard, Mo Fan sat cross-legged in the corner of the bed, eyes closed, watching Fang Tong crumple through the shared vision—completely calm.
No pity. Just cold, precise calculation.
He'd quietly assessed Fang Tong's cultivation two days ago.
Late Qi Condensation. Spiritual force unstable, footwork unsteady. As for the old village head—a mortal. Not even worth the effort.
If he wanted, he could issue Summon No. 003 the simplest possible command.
That massive bone claw—rebuilt from a demon tiger's forelimb—would turn Fang Tong's skull into paste the same way you'd smash a watermelon.
But that would accomplish nothing.
Killing Fang Tong, or killing the village head, would only spook the prey. It wouldn't solve the real problem.
What he needed was the "master"—the one who had laid an illusion array over an entire village. The real target.
You want to catch a big fish, you let the line run.
Mo Fan's mind moved fast. He decided to add one more ingredient to this performance.
To make a dog run back to its master, the dog had to be genuinely afraid for its life.
And a bone-white beast with pale ghost-fire burning in its skull carried a hundred times more terror than any ordinary mountain animal.
Tap... tap...
003 didn't lunge.
Instead, it began to move—long, powerful hind legs carrying it forward one step at a time, slow and measured, each stride radiating crushing pressure.
Massive bone claws scraped across the stone ground with a sound that set teeth on edge.
Ten paces. Five. Three.
The death-qi rolled forward like something physical. Fang Tong could see the dried blood crusted on 003's jaw.
"AHHH—FINE! I'LL TAKE YOU WITH ME!"
Survival instinct and mortal terror finally broke him.
Fang Tong let out a hysterical roar, snatched the broadsword off the ground, poured every last drop of spiritual force he had into the blade, and swung it at 003's skull with everything he had.
A desperate, all-or-nothing strike from a late-stage Qi Condensation cultivator. A layer of muddy yellow blade-light even flickered along the edge.
To Mo Fan, it looked like a warm-up exercise.
Too slow.
The massive white-boned beast didn't step back even half an inch.
Its enormous frame simply tilted—with a fluidity that had no business existing in something that size—half a foot to the right.
Whoosh.
Fang Tong's full-force swing grazed the side of 003's skull by a hair and slammed into the stone ground. Sparks flew.
Old force spent. New force not yet gathered.
In that single instant of overextension, 003 moved.
No lunge. No bite. No crushing blow.
The thick white foreleg simply swung—at a precise, almost casual angle—through the air.
No dramatic spray of flesh. No thunderous crack of bone. The claw, honed from a high-tier Spirit Beast's talon, passed through Fang Tong's sword arm with no resistance whatsoever.
Time seemed to stop.
Thud.
A thick, muscle-corded arm—still gripping the broadsword—dropped onto the dusty ground.
The cut was mirror-smooth. The cross-section of bone and blood vessels was perfectly visible.
It took two, maybe three full seconds for Fang Tong's brain to register what had happened. Then the pain hit.
A fountain of crimson erupted from the clean stump.
"AHHHHH—MY ARM! MY ARM!!!"
His scream was ten times more wretched than anything before it.
He clamped his remaining hand over the spurting stump, face white as paper, and rolled across the ground twice from the sheer agony.
Then he abandoned the sword entirely, lurched upright, and bolted—stumbling, staggering, like a rabid dog—toward the deepest part of the village.
"MASTER! MASTER, SAVE ME!!!"
His screaming echoed through the ruined village. A vivid red trail marked his path.
003 stood where it was. Not a tremor.
Only the pale blue soul-flames in its eye sockets quietly watched Fang Tong's desperate retreat.
Bait's in the water. Now let's see what bites.
While waiting for the big fish, Mo Fan wasn't idle.
He needed more intelligence—specifically about the mysterious array blanketing the entire village.
Looks like I'm going to have to tear this place apart.
He directed 003 to begin a systematic sweep. A methodical, physical demolition.
BOOM. A thick earthen wall caved under a bone claw.
CRASH. The field of "perfect wheat"—that unnaturally flawless crop that violated every agricultural law—was plowed into churned earth by 003's powerful hind legs.
Mo Fan was trying to physically locate and destroy whatever array nodes might be buried in the buildings or farmland.
But as the destruction spread—half the village reduced to rubble—nothing happened.
Beyond the terrified screaming of mortals cowering in root cellars and collapsed shacks, Mo Fan felt nothing.
No array activation. No spiritual ripple from a damaged node. No reaction at all.
The village was a dead pond. No matter how hard he stirred it, the surface stayed flat.
Something's wrong.
In the guest room, Mo Fan's closed eyes opened a crack. His brow furrowed deep in cold calculation.
If this were an array laid by a Qi Condensation or ordinary Foundation Establishment cultivator... This level of physical destruction would have destabilized the foundation. The core would be leaking spiritual fluctuations by now due to Qi traction.
But it's too quiet. Eerily quiet.
A bead of cold sweat formed at his temple. A somewhat horrifying risk assessment was taking shape in his mind.
What if this village isn't a low-tier devil cultivator's operation at all? What if this is a trap laid by a Golden Core mighty figure?
In the cultivation world, only array masters at Golden Core or above could fully merge an array with heaven, earth, and nature.
No core, no seams, a perfect closed loop with no trace.
If it was Golden Core...
Mo Fan's breath caught.
That would be completely beyond anything he could handle right now.
Forget completing the breakthrough mission—the moment that person showed up, he and his entire skeleton army would be slapped into dust.
I need to prepare an exit.
A cold, rational instinct to cut his losses surfaced. He wasn't the type to throw his life away for a mission.
Fortunately, his real body was still fully lucid—not deeply bound by the illusion.
If things went genuinely wrong, the so-called [ Tier-2 Breakthrough Quest ] could go straight to hell.
Cut the link, recall 003, grab Mo Yan, and run. That was the smart play.
While Mo Fan was directing 003 to pace through the rubble and simultaneously weighing whether to pull out immediately—
003's massive frame drifted, almost without him noticing, to a building at the rear of the village.
It was the only structure still completely intact. Not a crack in the walls. Not a speck of dust on the bricks.
In the middle of all this wreckage, it stood out glaringly.
Three characters were carved into the plaque above the door: Linshui Village Ancestral Hall.
Unexpected find.
Mo Fan shelved the retreat plan. He directed 003 to push its massive skull through the wide-open doors.
Inside, no lamps were lit. Dim and still.
The central offering table was packed with over a hundred spirit tablets, row upon row. The air was thick with the smell of cheap incense.
Mo Fan swept his gaze—through 003's eye sockets—across the tablets. And stopped.
His focus locked dead onto the tablet at the highest, most central position on the altar.
It was larger than all the others by a full margin. Carved from some kind of dark Yin Wood.
And instead of an ancestral name, it bore four characters written in stark, blood-red cinnabar:
[ Venerable Miasma Dust ]
"Venerable?"
Mo Fan stared at those words. Froze for a moment. Then let out a completely undisguised cold sneer from the bottom of his heart.
In the cultivation world, "Venerable" was not a title you threw around. It was the exclusive honorific reserved for Nascent Soul mighty figures!
A Nascent Soul powerhouse... turtling up in this impoverished backwater on the edge of Azure Cloud Sect's territory... Relying on a shoddy illusion array to drain livestock and swindle a handful of Qi Condensation wanderers?
The logic didn't hold together for even a second.
This is almost certainly some low-tier devil cultivator playing god, putting gold on his own face with a fake title to scare people.
The tension in Mo Fan's nerves eased slightly.
Though he had to admit—"Miasma Dust" was a name that fit this illusion-soaked village rather well.
Since he'd found what looked like the symbol of the mastermind, Mo Fan decided on one final provocation.
He wasn't willing to abandon the breakthrough mission without at least forcing this play-acting "Venerable Miasma Dust" out to check his stats.
Inside the ancestral hall, 003 slowly raised the same thick bone forelimb that had just severed Fang Tong's arm.
This time, it held nothing back. Violent necrotic death-qi condensed around the bone claw.
It was going to reduce this hall—and that bullshit "Venerable's" tablet—to a pile of powder.
BOOM—
Just as the claw, carrying a piercing shriek through the air, was a fraction of a second from impact...
"Wretched beast. Cease your insolence."
A low, hoarse voice—carrying a faint echo—cut through the air from the direction of the village entrance!
It wasn't loud. But it was laced with dense, resonant spiritual shockwaves.
As the sound wave rolled outward, it rattled the surrounding rubble...
And visibly slowed 003's descending claw, the bone limb stuttering mid-swing against an invisible spiritual pressure.
Finally willing to come out.
In the guest room, Mo Fan's eyes snapped open. A piercing cold gleam flashed through them.
He turned 003's massive frame around, locking those two pale blue soul-flames onto the source of the voice.
Through the drifting morning mist at the village entrance, a figure had appeared—quietly, at some unknown point.
A Daoist in a wide black robe.
He held a grayish-white horsetail whisk of indeterminate material. His face was gaunt, his expression cold.
As he regarded the destruction 003 had wrought across the village, he carried himself with the unfathomable, immortal-like posture of someone profound.
Beside him stood Fang Tong—face white as a corpse.
The bleeding from the stump of his right arm crudely staunched by some spell. Still trembling with pain. Still fixing 003 with a gaze of pure, venomous hatred.
And the mortals—the ones who had been cowering in root cellars and ruined shacks far away, shaking with terror—
When they heard that voice. When they caught a glimpse of the black-robed Daoist through the cracks...
They moved as if they'd grabbed a lifeline in the depths of hell.
Heedless of the danger outside, they crawled out of the rubble one by one, dropped to their knees in the muddy water, and kowtowed desperately toward the black-robed figure—weeping, shouting, voices cracking with desperate relief:
"It's the Immortal Master!"
"The Immortal Master has finally come to save us! We're saved!"
"A living god has manifested!"