The Terrifying Giant Lizard!

At the municipal flower garden, Mo Fan and Bai Tingting stared at the building in stunned silence.

Every vine and branch covering the structure was writhing — fully, unmistakably alive, savage as living things fighting over freshly claimed prey.

Neither of them had ever seen anything like it. Nearly every mage took it for granted that plants were inert. Even when vines grew everywhere, you only had to watch for the creatures lurking among them. Who could have imagined that these sinister plants *were* Demon-Beasts themselves, their tendrils, creepers, and trunks all weapons of slaughter?

"What do we do? They're trapped inside," Bai Tingting said, her expression grim.

The dense vegetation was likely tougher than any earthen wall. Their companions had already entered the civic hall, and fighting their way back out would be no simple feat — walking in there was no different from leaping straight down a monster's throat.

"Look up there." Mo Fan pointed toward the second tier of the civic building — the large, square structure above.

Bai Tingting looked up, and a chill crept across her scalp.

Perched at the second-tier structure was an enormous, grotesque head.

Not an animal's skull — something closer to a giant tree stump. Had it not been for the pitch-black maw opening and closing in slow, wet smacks, no one would ever have believed the thing was alive.

The stump-like head dominated the entire second-tier building. Countless creepers threaded into its throat like tubes pumping in nutrients, and from a distance the whole mass looked like some bark-wrapped devil sucking the life out of something unseen.

"A Dread Mimic!" The breath rushed out of Bai Tingting in a sharp gasp. Seeing this creature with her own eyes for the very first time sent a wave of shock crashing through her.

"Is this thing a plant or a Demon-Beast?" Mo Fan instinctively stepped back.

The creature was a devil. It had used the entire civic building as camouflage, making everything around it look safe and ordinary, drawing living things here to rest.

The total absence of any wandering Demon-Beasts nearby was itself a sign — this place was lethally dangerous. Anything that stumbled in had already fallen into this master of disguise's belly, becoming fodder for its growth.

"It's a high-bloodline strain — even harder to deal with fully grown. It has a strong aversion to light, so you'd normally only find one somewhere dark and shadowed... I never imagined this civic building would become its natural habitat. Growing alongside the structure blocks out the sunlight, and fresh prey just wanders in to die..." Bai Tingting was clearly a top student in Demon-Beast Studies. Even a species as obscure as the Dread Mimic — rarely covered in any official material — she could analyze with complete precision.

"Let's hope it isn't Commander-class... I'll try blasting it a few times with fire," Mo Fan said.

"Don't provoke it. Fire won't do much against it. Even twice our numbers would be no match for a Dread Mimic," Bai Tingting said urgently, stopping him.

"So they're as good as dead?" Mo Fan said, momentarily at a loss.

"Things look grim. Without a Light Element user in there, they'll be completely wiped out within ten minutes," Bai Tingting said, brow furrowed.

She had stayed behind only because of Mo Fan. She genuinely liked the man who had saved her life, and she hadn't expected that such a passing impulse would end up sparing her from a lethal trap.

For now, neither of them could do anything. Charging in would be suicide. The only option was to wait and offer backup if their companions managed to fight their way to the entrance.

Mo Fan's heart sank.

He could care less about the rest, but Mu Ningxue, Mu Nujiao, and Zhao Manyan — those three he absolutely had to look out for.

But if fire was already ineffective, Lightning Element would be even more useless against vegetation. There was nothing he could do right now but wait outside.

**Whoooosh—**

**Whooooooosh—**

Just as his anxiety was reaching a breaking point, a curtain of black wind came surging from not far away, crashing like ocean swells, bending every tree along the street sideways.

Debris on the ground clattered and rattled. A rusted-beyond-repair bicycle was wrenched into the air and hurled into an apartment building, shattering into metal fragments that continued to spin through the air.

The unnatural gale raged without warning, and neither Mo Fan nor Bai Tingting had any idea what was happening.

Their breathing grew strained. Cold sweat seeped from every pore. They looked at each other, and in each other's eyes saw naked fear and dread.

Beneath a darkening bank of clouds, a pair of enormous fleshy wings slowly grew larger as the distance closed.

Below those wings hung a body like a giant lizard's — knobbly, thick-scaled skin running from its head all the way to the tip of its tail. The long tail trailed half-raised, ending in a razor-sharp point that glinted in the sunlight with a bone-chilling gleam.

"Run!" The word came out of Mo Fan with tremendous effort.

The creature's aura pressed down on them like a physical weight, nearly suffocating. Someone with weaker mental fortitude might have simply blacked out. This was the first time Mo Fan had ever felt a living creature's presence reach this magnitude — so crushing it annihilated any thought of resistance, leaving only one impulse burning in his mind: *I have to run.*

Bai Tingting couldn't move her feet. All she could do was stare at Mo Fan, her face drained white.

Mo Fan grabbed her by the wrist. This was no time to worry about concealing his abilities. He forced Shadow Fade.

*Damn it — the Star Trail keeps breaking.* Shadow Fade stuttered and fractured three or four times before he finally held it together.

With Bai Tingting in tow, Mo Fan dissolved into a smear of shadow and skimmed along the outer wall of the civic building, slipping swiftly into the canopy-covered lanes of the old quarter.

Only when they had put an entire wide boulevard between themselves and that thing did the crushing aura finally begin to ease.

"You — you have *four* Elements!" Bai Tingting stared at him in flat disbelief, her thoughts in complete chaos.

"I'll explain later." Mo Fan turned his gaze back down the long street toward the civic building.

By now, the Flesh-wing Lizard had alighted on the rooftop terrace of the civic building's third tier, circling once like a hawk surveying its domain.

Then, without warning, it plummeted.

The Flesh-wing Lizard dove straight into the second-tier structure. Its cavern-like maw yawned open, baring row upon row of jagged fangs like descending stalactites.

**CRACK!**

It drove its jaws straight through the square structure of the second tier. Steel-reinforced concrete crumbled like foam.

The true target of those fangs was the Dread Mimic's great stump-like head. The moment they sank in, the Dread Mimic let out a shriek that rang across the entire district like an air-raid siren.

The vines and tendrils blanketing the building's base erupted into frenzied motion — thrashing so wildly it seemed the entire hall might be torn apart. The Dread Mimic was fighting for its life, commanding every vine toward the Flesh-wing Lizard in a desperate attempt to bind it.

Uncountable vines burst through every window of the civic building like tentacles, coiling around the Flesh-wing Lizard, straining to drag it down by sheer force.

But those vines might as well have been cobwebs. A single casual flex snapped them all. The fangs locked around the Dread Mimic's head only tightened further, and the Dread Mimic's struggles grew weaker... and weaker.