The Giant Lizard Pseudo-Dragon

Mo Fan rode the Swift Star Wolf in a bounding leap onto a wide street choked with garbage and caked mud.

The road stretched for nearly two full kilometers — clearly the main thoroughfare of Jinlin City in its former life. The buildings flanking it were mostly tall office towers and commercial high-rises.

Every one of them had been eaten away by some strange dark sludge. They looked less like finished buildings and more like bare construction skeletons — stripped of windows, their exposed surfaces peeling and crumbling in every direction.

Moving along the main road for a little over a hundred meters, Mo Fan quickly spotted a hardened mud wall ahead. It had risen to match the height of the surrounding buildings, forming a dam-like barrier that blocked all view of what lay beyond.

The Swift Star Wolf warned him: past that wall lay an extremely dangerous zone.

With so many pursuers hot on his heels, Mo Fan didn't think twice. He urged the wolf up the sloping earthen ramp and cleared the barrier. But the moment he reached the very crest of that slope, an enormous peak burst into view and seized his entire attention.

*A peak? In the middle of an abandoned city?*

He looked again — and his whole body went rigid.

It wasn't a mountain. It was a colossal honeycomb nest, built from nothing but hardened, compacted mud. It rose alone from the most densely developed district of the city, standing more than a hundred meters above Jinlin City's tallest skyscraper — so high it seemed to graze the clouds.

Its surface was riddled with holes, thousands upon thousands of them, so densely packed that just looking at them sent a crawling sensation across his skin.

Those holes were the burrows of the Lizard-Skull Giant Demons. When the Swift Star Wolf had mentioned there were around a dozen of the creatures' nests in the area, Mo Fan had already found that horrifying. But standing before this mud peak — this towering, hole-riddled mass that made skyscrapers look modest — his only instinct was to turn and leave.

Every tale of dragon's dens and death-defying heroics felt hollow by comparison. If everything living inside that peak crawled out at once, it could probably raze Jinlin City all over again.

*Wait. Something's off. I'm not sensing nearly that many presences... This could be the home territory of the Lizard-Skull Giant Demon Clan that attacked Jinlin City. If most of them have already withdrawn to the Dongting Lake region, then this peak is just an empty shell.*

Mo Fan steadied himself.

This was the first real Demon-Beast Nest he had ever laid eyes on in his life — a sight so staggering it rivaled anything humans had ever built. But what unsettled him most was what he could make out embedded in the mud: cars, streetlights, advertisement boards, all swallowed and fused into the structure alongside other debris — and bones.

*If this really is just an empty shell — or only a handful of Lizard-Skull Giant Demons still roosting here — there might still be a fighting chance...*

The thought died in his throat.

*Shit. That thing.*

At the very summit of the peak, a pair of enormous fleshy wings stirred and slowly stretched open.

Mo Fan poured his Mental Intent into his gaze, staring hard at the pinnacle. The wings unfurled with the lazy ease of something stretching after a long sleep. A massive, deep-red lizard head drooped over the edge of a large vent opening near the peak's crown, its enormous jaw hanging half-open, thick ropes of drool spilling down like a running faucet.

The commander — the one that had killed the Dread Mimic with a single bite.

The Giant Lizard Pseudo-Dragon.

The Giant Lizard was perhaps the earth's closest living equivalent to the Western dragon. Its bloodline traced to foreign lands; at some forgotten point in history, a lineage of Giant Lizards carrying Western dragon-subspecies heritage had migrated into China's Dongting Lake region, breeding across centuries until they became one of the most dreaded Demon-Beast scourges the country had ever known.

Once upon a time, creatures like Western dragons and giant dragons had been something Mo Fan only ever encountered in movies — fantastical beasts of pure imagination. But what crouched before him now was real: a winged, heavy-bellied behemoth of a lizard, flesh and scale and living breath. The Giant Lizard Pseudo-Dragon was a true dragon hybrid.

Its bloodline ran primarily lizard, but those fleshy wings were unmistakably inherited from its dragon ancestry — which was why it was called a pseudo-dragon. In raw power, it was likely even more formidable than the Wing-Azure Wolf that had once claimed the summit of Bo City's Silver Trade Building, because this creature carried genuine dragon blood.

**"Whooooo..."**

**"Whoo... whoo..."**

Small spiraling air currents drifted lazily through the sky around it. The Giant Lizard Pseudo-Dragon was deep in sleep, its snoring rolling out like muffled thunder — and the sheer force of its exhaled breath would have given some Wind Element mages a run for their money.

A creature like this, something that loomed over Mo Fan like death made flesh, sprawled out atop the peak — just looking at it made his chest tighten.

At least the peak was still a good distance away. If it weren't, he'd never have had the nerve to linger here at all — not after watching what had happened to that Dread Mimic.

Mo Fan and the Swift Star Wolf pushed deeper into the area surrounding the peak. The ground here was dry, and nothing stirred. All the Lizard-Skull Giant Demons were apparently tucked away inside the nest, resting until nightfall when they would head out to hunt.

Lizard-Skull Giant Demons weren't afraid of sunlight — they simply preferred overcast and rainy days.

Moving along the long main street, they hadn't gone far when Mo Fan glanced back and saw his pursuers clearing the mud wall behind him.

He picked out the adjutant Jiang Yi in his gray-white uniform, along with a cluster of Intermediate-Level Mages behind him — none of them looking the least bit afraid. They came barreling straight for him in a single-minded rush.

"Nowhere left to run!" Jiang Yi called out, an ugly sneer spreading across his face.

Chasing down a single student had cost them this much trouble. That was not how Military Mages operated.

"I wasn't planning on it." Mo Fan shrugged, making a show of easy surrender.

"You thought crawling into a place like this would let you slip away in the confusion? Let me tell you — these Lizard-Skull Giant Demons don't concern us in the slightest," Jiang Yi said dismissively.

"Is that right?" Mo Fan smiled. "What about the ones inside the peak?"

Flame erupted along Mo Fan's right arm.

He didn't aim the blow at the devil officers. Instead, he drove it straight at the base of the peak.

Blazing Fist tore through the air like a miniature fire meteor, shooting in a dead-straight line down the length of the street and slamming into the nest's foundation.

The peak was immense. One punch only rattled the openings at the base — nowhere near enough to shake the whole structure.

But it was more than enough.

The impact jolted awake every Lizard-Skull Giant Demon roosting in the lower chambers. All at once, countless heads thrust out from those tightly packed holes — a writhing mass of them — as a chorus of furious shrieks tore through the air. Every pair of eyes locked onto the uninvited guests who had dared enter their territory.

How long had it been since anything with the gall to trespass had wandered in? They had just woken up, and their stomachs were growling. The Lizard-Skull Giant Demons hadn't tasted human in quite a while.