Breakthrough in Crisis!
Mo Fan glanced toward the officers' position.
Fortunately, the Lizard-Skull Giant Demons were more drawn to that group, and several Colossal Death Lizards were busy assaulting the officers' fortification. Had that not been the case, his own position would have collapsed long ago.
He looked out again. The Lizard-Skull Giant Demons showed no sign of thinning — he couldn't see the end of them. He had no idea how many Nests his Blazing Fist had roused, or whether neighboring Lizard-Skull Giant Demons had simply joined the siege once they noticed humans causing trouble in their territory.
Mo Fan was breathing hard. His Magical Energy was still holding up. The problem was that he was being overwhelmed.
His Lightning Seal electric field, spanning twenty meters in every direction, had locked down most of the attackers. But the Lizard-Skull Giant Demons were so numerous now that they were crawling over their paralyzed brethren to reach him.
More than a few sets of fangs were nearly close enough to bite. One tail swipe would be enough to splatter him.
*I can't keep this up. I'm dead if this goes on.*
Mo Fan clenched his teeth, stealing periodic glances at the sky.
"Swift Star Wolf — buy me some time," he said. "Don't let a single Lizard-Skull Giant Demon near me."
The Swift Star Wolf swept its gaze across the circle of Lizard-Skull Giant Demons eyeing them hungrily. No Colossal Death Lizards — no Battle-General-class creatures — were pressing them for now. Against these regular Lizard-Skull Giant Demons alone, it could hold the line long enough to cover Mo Fan.
It gave a firm nod: *go ahead*.
Mo Fan trusted the Swift Star Wolf completely. He sat cross-legged on top of the ruins and closed his eyes.
He entered Meditation.
This was the moment — he had to gamble again. His Fire Element Star Nebula had been tempered to its absolute limit inside the Three-Step Tower, and after this long stretch of combat and cultivation, he had finally brushed against the threshold of the third tier.
Breaking through while surrounded was reckless. But Mo Fan was certain: only the shadow of death could drive him to his absolute peak.
He entrusted his life entirely to the Swift Star Wolf.
"**Awoooooooo!!**"
The Swift Star Wolf threw its head back and let out a long, savage howl at the open sky.
Sand began to rise around it — slowly at first, then faster, coiling outward in tightening rings. This was nothing like the Sand Tempest it had used before. The scale was growing, the intensity building, layer upon layer of sand blanketing a vast swath of the surrounding area until it threatened to become a full-blown sandstorm.
The storm rolled forward, swallowing every Lizard-Skull Giant Demon in its path.
Fine sand seemed harmless — until it hit at speed. Moving fast enough, each grain became a steel ball capable of punching through a wall.
The sandstorm crashed through the street like a hail of bullets. A great red mist blossomed through the yellow haze: blood, scattered in every direction, swirling through the killing storm.
The street surface, the abandoned billboards, the walls of derelict shops — all were riddled with thousands of tiny punctures, dense as the marks left by countless arrows.
Entire swarms of Lizard-Skull Giant Demons were reduced to mangled corpses. No matter how thick their hide, no matter how coarse their scales, nothing could stop that relentless barrage of fine-grained shrapnel. Every Lizard-Skull Giant Demon in that direction was slaughtered — and died horribly.
The Swift Star Wolf had been fighting in close quarters this whole time. Unleashing this kind of wide-area devastation once took a severe toll on its stamina.
When the shrapnel storm finally played out, the Swift Star Wolf was panting **hard** — but the results were undeniable. Over a dozen Lizard-Skull Giant Demons across one entire arc had been wiped out in an instant.
Lizard-Skull Giant Demons were tough and slow. When they surged in packs like this, a single area-of-effect strike could cover enormous ground.
The number of moving Lizard-Skull Giant Demons dropped — more precisely, the ones still moving in that direction dropped; the bodies were still piled thick.
The Swift Star Wolf remained fiercely devoted to its duty. To keep the twenty-to-thirty-meter radius around Mo Fan clear of every living thing, it continued unleashing stamina-draining abilities in succession, cowing the surrounding swarms into momentary stillness.
Mo Fan knew every second mattered. The Swift Star Wolf couldn't hold out forever.
In the vast expanse of his Inner World, the Fire Element Star Nebula burned with blistering heat — like a sun that had blazed since the beginning of time.
But it still wasn't enough.
Mo Fan needed it brighter. He needed it to rage.
*Dad has never done you wrong,* he thought, sardonic even as adrenaline clawed at him. *Now it's life or death. Stop sulking, break through that pitch-black chaos, and expand your territory all the way to the next district — how about it?*
He let the dark humor go. He stopped fooling himself and began pushing in earnest.
He gathered every thread of Mental Intent and focused it on the Fire Element Star Nebula, hurling wave after wave of spiritual force against the nebula cloud. The Star Nebula drew in that force and expanded — like a cosmic nebula asserting dominion over the surrounding dust and boundless dark, spreading its radiance further and further into the void.
This was the process. Mages had to drive spiritual force like a battering ram.
If the spirit was a wave, that wave had to crash through the infinite wall of dark chaos surrounding the nebula. Once the shackles broke, the Star Nebula would expand, Magical Energy would surge, and the Star Motes within would ascend.
There was no time for multiple attempts. Mo Fan had to do this in one clean push — ideally within seconds. If he failed, he'd have no choice but to surrender to that unhinged woman.
Surrender? Why, exactly?
In Mo Fan's view, death was the absolute last resort. People who invoked death to prove their integrity were, at heart, cowards. Choosing the brief pain of dying — where nothing mattered to you anymore — was far lesser than living and daring to bear everything that came with it.
"**Awoo! Awoo!!**"
The Swift Star Wolf began howling urgently, trying to rouse Mo Fan.
It wasn't that it could no longer hold back the Lizard-Skull Giant Demons. The problem was that slaughtering them in such massive numbers had drawn the fury of a Colossal Death Lizard.
The moment a Colossal Death Lizard appeared, the Swift Star Wolf would have to throw everything it had against it — and the moment it did, the Lizard-Skull Giant Demons would pour freely over the ruins and devour Mo Fan whole.
On the other side of the battlefield, Jiang Yi had already entered the fight.
Her group had more people and greater firepower, drawing far more Lizard-Skull Giant Demons than Mo Fan's side. Her subordinates were stretched to the breaking point. If she held back any longer, people were going to die.
But then she caught sight of the crisis unfolding on Mo Fan's end.
*Is he out of his mind?* Ice shot through her. *Attempting a Star Nebula breakthrough here, of all places — damn him!*
She bit down on the decision and broke out of formation.
She could not let Mo Fan die. No matter what. He was the only hope their Blood Catalyst experiment had left.
"Staff Officer—"
"Staff Officer Jiang!"
Several of the officers cried out in alarm as they watched her charge away from the line.
"Don't worry about me," she called back. "Hold your formation. I'm going to pull him out. Don't break ranks — we're cutting through."
"Yes, ma'am!"
"Yes, ma'am!"
The officers gritted their teeth and held, carving a bloody corridor through the swarm for her to pass.
"**Whoooooosh!!**"
By the time Jiang Yi had fought her way nearly a hundred meters out, the ruins erupted.
Fierce, rose-colored flames roared upward.
The firelight bathed the main street — thick with Lizard-Skull Giant Demons as far as the eye could see — in a deep crimson glow. Scorching waves of heat radiated outward in rings, washing over everything.
Surrounded by the lizard horde, Jiang Yi froze and looked up.
Mo Fan was wreathed in fire — blazing with an intensity she had never once seen from him before...