A New Element — Demon!
"Get as far away from me as you can, you deranged woman with murder on the brain, or I'll wipe out every last one of you right now." Mo Fan had no patience for Jiang Yi's ramblings. He needed to stay calm and find a way through to the Peak Lair — while the Giant Lizard Pseudo-Dragon was still drowsy.
"If you want to save them, this is the only way." Jiang Yi said, expression unruffled.
In her grimy palm, a special vessel hovered — crimson red, shaped like a suspended droplet of blood. Its strange luster belonged to no recognizable element, yet Jiang Yi knew exactly what it held: power of immeasurable scale.
The Five Continents Magic Association refused to acknowledge its existence. Governments across every major nation had long since banned all research into it.
Perhaps it was evil. Perhaps it was volatile. But no one could deny the unparalleled power it bestowed. Every new force that had ever emerged into the world had been like this — opposed by all, feared because it was unknown, branded a demon...
Yet how could power itself be divided into evil and righteous?
It was simply too powerful.
If someone could truly master it, whether it was evil would rest entirely with the person who did.
Naturally Dual Elements — a young man who, at the Intermediate level, already commanded three full elements.
He was fearless and possessed rare courage. Jiang Yi had genuinely never seen anyone seek a breakthrough — a transformation, a rebirth — while surrounded on all sides by Demon-Beasts.
This new element: Jiang Yi believed he was the only person in the world capable of wielding it.
"Perhaps all of this was a mistake of our making, and we are prepared to accept every judgment — but that punishment would be ours to deserve. Your companions and you should never have been caught up in this. The choice before you couldn't be simpler. Either charge in recklessly and die, or crush the Blood Catalyst. Of course, you can always choose neither and walk away — perhaps the people in that net aren't all that important to you." Jiang Yi kept her palm open, letting Mo Fan see the Blood Catalyst in full.
Walk away?
Mo Fan looked up at the Celestial Eagle drawing ever closer to the Lizard-Skull Giant Demon...
If Mo Jiaxing were in that net, Mo Fan wouldn't hesitate. If Xinxia were in that net, Mo Fan wouldn't hesitate either.
But what about them??
Even forcing himself to be calm, the desperate need to save them crushed every last trace of fear he felt for the Lizard-Skull Giant Demon army.
There was no complicated inner turmoil — Mo Fan had only one thought: no one was allowed to touch a single hair on their heads. Not the demon Lu Nian, not the Giant Lizard Pseudo-Dragon.
"Give me that thing." He finally said to Jiang Yi.
"We call it a Demon. You can call it the Demon Element — it falls under Black Magic." Jiang Yi placed the blood drop in his hand.
Mo Fan had no time for more. He didn't care about the steps involved, and he couldn't be bothered about what the thing was called.
The Blood Catalyst in his hand looked like a drop of blood frozen mid-fall, yet its texture was like glass — one firm squeeze and it would shatter.
"You have natural Dual Elements and three Star Nebulae, which should provide the sacrificial energy the Blood Catalyst requires. Additionally, you possess the Summoning Element. According to our Experiment No. 788, after Demonization you may fuse with the bloodline of your Summoned Beast — your Demonization will likely align with the wolf-clan lineage." Jiang Yi spoke rapidly in his ear.
Mo Fan didn't hear a word of it. The Giant Lizard Pseudo-Dragon had nearly finished waking, and fortunately its attention was still fixed on Lu Nian and Zhankong — two High-Level Mages. Without them, one sweep of those wings would carry it straight to Mu Ningxue and the others.
Jaw set, Mo Fan crushed the Blood Catalyst.
The action caught Jiang Yi completely off guard, mid-sentence.
The officers resting at a distance saw what happened, and the color drained from their faces all at once — every one of them wore the look of someone watching a real demon come into being, dread flooding their eyes.
The Blood Catalyst shattered into fragments. A dense blood mist began to swirl around Mo Fan in slow, deliberate coils...
Jiang Yi scrambled backward. She knew all too well how terrifying that mist was.
It wound around him like something alive — moving slowly, unhurriedly, as if examining its surroundings. It called to mind a creature loosed from Pandora's Box, taking its time to judge whether this offering suited its taste.
Then, all at once, the entire blood mist plunged into Mo Fan's pores.
He had no warning. He barely managed to glance down at his own body before his entire frame locked rigid.
His pupils began to shift — deepening until they could swallow a whole starfield, moving from absolute black to a silver-white as mysterious as moonlight, then to the molten orange of a boundless sea of flame, then to a fierce, all-consuming violet that swept across the sky.
As his pupils roiled with color, his hair began to grow at a frantic pace — black fading to ashen white, long and sleek and flowing, like the mane of the Swift Star Wolf.
Bones cracked and lengthened. Muscles swelled in even, relentless waves. Mo Fan threw his head back in agony, as if his very soul were being ripped apart. When his mouth fell open, saber-tooth fangs gleamed — razor sharp...
The blood mist disappeared entirely. But Jiang Yi noticed a bizarre shadow settling over Mo Fan. As unsettling blood markings erupted one after another across his skin, the shadow pulsed and expanded like a newborn creature growing at terrifying speed.
Slowly, the spectral shape took form — a werewolf silhouette, profoundly sinister, saturated with barely restrained savagery.
"The Swift Star Wolf... just as expected. His blood mutation was shaped by his Summoned Beast." The words escaped Jiang Yi before she could stop them. "A Blood Mutation Mage whose mutation shares a spiritual bond with their Summoned Beast will command their own mind far more effectively — and will wield the full power of that mutated bloodline."
The blood markings kept multiplying. They bore a striking resemblance to the star markings on the Swift Star Wolf, yet the bloodline power burning within them far outstripped anything the wolf's own marks could contain.
**"ROOAARR!!!!"**
A roar like that of a Blood Beast erupted from Mo Fan's throat.
Though most of his form — blood markings blazing across every inch — still held its human shape, the aura pouring off him was more terrifying than any Demon-Beast.
His pupils bore no resemblance to a human's. His ashen-white hair, grown past his ankles, stood rigid and defiant — demonic energy made manifest in every strand.
His bare feet had somehow pressed into the earth itself, leaving cracked and scorched imprints wherever he stood, as if each step might ignite the ground into a blazing inferno.
Countless bolts of lightning writhed across his body in the shapes of chains and shackles, crackling without order or pattern — what appeared to be restraints were in truth a Domain of utter annihilation.
And behind him loomed the werewolf shadow, testament to the power it commanded — and to darkness itself.
People always enjoy imagining things unknown and nonexistent, cobbling them together from fragments of what they know. When what they build from those fragments is terrible, they call it a demon.
A demon — rejected by all, yet capable of anything.
Here, now, wielding four entirely different powers and fusing them perfectly within a single body, Mo Fan was the living incarnation of the demon that haunted the oldest scrolls.