Chasing Down the Commander!

**"Grrr— grrr—"**

Led by the Colossal Death Lizards, the Lizard-Skull Giant Demons swarmed in from every direction. Their supreme commander, the Giant Lizard Pseudo-Dragon, stood in cold indifference atop a ruined shopping mall — a structure so badly weathered that it swayed under the creature's massive bulk, with clear signs of imminent collapse on all sides.

Across the vast ocean of lizard flesh, across the ruined main boulevard of the city center, the demonic Mo Fan stared at the Giant Lizard Pseudo-Dragon with eyes full of provocation.

*That beast's hide is tough as iron. It swallowed a fireball that size and still looks completely fine. Is its stomach lined with steel? No wonder the thing just swallows everything whole.*

If it thought this lizard army could buy it time and wear him down, that was far too naive.

"Shadow Wolf Scatter!"

Mo Fan spread both arms wide. The wolf-spirit silhouette at his back twisted in an uncanny way, and shadow wolves began peeling away from the great figure one after another.

A single pointed finger — and they exploded forward, streaking down the long boulevard at blinding speed.

Shadow wolves crisscrossed through the ranks, phantom claws striking again and again. The power of shadow became the sharpest of blades, slicing clean through the bodies of the Lizard-Skull Giant Demons without the faintest resistance.

Split from skull to tail, clean gashes opening at their throats without warning, bellies torn open in grotesque silence, or simply shredded to pieces — the shadow wolves that poured from Mo Fan were like ravenous hungry ghosts. Wherever they passed, blood became mist. The Lizard-Skull Giant Demons were too sluggish to react; their bodies simply fell apart.

Clouds of crimson haze rolled across the street. Shattered limbs tumbled through the air. Looking down the boulevard, you could barely find a single intact Lizard-Skull Giant Demon — the shadow wolves were savage dismemberers, reducing even the most powerful frames to inert lumps of flesh.

The Servant-class Lizard-Skull Giant Demons were no match at all. All they could do was mass together into one long wall of flesh, their survival hinging entirely on whether the shadow wolves happened to pass them by. They had no control over their own fate.

Mo Fan remembered clearly how, when he first encountered Demon-Beasts, their savagery and ferocity had made him feel utterly insignificant. Now that insignificance had reversed — it fell on the Demon-Beasts themselves. Their lives were pitifully cheap, driven and lashed forward by Battle-General-class Colossal Death Lizards, an entire Nest amounting to nothing more than fodder for a true powerhouse's slaughter technique.

The Giant Lizard Pseudo-Dragon showed not even the faintest concern for its own kin. A Commander-class creature's rise was built on the corpses of countless members of its own kind — even if every last lizard here were wiped out, so long as the Giant Lizard Pseudo-Dragon itself survived, nothing was lost.

The Lizard-Skull Giant Demons kept crawling toward him in suicidal waves, but the demonic Mo Fan didn't bother striking directly. The wolf-spirit shadow at his back was nightmare enough for them — each sweep of those vicious phantom claws left a swath of torn bodies in its wake. The Remnant Souls rising from the corpses were then drawn upward by the pendant at Mo Fan's throat.

This was the Loach Pendant's most exciting day yet. It trembled continuously, chirping with glee like a delighted child.

Remnant Souls poured into it in an endless stream, yet it seemed insatiably hungry — and the more it consumed, the greater its appetite grew.

The Loach Pendant turned nothing away: the Remnant Souls of the lowest Servant-class, the occasional Spirit Essence, even the Battle Commander Remnant Souls of Colossal Death Lizards — all accepted without hesitation. Within the inner world of the pendant, a great river already drifted thick with countless scattered, fading green candleflames...

What the Loach Pendant truly craved, of course, was the soul of the Giant Lizard Pseudo-Dragon.

It had never once tasted the soul of a Commander-class creature. Such a high-grade soul might just be the key to its next stage of growth.

"A whole horde is heading our way!" Zhao Manyan shouted in a panic.

With this many Lizard-Skull Giant Demons, he couldn't handle them alone — and right now, he was the only one capable of casting magic.

As he cried out, the demonic Mo Fan turned his head. Those eyes held nothing but alien blankness — as if they barely registered who was standing there.

He moved. In an instant, Mo Fan had vaulted a hundred meters past Zhao Manyan and landed behind the group.

The wolf-clan blood markings on his legs blazed to a vivid red, like strange runes freshly painted onto skin, crawling across the surface with an unsettling life of their own.

The markings transformed into a layer of blood-red killing-light, a dense and dark energy condensing around both legs...

The demonic Mo Fan kicked out hard, launching that killing-light. It took shape as an enormous full-arc crescent blade — vast and sweeping — flying parallel to the street at the speed of a gale.

"Hey — why are you kicking at that building?!" Zhao Manyan stared. The crescent blade Mo Fan had launched was fearsome, sure — but it was heading straight for the office tower next to them.

Before he could finish his complaint, Mo Fan executed a reverse kick. The blood markings on his other leg flared once more, launching an identical crescent blade toward the base of another towering office building on the opposite side.

Two crescent blades, each a full thirty meters wide, sliced clean through the base of both buildings. Concrete walls, steel beams — all of it severed.

Robbed of their foundations, the two towers slowly toppled. They collided in mid-air above the street, then came crashing down as a storm of rubble.

The two buildings were demolished beyond recognition, their wreckage spreading across the street in both directions, kicking up a vast cloud of dust. The debris formed a towering wall of steel and concrete directly across the path of the oncoming lizard horde, cutting them off entirely from Zhao Manyan and the rest of the group.

They now had a natural protective wall. It just happened to be made from two demolished office towers — which, in Zhao Manyan's estimation, was a somewhat extreme construction method.

"The Giant Lizard Pseudo-Dragon looks like it's leaving," Zhao Manyan said suddenly, pointing at the massive creature as it beat its wings and rose from the ground.

The demonic Mo Fan's gaze snapped back to it. Sure enough — the Giant Lizard Pseudo-Dragon was beating its wings, slowly lifting off...

Killing intent surged. The demonic Mo Fan had absolutely no intention of letting that prize escape. He vanished from where he stood, and when Zhao Manyan cast his gaze further out, he spotted Mo Fan leaping in rapid succession between ruins and crumbling buildings — in furious pursuit of the Giant Lizard Pseudo-Dragon.

"What are you chasing it for?!" Zhao Manyan was on the verge of a breakdown.

Was this guy serious? Going after a Commander-class creature for a fight???

*Can we please just get out of this godforsaken place first?!*