Tearing Lu Nian Apart
Demonized Mo Fan's body crackled with violent lightning, the scorching violet-black energy coalescing rapidly into a spear of writhing arcs that danced before him.
He thrust his palm forward and seized the lightning spear — and in that instant, demonized Mo Fan erupted into motion, man and lightning merging into one.
The spear drove straight for Lu Nian's chest. Lightning powerful enough carried tremendous penetrating force — the Ascension Phase Colossal Death Lizard from before had its skull blown clean through by a single bolt.
The violet lightning writhed through the air as the tip of the spear made contact with Lu Nian's chest.
Lu Nian stood frozen, the force of the lightning crashing over him like a wave.
There was no numbness, no paralysis — only raw, domineering destruction. Twisted together into a single thick spear, the penetrating force was beyond anything he had ever faced.
His golden mail was the first to meet it. The expensive Armor Enchanted Gear couldn't withstand the lightning's penetration — it was scorched through in an instant, a blackened hole burned into the chest.
The lightning punched through his defenses and struck Lu Nian square in the chest.
**Crack — crack — crack — crack — crack —**
The lightning spear screamed, wild and frenzied.
Skin, ribs, organs, back — each offered some resistance, but the lightning tore through them all.
From the ragged, bloody exit wound in his back, electricity spilled wildly outward. The spear held its charge, still lodged through his chest, branching tendrils snapping and popping in the air around him.
Lu Nian's body locked rigid, his eyes stretching wider and wider.
He reached up to touch the hole in his chest — his hand went charcoal-black the moment it made contact.
His hand felt nothing. That was the terrifying part — not the pain, but the absence of it. When a man stops feeling pain, death is already at the door.
"You… how could you… how…" Lu Nian stared at Mo Fan with desperate, unblinking eyes, his face contorted in agony.
Demonized Mo Fan stood before him, lightning still writhing across his body — a god of thunder descended from the heavens.
He bared his teeth in a vicious grin and broke into a wild, triumphant laugh.
That manic, laughing face stood in stark contrast to Lu Nian's expression of pain and disbelief. The man who had played executioner moments ago could never have imagined he would fall at the hands of this kid.
*Such incredible power — it should have served me. How could it… how could its first instinct be to kill me??*
The Demon Element — he had gone to extraordinary lengths to find someone truly compatible with it, only to accidentally create a nightmare that turned against him, driving lightning straight through his own body…
Not a drop of blood had escaped the wound — the lightning-scorched hole in his chest was a grotesque sight. Lu Nian's body tipped slowly backward. In his final moment, he saw the vast blue sky above, beautiful as a massive sapphire — yet stamped across that dreamlike expanse was a face, a face veined with blood markings and radiating dark menace. A human youth. The most perfect test subject the new element had ever found.
*But how could he accept this…*
*He should have had that perfect demon firmly in his grasp. With that power, he could have done anything…*
"AAAAAAHHHH!"
In the very last instant of his life, countless shadow wolf claws erupted across his nearly lifeless body.
Lu Nian had thought his life was simply over — but in the end, he was subjected to something worse than death: the agony of a slow execution applied not to his flesh, but to the soul as it departed from his body.
Shadow wolf claws had the ability to strike the soul directly, and demonized Mo Fan seemed to have done this deliberately — blade-sharp talons shredding his soul piece by piece, denying even a Grand Commander like him the chance to linger as a ghost.
The soul is always a person's most fragile part. When attacked directly, it cries out to be erased from existence entirely. The sensation was like dying over and over in endless repetition. This was why hell is so terrible — what it torments is not the body, but the soul.
Regret was useless to Lu Nian now. He had been torn to shreds by demonized Mo Fan's shadow wolf claws.
And those shreds were not allowed to scatter on the wind — they were drawn into a strange river.
It looked like the River of the Dead, drifting with the departed souls of countless Demon-Beasts — a sight that filled even Lu Nian's shattered soul with absolute dread.
*Was this hell? Had he truly fallen into hell?*
The pendant gave a faint tremor, and Mo Fan could even hear the agonized shrieking of Lu Nian's soul within it.
Souls imprisoned in the Loach Pendant were eventually refined — whether that refinement was anything like a live experiment, Mo Fan couldn't say. What was certain was that it was no gentle process. Everything connected to the Undead Element was always accompanied by pain, torment, and death.
After killing Lu Nian with his own hands, Mo Fan's mind went at once blank and wild.
Zhankong stood not far away, watching him, but not daring to approach.
From what Zhankong knew, someone in the grip of Demonization was far more dangerous than what Mo Fan had shown so far. He wanted to help Mo Fan recover from the transformation, but had no idea how to begin.
There were precious few cases of anyone surviving Demonization. These perverse experiments weren't his domain — and he found himself utterly at a loss.
He tried reaching out, because compared to the berserk Mages who had undergone Demonization before, Mo Fan seemed to have retained some measure of his own awareness.
"Mo Fan…" Zhankong said, his gaze fixed on demonized Mo Fan.
Demonized Mo Fan turned to face him, his eyes still burning with barely contained fury.
He didn't attack — because Mo Fan recognized this man: Zhankong, the Chief Instructor of Bo City.
But then a splitting headache surged through his skull without warning, so savage it made him want to rip his own head in two.
A psychic assault — violent and relentless. This was almost certainly the backlash of the Blood Catalyst. Such an assault could drive a normal person insane, or shatter a soul entirely.
**Rooaarrr —** Mo Fan let out a bellow like a cornered beast, flames and lightning erupting from his body in uncontrolled torrents.
"Listen to me, Mo Fan —" Zhankong called out urgently, watching Mo Fan grit his teeth against the psychic recoil. "The Demon Element has never been accepted as a true magic element precisely because of this — the backlash after use is catastrophic. It draws on the latent energy within a person's soul, granting unmatched combat power for a short time. But your soul could be broken completely!!"
"Tell… tell me… what… what do I do…" Mo Fan forced out through clenched teeth, clinging to what remained of his reason.