Commander Remnant Soul!

"We all ate its eggs — the venom can't touch us anymore. Let's kill it together!" Mo Fan called out from cover, addressing the other two.

The most terrifying thing about the Marsh Poison Centipede had always been its venom, but even now, with toxic blood spraying from wounds all over its body, there was nothing to fear.

Now was the perfect moment to finish it off.

Mo Fan was the first to leap forward. He desperately needed a Commander-class Remnant Soul, and while the Armored-Shell Giant Lizard's spirit hadn't fully dissipated yet, he had to claim it before it was gone.

"Are you trying to get yourself killed?!" Ah Li Man cried out as she watched Mo Fan charge headlong into the open.

The Marsh Poison Centipede was gravely wounded and barely clinging to life — but a Commander-class creature on its last breath could still kill a Battle-General-class opponent with a single careless swipe. Running out there now was suicide.

Mo Fan couldn't afford to care. He had to collect the Remnant Soul first.

The Armored-Shell Giant Lizard's corpse was immense. Running beneath it felt like sprinting under an enormous building. Mo Fan drew the Loach Pendant from his chest...

Almost immediately, a firefly-like luminescence spread across the dead lizard's body, tracing the full outline of its massive form in pale light.

As the Loach Pendant began to shimmer with the same glow, the Armored-Shell Giant Lizard's soul slowly separated from its flesh.

What Mo Fan hadn't anticipated was that the lizard's soul was just as enormous in death as the beast had been in life — and he could see it surging toward him, blazing with fury and an utter refusal to die.

A cold that cut straight to the bone — straight to the soul — swept over him. The Armored-Shell Giant Lizard's spirit snapped its massive jaws open and lunged, driving straight for Mo Fan.

He went completely still. The soul before him felt no different from the living beast. Its Commander-class aura pressed down on him like a mountain, and the breath nearly died in his lungs.

A deafening roar filled his ears, and his Inner World erupted into chaos — dizziness and ringing crashing over him like a wave.

The thick aura of death rolled over him in waves, wrapping around him entirely. Body and soul alike felt as though they would be torn apart by the lizard's raging spirit...

**Hummm—**

As if sensing its master's peril, the Loach Pendant let out a deep, resonant bell-tone.

Dark-blue light bloomed from within the pendant, launching beam after beam of radiance straight at the Armored-Shell Giant Lizard's soul.

The giant lizard was clearly terrified of that light. It stumbled back several paces, visibly panicked, and turned to flee.

The Loach Pendant had no intention of letting it go. This was its first taste of a Commander-class soul, and it would not allow the prey to escape under any circumstances.

The dark-blue beams transformed into chains of the soul — countless threads, slender as silk, piercing through every part of the lizard's enormous spirit and latching onto it with unyielding hooks.

The moment the lizard's soul tried to flee, it found itself anchored. The thousand silken threads began reeling it steadily, inexorably, toward the world inside the pendant.

The lizard's spirit shrieked in terror, wailing like a wraith, but no matter how it thrashed, it could not break free from the dark-blue beams or the countless locking threads that bound it.

A soul has no real weight. No matter how enormous the Armored-Shell Giant Lizard had been in life — no matter how mountainous its brute strength — as a spirit, it was hauled effortlessly by the Loach Pendant's soul-drawing force.

The more the pendant pulled, the smaller the lizard's spirit became, until by the time it hovered before Mo Fan, it had dwindled entirely into a single dark-blue candleflame.

A candleflame held no threat. By the time Mo Fan fully came back to himself, the soul had been completely subdued and drawn into the inner world of the Loach Pendant.

"Thought I was a dead man there," Mo Fan muttered, his face drained of color.

He hadn't imagined the lizard would be so terrifying in death. It forced him to rethink his understanding of Commander-class creatures entirely — their power wasn't purely physical. Even their souls were rulers of the spirit realm.

The Loach Pendant had proven its worth. Mo Fan let out a slow breath.

After a quick internal check, he found the Armored-Shell Giant Lizard's Remnant Soul floating proudly above the river within the pendant's inner world, standing out like a crane among chickens amid the sea of flickering firefly lights.

Inside the Loach Pendant lay a singular hidden world. The Earth Sacred Spring it had once absorbed had transformed into a long river flowing endlessly through that tiny realm, cycling without end. Every Spirit Essence and Remnant Soul the pendant had collected drifted above this river — each soul a candle-flame or lantern-flame dotting the surface, their reflections below showing the living forms they had worn in life, while the river itself shimmered like a galaxy of soulstars adrift upon an eternal current...

Whether they were candle-flames or soul-lanterns drifting silently across the dark water, or stars of the soul scattered in timeless stillness above — no matter how ferocious or wrathful they had been in life, every soul that entered this world dissolved into the same serene beauty. Free of rage and free of sorrow, they waited peacefully for their fading.

*Finally, a Commander-class Remnant Soul — even if it's not a full Spirit Essence...* With the lizard subdued, the last of the tension drained from Mo Fan's body. No more enduring the mental torment of the demon's repeated backlash. With this Commander-class Remnant Soul, he would survive the final demonic repercussion and come out the other side a new man.

"Brother Fan... Brother Fan, behind you!" Zhang Xiaohou's voice came out unsteady, his teeth chattering.

Mo Fan turned around with an easy smile — and found himself staring up at a blood-soaked giant centipede rearing its upper body to loom over him, its deep-set eyes burning with vicious contempt.

*Pitiful little human. Daring to steal my prize at a moment like this?*

Having just slaughtered the Armored-Shell Giant Lizard — a creature of slightly higher bloodline than itself — the Marsh Poison Centipede radiated a brutal, murderous air from every segment of its body.

In the wake of that battle, it was likely on the verge of a powerful evolution. In nature's merciless law where the strong devour the weak, slaying a Demon-Beast of greater power and higher bloodline was like earning the favor of blood's own god — a blessing of physical and spiritual ascendance.

Now, even half-dead and oozing from a dozen wounds, the aura rolling off the Marsh Poison Centipede was stronger than it had been before the fight. It merely loomed over Mo Fan from above, and Mo Fan's entire body locked up — he couldn't move a single muscle.

*Damn it. I was too reckless.*

He had needed that Commander-class Remnant Soul so desperately, and feared the lizard's spirit dissipating, that he had charged in without a second thought.

And yet, battered and bleeding as it was, the Marsh Poison Centipede still carried a Commander's killing instinct. It slowly opened its enormous jaws — already rendering its verdict on Mo Fan's life.

"**Light Falls Boundless Zhang!!**"

Just as Mo Fan gritted his teeth and activated Shadow Fade to escape, Ah Li Man's voice rang out from nearby, carrying an unmistakable air of authority.

A breathtaking Constellation blazed into being around Ah Li Man's curvaceous figure, making her look like a goddess who had descended from the stars themselves — radiant and sacred all at once.

Golden specks of light spread across her entire body, and under her Mental Intent, they transformed into a sky-filling storm of arrows.

"She's... High-Level..." Zhang Xiaohou stood frozen beside them, slack-jawed.

Mo Fan's eyes went wide as well, staring at her in utter disbelief.

*Good God — this spectacular-bottomed woman is a High-Level Mage!*