Totem's Rage (Part I)

West Lake. Su Causeway. Willows trembling in the cold wind...

It swept in like a sob, like the sound of weeping.

Mo Fan and Lingling had "listened" to every last moment of it — and "listened," too, to the Gray Eagle's desperate cries from within that grove of trees as it fought to the death to protect Wang Xiaojun.

In the end, the Gray Eagle had carried him back to the Western Fortress on its back. But from the moment it did, Mo Fan and Lingling's hearts had not known a single instant of calm.

**Hsssssss——**

Under Mo Fan and Lingling's watch, the Totem Xuan Serpent had finally awakened completely. And while the two of them were still drowning in grief and fury over Wang Xiaojun, the serpent's wounds had vanished — every last one — leaving its entire body clothed in gleaming blue-black scales.

It was as though it had slipped into a new vessel. The old skin, ravaged with wounds and scars, had sloughed away and now lay soaking in the lake water nearby. The Totem Xuan Serpent was somewhat smaller than before, but this Molting Season seemed to have freed it utterly from weakness.

It had been molting all this time. And all the while, like Mo Fan and Lingling, it had listened to everything.

It cried out now — to rouse the two humans still sitting on its head, lost in their grief and rage.

Mo Fan finally came back to himself. He stared, struck cold with awe: at some point, the Totem Xuan Serpent had undergone a complete rebirth. Its gleaming blue-black scaled armor spoke of the ancient dignity and majesty of a Totem creature, and its colossal body proclaimed its absolute dominion over all things.

**"Hsssssss——"** The Totem Xuan Serpent flicked its crimson tongue, its hissing growing heavier with each breath. Its eyes locked onto the western sky with absolute fixity — as though its enemy waited there.

And of course they did. The Totem Xuan Serpent had been framed by Councillor Luo Mian, nearly made the scapegoat for the entire plague outbreak.

"Do you want revenge?" Mo Fan felt the fury radiating from the serpent and asked at once.

The Totem Xuan Serpent understood human intent completely. Slowly, its body began to rise, lifting until it could look down upon all of West Lake from above.

**"KRAAAAAA!!!! KRAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!"**

The Totem Xuan Serpent opened its great maw and unleashed a thunderous roar — not merely the cry of a beast, but the proclamation of a true sovereign who had clawed back from the abyss. A declaration to every enemy who had sought to destroy it: *Your nightmare has arrived.*

Its presence was overwhelming. As it raised its head to the sky and roared, all of West Lake erupted into towering waves that crashed against both shores in a relentless frenzy.

"You finished the Molting Season?!" Mo Fan stood atop the serpent's head, his voice rising with barely contained elation.

He had been genuinely afraid of this serpent overlord before, if he was honest with himself. But now, feeling the same fury surging within it as burned in his own chest, Mo Fan knew — they wanted exactly the same thing.

Councillor Luo Mian's power was terrifyingly vast. And now he held the city's lifeline in his hands. Once he delivered the Eagle Red Grass to the general quarantine zone, his position would be unassailable — and any hope of seeking justice for Wang Xiaojun and his Gray Eagle would be all but extinguished.

Mo Fan and Lingling wanted nothing more than to tear Luo Mian apart with their own hands. The Totem Xuan Serpent completing its molt at this precise moment could not have been more perfectly timed.

"Are you saying — you'll follow my lead?" Mo Fan felt a strange, wordless language transmitting from the Totem Xuan Serpent into his mind, and pointed at himself in near-disbelief.

The Totem Xuan Serpent sent back an affirmative.

This great serpent knew exactly who had stood by it during its most vulnerable moment.

And so it would become the blazing inferno in Mo Fan's heart — burning until the mastermind behind this plague, this conspiracy, this tragedy, was ground to ash and cinder.

"Then let's go and slaughter that vile bastard!" Mo Fan roared, seized with fierce, exhilarated fury.

A *Councillor?*

Hiding behind his lofty station. Sheltering behind his matchless power. And using them for such cold, ruthless cruelty.

Now the Totem Xuan Serpent had completed its molt. The sovereign had returned. No soul on this earth could save that wretched man's life.

"Lingling — give me his location." Mo Fan turned to Lingling at his side.

"He's on the small plain between the Western Fortress and Hangzhou's general quarantine zone. He's almost back within city range," Lingling said.

The Spatial Bracelet had been tagged by Lingling; she could see exactly where Councillor Luo Mian was at any given moment.

This Luo Mian — who had just committed an unforgivable atrocity — was quietly slipping back into the city.

He had ambushed Wang Xiaojun. Now he would get a taste of his own medicine.

"Alright — everyone move! We're going in!" Mo Fan stood atop the Totem Xuan Serpent's head and jabbed his hand toward the west.

The Totem Xuan Serpent was sheathed from head to tail in blue-black scales that gleamed like armor plate. When it surged free of West Lake and launched skyward, it became a night dragon tearing through the heavens.

Other flying creatures had to beat their wings countless times and spiral upward gradually before finally reaching the clouds. The Totem Xuan Serpent simply shot straight up. And as it pierced the clouds, the water of West Lake behind it surged upward in reverse — a breathtaking inverse waterfall that left the residents living near its shores blinking in disbelief at what their eyes were telling them.

As it rocketed skyward, mist materialized around its body — the same deep blue-black as its scales. The mist served two purposes: it cloaked its enormous, awe-inspiring form from view, and it bore it forward through the sky. The ancient power to ride cloud and mist, to traverse the heavens as a true celestial sovereign.

Sweeping over Hangzhou — over its towers of glass and its avenues in bloom — Mo Fan and Lingling clung to the great serpent's head. Neither of them had ever flown before, not like this, and the storm of sensation threatened to swallow them whole.

The speed of a Sovereign-class creature was simply something else entirely. The vast sprawl of Hangzhou shrank to a glittering nightscape and fell away behind them with terrifying swiftness.

Ahead, in the dark and murky expanse of sky, white shapes moved — countless white shapes. The White Demon Eagle Legion, pressing forward to breach the Safe Zone and push into human territory, into city range.

The Totem Xuan Serpent didn't spare them so much as a glance. Its cold, luminous eyes fixed downward on the small plain below, searching — just as Mo Fan was — for the silhouette of Councillor Luo Mian.

"He's directly below us — but it looks like he's met up with a group of people. Quite a few of them." Lingling bent over her small notebook, urgently relaying to both Mo Fan and the Totem Xuan Serpent.

"There are a lot of them. We should—"

Mo Fan hadn't finished speaking when the Totem Xuan Serpent shed every last shred of its concealing mist in an instant. Its mountain-spanning body drove straight down toward the wide plain below — without a heartbeat's hesitation.

Many people?

*It was a Totem.*

*A Sovereign Xuan Serpent — tall enough to pierce the sky itself.*

Not merely in Hangzhou. In all the world, there were precious few creatures that the Totem Xuan Serpent would deign to notice.