Furious Battle Against the Vampire!
Liu Ru lifted her head and saw Mo Fan walking slowly toward her through the dying glow of the flames.
Something clicked, and she hastily covered her face with both hands.
She was afraid Mo Fan would see her Blood Fangs. Even now, she had no idea how to retract those loathsome things — having them protrude past her lips made her feel like an utter monster. And she had used those very Blood Fangs to drink Mo Fan's blood.
"Damn you, damn you, damn you — you came here just to die?!" The Vampire Nie Dong's roar reached them from beyond the shattered glass.
He had plunged from that staggering height and hadn't been reduced to pulp. Instead, a pair of bat wings had erupted from his body and carried him straight back up.
His wings were grotesque and terrifying — vast sheets of oily hide stretched over jagged bone, wide enough when fully unfurled to span an entire wall.
Nie Dong surged upward in a fury, savage green light blazing from his eyes as they locked onto Mo Fan.
It was all because of this damned Hunter-mage. He had ruined everything — gotten him cast out of his clan, and cost him his favorite prey on top of that. Anyone who dared to provoke a Vampire would die so completely that not a bone or splinter of soul would ever be found. And now that the laws no longer bound him, Nie Dong had no intention of letting it matter that his target happened to be a Mage.
"Annihilation Claw!"
Thick clots of blood materialized around Nie Dong and swiftly coalesced into a massive, hideous talon. As Nie Dong swept his arm forward, the blood-forged claw lunged toward Mo Fan.
The blood claw swept across the floor — large enough to close Mo Fan entirely within its fist.
Mo Fan didn't dare hesitate. He plunged his body into the scattered play of light and shadow.
The claw slammed shut, intent on crushing him to pulp — but it grasped only the afterimage he'd left behind. The real Mo Fan had dissolved into a dark smear, gliding along the wall to a completely different position.
"Playing tricks in front of a master!" Nie Dong sneered. He knew the Shadow Element far too well — a shadow displacement like Mo Fan's could never escape his darkness-stained eyes.
Nie Dong flung both arms wide, and an instant later, piercing shrieks erupted from every dark corner of the floor.
**Eeeeee!**
Cold glints flashed as razor-edged wings beat in a frenzy, pairs of crimson eyes glowing in the darkness — Night-Blade Bats!
Nie Dong could command over a hundred of them at once. When they swarmed together, they could tear a living person to shreds with ease.
The Night-Blade Bats poured in from every direction, converging rapidly on Mo Fan. Seeing how cramped and low-ceilinged the floor was — there was no room to use his full power — he didn't stop to think. He scooped up Liu Ru, battered and bleeding nearby, and hurled himself straight at the crack in the glass wall.
The glass wall burst apart under the impact, and shards rained down alongside Mo Fan from forty stories up.
"You think you can run?!" Nie Dong's voice rang out behind them, his roar mingling with the piercing shrieks of the Night-Blade Bats.
The bats poured through the wall like a cloud of black smoke, hot on Mo Fan's heels as he plummeted, showing not the slightest intention of abandoning the chase.
The fall wasn't especially fast, but midway down, the Night-Blade Bats' wings had already carved open several gashes across Mo Fan's body.
Seeing this, Liu Ru immediately used her own body to shield Mo Fan from their attacks. She was already covered in wounds, but scattered Night-Blade Bats could only leave shallow cuts on her — her constitution had grown something beyond human, even tougher than a Mage's.
**Eeeeee!**
Masses of black shapes swarmed around Mo Fan. The instant before hitting the ground, he unleashed Shadow Fade, his body dissolving into the building's shadow and reappearing on a streetlit road in one fluid motion.
The street was deserted. This was the financial district — with its nine-to-five rhythm, pedestrians were a rare sight past seven in the evening, and the residential areas lay more than half a kilometer away.
Traffic was nearly nonexistent, and the traffic lights at the intersection changed colors for no one.
Using Shadow Fade, Mo Fan sprinted all the way to the intersection — but the moment he reached its very center, there were no shadows left. He was stuck.
The Night-Blade Bats were creatures of darkness themselves and could track his every move with uncanny accuracy, relentlessly giving chase. The dim streetlights lit their black forms in sharp relief — a dense, seething swarm.
"You want to chase me? Then die — every last one of you!"
Mo Fan stopped running. A fire Star Chart traced itself rapidly beneath his feet as blazing power surged furiously into his right fist.
The Star Chart completed. Roaring, incandescent might gathered at his wrist.
"Earth Fiend!"
He drove his fist into the ground. The concrete at the center of the intersection fractured piece by piece, and through the fissures, scorching lava-fire erupted upward in vivid, blazing crimson.
Searing, ferocious, and overwhelming — a breathtaking Earthstrike blossom bloomed around Mo Fan like a death flower.
He had driven his fist straight into the ground below him, and the savage tongues of flame rising from the Earthstrike blossom swallowed him whole, as though he himself had ignited.
The Night-Blade Bats had surged forward eagerly, still hungry to tear him apart — but the Ground Shatter Flames erupting from below incinerated them to ash in an instant. No matter how many there were, it made no difference.
Swath after swath of Night-Blade Bats burned to nothing, wiped out in moments.
The fire still danced around him, and Mo Fan was scorched a blazing red — he looked for all the world like a volcano on the verge of eruption. The handful of Night-Blade Bats that survived blundered about in a panic, every shred of nerve to challenge him utterly gone.
Mo Fan spat on the ground and looked up — only to find a pair of far larger leathery wings sweeping down over him.
Between those black wings was a twisted, savage face, sharp fangs jutting from the upper lip all the way past the chin.
Nie Dong opened his jaws and lunged — straight for Mo Fan's throat.
Not to drink blood. He wanted to bite Mo Fan's neck clean through.
"Light's Grace — Sacred Shield!"
Just as Mo Fan's mind raced for a way to dodge, a chanted incantation rang out from nearby — Zhao Manyan, arriving in a car.
A radiant Sacred Shield materialized around Mo Fan in an instant, forming a barrier that sealed out all darkness and evil.
**Clang!**
Nie Dong's fangs struck the Sacred Shield, and white smoke immediately rose from his teeth — he recoiled in alarm, scrambling back.
The Light Element was, after all, a Vampire's natural nemesis. The panic etched across Nie Dong's face made that perfectly plain.