Chapter 452
With the Blood Fang shattered, the vampire Nie Dong was reduced to nothing but a whipped dog.
His once-neat hair hung loose and disheveled. The handsome face he had always prided himself on was scored with wounds. He felt for his upper lip, registered the absence of his Blood Fang, and dropped to his knees, scrabbling desperately across the ground in search of it.
His blinded eyes had not recovered, and the Blood Fang had fallen far out of reach — not that it mattered, since a shattered Blood Fang could never be reattached.
The realization that his end was near set Nie Dong trembling from head to toe. He groveled, begging Mo Fan to spare his life.
"I'll do whatever you want — I'll give you everything. Just let me go and give me back my Blood Fang... Please. I beg you. I swear I'll never harm another soul. Just let me go..." The Light Binding Net was searing through Nie Dong's flesh, burning him toward ruin.
Mo Fan picked up the two Blood Fangs he had come for. Not a trace of pity showed in his eyes.
This vampire had claimed who knew how many innocent lives across Magic City. Something like that had no right to live.
"Let me finish him," Mo Fan said, glancing back at Liu Ru.
Liu Ru nodded, eyes wide. She wanted to watch this wretched vampire die with her own eyes.
**Fwoom——!**
Rose Flame bloomed to life in Mo Fan's palm, burning with fierce intensity.
Nie Dong's strength had been bleeding away steadily, and the Light Binding Net was already pushing him past the edge of endurance — that powerful body of his could no longer withstand the inferno Mo Fan was about to unleash.
Mo Fan hurled the flames at Nie Dong. To make certain the vampire could never resurrect, he kept pouring on wave after wave of Bone-Searing Flames — he would reduce this creature to nothing but ash.
The blaze grew more savage by the second, bathing the surrounding streets in a hellish crimson glow.
By the time the commotion drew notice, fire trucks had already been dispatched to the scene. When the crews saw that the blaze had been Released by a Mage, they pulled over and stopped at a safe distance.
Police and firefighters alike understood that Hunter-mages operated within the city and that Demon-Beasts lurked hidden among the human population. Whenever a battle broke out between a Hunter-mage and a Demon-Beast, the moment law enforcement arrived, their first move was to disperse the surrounding crowd and seal off the area.
Both Mo Fan and Lingling held valid Hunter licenses, and Lingling had given the police advance warning — so the situation never spiraled into widespread panic.
The flames continued to consume Nie Dong, growing ever more ferocious. Any normal person would have been reduced to a pile of black ash by now — yet Nie Dong still thrashed within the inferno, howling in agony.
Within the fire, his body was undergoing a horrifying transformation. Jagged wings tore free from his back, his frame swelled outward, his hands and feet warped into monstrous claws, and a long tail thrashed through the curtain of flame.
The Blood Clan is divided into two kinds. The first are vampires who retain human bloodlines — indistinguishable from ordinary people when not hunting, they live hidden among the populace and abide by codes of conduct designed to keep them from drawing the attention of Hunter-mages or the Church. The second kind are vampire monsters.
Vampire monsters arise from pure-blooded vampires corrupted by darkness — consumed by bloodlust, indiscriminate in their feeding, saturated in venom. Over time they lose the last traces of their human heritage, drifting ever closer in nature to dark- and evil-attribute Demon-Beasts. When they finally shed all restraint, their true nature erupts and the monster fully emerges.
The fact that Nie Dong had transformed proved he had long been teetering on the edge between vampire and vampire monster. Left alive much longer, the day would have come when he crossed that line completely — and a vampire monster was nothing but a mindless killing machine, one that would have left rivers of blood in its wake.
In the heart of the blaze, the grotesquely transformed Nie Dong thrashed in wild frenzy. The firefighters who had parked their trucks at a distance took one look and retreated even further.
They were ordinary people, after all — none of them had any business facing something that terrifying.
"Still putting up a fight at death's door?" Mo Fan said coldly.
Under his control, the flames intensified further, erupting in cascading detonations. The monster Nie Dong had become was torn apart piece by piece within the relentless blasts.
An arm tore free and burned to powder. The skull detonated, sending sparks spraying in every direction. Torso and limbs alike were seared by the licking flames until they could no longer hold together.
At last, Nie Dong collapsed.
The fire had engulfed half the street by the time the monster finally breathed its last, its dense aura of malice evaporating in the scorching heat.
"Mo Fan, watch for his soul," Lingling reminded him.
"Don't worry — I have just the thing for dealing with souls," Mo Fan replied.
Shortly after Nie Dong drew his last breath, a ghost-flame wraith tinged with dark crimson began drifting upward from the heart of the blaze.
Stripped of his flesh, the vampire's soul was nothing but a powerless, wandering specter — yet the moment it appeared, excitement surged through Mo Fan.
*A complete Battle-General-class Spirit Essence. Finally, after all this time.*
*Ever since he'd collected the Scale-Skin Mother Demon's Spirit Essence, Battle-General-class ones had been nearly impossible to come by. Even during his rampage at Dongting Lake as the Dongting Lake Death God, the odds of one dropping had been slim. This vampire was clearly a more exceptional sort of Battle-General-class Demon-Beast, with far better chances of yielding a Spirit Essence than common prey.*
*The Scale-Skin Mother Demon's Spirit Essence had fetched a fortune — and this one had to be worth even more. Finally back in the money.*
There was just one odd thing: the Spirit Essence was tinged with dark crimson.
Every soul Mo Fan had ever encountered gave off the same pale green luminescence — a spectral glow that seemed universal, whether the soul belonged to a human or a Demon-Beast. The dark, blood-tinged hue surrounding Nie Dong's soul was something he had never seen before. *What could possibly cause that?*
"Wait!" Lingling suddenly called out.
After the battle wrapped up, she had seemed drowsy and worn — the bounty was complete, and she had been ready to head home and catch up on sleep. Nie Dong himself hadn't particularly interested her; she was a Hunter Master, after all, and had seen her share of demons and monsters in her time.
Yet just as Mo Fan moved to collect the vampire's peculiar Spirit Essence, Lingling's eyes snapped wide open. Those usually bright, lively pupils flooded with a rage she couldn't contain.
Her slight frame trembled — as though she had just found something she had been searching for all along. Behind the fury blazing in her eyes, her young face was alight with an excitement she couldn't suppress.
That kind of fierce, obsessive excitement had no business appearing on a face so young and lovely.