Sweeping Away the Giants

"Shadow Fade — Phantom!"

Drawing on the cover of night, Mo Fan unleashed his Shadow Element skill. His body merged into the surrounding darkness, and from that shadow a human-shaped silhouette peeled away — drifting low along the ground, gliding toward the far end of the ruins.

The White Sand Giants spotted someone trying to escape using a shadow decoy. Without hesitation, they hoisted their massive blades and charged after the dark phantom.

At the same moment, Zhang Xiaohou sprinted hard in the opposite direction, diverging from Mo Fan's decoy and drawing another cluster of White Sand Giants after him — lightening the burden on the rest of the group.

"Time to start the sweep!" Zhao Manyan watched the dim-witted White Sand Giants follow the script to the letter, and a smile spread across his face.

"Ready when you are!" Flames were already roaring across Mo Fan's body.

With Zhao Manyan covering him, Mo Fan had nothing to worry about. He could chant and trace his star paths as boldly as he pleased.

Against the White Sand Giants, Blazing Fist — Nine Palaces remained the bluntest and most satisfying solution. Once the energy converged in his fist, a single strike sent every White Sand Giant within a hundred meters writhing in agony amid columns of molten flame.

Pillars of searing fire erupted skyward. Through the wheeling tongues of flame drifted the shattered remnants of White Sand Giants.

The vast formation had stood like a white edifice moments ago — now it had crumbled into rubble and ash.

"You're still the more violent one," Zhao Manyan said, genuinely impressed, watching a third of the surrounding White Sand Giants vanish in an instant.

In an era where everyone was capped at two elements and four skills, someone like Mo Fan — packing four separate destructive spells — was exceptional even among the exceptional. His sheer output matched that of an entire squad. Utterly monstrous.

Zhao Manyan had not been standing idle, either. In his hand, a blade materialized, shimmering with golden light — one of his rare offensive tools: an expensive Slash Enchanted Gear.

As though venting every frustration he had been holding back, Zhao Manyan seized the golden shadow blade with both hands and drove it hard at the White Sand Giant directly in front of him.

Though the blade was formed from condensed light element, its edge rivaled the finest weapons in existence. The stroke cleaved straight through the White Sand Giant's dense body, splitting it clean in two. Even more stunning was the blade energy that detonated from the cut — a razor-thin arc of light that vanished almost before the eye could register it, bisecting every White Sand Giant along that entire line in a single pass. Those fortunate enough to be on the periphery merely lost an arm or a leg.

The stroke was devastating. Zhao Manyan had deliberately chosen the angle where the most White Sand Giants stood in alignment, and the result exceeded even his own expectations.

He did feel a twinge of regret, though. If his cultivation had been a step further — if he had managed to claim that other, far more powerful Slash Enchanted Gear — its fan-shaped burst of a hundred sword shadows would have swept every White Sand Giant here out of existence in a single blow.

"So you were still holding something back," Mo Fan remarked, watching Zhao Manyan rampage.

"There's another wave heading your way. Deal with it." Zhao Manyan clearly harbored a bone-deep hatred for being surrounded.

Mo Fan turned his gaze toward the cluster of White Sand Giants trampling through the residual flames. Strange creatures — not a trace of fear among them, as though the concept of death simply did not exist in their minds.

That was fine. It just meant their souls were all his.

Without him even noticing, another Servant-class Spirit Essence had already taken shape in his pendant — like components fed steadily along a conveyor belt into a machine, refined into something valuable. Mo Fan had no objection to the White Sand Giants lining up to die.

*Once I'm stronger, I could come back here and grind indefinitely. At this rate, the fourth-level Blazing Fist won't be far off.*

The souls here were worth good money. The difficulty was real, but today had proven this was no death trap. Learn the patterns, build enough power, and these charging White Sand Giants became nothing but a steady stream of coins pouring into his pocket.

"Brother Fan, I've got them all — they're yours!" Zhang Xiaohou's voice boomed through the Communicator.

Mo Fan turned — and there was Zhang Xiaohou, a massive horde of White Sand Giants rolling in behind him in a churning wall of dust.

"Have you completely lost it?! If they charge in like that, they'll trample us flat!" Zhao Manyan sputtered, then exploded.

Mo Fan stayed perfectly calm, crimson fire burning in his eyes as he read the situation. Zhang Xiaohou's interference had thoroughly shattered the White Sand Giants' formation. They were stumbling over each other, the previously orderly march dissolved into chaos — barely managing not to crash into their own kind.

Then, just as Zhang Xiaohou led them charging in, a wall of stone erupted from the earth.

The barrier rose squarely in the path of the White Sand Giants — like a stampeding herd of bulls running headlong into an iron fence.

"Blazing Fist — Nine Palaces!!!"

Mo Fan's fist crashed into the ground at that same instant. Towering pillars of searing flame surged up directly among the disarrayed, panicking White Sand Giants.

Blazing Fist — Nine Palaces was already a wide-area devastation skill on its own, but Zhang Xiaohou had taken his gift for monster-herding to new heights, clustering the Giants so perfectly that Mo Fan's Nine Palaces swept them all up in one net — its power driven to the absolute limit.

Remnant Souls streaked into Mo Fan's pendant one after another. Somewhere in the back of his mind, a memory surfaced: the time he had become something else at Dongting Lake, slaughtering without restraint — in those moments, a single swipe had wiped out hundreds of Lizard-Skull Giant Demons. But that had been power beyond his control.

This — fighting alongside Zhang Xiaohou and Zhao Manyan — this felt right. *If I'd had this kind of strength and these kinds of teammates when the disaster hit Bo City, no number of One-Eyed Demon Wolves would have frightened me. We could have brought the casualties down so much lower.*

In the distance, Lingling, Xinxia, and Chenying had found each other. Chenying had been deep in a hard fight — but for reasons she couldn't explain, every White Sand Giant around her had simply vanished, apparently all swarming toward the trio of men.

The three women had nothing left to do. They stood back and watched the battlefield unfold.

The three men complemented each other perfectly: one who excelled at repositioning, disruption, and tearing apart enemy formations; one who specialized in holding the line and locking down the field, making it nearly impossible for any Demon-Beast to break through; and one who carried nothing but devastation — a pure brute-force Mage.

When each member of a team was worth an entire squad on their own, bringing them together produced something extraordinary.

The White Sand Giants had already been fractured and scattered. Even now, with numbers still on their side, their situation was hopeless: unless they could punch through Zhao Manyan's defense in one go, or somehow cut down the Monkey darting around like a man possessed, they would be swept up by Mo Fan's spells one cluster at a time — until not a single one remained.