The fox exhaled slowly and straightened.
Then its head turned.
Its eyes locked onto the two corpses sprawled across the tiles floor—one headless, the other split open from neck to shoulder. Blood still steamed in the air, pooled beneath their bodies.
A flicker of greed lit up its gaze . Eyes gleaming .
"Well," the fox murmured, voice calm but, laced with satisfaction. " No time to waste. Time to get to work ."
Its paws made no sound as it strolled toward the corpses. No urgency. No guilt.
The fox didn't care.
Its eyes were already scanning the bodies.
Its pouch began to glow faintly—Qi finely tuned for item extraction. With a flick, the storage pouch hanging from Han's side shimmered, then flew into the fox's pouch.
It didn't even glance at the headless mess left behind.
"Tch. he didn't even got a chance to scream," the fox muttered. staring at the mutilated face.
It stepped over the corpse and moved on to Meilin.
Her sword caught its eye first—still gleaming, slick with blood, humming faintly with residual spirit resonance.
The fox's paw hovered over it.
"Oho... a mid-tier Earth-grade spirit tool. Forged with Spirit Silver," it said with a grin. "Not bad. Good stuff. I guess this is less of a reward, and more like compensation for all the talismans I burned in that damn fight."
It pressed it's paw against the hilt.
The sword flared once, resisting—then dimmed, suppressed.
The fox thought Huh what's this there's still a fragment of energy resisting....
The fox yanked it free and stashed it into its pouch with practiced ease.
It crouched again, muttering:
"Storage pouch… there."
Another flick. More loot tucked away.
"Dying with a full pouch," the fox mused. "Cultivators really do love to pretend they're immortal."
Yulan his spirit shield floating protectively in front of him, turned just in time to see Jinhai Suddenly collapse.
Not fall—collapse. like a puppet whose strings had been cut mid-motion.
Yulan froze.
"...Jinhai?"
what happened?
why did he just suddenly—?
He stretched out with his spiritual sense—fast, instinctive, desperate.
And found nothing.
No pulse of Qi.
No ripple of presence.
Not even the faint trace of life.
It was as if the man had simply ceased to exist.
> What…? No. That's not—
He stepped back, eyes wide, lips parted—but no words came out. His heart pounded in his throat. His breath hitched. He looked again.
Jinhai's eyes were open. Staring.
But they weren't seeing.
They weren't glowing with life.
They weren't even clouding over like the dead.
They were just… dull. Extinguished.
One moment, he had been standing—resisting, fighting, holding the line.
And the next—he was gone.
> How?
What did it do?
I didn't see anything—
—
Yulan reached again with his spiritual sense—more frantically now—sweeping across Jinhai's body.
Still nothing.
He's mind raced.
Panic clawed at the edge of his usually-calm thoughts.
> I didn't even feel it's Qi surge.
when it happened — how is that possible? How do you kill someone at Jinhai's level without even leaving a signature?
He turned sharply, eyes locking onto the lizard now hovering silently above Jinhai's corpse.
Lizarius.
Not breathing heavily.
Not bloodied.
Not even tense.
Its golden eyes were wide.
Lightning still danced faintly across its scales.
> it might've also ended Lianhai in the way but
what kinda of attack could possibly do that.
Yulan's eyes suddenly narrowed his knees nearly buckled from the sudden pressure building in his chest.
The lizard turned its gaze to him.
He felt it immediately—an electric shiver running along his spine.
The air shifted.
The world felt thinner, tighter.
The lizard opened its mouth. The jade fan dropped to the ground with a soft clink.
A moment of silence.
Then:
> No matter what... I can't let it get close.
If I do—
I'll die.
Just like the others.
He inhaled sharply, steadying his trembling fingers.
His energy surged.
Sealing symbols started appearing along his arms glowing a white_silver light as they floating out of his arms and floating around his body.
the lizard staring tilted its head.
> that it's using the same sealing art the mid-stage Cultivator tried trap me with,
Lizarius thought.
I can't get too close.
Or I'll be bound just like before.
Yulan narrowed his eyes, he thought.
> No panic. Focus. Calculate. I need distance. I need a plan. This thing doesn't kill like a beast. It kills much like a cultivator.
He blinked sweat from his brow.
And still—he watched it.
Suddenly, his pupils dilated, then narrowed to pinpricks. A golden light flared in his irises.
The technique he was preparing faltered.
His meridians spasmed violently.
Qi spiraled out of control, raging like a storm inside his body.
Blood erupted from his eyes, nose, and mouth.
The backlash from the interrupted technique convulsed—energy lashing out wildly, tearing at his own meridians from within. His knees buckled under the strain.
With a final gasp, his body gave out, collapsing to the ground, twitching as his cultivation fell into disarray.
The light in his eyes dimmed not from pain—but from the terror of realizing he had been struck by a soul attack far beyond his comprehension.
As his vision dimmed, Yulan's final thought was:
> So... that was it.
The brown spirit shield hovering beside him lost its glow and fell to the stone with a dull clang.