The lizard's tongue slid across its maw, tasting the residue of blood still warm against its scales. Satisfaction lingered on its ribbed tongue.
> "Distortion Arts… so it wasn't a sealing art after all."
Its golden eyes narrowed, thoughts coiling through its mind like smoke.
> "It distorts the target's senses. That's why I couldn't predict the shifts. That's why distance didn't matter."
A low hiss seeped from between its teeth—not anger, but the quiet evaluation of a predator whose prey had come far too close to outmaneuvering it.
It paced once around Yuanji's body, stepping lightly over the cracks and splinters of frozen stone. Mist recoiled from its steps. Frost trailed the gentle sweep of its tail.
> "I expected a seal. If it had been one…"
A brief pause—the lizard's eyelids half-lowering, weighing the possibilities.
> "…would have seen the seal forming. would've avoided being bound or slowed. I've seen that kind of threat enough times that it's simple to avoid."
But this?
This had been something else entirely.
It stopped, head tilting in a slow, deliberate motion, as though listening not to sound but to memory.
> "Distortion Arts twist instincts. They shift perception… They don't bind the body or energy—they deceive the mind."
It clicked softly, tail snapping once.
> "Even if I pulled away… it still caught me."
> "These Cultivators' Spirit Arts really are dangerous," it thought. "I need to be more vigilant about them."
Its claws scraped the stone. Not frustration—analysis.
The System's earlier explanation replayed in its mind like a cold ripple of truth: a technique that altered the flow of battle itself, how an opponent felt danger—not how they visually perceived the world. Tricky. Nearly lethal, if it hadn't sensed something amiss the moment the shifts in the "flow" failed to match the battlefield.
The lizard's tongue flicked out again, tasting the fading Qi drifting around the corpse.
> "Luckily… my plan worked. Perfectly."
It leaned down, brushing its snout lightly against Yuanji's blood-lined arm—almost thoughtful.
> "The poison acted up at the right moment. Faster than even it realized."
It looked toward the broken glaive, its fractured edge gleaming beneath the moonlight.
> "All it's attempts to suppress the toxin only spread it further. Fighting me was the very thing that killed it."
A faint gleam appeared in its eyes, lacking any true warmth.
> "It realized too late… and that sealed the end."
A slow breath left its body, frost spilling across the ground in a gentle wave.
The battle was over.
The plan had succeeded.
The predator remained.
And the courtyard, silent and ruined, bore witness to the truth written in blood:
The lizard had won not through strength…
but through design.
Its jaws closed with a wet crack—less hunger than ritual, instinct, dominance. Flesh tore loose with hardly any resistance, the torn cloth fluttering to the ground like wilted petals.
The courtyard echoed softly with the rhythmic crunch of its chewing.
There was no frenzy.
No savagery.
Only calm, deliberate consumption—like a beast reaffirming the kill, taking what it had rightly earned.
Each bite measured.
Each swallow purposeful.
Frost traced faint trails down its chin where blood smeared warm against cold scales, hissing softly as heat met its innate chill. Steam curled upward, dissolving into the fractured night air.
After a long moment, the lizard stopped chewing.
Its golden eyes lifted, pupils narrowing as it stared into the darkness beyond the ruined courtyard. The wind shifted—bringing the scent of pine, distant stone… and something else.
Movement.
Not here.
Not close.
But not far, either.
The lizard's tongue flicked out once, tasting the air.
> "…Hnh. So the other ones already are coming," it thought.
Its tail swept slowly across the cracked stone, the frost it left behind spreading like white veins spiderwebbing outward. It nudged Yuanji's body once more—not to check for life, but out of habit, confirming ownership of the kill.
The lizard lowered its head again.
Its jaws parted with a soft, predatory click as it sank its fangs into the corpse once more. This time the flesh peeled away more easily—looser now, Qi long extinguished, the body slack and compliant beneath its weight.
A strip of muscle tore free, long and wet.
The sound echoed faintly through the ruined courtyard—sticky, stringy, final.
The lizard chewed without urgency, savoring the warmth before it faded. Blood dripped from its maw in slow, steady beads, striking the stone with muted taps. Each one steamed where it landed, the heat evaporating against the cold aura leaking from its scales.
Yuanji's once-proud form—robes embroidered with faded sigils, skin once taut with Qi—rapidly lost its shape. The lizard's claws pressed into the ribcage as it leaned down, ribs creaking, flesh parting beneath casual strength.
It bit again.
And again.
Silent.
Efficient.
Claiming everything it needed—the essence clinging to the meat, the faint trace of Qi remaining in the blood, the small nutrients cultivators' bodies accumulated after years of tempering.
This was no feast.
It was refinement.
It was completion.
Soon only a collapsed frame remained: bone splintered in places, robes torn into pale threads fluttering in the night wind. The courtyard smelled of iron and frost, a strange mingling of cold death and cold predator.
The lizard licked its muzzle clean with one slow sweep of its tongue, leaving its scales slick but gleaming. It inhaled deeply, tasting the night again.
The approaching presence was closer now.
Close enough that the tremor of footsteps hummed through the broken stone.
The lizard did not hide.
It did not flee.
It simply rose, slow and deliberate, stepping away from the corpse it had picked nearly clean. Frost spread with each step.
It cast one last look at Yuanji's remains—nothing more than a hollow pool of blood and torn robes now.