"Whoosh—!"
The instant the Deer King accelerated once more in its extreme fury, that enormous pair of antlers howling as it tore the air, smashing straight at Lin Mu's face—
This time, Lin Mu did not continue retreating and dodging! At that final instant, when those antlers were less than a foot from him, on the verge of running him clean through!
"Rise!"
Lin Mu let out a beast-like roar, and the Green Wing Gu at his back erupted thunderously with all its power!
His figure shot sharply upward in midair.
Barely grazing past that deadly pair of antlers by the narrowest of margins, he soared up.
Then.
Directly above the Deer King's enormous skull, Lin Mu abruptly kicked his legs out, and his whole body dropped like a meteor falling from the heavens, crashing down heavily!
Bam!
He had actually landed directly upon the spot where the Thousand Beast Deer King's head met its neck!
"Go!"
The moment his feet touched that tough hide, Lin Mu did not hesitate in the slightest.
Within his aperture, Flowery Silver Primeval Essence gushed madly.
The Iron Chain Gu activated abruptly!
"Clatter clatter!"
A thick, pitch-black iron chain shot out from Lin Mu's palm in an instant, like a venomous snake.
It looped with exceeding precision around the bases of the Deer King's two enormous antlers, then followed the momentum down along its thick neck, coiling tightly several times!
"Up!"
Lin Mu gripped that taut iron chain with both hands and clamped his legs around the Deer King's neck like iron pincers.
At this very moment, he was, incredibly, like a mad rider with no regard for his own life!
"Yoooo—!!!"
Feeling the strangeness and humiliation coming from atop its head, the Thousand Beast Deer King let out an earth-shaking, violent bellow of rage.
It was a dignified Thousand Beast King. How could it tolerate an insignificant human riding upon its neck?!
The Deer King went utterly berserk.
It began to thrash its head, leap, and ram madly between the dense woods and mountain rocks, trying to hurl this human clinging like a maggot to its bones violently off its back, and then trample him into meat paste!
Bam! Crash!
The towering great trees around it snapped one after another under the impact of those enormous antlers, and mountain rocks crumbled apart.
Sprawled across the Deer King's back, Lin Mu was jolted until his senses swam.
The strength of a Thousand Beast King of this caliber was terrifying in the extreme. It was simply impossible for Lin Mu to truly control its movements with his individual strength — he could not even force it to a halt.
He could only grip the iron chain with all his might and clench his teeth, letting his qi and blood churn from the impacts, letting even the flesh of both his arms be cut inch by inch and split open by that taut iron chain, blood streaming everywhere!
He simply would not let go!
"Left!"
When the Deer King tried to dodge and swing its body leftward because of an obstruction ahead—
A vicious light flashed in Lin Mu's eyes. Far from going along with the Deer King's force, the muscles of both his arms bulged, and he yanked the iron chain on the right side backward with exceeding brutality!
At the same time, the Green Wing Gu at his back beat abruptly in the opposite direction, toward the right. Under this tremendous pull of force, the Deer King's head, which had been about to turn left, was thrown off by this sudden surge, producing an exceedingly minute deviation.
Its massive body, following that minute deviation, charged several zhang further to the right.
"Again!"
When the Deer King tried to fling him off, the green wings erupted thunderously, forcibly pressing his body down tightly against the deer's back.
Lin Mu did not seek to tame this ferocious beast.
All he was doing was, with every single struggle of this enraged Thousand Beast King, using the iron chain in his hands to apply one tiny disturbance after another!
Once was not enough.
Twice.
Three times!
Under this ceaseless pulling and interference, the Deer King had by now fallen wholly into a rage devoid of reason. What truly drove it to run wild was no longer the instinct of a beast tide's advance, but the bone-deep killing intent it bore toward this human atop its head!
And in the midst of this frenzy, the originally straight charging route of man and beast began to gradually and irreversibly veer aside.
Below, that Black Blood Stockade clan elder who had been trying all along to keep up and provide Lin Mu support soon saw that something was wrong.
He stared with wide, horrified eyes, because he discovered— that madman riding atop the Deer King's head, dragging that enraged Thousand Beast King along, was heading in a direction… that was not away from Black Blood Stockade's defensive line at all.
But rather— toward another dark, dense, enormous beast horde radiating an utterly different aura of savagery!
That was… the tiger pack!
That was the battlefield of the Thousand Beast Tiger King, which had until now always kept a clear distance from the deer herd, the two sharply delineated!
"Lin Mu!"
That clan elder was so shocked his scalp went numb, and he could not help but roar out loud:
"Have you gone mad?! What are you doing?!"
Lin Mu had neither the time nor the spare strength to answer.
At this moment, if he relaxed by even a sliver, he would immediately be flung off by the Deer King's violent strength and then instantly trampled into meat paste!
He could only clench his teeth so hard his lips bled, and grip with all his might those two iron chains that had already cut into his flesh.
He let the howling wind lash at his face like knives, the green wings at his back trembling madly in their limit state.
The distance.
Grew closer and closer.
Fifty zhang.
Thirty zhang.
Ten zhang!
"Roar!"
At last.
Under this mad ride, the Thousand Beast Deer King, utterly stripped of reason, carrying that pair of enormous, razor-sharp antlers, smashed headlong straight across that invisible boundary between the beast herds, the one instinct had maintained all along.
Bam!
The first striped tiger, positioned at the fringe and preparing to launch its attack on Black Blood Stockade's defensive line, did not even have time to react before this colossal creature, charging in with the momentum of ten thousand jun, struck it dead on!
The terrifying impact force shattered every bone in this tiger's body outright. Like a torn burlap sack, it sprayed blood wildly in midair and was sent flying backward several dozen zhang!
Immediately after came the second.
Shhhk!
The enormous antlers tossed the second tiger high into the air with exceeding brutality, the sharp prongs piercing clean through its chest in an instant. Scalding tiger blood poured down like rain, staining the Deer King's grey-green hide red.
"Roar—!"
This sudden turn of events instantly triggered extreme agitation throughout the vast tiger pack!
The tiger pack, which had been ceaselessly assaulting Black Blood Stockade's line along its own front, had now suffered an inexplicable and exceedingly brutal attack.
The tyranny and territorial instinct within those beasts was ignited in an instant!
They cared nothing for whether this Deer King had gone mad. All they knew was that an outside creature had invaded their territory and killed their own kind!
"Roar! Roar! Roar!"
Countless tigers with blood-red eyes instinctively turned their heads, abandoning Black Blood Stockade's line ahead, and with furious roars launched a mad pouncing, biting counterattack at this colossal creature that had suddenly barged in!
And the true chain reaction had only just begun.
A Thousand Beast King was the absolute core of its clan.
Once the Thousand Beast King moved, the vast deer herd behind it would naturally follow in their king's footsteps, blindly, instinctively.
Following the Deer King's charge into the enemy ranks, hundreds upon thousands of grey-green deer beasts poured across that beast herd boundary one after another along the bloody path the Deer King had forcibly smashed open, surging madly into the tiger pack's territory like floodwater bursting a dam.
The deer beasts at the front wanted to stop, only to be met head-on by the panicked tigers' fierce assault.
The deer herd at the rear, unaware of what was happening, was still blindly pressing forward.
And the tigers who had been rammed and trampled went utterly berserk, launching into a mad frenzy of biting and retaliation against every creature within their sight that was not of their own kind!
One tiger pounced upon a deer beast, tearing out its throat in a single bite.
Another panicked, giant stag madly drove its antlers clean through a tiger's belly.
More tigers joined the melee.
More of the deer herd was swept up and poured in.
Rumble…
The earth trembled.
The two vast beast tides, once sharply delineated and held in check only through Black Blood Stockade's bitter effort, were in this moment, for the first time, in the truest sense, churned into a single mass!
Biting.
Ramming.
Mad trampling.
Shrill roars.
Blood, severed limbs, and broken antlers flew through the air across this jungle that had turned into a slaughterhouse in an instant.
The two Thousand Beast King battlefields, which had been relatively distinct and had maintained a degree of order even while teetering on the brink, were in the space of a few short moments forcibly stirred into a pot of utterly boiling blood!
And the deer herd still followed their king in an unbroken stream, like moths that knew nothing of life and death, surging wave after wave into that tiger pack whose eyes had already gone red with slaughter.
The two vast beast hordes, once sharply delineated, had at last crashed completely into one another.
Tigers biting deer.
Deer ramming tigers.
Countless savage beasts that should have been assaulting Black Blood Stockade's defensive line were now, driven by instinct and incited by territorial awareness, madly slaughtering their own.
That invisible boundary which had maintained the fragile balance of the battlefield of the three kings— in this moment, was torn to shreds by Lin Mu's own hands!