"Could it be... that today, I'm really going to die here?"
The instant this thought flashed through his mind, it brought no peace of resignation. Instead, it was like a drop of water falling into a pot of boiling oil, exploding into towering waves of survival instinct.
"No! Absolutely not!"
Mo Fan's pupils contracted to their absolute limit, even filling with red veins from the blood rushing to his eyes.
In this moment between life and death, adrenaline was squeezed to its maximum. The world around him seemed to slow to half speed.
The taut muscle fibers in the Shadow Leopard's hind legs, the dust motes floating in the air, even the reflection of Death in those eerie green eyes—everything became impossibly clear.
His brain was working frantically, racing like an overloaded CPU on the verge of burning out.
Move? No! Broken ribs, punctured lung, can't move.
Fight with a blade? That's suicide.
No. 001? Still down, seven meters away, far water won't quench a nearby fire.
A hopeless situation?
No—there was still one variable!
Mo Fan's peripheral vision caught that white shadow that had been circling overhead all along, ignored by everyone.
No. 002—the one with zero combat power, useful only as a drone.
"Now!"
Mo Fan let out a hysterical roar in his mind. It wasn't just a command—it was a desperate, all-or-nothing gamble with his life on the line.
"002! Suicide attack! Hit its eye!"
In mid-air.
The rotting sparrow skeleton that had been timidly circling—too afraid to approach even when its master was wounded—received this death sentence of a command.
There was no resistance, no hesitation.
It folded its scrawny bone wings and curled its body into a white bone bullet. Using the gravitational acceleration of a high-altitude dive, it shot straight at the Shadow Leopard's intact left eye like a desperate projectile.
The Shadow Leopard was about to pounce when it suddenly sensed malicious wind from above. Instinctively, it tilted its head, trying to dodge the unknown object.
Crack!
A crisp snap.
The fragile bird bones shattered the instant they struck the Spirit Beast's hard facial bone, like an egg smashing against stone. Countless bone fragments and phosphorous powder exploded like shrapnel, and though they failed to blind the Shadow Leopard, they got into its eyes.
"Roar—!"
The Shadow Leopard let out an offended roar, instinctively closing its eyes and shaking its head. Its killing lunge paused for less than a second.
No. 002 was gone. It had traded its complete destruction for this fleeting opportunity.
But it wasn't enough.
This bought Mo Fan only half a breath. The moment the Shadow Leopard opened its eyes, its rage would tear him to shreds.
He needed stronger control!
A method... a method... what other method is there?!
Mo Fan's gaze locked onto the Shadow Leopard's tightly shut eyes, and a memory suddenly flashed through his mind—the death glare of that Demon-Eye Rabbit in its final moments.
Spiritual attack!
"I'm LV. 3 now! I've absorbed so many remnant souls—my Soul Strength is 31! That's already at the peak of Qi Condensation, maybe even comparable to a Foundation Establishment cultivator's Spirit Sense!"
"If that rabbit could stun me, why the hell can't I stun you?!"
Mo Fan's eyes flew wide open, blood even bursting from the corners. He compressed and collapsed every last shred of spiritual power in his consciousness sea, leaving no reserves, condensing it all into an invisible, razor-sharp soul spike.
No technique. Just raw, primal release.
[ Skill (Self-Enlightened): Soul Intimidation! ]
"Kneel... before me!!!"
Mo Fan opened his mouth and let out a silent scream.
Buzz—!
An invisible wave of spiritual energy erupted from him in a fan shape, slamming viciously into the Shadow Leopard's consciousness.
The Shadow Leopard, just about to shake its head and open its eyes, suddenly went rigid.
The sensation was like a stray cat suddenly being locked onto by a primordial behemoth. The terrifying pressure from a superior soul caused its cunning brain to crash for an instant. It still held its pouncing posture, but its body was frozen in mid-air like a stone sculpture.
Paralyzed!
Only for an instant—but that was enough.
Blood flowed from all seven of Mo Fan's orifices, the price of overloading his soul. His vision was already blurring, but he still roared out one final, fatal command in his mind:
"001! Detonate the armor! Pierce it!"
In the rubble several meters away.
No. 001 didn't stand up. It knew there wasn't time.
This skeleton with its simple intelligence, upon receiving the command, performed a movement that defied skeletal structure.
Lying on the ground, it braced those powerful Demon-Eye Rabbit hind legs against a boulder, bending its knees to the absolute limit.
At the same time, that modified gibbon right arm rose sharply, pointing straight at the paralyzed Shadow Leopard hanging in mid-air.
At the arm's joints, the bone armor that Mo Fan had carefully reinforced using the [ Bone Armament ] skill suddenly lit up with an unstable red glow.
That wasn't defense.
That was the "overload fuse" Mo Fan had prepared in advance.
[ Bone Armament · Armor Detonation ]
Boom!
A muffled explosion.
The bone armor on No. 001's right arm instantly burst apart. The enormous thrust it generated wasn't used to harm an enemy directly—it was channeled entirely into that gibbon arm bone.
Simultaneously, the rabbit legs kicked with explosive force.
No. 001 didn't fly out.
What flew out was only the arm!
Propelled by the dual kinetic force of the armor detonation and the leg thrust, the gibbon arm fitted with the rat-tooth finger-knuckle weapon detached from No. 001's body like a heavy javelin leaving a ballista, screaming through the air as it shot straight forward!
This strike abandoned defense, abandoned structural integrity—all for the sake of ultimate speed and penetration.
In the air, the soul-paralyzed Shadow Leopard couldn't make any evasive movement.
Its prized agility meant nothing when it couldn't move.
And its fur—sacrificed for speed at the cost of defense—was thin as a cicada's wing against No. 001's strike of brutal elegance.
Squelch!
A teeth-grinding sound of flesh being torn.
The massive bone hand, fitted with barbed spikes, plunged precisely into the Shadow Leopard's unguarded throat. The kinetic energy was so great it punched straight through the back of its neck, bursting out the other side in a spray of blood rain!
Thunk!
The bone hand's momentum carried the Shadow Leopard's corpse backward two meters, pinning it firmly to the trunk of a dead tree.
The Shadow Leopard's limbs spasmed violently twice. Those eyes, just now regaining clarity, were filled with disbelief and terror.
It opened its mouth, trying to roar, but only gurgled out massive amounts of foamy blood.
A few seconds later.
The light in its eyes rapidly faded, and that noble head drooped lifelessly.
Dead.
This Tier-1 High-Grade Spirit Beast that had pushed Mo Fan to the brink of death had ultimately died at the hands of the "clumsy skeleton" it had so despised.
"Hah... hah..."
Mo Fan collapsed in a pool of blood, gasping for air in great heaving breaths. Each breath was as labored as working a bellows.
Silence surrounded him.
No. 002 had been reduced to dust—not even all its ashes could be found.
No. 001 was missing an arm, half its body buried in dirt, making clicking sounds as it tried to crawl over, but kept falling due to loss of balance.
Mo Fan himself was in even worse shape—chest caved in, blood streaming from all seven orifices. His health in that moment had even dropped below the red warning line of 10 points.
This was the price of challenging something above your level.
A pyrrhic victory.
But that didn't diminish Mo Fan's current mood one bit.
With great effort, he turned his head to look at the Shadow Leopard's corpse pinned to the tree, and at the experience notification on his retina—the numbers jumping wildly, the amount staggeringly large.
He split open his blood-covered mouth, revealing two canine teeth stained red, his grin both savage and utterly exhilarated.
"Run..."
"Weren't you so damn good at running?"