Luo Luo stared at the demon as arrogant as Li Zhaoye for a moment before silently turning away.
The top priority now was to conceal her tracks—she absolutely couldn’t fall into the hands of the cloaked man again.
She didn’t know why he hadn’t killed her on the spot. Whether it was disdain or an unwillingness to stir trouble, he could change his mind at any moment.
After traveling some distance, a sudden chill crept up her spine.
An enemy!
Luo Luo instantly steeled her nerves, pretending to remain oblivious as she continued forward while subtly adjusting her grip on her sword hilt.
It was that demon. Somehow, it had caught up to her.
She knew its hunting style—dragging its claws with deliberate slowness, silent and patient, stalking her, waiting for the perfect moment to strike.
She pressed on without a word, and it matched her pace like an unshakable shadow, neither too close nor too far.
When she stopped, it stopped.
Feigning ignorance of its presence, Luo Luo waited until nightfall before settling beneath a sheltered cliff. She set up a simple defensive array around herself and pretended to doze, baiting it into making a move.
One incense stick’s worth of time passed, then two…
Hugging her sword, Luo Luo nearly dozed off waiting.
Yet it never attacked.
"Could it be guarding outside the array again?"
She dismissed the absurd thought, stood up, dusted off her robes, and casually walked toward the edge of her defensive formation.
“…”
The sight before her left Luo Luo speechless, her eyes and lips twitching slightly.
The demon had silently slaughtered several of its own kind, gutting them and stringing up their bloody entrails across her barrier.
What a provocation! What audacity!
Luo Luo let out a bitter laugh.
Cold, calculating, cunning, patient—then suddenly delivering such a brazen taunt—this was pure Li Zhaoye behavior!
She scanned her surroundings, hand on her sword, but the demon was nowhere in sight.
Yet she knew it was nearby.
She continued walking, occasionally halting abruptly—each time, the unseen hunter in the mist would pause as well.
The silent standoff grew more intense as they entered a narrow mountain path.
Luo Luo could almost feel its excitement, its eagerness to strike. Still, it made no sound.
She, too, remained composed, suppressing the instinctive fear and burning battlelust within her.
Just as the tension in the air reached its breaking point, a massive demon suddenly lunged from the left side of the path.
It spotted Luo Luo and bared its fangs with a thunderous roar: “RAAARGH—!”
Foul breath blasted toward her.
“?” Luo Luo, who had been entirely focused on the threat behind her, nearly jumped out of her skin.
Before she could react, a sharp gust of wind whipped past her. A black streak flashed—the hunter’s claws sliced cleanly through the larger demon’s belly.
So ruthless! So precise!
The demon shrieked in agony, its cries rippling through the mist like shockwaves.
The two demons instantly clashed in a frenzied battle.
Luo Luo: “…”
Seizing the opportunity, she retreated, no longer restraining her cultivation as she fled full-speed in the opposite direction.
Standing atop a small hill, Luo Luo glanced back the way she had come.
Though she had escaped danger, she felt no relief—only an inexplicable, lingering melancholy.
She must be going mad.
Even a demon reminded her of Li Zhaoye.
Pursing her lips, Luo Luo walked onward, occasionally blinking hard as she gazed at the sky.
She had shaken it off during the fight.
The sound of rushing water grew louder.
After circling widely, she deliberately returned to the Blackwater River, where the dense miasma of Yin energy lingered, and found a small cave to rest in.
Dangerous, yet safe.
First, because of the “hiding in plain sight” principle—no one would expect her to return here.
Second, because even if her scent were detected nearby, it wouldn’t raise suspicion—she had fled from here originally, so traces of her presence were only natural.
Perfect.
The moment Luo Luo closed her eyes, a bone-chilling sense of peril jolted her awake.
She dashed out of the cave and traced the ominous aura to the opposite bank of the Blackwater River.
Then—
An earth-shattering shockwave erupted.
For an instant, the very air seemed to freeze. Two breaths later, a crushing wall of force exploded outward, accompanied by a deafening roar.
The Blackwater River was hurled into the sky, exposing its rocky bed.
The blast sucked away the air, leaving Luo Luo gasping.
And then—
The towering outer wall of the Sealed God Temple collapsed.
Across the vast river, the details were unclear, but as the colossal structure crumbled, the earth itself became a drum, pounded relentlessly by falling debris.
The ground trembled; her body swayed like a kite in a storm.
This had to be the work of the cloaked man and Li Zhaoye!
Before Luo Luo could process it further, a low, planetary hum reverberated from the ruins.
“Wuuuu—Oooom—”
The dust cloud rose a thousand feet high.
Within it, an unimaginably massive shadow stirred—a demon! Each movement sent quakes through the land.
“BOOM. BOOM. BOOM.”
“WUOOOM—”
A claw the size of a palace emerged, crushing fragments of the temple wall like paper.
A demon! A demon!
The kind spoken of only in legends, the nightmare used to frighten children into obedience—a Great Demon!
The cloaked man and “Li Zhaoye” had unleashed the ancient evil sealed within the Twelve Temples!
A sound like shifting planets cracked the sky as the demon’s blood-red vertical pupils locked onto the only living thing in sight—Luo Luo.
Paralyzed by primal terror, she stood frozen, unable to move.
The Blackwater River’s waves crashed back down in a thunderous roar.
Luo Luo knew the river wouldn’t stop it.
The demon could drink it dry with a single tilt of its head.
It took one step across the ruins, then another into the river’s heart, sending towering geysers skyward.
“Disaster! Catastrophe!”
In the three great sects, the elders guarding the Yin Realm’s seals stumbled over themselves to report: “The Sealed God Temple—something’s happened at the Sealed God Temple!”
“What?!”
Master Lingxue shot to her feet, her fingers pressing into the blackwood table.
After a brief moment of shock, she took a deep breath and commanded, “Elder Zhang, mobilize our forces immediately. Relay all updates directly to the Divine Palace.”
“Understood!”
“I will summon the Divine Suppression Banner and the Demon-Slaying Seal. Inform Master Yuan and Qing Xu to meet me at once—we enter the Yin Realm!”
“Yes!”
Master Lingxue acted swiftly. In no time, she had retrieved the two sacred artifacts, her aura blazing with divine might.
Master Yuan waited outside her cave abode.
Frowning, Master Lingxue asked, “Where’s Qing Xu?”
Master Yuan looked pained. “That bastard crafted a plant puppet to fake his seclusion—he’s already sneaked into the Yin Realm to fish out his disciple!”
Master Lingxue: “…Predictable.”
Luo Luo’s pupils trembled.
Never had death felt so close.
Not even during that desperate battle in the valley, surrounded by a demonic horde, fighting for seven days and nights—clawing, biting, drenched in blood atop a mountain of corpses—had she felt this hopeless.
Before the colossal monstrosity emerging from the river, all fighting spirit and courage seemed like a cruel joke.
That time, Li Zhaoye had still been waiting for her. And she had truly waited—watching him stride through a sea of blood to reach her, his figure brighter than any sunlight she’d ever seen.
But now, even Li Zhaoye was gone.
Despair? Oh yes, despair.
The ancient demon surged toward her, one massive foreclaw breaching the Blackwater River, crashing into the earth with a thunderous tremor that shook both riverbanks. Its head swiveled, fixing her in its gaze like a mountain descending to crush her.
The shadow of its bulk swallowed the hillock where she stood.
Luo Luo summoned Qiushui, gripping the blade tight.
Surrender had never been a word in her dictionary.
Then, in the suffocating air, a sudden gust of wind stirred.
From the corner of her eye, Luo Luo spotted another demon—the very one that had stalked and taunted her before.
It lunged at the towering behemoth.
Leaping into the air, it slashed with razor claws, aiming for the giant’s pillar-like knee.
"Clang!"
Sparks flew as the claws scraped against scales harder than forged steel, the screech grating enough to make one’s scalp crawl.
"Groooaaar—CRASH!"
The sky-piercing demon extended a single talon and effortlessly crushed the overambitious lesser demon into the ground.
"Squelch."
Black blood splattered.
Luo Luo exhaled softly. Her body trembled, but the hand holding her sword remained steady.
Just as she prepared to charge into a hopeless fight, another gust of wind whipped past her—then another, and another.
More demons.
They followed the first, throwing themselves at the colossal horror like moths to a flame.
Their twisted forms moved with ruthless precision, even when half their skulls were smashed apart, staggering back up to attack again.
Luo Luo stared, stunned.
They couldn’t stop the giant—but they had become her final, unyielding line of defense.
"Tap."
A hand landed on her shoulder.
She turned sharply, breath catching at the familiar face.
For a heartbeat, Luo Luo couldn’t suppress the tremor in her voice. "Master!"
A thousand words rushed to her lips—how Li Zhaoye had been an imposter, how his allies had unleashed this horror—
But the first thing that spilled out was:
"Master, look at these demons… Don’t they remind you of Li Zhaoye?"
No matter how hard she blinked, the tears wouldn’t stop falling.
