The city that had once belonged to the great Barbarian tribe had long since fallen under demon occupation, its streets thick with demonic energy that refused to dissipate. Yet at this moment, the sprawling city was eerily silent — not a single soul moved along the thoroughfares, as though it had become a city of the dead.
Several black clouds came drifting in from the distance, hurtling forward at tremendous speed. In the blink of an eye, they had arrived above the city, and the figures of several Demon Kings materialized from the darkness.
There were no fewer than five of them. The one in the lead had not a scrap of flesh on his body — nothing but a towering skeleton of jet-black bone, two ghastly flames dancing ceaselessly within his hollow eye sockets.
The Bone Demon, Fili.
"We're too late!" One of the Demon Kings standing behind Fili swept his divine sense across the entire city, and his expression darkened instantly. The others didn't look much better — all except Fili, whose bare skull betrayed no expression whatsoever, though the ghostly flames in his eye sockets flickered with ever greater intensity, as though venting the fury within.
"This is the nineteenth location! Damn that outsider!" The Demon King who had spoken ground his teeth, as though he harbored some deep, personal vendetta.
Another Demon King stepped forward and frowned. "I recall that when that outsider escaped from Lord Mo Duo's grasp, he said something — that the Southern Barbarian tribe had lost three hundred thousand souls, and that our demon race would pay the same price. Did he really mean to slaughter three hundred thousand of our kind before he'd be satisfied? Where does he find the energy for it?"
Three hundred thousand — not three hundred thousand insects. Even if they truly were insects, culling that many would require no small amount of effort.
And yet, ever since his escape that day, the outsider had been ranging freely across demon territory, penetrating deep behind their lines. Every place he visited, the demon garrison stationed there was annihilated to the last — Demon Kings included.
In a single month — an entire month — that outsider had struck at nineteen separate locations, reducing nineteen demon outposts to charnel grounds. Every demon he encountered perished without exception.
Mo Duo was furious. He had even set out personally to track the outsider's whereabouts, but to his frustration, the man was extraordinarily cunning, slipping away every time. On one occasion, the distance between them had shrunk to barely a hundred li, yet the outsider still vanished without a trace.
He never engaged the Demon Saints head-on, picking only the soft targets to crush.
What made the killings even more unsettling was their nature. Ninety-nine percent of the demons bore no visible wounds, yet every single corpse was frozen in an expression of sheer terror — as though each one had encountered something that filled them with absolute horror, and had died in the grip of mortal fear.
The outsider's relentless harassment had tied down a massive portion of the demon race's strength. Over the course of one month, the death toll at his hands had climbed past one hundred thousand — including five Demon Kings. Such losses were devastating. Although this invasion had brought one or two hundred Demon Kings into the field, no number could withstand that kind of attrition.
The Demon Saints were mostly occupied with healing their injuries. Lord Mo Duo had come to lend his strength, but for certain reasons, he could not unleash his full power. In the fight against the outsider, the Demon Kings formed the backbone of the effort — if too many were lost, the consequences for the future would be dire.
The demon forces had been forced into a rapid contraction. The Demon Kings no longer dared to act alone, instead grouping in threes and fives — some to repel the invading barbarian army, others to hunt down the foreign Great Shaman.
Staring down at the city below, Fili spoke. "I believe this was Ba Han's domain, yet I can sense no trace of him. Who will go check on him?"
"I'll take a look." The Demon King who had spoken first hesitated for a moment, then volunteered, wheeling downward toward the city's largest structure.
The remaining four Demon Kings extended their divine senses in every direction, maintaining their vigilance. Though they had not encountered the outsider in all their recent travels — each location they reached nothing but corpses — none of them could be certain that the foreign Great Shaman wasn't lying in ambush right here.
Every Demon King harbored a deep dread of that man, because he possessed the power to kill them.
The surroundings were deathly quiet, yet the air carried an inexplicable chill. All three Demon Kings besides Fili had grown visibly tense.
Then, without warning, a surge of violent demonic power erupted — there and gone in a flash — and the building below crumbled into fine dust.
Every Demon King's expression changed. Their divine sense swept toward the spot like a tidal wave, but what they found left them stunned: the area was completely empty. Even their companion who had gone to investigate moments ago had left behind not the faintest trace of a presence.
Someone called out the Demon King's name. There was no answer.
A creeping dread began to settle over them. A vague, terrible realization took shape — their companion had met with some unknown fate.
"He's here!" Fili's low voice cut through the silence, his skull swiveling left and right, the ghost fire in his eye sockets flickering between bright and dim as though searching for the enemy's trace.
The other three Demon Kings braced themselves as though facing their deadliest foe. Each drew a demonic weapon, demonic energy churning within their bodies, ready to strike at a moment's notice.
The very air seemed to freeze solid. The suffocating tension of imminent slaughter made every Demon King's hair stand on end. And what left them helpless was the fact that no matter how thoroughly they searched, they could not locate a single trace of the foreign Great Shaman.
He was always like this — appearing and disappearing without warning, like a phantom that kept a blade suspended over one's heart.
Yet every Demon King knew he had not left. He was still hidden somewhere in the darkness, poised to lunge out and deliver a killing blow to whichever one of them let their guard slip.
If only Mo Ke Tuo were here! When it came to concealment and assassination, she was the unrivaled master — with her abilities, she could certainly have flushed the foreign Great Shaman out of hiding.
"Behind you!" Fili suddenly roared, and the three Demon Kings, their nerves already stretched to the breaking point, reacted on pure instinct. Even as the shout left his mouth, Fili had already raised a hand, and a bolt of ghost-fire-like energy shot toward the rear at blinding speed.