A piercing shriek rang out as a colossal beast spanning a thousand zhang in length materialized from the sealed pillar of light.
Sheep's head, bear's body, bat wings, covered head to tail in bristling bright green fur!
"No — a Confluence Beast! It's one of the Four Great Fierce Beasts!"
The human cultivators in Yitian City who had been unaware of the situation descended into chaos the moment they laid eyes on the beast. Far away, the black-armored giant who had been driving his twin hammers in a counterattack sensed the terrifying aura emanating from the colossal beast. His eyes flickered with dark light as he swept his gaze toward Yitian City. The moment he made out the beast's appearance from afar, he couldn't help but cry out in shock.
The colossal beast's eyes shifted, immediately spotting the white-robed cultivators fleeing in all directions nearby. Fierce light flashed in its eyes, and it opened its mouth to spew forth a torrent of energy.
A wave of yellow radiance swept outward, vanishing in a flash as it engulfed all the white-robed cultivators. Then, with another flicker, they exploded one after another into clouds of blood mist, which the beast inhaled in a single breath and swallowed into its belly.
The other cultivators nearby were scared out of their wits. In the blink of an eye, over a thousand streaks of fleeing light shot into the sky simultaneously, scattering in every direction.
Upon seeing this, the beast let out a low growl and swung one massive brownish-yellow palm toward a group of cultivators fleeing in a particular direction.
A piercing shriek erupted through the void, and a yellowish gale howled forth. With a single sweep, it caught over a hundred cultivators within it, then tore them to countless shreds.
The beast's other palm then struck toward another direction, and dozens more cultivators were killed on the spot in an instant.
Azure Dragon Lord saw this from afar, his expression changing dramatically. He immediately bellowed:
"Fairy Lin Luan, if you don't act now, when will you?"
This shout clearly carried some manner of divine ability within it, for it didn't merely boom across the entire sky — it also left many low-level demonic beasts dizzy and collapsed on the ground, unable even to stand.
On the other side of the battlefield, Fairy Lin Luan was locked in combat with the white-robed youth. Hearing this shout, her jade-like face darkened in an instant. She let out a sharp cry, and three gourds burst apart one after another with three consecutive pops. Three enormous bees, each several zhang in size, flew out and shot straight toward her opponent, each spraying a different type of flame.
They were three Fire Bee Kings!
The flames commanded by each bee king possessed tremendous power. Even the white-robed youth didn't dare take them head-on and had to retreat.
Seizing this opening, Fairy Lin Luan flapped the pair of fire wings behind her back and vanished in a burst of raging flame.
The next instant, her figure reappeared in the void roughly a hundred zhang away from the white-robed youth. An unnatural crimson flush crossed her face. One hand swiftly formed magical seals while the other extended a jade-like finger and gently tapped her own brow.
Several runes flickered and vanished, and a small, blood-hued talisman materialized, its outline wavering and somewhat indistinct.
Fairy Lin Luan let out a sharp cry. The jade finger she had extended flashed with white light, and a pillar of pure white spiritual power immediately poured in a torrent into the talisman.
The next instant, inside Yitian City, the colossal beast had been slaughtering cultivators en masse when its body suddenly froze. It let out an agonized roar of extraordinary volume. On its massive sheep's head, another blood-red talisman flickered into existence.
Aside from the difference in size, its shape and the runes inscribed upon it bore a seventy to eighty percent resemblance to the one that had appeared between Fairy Lin Luan's brows. Its surface likewise shimmered with spiritual light and radiated a faint crimson glow.
"You wretched creature — have you had enough of your lesson? Leave the city at once!"
Just as the beast writhed in agony, unable to even stop itself from rolling on the ground in the middle of the city, Fairy Lin Luan's cold, commanding voice suddenly echoed within its spiritual sense.
The moment those words fell, the excruciating pain in the beast's spiritual sense vanished as mysteriously as it had appeared.
The beast grunted several times before slowly rising to its feet. Its eyes darted about, revealing a look of deep unease — it seemed to possess a degree of intelligence after all.
But when Fairy Lin Luan's cold snort once again resounded inside its head, the beast shuddered and, wasting no more time, spread its wings wide. It transformed into a colossal yellow bat a thousand zhang in length, stirring up a strange gale as it hurtled toward the battlefield outside the city where humans and demons clashed.
At that moment, high above the battlefield outside the city, the black-armored giant had once again locked onto Azure Dragon Lord and was pressing him on the defensive with a fierce assault, seizing every opportunity. However, when his spiritual sense detected the massive aura approaching at tremendous speed from the distance, a genuine fear took hold in his heart.
Although the Confluence Beast ranked last among the Four Great Fierce Beasts and was far from comparable to entities like the True Spirits, these vile beasts born from the source of all malign energy in their respective realms each possessed several heaven-defying divine abilities — more than enough to stand against several Body Integration stage cultivators without suffering a scratch.
He was a demon lord who had reached the perfected late stage of Body Integration, yet he absolutely did not believe he could withstand one of the Ten Great Fierce Beasts in a one-on-one confrontation.
"How could such a fierce beast be here?! And how could these human cultivators possibly have subdued it? This is utterly inconceivable! Are we going to come away empty-handed once again?! No — if the humans in this city had such power, why would they have waited until now to release it? Could it be that..." The black-armored giant's thoughts raced, and after his initial shock, a sudden realization dawned upon him.