The night wind howled as the pack wolves screamed and snarled.
Around the city walls, the Pei Family and the Ge Family were locked in fierce battle.
Flames, golden light, lightning, green vines — all manner of attacks converged into a brilliant spectacle of fireworks, tearing open a corner of the pitch-black night.
"Charge! Break through the walls and wipe out the Pei Family too!"
"Hit them hard, every last one of you! Kill every last Ge Family scumbag!!"
The commanders on both sides screamed themselves hoarse, desperately rallying their troops' morale.
The thick stench of blood permeated the entire battlefield.
Severed limbs and shattered bodies lay strewn everywhere. Even Gu Masters who had once held positions of dignity now found their lives as cheap as grass. Of course, the majority of the corpses belonged to wild wolves.
Watching the Tortoiseback Myriad Wolf King get driven back from the front lines once again, Fang Yuan sighed inwardly.
Because the Pei Family had been alerted after consecutive assaults on the Bei and Zheng Families, when Fang Yuan led the Ge forces to attack the Pei Family, the enemy had already prepared their defenses thoroughly.
After losing the Night Wolf Myriad Beast King, Fang Yuan's hand held only the Tortoiseback Myriad Wolf King and the Wind Wolf Myriad Wolf King.
With two Myriad Kings striking together, they could have posed a serious threat to the Pei Family's defensive line. But because of one person, Fang Yuan could only dispatch a single Myriad Beast King to attack at any given time.
That person was none other than the current Pei Family Patriarch — Pei Yanfei!
On this battlefield, he was the focal point of everyone's attention, commanding more presence than either of Fang Yuan's two Myriad Wolf Kings.
Pei Yanfei stood eight feet tall, with an imposing bearing and sharp, piercing eyes. He had the build of a wolf's back and a wasp's waist. At this moment he charged through the wolf packs left and right, cutting through everything in his path, the very picture of an unrivaled general.
His most striking feature was his pair of jet-black eyebrows, glossy and lustrous. They were thick in the center and tapered to sharp points at the sides, the tips sweeping upward like the wings of a swallow in flight.
These brows were not natural — they were formed from a pair of Fourth Transformation Swallow Wing Gu.
It was precisely because this man roamed the battlefield unchallenged that Fang Yuan, wary of a surprise attack, had to keep one Wolf King stationed as a personal guard at all times.
This left only the Tortoiseback Myriad Wolf King to press the front, significantly reducing the assault's impact against the Pei Family's position.
"Agh!" A Ge Family Elder let out a heart-rending scream as death claimed him.
With that cry, his head soared into the air, reaped by Pei Yanfei's strike.
"Another Elder has fallen to Pei Yanfei!" At the sight of this, the corners of every Ge Family member's eyes twitched.
Pei Yanfei had not gone directly after Fang Yuan. Instead, he had thrown himself into the fray, charging back and forth through the wolf packs, having already slain three Ge Family Elders in succession.
By doing so, he not only avoided being entangled by the Myriad Wolf Kings — freeing his own combat power — but also indirectly suppressed the Wind Wolf Myriad Wolf King's effectiveness. It was a display of both martial prowess and shrewd tactical thinking.
"Who else dares?!" Pei Yanfei activated his Swallow Wing Gu and soared into midair, bellowing with chilling authority.
His voice cut straight through the wolves' howling, carrying clearly across the entire battlefield.
The Ge Family fell silent, while the Pei Family Gu Masters were galvanized with renewed morale.
"What a warrior," Fang Yuan murmured in quiet admiration.
Pei Yanfei possessed exceptional aerial technique, specializing in low-altitude flight. While he had not yet reached the level of a flight master, he was not far off.
He was a Gold Path Gu Master, his attacks sharp and piercing, difficult for most to parry. On top of that, he possessed outstanding mobility. Charging through the battlefield at tremendous speed, he moved like a celestial horse galloping through the sky, utterly unrestrained. Those with greater combat strength typically lacked his mobility. Those who could match his pace had nowhere near his fighting ability.
Several times, Fang Yuan shifted the Wind Wolf Myriad Beast King slightly toward the front line. Each time, Pei Yanfei simply traced an arc and dove straight for Fang Yuan.
None of the Ge Family members could block him, and Fang Yuan had to pull the Wind Wolf King back.
The Wind Wolf Myriad Beast King's combat strength was a few notches above Pei Yanfei's alone, but it was ultimately a wild beast, lacking in cunning. Even though Fang Yuan commanded it, its flexibility still could not compare to Pei Yanfei's.
"My forces in Myriad Beast Kings are simply too few. Against a single Pei Yanfei, I'm already stretched thin. The scale of the wolf pack itself is also inadequate. A truly mature beast horde needs at least a hundred thousand. The three great Beast Enslavement Grandmasters of the Northern Plains — Ma Zun, Yang Poying, and Jiang Baoya — each command hordes numbering in the hundreds of thousands. Some even hold a squad of exotic beasts as their trump card."
Fang Yuan surveyed the battlefield, and the thought of expanding his beast horde took root in his mind.
His current pack, while having reached a modest level of maturity, showed its weakness when facing three consecutive battles. High-tier combat power was especially insufficient.
In the world of Gu Masters, those who truly dictated the outcome of battle were the high-transformation Gu Masters.
As he pondered, Fang Yuan directed the Thousand Wolf Kings and Hundred Wolf Kings, leading the wolf packs to form a dense wave of attacks that surged toward the Pei Family camp.
The wolf pack surged forward with a deafening roar, fierce as a tidal wave, immediately putting the Gu Masters on the city walls on edge as they scrambled to mobilize everything they had.
"That's a fierce offensive! Get the reserves up here to help defend!"
"Earth Path Gu Masters, move it — repair the walls!!"
"Hold the line, you absolutely must hold! Don't hold back your True Essence!"
Boom, boom, boom…
Massive fireballs rained down, detonating within the wolf packs. Golden flying spears and arrows, dense as a school of fish, hammered down in successive waves of area bombardment, inflicting devastating casualties among the wolves.
Several Elders joined forces, conjuring two or three small tornadoes that rampaged through the wolf packs, sending wild wolves flying through the air before they plummeted from heights of fifteen or twenty feet to their deaths on the ground below.
"We join the attack too!" The Ge Family forces launched their counteroffensive.
Ghost Flame Gu!
Two or three clusters of ghastly blue ghost fire splattered against the city walls. A swath of Gu Masters caught in the blast suffered terribly, their bodies engulfed by the cold, eerie flames.
They let out the most agonized screams. The ghost fire inflicted no damage to their physical bodies whatsoever, but burned their very souls directly — the pain was excruciating.
Fist Stone Gu!
A massive boulder shaped like a clenched iron fist burst through the air with a roar like a lion or tiger, then slammed into the city wall with a thunderous impact.