Night wind howled as packs of wolves shrieked and wailed.
Around the city walls, the Pei and Ge families were locked in fierce combat.
Flames, golden light, lightning, green vines—various attacks intertwined into a brilliant display of fireworks, tearing open a corner of the pitch-black night.
"Kill! Break through the walls and annihilate the Pei family too!"
"Hit them hard! Wipe out every last one of those Ge family thieves!!"
Commanders on both sides screamed themselves hoarse, rallying the morale of their troops.
A thick stench of blood hung over the entire battlefield.
Severed limbs and mangled bodies lay scattered everywhere. The once-revered Gu Masters were as cheap as grass here. Of course, wolf corpses far outnumbered them.
Watching the Turtle-back King of Ten Thousand Wolves get pushed back from the front line once again, Fang Yuan sighed quietly to himself.
Having raided the Bei and Zheng families in succession, word had inevitably leaked out. By the time Fang Yuan led the Ge family forces to attack the Pei family, the enemy had already prepared rigorous defenses.
After losing the Night Wolf King of Ten Thousand Beasts, Fang Yuan only had the Turtle-back King of Ten Thousand Wolves and the Wind Wolf King of Ten Thousand Wolves at his disposal.
With two kings attacking together, they could have posed a real threat to the Pei family's defensive line. But because of one person, Fang Yuan could deploy at most one King of Ten Thousand Beasts at a time.
That person was the Pei family's current patriarch, Pei Yanfei!
On this battlefield, he was the center of all attention, outshining even Fang Yuan's two wolf kings.
Pei Yanfei stood eight feet tall, with a commanding presence and piercing eyes. He had the back of a wolf and the waist of a wasp. At this moment, he charged left and right through the wolf pack, unstoppable, embodying the bearing of a peerless war god.
His most striking feature was a pair of jet-black eyebrows, gleaming with dark luster. They were thick in the middle and tapered to sharp points at the sides, the tips sweeping upward like the wings of a swallow in flight.
These eyebrows were not born with him—they were transformed from two Fourth Transformation Swallow Wing Gu.
Because this man roamed the battlefield with no one able to restrain him, Fang Yuan had to keep a wolf king nearby at all times to guard against a sudden attack on himself.
This left only the Turtle-back King of Ten Thousand Wolves charging the front line, and the impact on the Pei family's position dropped considerably.
"Aaagh!" A Ge family Elder let out a shrill scream on the verge of death.
With that scream, his head soared into the air, reaped clean by Pei Yanfei.
"Another Elder has fallen to Pei Yanfei!" At the sight of this, every member of the Ge family felt their brows twitch.
Rather than going straight for Fang Yuan, Pei Yanfei had charged directly into the formation, carving a path back and forth through the wolf pack. He had already slain three Ge family Elders in succession.
In doing so, he not only avoided being tied down by the wolf kings—freeing up his own combat power—but also indirectly suppressed the Wind Wolf King's effectiveness. His intelligence was clearly on par with his bravery.
"Who else dares to come?!" Pei Yanfei activated his Swallow Wing Gu, soaring into midair with a commanding roar.
His voice drowned out the howling of the wolves, carrying clearly across the entire battlefield.
The Ge family fell silent, while the Pei family Gu Masters' morale surged.
"Truly a fierce warrior." Fang Yuan murmured in quiet admiration.
Pei Yanfei possessed exceptional flying skills, excelling at low-altitude flight. He had not yet reached the level of a flight master, but he was not far from it.
He was a Path of Gold Gu Master, his attacks sharp and difficult for ordinary people to parry, and he possessed outstanding mobility. On the battlefield, he dashed left and right at incredible speed, like a heavenly steed soaring across the sky—utterly unrestrained. Those stronger than him in raw power generally lacked his mobility, and those who could match his pace could not match his combat strength.
A few times, when Fang Yuan shifted the Wind Wolf King of Ten Thousand Beasts slightly toward the front line, Pei Yanfei would arc around and charge straight for Fang Yuan.
The Ge family members were unable to stop him, and Fang Yuan had to pull the Wind Wolf King back.
Though the Wind Wolf King of Ten Thousand Beasts was somewhat more powerful than Pei Yanfei alone, it was still a beast and lacked cunning. Even under Fang Yuan's control, its agility could not match Pei Yanfei's.
"I have too few Kings of Ten Thousand Beasts. Dealing with a single Pei Yanfei already leaves me stretched thin. My wolf pack's size is still small, too. A truly mature beast army needs at least a hundred thousand. The three great Beast enslavement masters of the Northern Plains today—Ma Zun, Yang Poying, and Jiang Baoya—each command hundreds of thousands of beasts. Some even have squads of variant beasts as their trump cards."
Fang Yuan gazed at the battlefield, a desire to expand his beast army taking root in his mind.
His beast army, though it had reached a modest level of maturity, appeared woefully inadequate for three consecutive battles. High-tier combat strength was severely lacking.
In the world of Gu Masters, those who truly determined the outcome of battle were the high-transformation Gu Masters.
While turning these thoughts over in his mind, Fang Yuan deployed the King of a Thousand Wolves and the King of a Hundred Wolves, leading the wolf pack to form a dense wave of attacks pushing toward the Pei family camp.
The wolf pack howled with menacing force, surging like a tsunami, making the Gu Masters on the walls tense up immediately as they scrambled to mobilize everything.
"This assault is fierce! Get the reserves up here to help defend!"
"Earth Path Gu Masters, quickly—repair the walls!!"
"Hold the line, you must hold! Don't hoard your True Essence!"
Boom, boom, boom…
Great gouts of flame rained down, exploding among the wolf pack. Golden flying spears and arrows, dense as schools of fish, fell in wave after wave of suppressing fire, inflicting devastating casualties on the wolves.
Several Elders joined forces, conjuring two or three small tornadoes that rampaged through the wolf pack, flinging many wolves into the air fifteen to twenty feet high before they crashed heavily to the ground.
"We strike too!" The Ge family forces launched their counterattack as well.
Ghost Flame Gu!
Two or three clusters of ghastly blue ghost fire sprayed onto the walls, engulfing a swath of Gu Masters in cold, eerie flames.
They let out the most agonizing screams. The Ghost Flame Gu caused no harm to their physical bodies whatsoever, but burned their souls directly—an agony beyond endurance.
Fist Stone Gu!
A massive boulder shaped like a clenched iron fist tore through the air with a roar like a lion or tiger, then slammed heavily into the city wall.