The terrifying strength Fang Yuan displayed oppressed the entirety of the Ma family army.
Despair spread rapidly through their hearts!
"We can only rely on the Rat King now! Only the rat swarm can fight the wolf pack!" Ma Shangfeng's face was ashen. Ma Zun's death had plunged him into an icy abyss. But as the Ma family patriarch, he had nowhere left to turn. He could only shift his gaze toward Jiang Baoya.
Yet in the next instant, the last vestiges of hope in Ma Shangfeng's eyes vanished without a trace.
The Rat King had actually fled!
"Heavens, this Wolf King is a freak! The Eagle King, the Horse King, Cheng Long, Cheng Hu, Wu Ye—all killed by him directly! If I don't run now, will I even have a life left?"
Jiang Baoya fled while blood gushed from his seven orifices.
There was no helping it—he had sworn a binding oath to serve the Ma family army. Deserting the battlefield now naturally invited the oath's backlash.
But even at the cost of the backlash, Jiang Baoya had to retreat!
Fang Yuan's terrifying display had completely shattered what little fighting spirit he had left.
"Rat King, get back here right now!!" Ma Shangfeng screamed.
But Jiang Baoya ran with his head down, paying no heed whatsoever.
Blood sprayed from his seven orifices and trailed behind him all along the way—a testament to his unparalleled resolve to flee!
His escape drew those around him along. Before long, large numbers of Ma family Gu Masters began retreating, and the vast bulk of absorbed tribal forces withdrew from the battlefield.
"Outsiders really can't be trusted!" Ma Shangfeng coughed up a mouthful of fresh blood with a wet hack, then his vision went black and he collapsed unconscious on the spot.
The Ma family's rout was complete. The outcome was decided!
Even with the Snowman elite soldiers, no one could turn the tide.
The powerful Gu Masters withdrew one after another.
"I was almost forced to break the seal and fight in my true form. That was close! Close indeed!" In the midst of the battle, Hei Loulan—who had been under constant assault the entire time—panted heavily. His body was riddled with wounds, his True Essence consumed at an alarming rate, yet the savage gleam in his eyes only grew more piercing.
Under his command, the Hei family army launched a merciless pursuit.
The more people they killed, the more war merits they earned. Even a fool understood that.
Fame, fortune, and glory drove the entire Hei family into a frenzy, transforming them into ferocious, starving wolves.
At first, the various elite units from each faction held the line, but soon the Hei family's own elites returned from the pursuit and pinned down their counterparts. The Ma family army finally collapsed entirely. Countless people scattered and fled.
Fang Yuan did not move. Instead, he drew the wolf pack close around himself as his personal guard.
"Internal bleeding in the organs, soul weakened to the five-hundred-human-soul level..." Fang Yuan inspected his body, quietly swallowing the blood in his mouth. Waves of dizziness continued to assault him.
The two bronze arms silently vanished. The aftereffects of the Four-Arm Earth King killing move were even more severe than he had anticipated.
"The previous few trials only scratched the surface. This time, I pushed it to its absolute limit—beyond even the theoretical duration—and discovered the problem. As expected, practice yields true knowledge."
A killing move was nothing more than an exquisite combination of Gu insects.
But no killing move was perfect the moment it was conceived.
Only through constant practice and continuous refinement could a killing move be perfected. And this process of perfection could take an extraordinarily long time—several generations, or even a dozen or more generations of continuous iteration and adjustment.
The Four-Arm Earth King was merely the product of Fang Yuan leveraging five hundred years of experience from his previous life along with a flash of inspiration. It carried the hallmarks of haste and experimentation.
Fang Yuan quickly figured out which part of the technique was responsible for such severe aftereffects.
"It's the Fifth Transformation Earth Tyrant Gu. Originally, this killing move was designed for ground-based combat. The longer you remained rooted to the earth, the smaller the aftereffects. But in this battle, I was airborne almost the entire time. That's what exposed the problem."
"It seems the Four-Arm Earth King still has many flaws. Judging from today's battle, flight is far more convenient than the Charge Forward Gu and poses a greater threat to the enemy. Since I possess master-level proficiency in flight, I should be leveraging that advantage instead."
He was unwilling to give up flight. And if that was the case, the Four-Arm Earth King killing move would require a major overhaul.
Fang Yuan sat atop the aging Night Wolf Emperor, watching the Hei family army's indiscriminate slaughter while quietly contemplating.
"Curse it... He really is alert—doesn't give me even the slightest opening!" The assassin Wuming lurked in the distance, watching Fang Yuan from afar.
He had originally planned to exploit the Wolf King's post-pursuit complacency to launch a sneak attack.
If he succeeded and killed the Wolf King, the battle could still be fought. The Ma family would have a chance to regroup.
But Fang Yuan gave him no opportunity at all, as if he had seen through his intentions.
Wuming waited a while longer, but eventually could no longer endure the increasingly frequent movements of the Hei family experts nearby. He withdrew silently.
The Ma family fled in defeat. During the retreat, Patriarch Ma Shangfeng regained consciousness.
He still refused to give up. After reaching the defensive line, he attempted to use it as a stronghold.
But Tai Bai Yunsheng's Enduring Mountain Gu shattered that plan. The Hei family army broke through the defensive line, and Pan Ping, deploying his Single Saber Gu, luckily claimed Ma Shangfeng's head in the chaos.
With the Ma family patriarch dead, the entire Ma family lost all will to fight.
The Tao family, the Yang family, and the Qilian family surrendered in succession. The process of accepting their surrender inevitably consumed most of the Hei family's attention.
"Faster! Go faster, faster!" Zhao Lianyun urged from inside the carriage.
Fei Cai served as the carriage driver, lashing the horses with everything he had as the two wheels behind him spun furiously.