Zhan Chen pulled a glowing communication jade slip from his dark robes and sent a swift ntal ssage to the two escort elders leading the other junior squads. He detailed the irregular bone spurs, the foul black fluid and the entirely erratic Qi veins of the dead creature. The jade slip pulsed gently in his palm a few monts later with their imdiate reply.
The elders advised the heir to be exceptionally careful and keep his senses sharp. They noted that finding a beast with such unnatural traits could an that sothing terrible had happened in this specific area of the ancient woods. It could also an absolutely nothing at all.
The Primal Howl Realm was vast and untad. Simple mutated beasts happen every once in a while due to natural effects or a creature unknowingly consuming a highly tainted spiritual herb. They told Zhan Chen not to panic but to maintain strict vigilance as they proceeded.
Zhan Chen crushed the remaining skull of the beast under his heavy boot to ensure it was truly dead. He signaled the twenty juniors in his squad to continue fanning out. They ford a wide and cautious periter and began investigating the imdiate area for any source of the corruption.
The team swept through the dense rotting underbrush and scanned the thick canopy above. They found nothing out of the ordinary, only that the strange tallic scent lingered heavily in the humid air but there was no glowing crater or corrupted spiritual spring to explain the anomaly.
Li Yu used this expansive sweep as an excuse to go a bit off on his own. He did not leave the squad's formation entirely. He just drifted ever so slightly toward the extre outer edge of their designated visual boundary. Li Yu wanted a few monts of isolated combat to truly test his sword techniques. He needed space to let the blades fly freely to test other aspects of his abilities.
He ventured into a dense patch of ancient ferns and imdiately sensed heavy movent. A small group of heavily armored bears lumbered into the clearing. They exuded the distinct aura of the King realm. The beasts were perfectly normal and showed no signs of the foul mutation that tainted the centipede ape. They roared aggressively and charged at the lone human intruder.
Li Yu smiled calmly and activated his Nexus Mind technique. His second Qi node pulsed with deep reserves of energy as he summoned his five weapons. He did not even need to raise his hands or assu a defensive stance. The rusted sword absorbed the crushing charge of the lead bear with a deafening thud. The beast bounced off the defensive tool while Li Yu remained perfectly still.
He split his consciousness and directed the imdiate counterattack. Pale Extinction shot from the north. It pierced directly through the thick hide of a flanking bear while Whispering Frost spun rapidly from the east and took out another.
Firmant's End dropped from the sky as it cleaved cleanly through the bear. Gilded Calamity guarded his western flank and zipped through the air. It severed the thick spinal cord of the remaining beasts before they could even turn to flee.
The skirmish ended in a matter of seconds as Li Yu exhaled a slow breath and recalled his orbiting blades. Practicing out here on his own was going incredibly well. His ntal division was smooth and his doubled Qi reserves provided the necessary fuel to sustain the attacks without fatigue. He quickly harvested the cores and stored the at in his spatial ring as he turned back toward the main group to rejoin the ongoing investigation.
He walked back toward the center of their wedge formation just as a loud shout rang out through the massive trees. It was his cousin Zhan Ling and she was standing at the edge of a deep rocky ravine with her fists clenched tight.
Zhan Chen and Li Yu rushed over to her position imdiately. They looked down into the ravine and saw another dead beast. It was an avian predator with four sets of wings. However, it was also horribly mutated. The feathers were falling out in sickly clumps and its beak was twisted into a jagged and uneven spiral. The exact sa milky eyes and foul black fluid leaked from its shattered skull. It was a completely different type of beast but it carried the sa corrupted signature as the centipede ape.
Zhan Chen looked at the dead bird and his expression darkened significantly. One mutated beast was a strange oddity. Two mutated beasts of entirely different species in the sa localized area established a clear pattern. This discovery made Zhan Chen feel that there was really sothing strange and deeply wrong happening here.
He made a quick and decisive tactical choice. Instead of investigating any further into the unknown danger, he called for the group to imdiately halt their advance. He sent another urgent communication through his jade slip directly back to the Zhan Clan headquarters.
He requested for more specialized elders to co investigate this specific sector of the realm. Finding the root cause of this corruption might take a long ti and require deep environntal analysis. That was not the job of a junior hunting party.
"We are falling back." Zhan Chen ordered the squad. "Gather yourselves. We are leaving this area entirely."
The twenty juniors moved with discipline and they retreated from the corrupted woods as they made their way back toward the main staging area. They regrouped with the other two elder led groups shortly after. The escort elders listened closely to Zhan Chen's report and completely agreed with his cautious approach. The presence of multiple corrupted beasts was highly suspicious and warranted a formal sect investigation before they proceeded any further into that zone.
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However, they did not feel like it was enough of a reason to leave the Primal Howl Realm entirely. This was a massive world that they controlled and monitored. The corruption seed localized to that specific northern area. They decided to continue their hunting mission but in the exact opposite direction of where they found the mutated beasts.
The realm was vast and there were a few powerful elders permanently stationed here guarding it from poachers and large threats. If a true widespread disaster was unfolding, those stationed guards would have detected it by now. The group of sixty one juniors and their escorts marched south into a vibrant and seemingly untouched expanse of the ancient forest.
They resud their hunt and easily dispatched several packs of normal beasts over the next few hours. The tension slowly bled out of the group as they focused on harvesting at and refining their combat techniques. Li Yu fought alongside Zhan Ling and watched her crush a massive boar with a single devastating punch. The Zhan Clan fighting style was brutal and highly efficient.
It was precisely at this ti of relaxed vigilance that the sky above them simply broke.
A massive deafening tearing sound echoed across the entire continent and the clouds parted violently as a spatial rift tore directly open in the sky. The tear was jagged and pulsed with a sickly dark and purple light. The pressure of the rift knocked several junior disciples flat onto the forest floor.
An army of mutated beasts poured out of the rift like a waterfall of rotting flesh and corrupted Qi.
They rained down from the sky in the thousands and there were twisted animals with extra limbs, serpents leaking highly acidic venom and grotesque avian creatures screaming with multiple heads to na a few. The volu of the invading swarm was staggering, entirely unprecedented and unpredicted. They crashed into the forest canopy and imdiately began slaughtering the natural wildlife in a frenzy of violence. A war had just randomly broken out.
Everyone in the hunting group was completely stunned as they stared up at the apocalyptic scene with wide and unblinking eyes. Three figures suddenly appeared in the sky directly below the rift. It was the few stationed elders guarding the realm. They moved with blinding speed and used arrays of golden Qi to try and force the spatial tear closed while they fought desperately to stem the tide of the sudden invasion.
The swarm of mutated beasts was endless and completely devoid of fear though. They threw themselves at the stationed elders in suicidal waves to push them back. The numbers and the corrupted Qi radiating from the swarm began to physically burn through the elders' defenses.
The stationed guards were fought back fiercely but they were forced to abandon their sealing attempts and retreat lower into the sky to avoid being completely overrun by the tide of monsters. A low vibrating hum suddenly originated from deep within the rift. The sound was so deep it rattled the teeth in Li Yu's skull and caused the ground to tremble.
A massive shadow blotted out the sickly light of the tear and a truly colossal entity forced its way through the spatial boundary. It was a Blight Maw Kraken or at least a mutated version of it. The aquatic horror possessed a massive bulbous body covered in thick armored plates and dozens of writhing tentacles. It floated gracefully in the air despite its size and the creature exuded the terrifying aura of a Creation Lord, one level above the Sovereign level.
Zhan Chen grit his teeth and clenched his fists as soon as he saw the beasts. He was only at the Sovereign level and the two escort elders standing beside him were in the Sovereign and Creation Lord themselves. They were incredibly powerful cultivators but facing a mutated monster of that scale was a daunting and potentially lethal task.
However, they were not the primary defense of the realm. The lead elder guarding this place was Elder Zhan Mo and he finally appeared. He was a Supre Exalt which placed him one full major level higher than the Creation Lord realm. He was a towering figure of authority and instantly beca the beacon of hope.
Elder Zhan Mo stepped forward in the sky to et the aquatic horror. He gathered a massive amount of Qi into his right fist and launched a devastating punch directly at the center of the beast. The space around his fist completely shattered from the force of the blow and the trees seed to bow to his presence.
The punch connected with a thunderous boom and the resulting shockwave flattened the ancient trees for miles in every direction. When the dust cleared, everyone gasped in shock. The Blight Maw Kraken was barely scratched from such a blow.
The beast possessed an imnse physical density that completely absorbed the Supre Exalt's strike without faltering even though it was a realm below. It was much stronger than its cultivation realm would normally dictate and now it was even angrier.
The Kraken retaliated imdiately after the elder’s strike. It opened its circular maw and exhaled a thick cloud of deadly toxin. The blight moved with terrifying speed and instantly lted the spatial fabric it touched. Elder Zhan Mo was caught off guard by the sheer durability of the beast and the highly lethal nature of the toxin. The Supre Exalt could not contend with it at all and he was forced to aggressively fall back and deploy desperate defensive barriers just to survive the lting toxic cloud.
The sight of Elder Zhan Mo being physically overpowered deeply surprised the other elders and the juniors on the ground. A Supre Exalt was supposed to be invincible against a Creation Lord beast and panic began to set in.
The fight truly began as the massive chaotic battle lines were drawn across the sky and the forest. Elder Zhan Mo stabilized his position and launched himself back into the toxic cloud to hold off the Blight Maw Kraken for everyone else. He roared and unleashed a flurry of devastating force strikes to keep the colossal beast occupied and away from the juniors.
The other stationed elders and the two escort elders rushed forward to intercept the falling army as well. They had all sent signals for help and all they could do now was try to hold back the dangers as help arrived. They fought with everything they had as they threw attack after attack to try and hold back that swarm before it could reach the ground and slaughter the younger generation.
The group that ca here to hunt suddenly found themselves in a desperate fight for survival. The edges of the swarm broke past the elders and descended upon the junior disciples in a wave of teeth and claws. Zhan Chen ordered them into a tight defensive circle and began crushing the mutated beasts with his bare fists to lessen the burden of the others.
Li Yu summoned all five of his swords and directed them into a rapid spinning periter around his family mbers. He stared up at the endless tide of corrupted monsters and the terrifying Blight Maw Kraken dominating the sky. He let out a long heavy sigh and cursed his bad luck with the Zhan clan. That made it exactly two out of two tis he had gone on a clan outing and sothing incredibly dangerous and catastrophic had instantly happened.
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