Its giant thorned branches snapped apart, unraveling into hundreds of thin, wriggling vines. They filed wildly in every direction. Linyue didn’t flinch.

  She ducked left, twisted right, burned the vines that came too close but her hand stayed steady, still pressed to the demon’s back, the blue fme pouring out without stopping. The fire clung tighter, crawling deeper into the wood, turning bark into glowing ash.

  The demon shrieked again and thrashed harder.

  The vines didn’t spare anyone.

  Shu Mingye cursed under his breath as a vine whipped toward his face. He sshed it clean through, sending fire along the vine. It crackled, sizzled, and exploded in a puff of glowing embers.

  Shen Zhenyu calmly spun once and sliced five vines in a single motion. His sword shimmered with light, and small bursts of fme followed each swing. One vine tried to wrap around his leg. He stepped on it. Hard.

  Meanwhile, on the demon’s back, the bark began to bcken.

  Then melt.

  Blue fme spread across its back.

  The demon’s head slowly tilted downward, its roar turning into a low, strangled wheeze. The vines withered. Burned. Fell off and crumbled into ash midair.

  And Shu Mingye just… stared.

  He was still bleeding, still exhausted and now very confused.

  Blue fme?

  That wasn’t anything he’d ever seen before. He had seen all kinds of fmes before. Red, orange, golden. It looked like fire, sure. It acted like fire. But it felt… different. Strange. And where in the heavens did she even hide all that power? He couldn’t feel her cultivation level at all.

  He gnced at the panda mask beside him, hoping for answers.

  Shen Zhenyu, on the other hand, looked completely unfazed. “That’s just her being Linyue.”

  “That’s not an answer,” Shu Mingye muttered. So that was really her name, huh? Linyue.

  “I stopped asking questions a long time ago,” Shen Zhenyu shrugged. “It’s healthier that way.”

  The demon stopped moving.

  Its bark began to melt under the steady force of Linyue’s blue fme. Bits of charred bark cracked off and dropped to the ground with loud thuds. The fire hissed. The battlefield fell into eerie silence.

  Shu Mingye let out a long breath and finally lowered his sword.

  “Finally,” he muttered, sounding more tired than triumphant.

  Beside him, Shen Zhenyu didn’t move. His panda mask stayed tilted in the same direction, still watching the demon. His sword stayed up.

  Wise man.

  Because just as the st bit of bark slid off with a crunch, something… worse appeared.

  The twisted tree-like body was gone. What emerged was something far more horrifying. A writhing mass of crimson muscle threaded with pulsing bck veins.

  Its head snapped upward. Its jaw fell open wide to unleash a shriek so piercing it shattered nearby stones. Swords rattled. Several poor soldiers immediately colpsed across the battlefield, clutching their ears as blood trickled from their noses.

  Linyue, who was still on the demon’s back, yanked her hand free and spped her palms over her ears. A heartbeat ter, tendons exploded from the demon’s shoulders. One sliced clean across her neck. Another whipped across her arm, grazing her shoulder. Her robe instantly bloomed red.

  She gritted her teeth. “Great.”

  Still covering her ears, she dropped low, a wave of blue fme bursting outward from her body. The fme wrapped around her like a cloak, shielding her from the next barrage of screaming.

  Shu Mingye stared in horror and pure disbelief.

  “… Did it just evolve?” he asked no one in particur.

  “It melted and leveled up,” Shen Zhenyu replied ftly. “Typical.”

  Shu Mingye coughed blood into his sleeve. His face was pale, robes shredded, and eyes gleaming with fire and murder. “I hate this demon.”

  Shen Zhenyu muttered, “Who will like demons…”

  Across the field, far enough but not far enough, He Yuying and Song Meiyu flinched from the ear-piercing shriek that had just assaulted their ears.

  He Yuying winced, swatting a low-level demon aside with a bored kick. “There’s actually something that screams louder than you. That’s surprising.”

  “What do you mean?” Song Meiyu huffed indignantly while stabbing a demon in the stomach. “I scream elegantly.”

  Back at the main disaster zone, the Petrified Corpse Demon—now upgraded to Flesh-Nightmare Horror Edition—lunged straight at Shu Mingye with a terrifying burst of speed. It moved like a blur, cwed arms snapping forward. The fingers stretched into long, whip-like tendrils that shed through the air like bdes.

  Shu Mingye had no time to dodge. But that was fine. He was so deeply, thoroughly, soul-level done with this demon that he didn’t even flinch. His body erupted with spiritual energy. Red fme spiraled from his skin, coiling around him. It crackled, hissed, and surged forward.

  The demon’s cw grazed his side—more blood, great—but he didn’t slow down.

  With one burning strike, Shu Mingye sshed his sword straight into the demon’s chest. The fmes exploded outward with a roar, lighting up the battlefield.

  The demon staggered, its torso was a scorched ruin. Bck muscle sizzled. Bone cracked. For half a second, there was hope.

  And then it… bubbled.

  Beneath the burned flesh, the demon began to regenerate. Muscles twitching, knitting back together, the bck veins pulsing faster.

  Shu Mingye groaned. “Why won’t you die like a normal demon?”

  The demon tilted its head, hissed… and then split down the middle.

  Its whole upper body peeled open. From the gaping opening, rows of jagged bone-thorns glinted. A tidal wave of bck vines burst out from the demon’s chest, filing wildly. Each one was tipped with a glowing crimson eye that turned and stared. Every eye locked onto the three humans nearby.

  Linyue stared at the grotesque, and thoroughly unpleasant demon still twitching in front of her. Her spear was still stuck in its hideous peeled chest.

  She sighed.

  “… Fine. Let’s do a proper cremation,” she muttered.

  One knee dropped to the ground. The demon’s bck veins lunged at her, snapping through the air but she was faster. She fred her spiritual energy outward. It twisted into glowing chains, shimmering and crackling and snapped onto the bck veins like spiritual rope.

  The veins writhed and thrashed, but Linyue’s grip didn’t falter.

  Then, with one steady breath, she pressed her palm to the ground. Her spiritual energy surged down into the soil, snaking forward, and burst up beneath the demon’s ugly feet.

  Twin chains, bzing with blue fme, wrapped around its ankles. And then—

  Boom.

  A tower of blue fme exploded upward in a swirling spiral, wrapping the demon’s body.

  Across the battlefield, Shen Zhenyu ducked a rogue bck vine, narrowed his eyes, and smmed his sword into the dirt. Orange fire spiritual energy erupted outward. A shockwave tore through the ground. The fiery fissure raced under the demon’s feet—

  Boom again.

  It exploded in a second wave of orange fme, joining the blue fme in a chaotic harmony of “die already!”

  And of course, Shu Mingye saw all of this. With no hesitation and possibly a little spite, he dashed up a half-destroyed stone pilr. Then, mid-leap, he kicked off into the air, sword raised high, fire spiraling along the bde like a dragon.

  He aimed for the open chest cavity now fming with Linyue and Zhenyu’s energy.

  And plunged his sword straight into the demon’s chest.

  BOOM.

  The explosion was immediate and ridiculous. Red and blue fme erupted in a supernova.

  The upper body of the demon didn’t just vanish. It evaporated. Disintegrated. Sizzled into ash. The shockwave cracked the earth beneath them, forming a bckened dome of scorched stone. Chunks of demon goo rained from the sky.

  Shu Mingye nded in a shaky crouch, then stumbled a step back and coughed up a mouthful of blood. He wiped it away with the back of his sleeve, not gently. His whole side ached, his robes were barely hanging together, and he was starting to wonder if his internal organs were still in the correct positions.

  Linyue, meanwhile, didn’t even gnce at him.

  She walked past the smoldering crate. Her weapon, now back in flute form, was half-buried in ash and cracked dirt. She knelt, picked it up, gave it a quick inspection. Bit of dust, a few scorch marks. Still alive. She tucked it neatly back into her robes.

  Blood dripped steadily from a deep gash on her neck, and her shoulder was clearly bleeding too. The entire side of her colr was soaked through. She had apparently decided to ignore all of this.

  Shen Zhenyu had not.

  The moment he saw her up close, his eyes widened, and in a blink he was right beside her. His expression calm as always, but his hands already moving to check the worst of the wound.

  “Linyue,” he said in a low, armed voice, trying to part the colr near her neck. “That cut—”

  “It’s fine. It’s fine,” she interrupted briskly. “Still alive. We’ll fix it ter.”

  Shu Mingye walked up slowly, every muscle in his body still burning. His eyes flicked between them. The panda-mask man was standing far too close. His hand was still hovering near her neck. And just now, he'd called her Linyue.

  Shu Mingye’s brows twitched. From the way that guy said it, they were clearly close. Familiar. The kind of close where people shared real names, helped bandage each other’s wounds, and stood very, very near.

  Not that it mattered. Shu Mingye didn’t care.

  He absolutely didn’t care.

  Their retionship? None of his business.

  He was just... casually standing here. Bleeding. And witnessing whatever this was.

  Linyue gnced sideways at Shen Zhenyu, who was still standing just a bit too close and very obviously preparing to either lecture her, drag her off, or both.

  Right. Before he turned into an overprotective panda again, she should say something.

  “It’s not serious,” she said quickly, her voice firm and no-nonsense. Her eyes were already scanning the battlefield. “Let’s clean up the rest.”

  And just like that, she shifted into business mode. Calm. Focused. No fuss. A little blood? Who cared. There were still demons out there.

  Across the field, Song Meiyu and He Yuying were handling the leftovers.

  Song Meiyu twirled her borrowed sword with a bit too much excitement, definitely showing off. He Yuying looked bored while beheading something with six legs and far too many teeth.

  They had to wrap this up quickly. High-level demons might show up soon and those were a real pain. They could sense spiritual energy. Normally, fire cultivators stayed behind to burn all the demon remains and corpses, making sure none of that nasty energy could be used again.

  Shen Zhenyu sighed. He didn’t like it, but he knew that look in her eyes. The “I’m not arguing about this” look.

  “Fine,” he muttered, defeated. He turned away, spiritual energy already sparking around his hands. The fire rose clean and bright as he waved it across the battlefield, burning down corpses with expert control.

  Shu Mingye watched all this while still bleeding.

  No one asked if he was okay. Absolutely no one.

  Typical.

  LeeYooNa

  [colpse]