Chapter Four: Special Training at Clear Wind Mountain (Part Two)

Northern Clearwind Mountain, amidst the dense forest.

Gan Lie hunched his body low, clutching a dagger in a reverse grip with his right hand, facing off against the Wolf King ten meters away. At his feet, six or seven gutted gray wolves snarled and twitched, their blood and entrails soaking the ground.

A mournful howl rose—the Wolf King threw back its head, as if to bolster its courage. Its massive forepaws pressed the earth as it crept closer, copper-bright eyes locking onto Gan Lie, exerting a suffocating pressure upon his spirit.

Wolf blood mixed with sweat trickled down Gan Lie’s face, stinging his eyes, but he dared not wipe it away. Every nerve was taut; as the Wolf King advanced, he retreated. This was a Wolf King near breaking through to the next rank—a threat far deadlier than the seven wolves that had beset him before.

He could not relax for a moment. His mind was strung tight as a bowstring; he would have but one chance. The slightest miscalculation, and he would fall to the Wolf King’s jaws.

Nearly there—five meters and fifty-four centimeters left... Gan Lie silently counted as he inched backward.

The Wolf King pressed closer, unconcerned with haste. Night was falling; soon the blood-red moon would rise, and with it, the surge of demonic energy that would greatly enhance its power.

Man and beast faced one another in an agony of tension, their murderous intent condensing in the air—each waiting for the fatal opening.

Now!

Gan Lie’s heart leapt as he stopped retreating. Quietly, he drew on the last reserves of his star force, channeling it through his feet into the earth, activating the trap array he had set earlier. With no hint of emotion, he continued to withdraw.

The Wolf King, suspecting nothing, crept ever closer, eyes flicking occasionally to the sky as it gauged the rising concentration of demonic energy—waiting for the moment to unleash its fury.

Gan Lie watched as the Wolf King’s paw hovered at the edge of the array’s boundary—then paused.

The crimson moon vaulted into the sky, casting its baleful light. The demonic energy on Clearwind Mountain surged!

With a blood-chilling howl, the Wolf King threw back its head. Its gray pelt darkened to a sinister crimson, its body swelling to over twice its size, towering two meters high, eyes alight with bloodlust.

Frenzy!

The Wolf King launched itself at Gan Lie, leaping effortlessly over the one-meter-wide array.

Damn!

Gan Lie’s heart turned cold. Staring death in the face, his mind raced, jaw clenched. Abandoning defense for attack, he lunged forward.

Only eight meters separated them. The Wolf King’s leap covered three, leaving less than five meters. Its bloodthirsty aura washed over Gan Lie, forcing him to steady his nerves as he calculated—how much star force remained to power his attacks? Five times. I can strike five more times effectively!

Now less than three meters apart, the Wolf King sprang, hoping to crush Gan Lie with its new size and speed.

Three months of sleepless running had not been in vain—it had honed Gan Lie’s mental endurance and explosive strength. Abruptly stopping mid-stride, he slid to the side, dodging the Wolf King’s pounce. With star force coursing into his dagger, he plunged the blade deep into the Wolf King’s neck, withdrew, and retreated in a flash.

The Wolf King howled in pain, its eyes wild with bloodlust. Unbothered by the torrent of blood from its neck, it bared its fangs and gathered itself for a lethal charge, determined to tear Gan Lie apart.

Four attacks left! Gan Lie noted silently, resisting the urge to press the attack. Instead, he circled the Wolf King at top speed, hoping to weaken it further through blood loss.

The Wolf King would not be drawn in, abandoning reckless attacks for a dogged pursuit. Whenever it closed the gap, it snapped its jaws, trying to catch him.

Unable to evade, Gan Lie dropped into a split, landing heavily but not stopping. He sprang up, ducking beneath the Wolf King’s belly, wrapping his legs and arms tight around its body. Channeling more star force, he drove his dagger into the Wolf King’s abdomen, twisting viciously.

The Wolf King screamed in agony, thrashing wildly to shake him off. Gan Lie clung on with every limb—even sinking his teeth into a fold of flesh, refusing to let go. His right hand, gripping the dagger, grew weak, but he poured the last of his star force into the blade, enlarging the wound and plunging his whole arm into the beast’s belly, shredding its organs in a frenzied assault.

The Wolf King grew ever more deranged with pain, its mind clouded. It thrashed and crashed against the trees, desperate to kill Gan Lie by any means.

Gan Lie was just as possessed, heedless of the snapping of his own bones. He sunk his teeth deeper, while his right hand relentlessly destroyed the Wolf King from within.

A strangled howl escaped the Wolf King as it collapsed, body convulsing, yet life clinging stubbornly on. Sensing the lingering vitality, Gan Lie didn’t dare pause, even as his star force was utterly spent. He kept grinding his arm inside the beast’s belly.

How much time passed, he couldn’t say—his consciousness faded, the world a blur. Only a stubborn will kept him moving, until finally, as the Wolf King’s body cooled, he let go and slipped into oblivion.

Lu Huan darted over from the distance, checked Gan Lie’s condition, and was relieved to find only a few broken ribs. Channeling star force, she rejoined the bones, crushed a few pills and fed them to him, then leapt into a nearby tree, settling into the tranquility cast by the blood moon. The faint glow of her watch flickered—a silent message in the night.

Elsewhere on Clearwind Mountain.

Yin Xin was using her dagger to reap a nest of hedgehogs.

Five days earlier, Yin Xin had stumbled upon a hedgehog’s trail. Rather than attack outright, she had chosen to follow it, patiently locating its den.

Having confirmed there were nine hedgehogs and none near the breakthrough stage, she quietly set up a complex star array over a twenty-meter diameter, centered on the den.

Her innate spirit value of ninety granted her mastery over more than fifty types of star arrays, including strangling traps and impalement matrices. After days of rigorous training and fieldwork, she was now experimenting with more intricate combinations. This labyrinthine array, designed to exterminate the hedgehog colony, was the pinnacle of her learning.

The foundation of the array consisted of four basic energy storage formations, stockpiled with star force over five days to ensure stable operation. She layered in multiple trap arrays, causing the den to collapse into soft sand. Next came her signature strangling and pitfall arrays, turning the hedgehogs’ affinity for earth against them.

The coup de grâce was the core of the formation—the Solid Earth Array. As the name suggested, its sole purpose was to petrify soil into stone—a basic, yet invaluable formation, widely used throughout the Republic for constructing city walls. The Solid Earth Array turned the collapsed sand into stone, trapping the hedgehogs immobile.

All Yin Xin had to do was channel her star force, thrust her dagger through the stone into the helpless animals, and the harvest was complete.

For extra precaution, she’d inscribed a Purification Array in the formation, to counteract the surge of demonic energy under the blood moon—preventing any hedgehogs from going berserk and escaping. As it turned out, the Purification Array was not needed, to her mild disappointment.

Scenes like these unfolded throughout Clearwind Mountain. All forty-five of Lu Huan’s classmates were exhausting their skills and wit to slay as many beasts as possible. Some, like Gan Lie, honed their craft in direct combat. Others, like Yin Xin, relied on meticulous planning and star arrays to ensnare beast after beast—except for Deng Wenle...

At that moment, Deng Wenle was lying hidden in a bush, dressed in a suit crafted from twigs and leaves, his beady eyes sparkling with excitement. Here they come!

Just as he hoped, a melee erupted in the nearby valley—a war between a troop of monkeys and a gryphon!

Though the gryphon was close to breaking through and had gone berserk, it was still only one eagle against twenty or thirty monkeys. Killing over a dozen before succumbing, the gryphon finally fell.

Seeing the gryphon collapse and the remaining monkeys cheering, Deng Wenle sprang to his feet, dagger reversed, and charged into the valley. The monkeys, already weak and wounded from the fight, were no match for the prepared Deng Wenle.

He dispatched them one by one, harvesting the entire valley’s worth of monkeys, then cheerfully hacked off the gryphon’s wings and gathered the spiritual fruits it had hoarded.

It turned out Deng Wenle had set his sights on these monkeys long ago, but their numbers made them impossible prey. So he devised a clever plan: wearing his homemade “ghillie suit” and using a Concealment Array, he stole the gryphon’s egg, deliberately leaking its scent to lure the gryphon to the valley, then tossed the egg into the fray.

Crunch—

Years later, Deng Wenle would recall:

“That was the most beautiful sound I’ve ever heard!”