The moonlight over Yellow Wind Valley was a pale, sickly silver, barely penetrating the canopy of ancient trees that sighed like dying men in the midnight breeze. Beneath that canopy, a nightmare was unfolding in total silence.
Jiang Dao stood like a monument of cold iron. His hand, thick with callouses and coursing with a suppressed, lethal heat, was clamped onto the monster's skull. He didn't just hold the creature; he dominated it, his fingers sinking slightly into the chitinous bone of its forehead. The pressure was immense, a physical manifestation of a power that shouldn't belong to a man who stood barely six feet tall.
The monster, a towering three-meter-tall abomination, was pinned. It didn't struggle because it couldn't. Its knees had shattered the earth beneath them, driven deep into the dirt by Jiang Dao's downward force. It trembled—a visceral, pathetic shudder that rippled through its armored hide.
Jiang Dao leaned in, his eyes narrowed and glowing with a faint, predatory light. He studied the creature's face. It was a jarring, horrific sight. The features were unmistakably those of the burly old man who had walked through the valley gates earlier that day—a man who had seemed like a simple, if formidable, martial artist. Now, that human face was a mask grafted onto a nightmare. Below the neck, the man was gone. In his place was a torso encased in segmented, insectoid plating. Thick, wet tentacles writhed from his abdominal cavity, twitching with a life of their own.
"You're not from Yellow Wind Valley, are you?" Jiang Dao's voice was a low rasp, cutting through the silence. "What is your origin? Tell me—are you the architect of the blood sacrifices plaguing Bailing State?"
The creature's human lips peeled back, revealing rows of needle-sharp teeth. It looked as if it wanted to scream, to plead, or perhaps to lie, but the sheer terror radiating from Jiang Dao's grip paralyzed its tongue. It could only shake its head frantically, its eyes wide with a very human desperation.
"You can't speak? Or you won't?" Jiang Dao's expression didn't change, but the air around him grew noticeably hotter. The grass at his feet began to yellow and curl. "I don't have the patience for charades. Give me answers, or I will peel you like a grape, limb by limb."
The monster's tentacles flailed in panic. It clasped its armored hands together in a gesture of supplication, its mouth working wordlessly. It pointed a trembling claw toward its own throat, its face twisting into a mask of pure agony.
Jiang Dao frowned. With a movement too fast for the eye to follow, he reached out with his free hand and forced the creature's jaws open. He needed to see if the vocal cords had been severed or if something else was at play.
But the monster had one last card to play.
As its mouth fell open, a jet of jet-black, viscous fluid erupted from deep within its throat. It was a concentrated stream of neurotoxic venom, aimed directly at Jiang Dao's eyes. At this range, it was unavoidable.
Jiang Dao didn't even blink.
Boom.
The venom never touched him. A few inches from his skin, it slammed into a shimmering wall of translucent energy—Jiang Dao's Protective Astral Qi. Interwoven with his specialized Fire-Poison Qi Net, the barrier acted like a searing furnace. The black fluid hit the Qi and instantly began to hiss and bubble, turning into a foul-smelling steam before it could even drip to the ground.
The monster's eyes bulged. The last shred of its hope vanished. It had just unleashed enough toxin to kill a battalion, and its captor hadn't even shifted his weight.
"Wrong move," Jiang Dao whispered.
Squelch.
With a casual, almost bored flick of his wrist, Jiang Dao ripped one of the monster's primary limbs from its socket. It wasn't a clean break. Tendons snapped like guitar strings; black, oily blood sprayed across the clearing. The creature's mouth opened for a world-ending shriek, but Jiang Dao's hand was already back over its face, muffling the sound into a wet, pathetic gurgle.
Jiang Dao was a surgeon of violence. He worked with a cold, methodical precision.
Squelch. Squelch. Squelch.
He dismantled the creature. He tore away the armored legs and the extra appendages, leaving the monster a mangled torso wallowing in its own filth. The pain should have caused it to black out, but Jiang Dao's Fire-Poison Qi wouldn't allow it. The searing heat he pumped into the monster's nervous system acted like a brutal stimulant, forcing its mind to stay sharp, to feel every nerve ending scream.
After ten minutes of silent, rhythmic torture, Jiang Dao finally pulled his hand away.
"Don't scream," he warned, his voice as calm as a summer pond. "If you make a sound, the next ten minutes will make the last ten look like a mercy. Talk."
The monster lay in the dirt, its soul twitching with the sheer memory of the pain. "Mercy..." it wheezed. "Please... spare me..."
"Who sent you? Is the blood sacrifice you're doing?"
"I... I can't," the creature sobbed, black bile leaking from its eyes. "The curse... the poison curse. If I speak the truth, it will—"
The creature's words cut off into a high-pitched, inhuman whistle. Its eyes rolled back, and its skin began to bulge as if thousands of golf balls were moving beneath the surface. With a sound like tearing silk, dozens of bright red worms erupted from its tear ducts, its nostrils, and its mouth. They were fat, wet, and ravenous.
Jiang Dao stepped back, his face darkening. Within seconds, the monster's internal organs and muscle tissue had been converted into this writhing mass of vermin. The body collapsed like a deflated balloon, leaving nothing behind but a hollowed-out sheet of human skin and a pool of stinking, acidic slime.
A silence spell, Jiang Dao thought, his jaw tightening. Embedded in the very marrow. They would rather lose a high-level operative than risk a single word of intel.
In the distance, the sound of rushing wind broke his reverie. Multiple auras—some weak, some surprisingly potent—were converging on the location. Jiang Dao didn't hesitate. He let his body go limp, fading into the shadows of the ancient trees just as the first wave of Yellow Wind Valley disciples arrived.
He watched from the darkness as the middle-aged supervisor he had seen earlier arrived on the scene. The man looked at the discarded skin, and for a fraction of a second, his composure slipped. Fear? No, it was more like annoyance. He quickly regained his mask of calm, comforting the panicked disciples with practiced lies.
Jiang Dao stayed in the shadows, his mind racing. The supervisor was involved. Perhaps the entire valley was a facade—a "monster's nest" masquerading as a martial arts sect.
He followed the trail of the supervisor, moving like a ghost through the underbrush. His target led him toward the most desolate part of the valley: the Forbidden Area. It was a gaping maw of a cave, guarded by nothing but the oppressive silence of the mountain.
Jiang Dao watched as the supervisor approached a massive bronze gate deep within the cave. The gate was etched with ancient, protective runes that hummed with a low, vibrating Yin energy. The supervisor knocked—three rhythmic strikes—and the doors groaned open.
"Hu Yun," a voice hissed from the darkness within. "You're late."
"Long Feng is dead," the supervisor, Hu Yun, replied, his voice shaking. "The blood curse was triggered. I need to see the Sect Leader."
The voice inside went silent for a moment before the doors swung wide. Jiang Dao peered through the crack. The interior was a charnel house of Yin energy, a place where the sun had never reached.
The Sect Leader, Jiang Dao, mused. If the rumors were true, the head of Yellow Wind Valley was a "Dragon-level" master. But if this "Protector" and their mysterious Sect Leader had taken over, the power scaling in this valley had just shifted into the realm of the suicidal.
He waited. He was here for the Purple Spirit Flower—the only thing that could stabilize his own volatile cultivation. He didn't care about the politics of monsters, but if they were sitting on his prize, he would burn the valley to the ground to get it.
An hour later, Hu Yun emerged from the bronze gate, looking pale and shaken. Jiang Dao didn't give him a chance to reach the disciples' quarters.
As Hu Yun crested a lonely ridge, the air behind him simply exploded.
Jiang Dao didn't hold back this time. He unleashed the Ultimate Demon Overlord Physique. His body ballooned, his muscles expanding with the sound of snapping cables until he stood nearly fifteen feet tall. His skin turned a deep, metallic bronze, and jagged bone spikes erupted from his spine.
Hu Yun spun around, his eyes widening in terror. He didn't even have time to scream before Jiang Dao's massive hand closed around his throat.
"Wait!" Hu Yun gasped, his body beginning to shift into its own monstrous form. Armor plated his skin, and tentacles whipped out to strike Jiang Dao's chest.
It was like a toddler hitting a brick wall.
Jiang Dao's fist descended like a falling star. He didn't just hit Hu Yun; he pulverized the air around him. The supervisor's multiple arms shattered like glass. His ribs caved in. Jiang Dao caught him before he hit the ground, dragging him into a nearby ravine.
"The Purple Spirit Flower," Jiang Dao growled, his voice a tectonic rumble. "Where is it?"
Hu Yun coughed up a mixture of blood and green bile. "The Sect Leader... he's using it. It's the only thing... keeping the Blood Fiend power from consuming him. It's a thousand-year-old tree... it only blooms once a century. There is only one."
Jiang Dao's grip tightened. "So I have to kill your leader to get my flower. Fine. And Bailing State? The sacrifices?"
Hu Yun nodded weakly, his eyes glazed with pain. "Everything... for the ascension. You... you can't stop it."
Jiang Dao looked at the man—this thing—and felt a flash of pure, cold irritation. He didn't need any more words. He raised his foot and brought it down with the force of a hydraulic press. Hu Yun's skull vanished in a spray of red and green.
As the body began to burn under the influence of Jiang Dao's toxic fire, a flash of red light caught his eye. Something was trying to escape the flames.
Jiang Dao reached out and snatched it from the air. It was an eyeball. A dark, crimson orb the size of a plum, still twitching, still warm. As it sat in his palm, the pupil swiveled and stared directly into his soul.
It wasn't just an organ. It was a conduit. A living spy.
"Watching me, are you?" Jiang Dao whispered.
He didn't wait for a response. He closed his fist, and with a wet pop, the eye was reduced to ash. He stood in the wreckage of the ridge, the wind howling through his bone spikes, and looked back toward the bronze gates.
The hunt wasn't over. It had just become personal.