Lin Mu's expression turned solemn in an instant.
Without the slightest hesitation, the green wings behind him beat abruptly, carving a sharply turning arc through the air, and like a meteor, he shot at full speed toward the bearing of the distress signal!
Before he had even fully drawn near that signal zone, Lin Mu, suspended in midair, could already feel with exceeding clarity the heart-stopping destructive force below.
Below lay an exceedingly open stretch of mountain forest, but at this moment, great swathes of towering trees — each requiring several men to encircle with their arms — were being snapped in row after row like fragile matchsticks.
Enormous boulders shattered under the violent impacts, and dust filled the sky, nearly blotting out half the hilltop.
And at the center of that dust, two Rank 3 clan elders of Black Blood Stockade were locked in a bitter, desperate struggle below, drenched in blood from head to toe.
And their enemy was no mere Hundred Beast King at all.
It was a terrifying colossal beast with a body like a small hill, a full four or five zhang in length, far beyond the recognized limits of any ordinary lizard!
—A Thousand Beast King, the Crimson Armored Giant Lizard King!
Its entire body was covered in a layer of russet-brown scale armor, thick as lava and utterly impregnable.
That tail, stout as a battering ram, needed only a casual sweep to whip a sonic boom out of the air and snap the surrounding trees clean in half.
What made it more despairing still was that across the surface of its body, an exceedingly powerful spiritual light, brimming with violent savagery, faintly circulated.
This meant that within this Thousand Beast King's body, there absolutely dwelled at least one wild Gu worm that had genuinely reached the Rank 3 tier!
Moreover, it was not fighting alone. Along its outer perimeter, a great number of ordinary giant lizards with blood-red eyes were coiled and waiting.
By now, the battlefield had already taken shape.
Those ordinary Rank 1 and Rank 2 Gu Masters had long since exceedingly wisely withdrawn from the central battlefield of their own accord; they could only lock into a defensive formation along the perimeter, straining with all their might to block the ordinary giant lizards that sought to draw near.
For they understood very well: within the core region where this Thousand Beast King rampaged, they were not even qualified to serve as cannon fodder. To be caught by so much as the aftershock meant flesh and bone ground into paste.
The only ones who could truly remain in that core zone of mortal combat were Rank 3 clan elders!
A Thousand Beast King had always been the absolute measuring stick for testing Rank 3 combat strength.
By common knowledge in the Southern Border, one intact Thousand Beast King at full strength required at the very least three seasoned Rank 2 squads with exceedingly seamless coordination, expending the entire teams' foundations, to be hunted down with difficulty; or else a full three Rank 3 Gu Masters joining forces, merely to barely manage a head-on fight against it!
"Good timing!"
Suspended in midair, Lin Mu's eyes held not only no fear, but instead a glint of sharp light.
He folded his wings and, like a diving falcon, plunged straight into that core battlefield of flying sand and hurtling stone.
"Go!"
While still in midair, the Iron Chain Gu erupted with a thunderous roar!
A thick, pitch-black chain of Primeval Essence coiled around the Crimson Armored Giant Lizard King's stout hind leg with exceeding precision, like a venomous serpent.
However.
The iron chain that had once been able to trip a Hundred Beast King to the ground in an instant now, wound about the Giant Lizard King's leg, met with exceedingly powerful resistance!
"ROAR—!"
The Crimson Armored Giant Lizard King let out a heaven-shaking bellow of rage, and that bound hind leg abruptly exerted force and thrashed!
Twang!
The pitch-black iron chain was instantly dragged taut, even letting out a friction sound that set teeth on edge.
A monstrous, terrifying strength surged back up along the Iron Chain Gu.
Lin Mu's entire person was yanked forward with a violent lurch.
Had the Green Wing Gu not beaten in time to forcibly steady his form, he would even have been dragged straight out of the air by this colossal beast and into the beast herd on the ground.
He had to continuously pour vast amounts of Flowery Silver Primeval Essence into the Iron Chain Gu just to barely delay and interfere with this monster's movements.
"Break!"
Seizing the instant the Giant Lizard King's movement was hindered, Lin Mu brought his fingers together like a sword.
The Metal Sever Leaf Gu became an enormous streak of golden light, slicing viciously toward the Giant Lizard King's back.
CLANG—CRACK!
A piercing clash of metal against metal rang out.
The Metal Sever Leaf's originally all-conquering edge, after cutting through the layer of coarse carapace on the Giant Lizard King's surface, met with an exceedingly powerful resistance.
The golden leaf blade left only an obvious crack upon it and a wound about half a foot long, from which a pool of dark-red blood flowed — falling far short of the effect Lin Mu had anticipated.
"Hissss—!"
The pain from its back utterly enraged this Thousand Beast King.
Its pair of cold vertical pupils abruptly locked onto Lin Mu in midair, and that enormous tail, like a battering ram, swung up in a reverse hook and swept horizontally at Lin Mu in the air!
"Defend!"
Lin Mu's pupils constricted sharply. There was no time at all to evade; he could only unfurl the Iron Curtain Gu before him in an instant.
BOOOOM—!!!
The colossal tail lashed viciously against the black iron curtain.
Lin Mu's entire person, together with the iron curtain, was driven backward by that utterly unreasonable impact force — like a batted baseball — flung bodily several dozen zhang through the air!
Fortunately, in the instant he was struck flying, the Green Wing Gu behind him beat madly, helping him forcibly steady his form and shedding the greater part of the impact, sparing him the fate of being smashed into a cliff face.
"What terrifying brute strength, what astonishing defense!"
Steadying himself in midair, Lin Mu drew a breath, his expression grave.
Still, fortunately, the other two clan elders were clearly both veterans of a hundred battles, each with their own specialty.
One burly clan elder was responsible for holding the front and enduring the Giant Lizard King's frenzied charges; his whole body was like bronze poured and iron cast, and every collision gave off a heaven-shaking crash; the other clan elder roamed the flanks, hurling out all manner of strange Gu worm radiances from his hands, dedicated specifically to suppressing and restricting the Giant Lizard King's movements.
And Lin Mu, possessing the Green Wing Gu, naturally took on the role of greatest mobility.
He shifted position rapidly high above the battlefield.
He used the Iron Chain Gu to continuously restrain and control from the edges, stepping in at the critical moment whenever the Giant Lizard King was about to break through the line; at the same time, relying on his exceedingly keen combat intuition, he sought out defensive weak points across that enormous body, using the Metal Sever Leaf Gu to harass and cut with ferocious precision.
It was a brutal war of attrition.
The three Rank 3 clan elders poured out their Primeval Essence and foundations with practically nothing held back.
Blood, sweat, and shattered scales scattered across this broken, ravaged stretch of mountain forest.
In the end, after paying the enormous price of all three men having the greater part of their Primeval Essence drained dry, and one of them even suffering considerable internal injuries, that proud Crimson Armored Giant Lizard King finally could bear it no longer.
Its entire body was covered in sword marks deep enough to expose bone and charred black wounds, its blood staining its russet-brown scale armor red.
"Roar…"
The Giant Lizard King let out a low growl full of grudging resentment and exhaustion.
Its cold vertical pupils took one deep look at Lin Mu in the air and the two men on the ground, and at last it gave up this territory.
Dragging that hind leg, mangled to bloody pulp where Lin Mu's iron chain had cinched it, it limped away, wounds covering its body, and retreated in exceeding disgrace into the depths of the mountains.
With the king's withdrawal, those ordinary giant lizards along the perimeter, as though granted a pardon, swiftly pulled out of the battlefield like an ebbing tide.
"Haah… we finally forced that beast back."
Below, that clan elder who had been responsible for tanking the front collapsed on his rear amid the rubble of broken stone, gasping in great mouthfuls of air, his face written all over with the relief of a man who had survived disaster.
Had that Thousand Beast King fought on to the death, then even if the three of them could have won today, they would likely have had to leave two corpses here as the price.
Lacking the strength to utterly overwhelm it, crippling a beast of this caliber and forcing it into retreat was already the most perfect outcome they could have secured.
No one was willing to risk their life fighting a cornered Thousand Beast King to the bitter end.
However.
While the two clan elders below were busy recovering their Primeval Essence, Lin Mu did not immediately turn and leave.
He still hovered there.
Those pitch-black, deep-set eyes of his stared fixedly through the dense canopy at the enormous back of the Crimson Armored Giant Lizard King as it gradually vanished into the depths of the thick forest.
In this moment, in Lin Mu's mind, the trial concerning the Black Bone King resurfaced—
Capture one Thousand Beast King alive!
Lin Mu was silent for a long while.
He slowly lowered his head and glanced at the Flowery Silver Primeval Essence in his aperture, already more than half spent from that stretch of high-intensity struggle just now, appearing somewhat hollow.
A full three clan elders of the Rank 3 tier, straining with everything they had, playing every last trump card.
And all they had managed was to "force back" this one Thousand Beast King.
A bone-chilling wind swept past.
Lin Mu hovered in the wind, his brows knitting, bit by bit, deeply together.
"Capture it alive?"