The other people who were chasing Xue Wei stopped dead in their tracks and looked at the corpse on the ground.
They had never expected that Xue Wei would erupt with such power and execute one of their members so cleanly.
But there were still nine experts on his trail, and it would not take too long before the ten others caught inside the Blazing Light Formations broke out.
“Stop holding back!” Xue Wei yelled out. His entire body started transforming into that of a dragon.
He was no longer a dragonkin but a real dragon that soared through the heavens. He had grown to a size so ma.s.sive that the humans in front of him looked like ants.
The dragon-form Xue Wei lifted his long, beastly head and let out a deafening roar that shook the very sky.
Hei Gou felt his blood run cold, and the roar seemed to call out to him, beckoning him. It was a rallying power that beckoned every Fierce Beast in the area. All of them, even the weakest, charged with frenzy toward Xue Wei. Their screams were like a battle cry, and their eyes glistened with veneration and madness.
The experts from the royal palace were frightened out of their minds. And yet while they were fearful, they could not hide the greed that appeared in the depths of their eyes.
“He is a Primordial Beast!” one of them exclaimed. “Kill him and we shall have done a great favor to humanity! Kill him and we can sell his corpse for a fortune! He is a dragon type of beast – they are the rarest!”
Hei Gou did not hold back either. The blood in his body was boiling with excitement. He could not even understand the beckoning he had received, but it had actually intoxicated him.
Hei Gou’s figure morphed and expanded, turning into a ma.s.sive winged dog. Although he was ma.s.sive, he was dwarfed by Xue Wei in his dragon shape.
Seeing what they thought were two Primordial Beasts appearing in front of them, these experts were both excited and worried. Could they defeat them?
The fight exploded. Xue Wei used his ma.s.sive body and overwhelming and seemingly endless stores of Qi to chain down ten Heavenly Warriors by himself.
Despite giving off an indomitable air and injuring multiple Heavenly Warriors, Xue Wei’s draconic body was being riddled with wounds. Blood flowed from the numerous broken scales on his large body.
The consequences of the blood loss kicked in at some point, causing him to feel light headed, but he kept clawing, biting, and tearing anyone near him to pieces.
The fighting scene was incomparably chaotic. Random fierce beasts had appeared from the nearby area, but they were not the only ones – human cultivators were also attracted to the sound of the fighting.
When the humans saw that the battle was between beasts and humans, they all threw their caution to the wind and joined the fray.
Xue Wei was exhausted, but he noticed that maintaining his form as an azure dragon did not cost him any energy. Rather, it was as if he was as familiar with the dragon shape as he was with his human shape.
But he was, after all, fundamentally a Sky Warrior cultivator. Although he fought back relentlessly and used his overwhelming physical strength to his advantage, he was wounded in each exchange.
Hei Gou’s physical strength was at the Heavenly Warrior level so he was not at a big disadvantage, but he too had suffered some grievous wounds over the course of the fight.
Blood flowed down his black fur, but it was difficult to see due to the color of his fur.
The one who was doing the best was w.a.n.g Xiaoyun. She had refused to kill any of their enemies, as she did not want to have human blood on her hands.
Bai Tianyi was fighting elegantly. It looked like he was dancing from enemy to enemy, fluttering about like a blur of white and gold.
Despite outwardly bearing the appearance of a child, he was able to send out unceasing waves of sword energy unbecoming his age.
He headed straight for their weaknesses, killing people as though he were chopping weeds. In fact, he was the one who had the easiest time taking down their enemies.
After consuming the soul power of the Moon Prince, his strength had risen to the Heavenly Warrior realm, and it showed when he fought. He also had the advantage of being small and agile, so none of the enemies could land a hit on him.
The Fierce Beasts fought with complete, mindless disregard for their own lives. Many of them had already succ.u.mbed to death, but some of the stronger ones continued to fight recklessly.
Of the original twenty-five members of the royal families, only seven remained.
Of the many experts that had appeared, three were still standing.
Of the fierce beasts, a hundred had appeared and eleven were still alive.
Xue Wei was nearing his limits. The world started to turn dark around him. He knew that he was grasping at straws. When he looked around him, he saw that Hei Gou was in a perilous situation, and even Bai Tianyi was sweating while his clothes had begun being marred with cuts and holes.
Heart of Fire!
Xue Wei did not hesitate and used the Heart of Fire. This was an ability that he had learned from the Heritage Ring, a last-resort skill that he had never used before.
The Heart of Fire was a profound martial art technique. It allowed the user to burn one drop of heart-blood essence.
In return for burning the blood of the heart, it raised the user’s strength by three times for thirty breaths of time. Not too much but not too little either.
However, this was a drop of heart-blood essence. It was not like the ordinary blood essence, and the loss of a single drop of it would result in Xue Wei being extremely fatigued and injured once it ends.
Restoring the heart-blood essence was not easy. It required outside factors like herbs, pills or spirit fruits.
But Xue Wei could not consider the consequences right now.
He burned his heart-blood essence without hesitation. His eyes turned bloodshot, and his strength climbed rapidly. A b.l.o.o.d.y mist surrounded his body before he lunged at the closest enemy.
The roar that escaped his mouth was so terrifying that some of the experts tried to flee, but Bai Tianyi and Hei Gou picked off the escaping experts that had turned their backs to them. With each swipe of a paw and each wave of sword energy, the experts collapsed to the ground.
Xue Wei held down the rest of them. Although they fought back, the blood mist blocked the majority of their attacks. He was overwhelmingly powerful now that he had burned a drop of heart-blood essence. No one stood a chance against him, but the price he had to pay was naturally equally frightening.
He flashed about like an azure lightning bolt. Everywhere he pa.s.sed, he brought death and carnage.
None of their enemies survived. In twenty-eight breaths, they had killed every single person from the delegation sent by the two princes. Xue Wei stopped in place, gasping for air as he returned to his human shape.
His clothes were completely destroyed. They hung as rags on his body, and his own blood combined with the blood of his enemies had sept into every single piece of cloth.
Wounds covered every part of his body, and he seemed completely exhausted. The blood mist around him was almost translucent from how much it had diminished.
“Guys, quickly grab the spoils of war so we can get out of here,” Xue Wei said weakly with a hoa.r.s.e voice. He quickly did as he told the others to do, holding up both hands. The storage rings on the fingers of the dead experts were forcefully pulled off and drawn toward Xue Wei by a suction force, eventually landing in his palm. As soon as they came close enough, they vanished, all entering Xue Wei’s own storage ring. Now was not the time to check what they had acquired.
Xue Wei staggered backward. He was so exhausted he could barely move his fingers. When w.a.n.g Xiaoyun saw this, she rushed to his side and placed an arm around him. She tried to support him, but something made her blood freeze over the moment she made contact with him. She could not help her shock. The blood that was flowing from Xue Wei’s open wounds called out to her, like a bloodline summoning.
She resisted the allure, however, and forced herself to support him as they moved forward. Bai Tianyi supported Hei Gou, more or less dragging him, who was also severely injured.
At the start, w.a.n.g Xiaoyun felt uneasy from the smell of Xue Wei’s blood. It made her feel dizzy and uncomfortable, as if she had drunk too much wine.
The blood seeped through her clothes and touched her skin. At first, the pain she felt from this contact was bearable, but before she could even register it, the pain had become incredibly sharp.
It was a pain she was familiar with, a pain that she had undergone during her sixteenth birthday, but it was much more intense this time.
She had to grit her teeth hard to continue leading Xue Wei into a cave they found after entering a small forest. They had walked for half a day at that point. Xue Wei was as weak as before. In fact, his condition was worsening because he had not had the time to relax and focus on his wounds.
Because he was in constant motion, the blood continued to flow from his body, and both he and w.a.n.g Xiaoyun were bathed in it.
The tattoos on her body were s.h.i.+ning with a golden light that made her feel incredibly weak. When they made it to the cave, she collapsed together with Xue Wei.
“Useless! Is it the ritual?” Bai Tianyi swore now that he alone had to look after his three unconscious companions.
He took care of Xue Wei first. He had the most severe injuries, so Bai Tianyi put him flat on the ground on his back before taking out some healing medicines from his storage dimension.
He did not have that many items because he gave most of their loot to Xue Wei, but he had a couple useful ones from his personal stash.
He found the pills and placed one in Xue Wei’s mouth. Another was ground to dust and sprinkled over his wounds.
Then he did the same with Hei Gou before he finally turned to w.a.n.g Xiaoyun. “This is troublesome,” he said with vexation. “She is already strong and now she’ll get stronger. The blood ritual will take her around ten hours, maybe more since she received a Sovereign Beast’s blessing this time.” Bai Tianyi sighed and shook his head.
After having tended to them and placed them beside each other, Bai Tianyi sat by the entrance of the cave to keep watch. It was clear that the signs of battle outside would be noticed sooner or later. When they were found, they would all be seen as suspects.
Getting half a day’s distance away was not enough to bring them out of danger.
The golden symbols on w.a.n.g Xiaoyun body turned darker and darker as time went on. Eventually, they turned dark-red like blood.
The ten hours pa.s.sed quickly, accompanied by constant groaning sounds from the three wounded ones.
Hei Gou was the first to awaken. He seemed much better than before, and his eyes were filled with life and excitement despite his injuries.
“That was a fight worth fighting!” was the first thing he said. But he quickly started frowning when he saw the unconscious w.a.n.g Xiaoyun and Xue Wei beside him.
“What happened to her?” he asked, puzzled. He had known that she had not been injured in the fight, so something ought to have happened when he was unconscious.
“Have you ever wondered about Wei’s real ident.i.ty?” Bai Tianyi asked curiously. Hei Gou shrugged his shoulders. “He is a sovereign beast, right?” was his answer.
“Oh, you know?” Bai Tianyi was surprised.
“Yeah. He made my bloodline mutate. Only a sovereign beast can do that. Not to mention that he is an azure dragon.”
“But he seems to think he is a human, so I can’t make myself burst his bubble. If he wants to be human, then I will let him be human.”
Bai Tianyi gave Hei Gou a long glance. “I never thought you were so shrewd and knew all along,” he said praisingly.
“His blood has triggered a mutation in that la.s.s’s body. She will undergo a mutation similar to the one you did. I don’t know how they managed to create these Wayfarers, but they react to blood similarly to how Fierce Beasts and Primordial Beasts do. It is quite intriguing.
“Unfortunately, I think that Xiaoyun knows he is a beast now. We might have to fight her, and her strength is rising drastically. I don’t know what to do.”