The night was so dark that there wasn’t even a ray of moonlight. The only light source was the dim stars in the sky. The campsite that they hastily found was a canvas of darkness. This place seemed even darker than the wasteland around them.

Silence persisted. The only noise was the faint sound of breathing. The group had changed their campsite three times in a single night. Even if their bodies were made of iron, they would inevitably go hungry.

Out of the blue, a sniffling sound came from afar.

It didn’t sound like the wolves were trying to ambush them but the person on guarding duty was still nervous. Ye Que opened his eyes momentarily before shutting them again.

Soon, the sound became closer and it became clear who it was.

It was the independent female disciple from the Silent Monastery.

She was still riding her plump goldfish but the fish appeared to be in a miserable condition. Half of its golden scales were gone, exposing its pink and tender flesh. Its large eyes seemed to have suffered a massive punch, causing them to swell to the size of large bowls. Three of its four beautiful fins that resembled the wings of a dragonfly were drooping. It seemed like the fish would have to recover for quite some time before it could take flight again.

Li Jianqi, who was sprawled on the back of the goldfish, was also filthy all over. Her hair was a mess and there were quite a few holes in her clothing. She held two items in both of her hands but it was too dark to see what they were.

“Gulg, gulg.”

Seeing that she had finally caught up to the group, Li Jianqi suddenly regained her spirits and straightened her back. Those not in the know would have thought she was a victorious general.

She threw the things in her hands to the ground. They turned out to be two large wolf heads with a malevolent expression and three-inch tooth inside a bloody, wide-open mouth.

Standing with her hands on her hips in the middle of the campsite, Li Jianqi yelled, “Wake up, guys! Wake up! You can all stop living in fear now. I’ve decapitated the Wolf King!” While yelling, she didn’t forget to point to the two wolf heads on the ground.

“Decapitated the Wolf King?” Nalan Rongruo asked in surprise.

“You’re kidding me!” someone retorted skeptically.

Amid the confusion, everyone roused from their meditative state and stared at Li Jianqi with their mouths open. Then, they turned to look at the wolf heads on the ground.

“You said you decapitated the Wolf King but why are there two heads here?”

“Shouldn’t there be a single Wolf King and a single wolf head in a pack of wolves?” Nalan Rongruo asked uncertainly.

“That seems logical,” someone said in agreement.

In the middle of the crowd, Li Jianqi grabbed her hair awkwardly. Blushing, she mumbled to herself, “Who can tell which is the Wolf King out of so many wolves? No need to be that serious!”

Ye Que didn’t question her because he knew what she had run off to do. However, a Wolf King wasn’t that easily killed. Furthermore, did she think the pack of wolves would dissolve just because their Wolf King was killed? If the Demon Race was pulling the strings behind the scenes, the death of the Wolf King was as good as pointless.

In fact, it was a tremendous stroke of luck that Li Jianqi was able to return to the campsite in one piece. The reason lay in her timing; it just happened to be a brief moment in time whereby the pack of wolves had no leader.

It was still the same dark wasteland.

The only difference was the direction.

Under their feet was a layer of gray and hard grains of sand. Next to them were about seven or eight withered old trees laying horizontally.

Out of the blue, countless small bugs of every kind imaginable emerged from the bare old trees. When a gust of cold wind swept past them, a faint smell of blood lingered in the air.

A young man wearing a hairpin leaned against a tree trunk. “We’ve been doing nothing but running! When will we finally see an end?” he asked in annoyance while stepping on the withered branches on the ground.

“It’s been several days since we came! Is there no end to the ley lines of sovereignty of the Imperial Mausoleum? The birth of a Divine Tool? We couldn’t even see its shadow!” another young man complained.

“Keep holding on. Our master has given us a strict order to fight for the Divine Tool no matter what. Obtaining a Divine Tool is all about chance; we might very well be the fated people. Once we get the approval of the Divine Tool, we’ll be fearless in the ley lines of sovereignty of the Imperial Mausoleum regardless of how many enemies we face. All we have to do is kill them.” The one who spoke this time was the leader of the team. His voice was calm but his nervousness was evident when he mentioned the Divine Tool. There was even a hint of excitement mixed in.

“Before nightfall, I heard Senior Brother Kong Ming from the Sixth Buddhist Temple say that there’s something odd about this dark wasteland. He told us to be on our guard lest we fall for our opponents’ trap.”

“What’s there to be afraid of? We now understand the rules to the sinking ground and the blood insects are also nowhere to be seen. I think all we have to do now is wait, wait for the Divine Tool to appear.”

“The scariest thing isn’t the world but the human heart. We must guard against the schemes of other sects. The moment the Divine Tool is born is the moment the bloody battle for it begins. We’re all rivals this time; there’s no telling if someone will break the rules,” the leader said solemnly.

“Who’s that?”

Suddenly, the teen who had been leaning against the tree trunk violently turned his head to look into the darkness nearby.

“What’s wrong?” Everyone was on high alert.

“Someone’s there.” The teen pointed at the darkness.

Under the withered trees, the bugs of every kind on the ground gradually increased.

The faint smell of blood drifted over to the team.

Finally, a group of Taoists slowly appeared. Simultaneously, countless pairs of green eyes began drawing close.

“I’m Qing Yuebai of the Salvation Palace. Name yourself,” the leader yelled. He could sense the increasingly strong smell in the air. He could detect more than ten smells of Starburst Realm cultivators alone.

No one replied.

A sword that ripped through the air pulled open the curtains to the prologue of a battle.

This was a confrontation of starkly different strengths. On one end was the Salvation Palace disciples numbering about 10. On the other end were all the disciples from the Five Main Tribes of the Demon Race. Putting aside the size of the groups, Starburst Realm cultivators from the Demon Race alone outnumbered the whole group of the Salvation Palace disciples.

The battle began quickly and ended even quicker. Life-and-death battles usually didn’t last long as each attack made was meant to be fatal.

There was resistance in the beginning but several seconds later, the battle turned into a one-sided massacre.

“Who are you? Why are you attacking us disciples of the Salvation Palace?” Qing Yuebai asked weakly and helplessly, titling his head. He was covered in blood all over.

“The Five Main Tribes of Wind, Thunder, Water, Fire, and Mountain are all here.”

“You suffer no injustice in your deaths.”

With that, the conversation was over. The blade of the saber glinted as it fell. A decapitated head rolled to the ground.

Thin blood seeped into the earth, worsening the smell of blood.

A graceful red-haired woman dressed in red clothes slowly walked over and gently placed her hand on the teen’s shoulder. “Feng Xingmo, the treasure-hunting team from the Salvation Palace is all dead. Where do we go next?”

“Keep going, of course. It’s best if we can kill all the disciples from the Cultivation World before the birth of the Divine Tool, the River Soldiers. They’re all a group of haughty people who don’t know their place. Kill all of them. We don’t fear anyone,” Feng Xingmo said solemnly, “Order everyone from your Fire Tribe to scatter and search the place. Leave no one behind.”

In the end, Feng Xingmo added a final reminder. “Remember to coordinate with my wolf cubs.”

Wolf cubs?

It was a simple sentence yet it seemed to suggest that the pack of wolves in the dark wasteland was his. The truth wasn’t far off, though. Feng Xingmo was born a wolfkind. From the moment he was born, he was capable of commanding tens of thousands of wolves. It so happened that there was an endless supply of wolves in the dark wasteland.

It seemed like the world was aiding the Demon Race.