Speculation

Seeing the somber expressions on everyone's faces, Karol smiled. "The coming days may be rough. Allow me to have someone show you to your quarters."

Elder Yu gave a small nod. "Much appreciated, Commander."

"Of course."

Karol summoned an escort and had Lu Yuan's group taken to the guest accommodations.

For the soldiers stationed on the front line, any warriors of Battle King or Battle Sovereign rank who came to help were honored guests — so the lodgings assigned to them were the finest quarters the military camp had to offer. Every person got their own suite.

Compared to accommodations back in the empire, it wasn't much to speak of. But this was the front line of the Forbidden Zone's defense perimeter. Having this level of comfort here was already quite decent.

Elder Yu and the others had stayed in these same rooms during the last Beast Tide. No one had any complaints.

Once everyone was settled, the escorting officer excused himself and departed. Elder Yu looked around at the group with a warm smile.

"All right. A hard fight is likely ahead of us. Everyone get some rest."

They said their farewells and returned to their respective suites.

Lu Yuan did a quick walk-through — a bedroom, a sitting room, a bathroom with a balcony, and even a small kitchen. After the tour, he headed back to the bedroom, intending to rest before going out into the Endless Mountain Range that night to assess the situation.

Just then, he heard a knock at the door.

He paused, walked over, and opened it — to find Li Qinghe and Si Tingyu standing in the hallway.

"Qinghe, Mentor — what brings you two here?"

He stepped aside to let them in.

They settled onto the sofa, and Li Qinghe studied him with a curious look. "Little Yuan, the Beast Tide situation seems pretty bad. Have you noticed anything?"

Si Tingyu was watching him just as intently, waiting.

Lu Yuan smiled. "Well... I did pick up a fairly powerful Aberration Feral Beast aura from deep within the Endless Mountain Range. Might be Saint Grade. Didn't quite expect that."

Since both women knew his true strength, he saw no reason to conceal it.

"Saint Grade?!"

They both went rigid, eyes snapping wide.

"The highest-tier Feral Beasts in the Endless Mountain Range are only Sovereign Grade. How did a Saint-grade one suddenly appear?"

Si Tingyu's expression turned serious.

Lu Yuan thought it over. "Last time, a Sovereign Grade Feral Beast got Aberrated during the Beast Tide. Maybe the same thing happened here. Aberration does amplify a Feral Beast's power — breaking through to Saint Grade isn't impossible."

Both women considered this and gave slow nods.

Li Qinghe looked at him, a hint of worry in her eyes. "Little Yuan, will you be all right?"

"Relax. Didn't I already handle a Saint-grade Aberration Feral Beast last time? You both know how strong I am."

At that, the tension eased out of their faces.

"Go get some rest. I'll head into the Endless Mountain Range tonight, find whatever that thing is, and put it down."

"Ah Yuan — we're counting on you. The safety of the empire is at stake."

Si Tingyu gave a small nod.

"Don't worry, Mentor."

Lu Yuan smiled.

Neither of them lingered. Knowing he'd be going after a Saint-grade Aberration Feral Beast that very night, they left him to rest.

The evening came quickly.

Night fell. Stars scattered across the sky, and the Endless Mountain Range filled with the overlapping cries and roars of Feral Beasts. Some were already pressing against the camp perimeter — the sounds of battle never fully stopped — though the fighting was nothing too intense yet.

The main force of the Beast Tide hadn't arrived.

Sitting cross-legged on the bed in meditation, Lu Yuan opened his eyes.

A faint gleam flickered through his gaze. The next instant, he was gone.

He materialized beneath a tree in a forest deep within the Endless Mountain Range, his body dissolving into the surrounding darkness. Right beside him — less than two meters away — a massive black tiger crouched at rest, completely unaware of his presence.

Lu Yuan glanced at the Sovereign Grade tiger and moved on.

He focused on the trembling of the Evolution Cube within him, adjusting course a few times until he had locked in the direction of the strongest vibration.

Technically, he could have sent Shadow Clones to search for the Saint-grade Aberration Feral Beast. But the Endless Mountain Range was enormous — that would take a while. Better to come in person and use the Evolution Cube's sensitivity to Aberration directly.

There were plenty of Aberrated Feral Beasts scattered throughout the mountains, but the direction with the most violent trembling was unmistakably where the Saint-grade one was hiding.

Following the signal, it didn't take long before Lu Yuan arrived at a mountain peak that looked entirely unremarkable — blanketed in dense forest, nothing unusual about it at all.

He circled it several times. Every pass confirmed it: the vibrations peaked here.

And yet his perception caught no particularly powerful Aberration aura. The mountain read as perfectly ordinary.

*This one knows how to hide.*

His eyes flashed. Space distorted. The entire mountain — thousands of meters tall — vanished from its spot, leaving only a wide crater in the earth behind.

Lu Yuan vanished with it.

Space.

Lu Yuan appeared alongside the massive mountain.

The moment he materialized, a terrifying aura surged from within the rock. Invisible shockwaves radiated outward. Then the mountain shattered, and green light blazed in all directions.

Lu Yuan narrowed his eyes and peered through the crumbling stone.

A colossal beast emerged from the debris.

It stood roughly fifty meters at the shoulder, its hide a pallid gray-white. This was a Ground-Stalking Demon Dragon.

Its eyes blazed with green fire. Across its Scale Armor, jagged channels of green light pulsed like veins of molten rock, tracing intricate patterns across its body.

Ripped from the earth and dumped into the void of space without warning, the Ground-Stalking Demon Dragon was — understandably — furious. It let out a soundless roar at Lu Yuan, waves of killing pressure rolling off its frame.

*Just as I thought — a Feral Beast Aberration. And Saint Grade at that.*

Still...

Darkness spread. Centered on Lu Yuan and the Demon Dragon, the Shadow Sacred Domain expanded outward and swallowed them both.

Then hundreds of Shadow Clones materialized simultaneously, every one of them reaching toward the Ground-Stalking Demon Dragon at once.

Gray-white Hand of Death enveloped the beast.

The Scale Armor began to rot and crumble. The body cracked and fractured. Blood laced with green light seeped from the wounds in widening streaks, and its aura cratered.

With his Transcendent Genes continuously tempered over time, Lu Yuan now possessed two perfected Saint Grade Transcendent Genes — a far cry from before. Hundreds of Shadow Clones unleashing Hand of Death in unison was overwhelming force against a Feral Beast that had only just broken into Saint Grade. It was decided in a single exchange.

The creature might not have even understood what had happened to it.

Another wave of Hand of Death. The decay completed. Death settled over the Ground-Stalking Demon Dragon's body, its vitality extinguished, and it drifted in the Shadow Sacred Domain as a corpse.

A dense surge of Unknown Aura flooded off it, flowing into Lu Yuan and being absorbed by the Evolution Cube.

Saint Grade Aberration Feral Beast or not, the Evolution Cube had undergone too many metamorphoses by now for a single entity's Unknown Aura to move it.

Lu Yuan dismissed the Shadow Sacred Domain and stood looking at the decaying remains. Golden fire burned quietly in the depths of his dark eyes.

Then Radiant Fire ignited across the Saint-grade Ground-Stalking Demon Dragon's corpse. It blazed through the remains quickly, reducing everything to ash.

Perhaps because his strength had grown considerably. Perhaps because Hand of Death had already left the body deep in rot. Either way, it burned fast.

Lu Yuan watched the ash disperse, dusted off his hands, and let the corner of his mouth curl up.

*Done. Clean job.*

He paused, then thought it over. Worth sweeping the Endless Mountain Range one more time — there might be more than one Saint-grade Aberration in there. Better safe than sorry.

With that settled, he was gone.

In a region of Great Qi Star where the soil ran deep red and the air carried a thick, iron-rust scent of blood, Du Bei raised his head toward the direction of the Endless Mountain Range. Something surfaced behind his eyes.

He had felt it — a seed he had planted in a Forbidden Zone over there had just been wiped out.

Less than thirty seconds ago, it had still been intact.

*Who did this?*

*Someone powerful enough to take down a Saint-grade Aberration Feral Beast that quickly?*

Even for him, pulling that off would have been no easy feat.

*Could it be... the Saint?*

Du Bei's eyes narrowed, a faint calculating gleam rising in them.

He had known the Saint wasn't weak — but this speed was another matter entirely.

*At least my task is only to investigate. Not to fight him directly.*

A quiet flicker of relief settled in his chest.

Then his lips curved into a faint smile. "Since he's out there, he won't let any Saint-grade Aberrated beast go unchecked. I just have to wait."

He found himself a position not far from another Saint-grade Aberration in the area and went still. Once the mystery Saint showed himself, tracing him back to his source would be considerably easier.

Back in the Endless Mountain Range.

Lu Yuan swept through the range with the Evolution Cube's Aberration sense. The tremors across the area were roughly uniform now — nothing with the sharp, violent spike that would indicate another Saint-grade Aberration source.

After a full circuit, he vanished.

He reappeared above the Ice-Fire Rift Valley — a cracked, arid expanse where volcanoes erupted and rivers of lava rolled without warning, only to give way, surreally close, to fields of frost and snow-capped peaks.

The Ice-Fire Rift Valley. One of the other Forbidden Zones along the Red Maple Empire's border, and another of the empire's chronic headaches.

Since he'd already started, he decided he might as well handle every Saint-grade Aberration Feral Beast on Great Qi Star in one sweep. If he left any and had to return later, Elder Yu and the others would likely notice.

He tracked the Evolution Cube's vibrations to a Saint-grade Aberration lurking inside a volcano.

Spatial rings shimmered in his eyes. He lifted the entire volcano and vanished with it into space.

The lava inside began to cool and harden.

Then a terrifying aura forced itself through the solidifying rock. A Flame Dragon emerged — crimson Scale Armor blazing, eyes lit with green fire, green patterns coiling across its body. The markings looked nearly identical to the Ground-Stalking Demon Dragon's.

Lu Yuan's brow furrowed slightly.

*The Aberration markings are almost the same.*

His thoughts jumped immediately to the elf from the Heavenly Calamity Cult.

*If the markings are this similar across separate creatures... is someone pulling strings behind this?*

*If so, cultivating Aberrations at this level would require a Saint themselves.*

*But why would a Battle Saint take any interest in a small planet like Great Qi Star, where the officially recognized peak power is only Battle Emperor?*

The Flame Dragon roared soundlessly at him in the void — no real threat given the gap between them. Lu Yuan cleared his head and ran through the same sequence: Shadow Sacred Domain, Hand of Death, and it was over.

Unknown Aura absorbed. Radiant Fire to reduce the remains to ash. One dragon already under his belt — he was getting practiced at this.

After finishing, he returned to Great Qi Star, swept through the Ice-Fire Rift Valley once more, confirmed there were no further Saint-grade Aberrations, and vanished again.

There were other Forbidden Zones to check. The incidents weren't limited to the Red Maple Empire's territory.

A minute later. Nearly a light-year from Great Qi Star, floating in vacuum.

Lu Yuan looked at the massive purple serpent before him — its entire lair had just been transplanted into space without warning, and it was visibly furious about it.

The serpent carried the same markings: green flame-like eyes, green patterns running the length of its body. Identical to the two before it.

Its lair had been in a Forbidden Zone within Lion Empire territory — far removed from the Endless Mountain Range and the Ice-Fire Rift Valley.

Yet the Aberration phenomenon was the same.

*Someone really is behind this.*

*But what's their goal?*

Lu Yuan thought of the elf man from the Heavenly Calamity Cult again. Was this person also after Aberration Entities?

That didn't add up. Someone capable of cultivating Saint-grade Aberrated Feral Beasts wouldn't have any use for ordinary Aberration Entities.

He turned it over for a while and still couldn't land on an answer. What could possibly drive a Battle Saint-level figure to operate on a planet as unremarkable as Great Qi Star — officially home to nothing stronger than a Battle Emperor?

He couldn't work it out, so he stopped trying.

If whoever it was was still lurking around, the Evolution Cube would find them.

So he'd keep going.

A cold gleam passed through his eyes. Alongside the suspicion, something else was taking shape — a genuine curiosity about whoever was working behind the scenes.