The Black Church, Once More!
Near the plaza, a blaze of purple light split the air. An instant later, coiling arcs of lightning hammered down again and again on a One-Eyed Demon Wolf, its muzzle still slick with blood.
The lightning scorched the wolf's body black, fury blazing in its single eye. Every muscle in its frame had locked rigid — it could not raise a claw, could not tear open the chest of the small human standing before it, no matter how desperately it tried.
At last, after several more blasts of magic, the One-Eyed Demon Wolf collapsed in bitter defeat. From start to finish, it had never once laid a claw on the human Mage.
"Good thing I spotted it first and got the jump on it." Mo Fan exhaled a long breath, studying the wolf's motionless body.
This was probably the first time he had ever faced a Demon-Beast alone. Without his Lightning Element skills, the wolf's speed and ferocity could have shredded him to pieces. He had opened with Lightning Seal to seize the initiative, then followed up with Fire Burst's explosive force, barely managing to put the unwary wolf down before it could properly react.
He pushed through the alley. The shopping plaza came into view ahead.
Mo Fan began searching for a safer path toward the mall.
On a terrace ten stories above the shopping plaza, two men in black stood watching. The Demon-Beasts below seemed entirely oblivious to their presence as the pair surveyed the surrounding area.
"Purple light just flashed over there — likely a lightning-type Mage." The hawk-nosed man among them murmured. "There he is. Looks like he's heading for the shopping plaza."
"*It's him.*" The other man, his face entirely wrapped in dark cloth, felt something sharp and ugly ignite behind his eyes.
"You know him?"
"Of course I do." The wrapped figure's voice dropped to ice. "Stay here. I'll go kill him."
"Don't take too long. We have a mission."
"I know. But this one — I'm finishing him regardless."
With that, the masked man issued a short command. Several Black-Beast Demons materialized around him and streaked toward the plaza below.
Meanwhile, Mo Fan had already reached the steps of the shopping plaza.
His luck was holding. A handful of Giant-Eyed Ape-Rats roamed the broad expanse of the plaza, but none of them caught so much as a glimpse of him. He reached the mall's main entrance without incident.
The doors showed obvious signs of having been forced open. Mo Fan scattered some Demon-Tracking Powder before crossing the threshold — he had no interest in walking into an ambush the moment he set foot inside.
The powder had barely dispersed — drifting like dandelion seeds on the still air — when it began drifting sideways. Something to his right was closing in fast.
**Slash!**
A black shape lunged from nowhere at terrifying speed. Razor claws raked through a glass door and drove straight at him.
Mo Fan threw himself sideways behind an adjacent glass panel, barely clearing the strike.
The shape lunged again — but it clearly had no concept of glass. It crashed headlong into the smooth surface with a shattering explosion of shards.
Mo Fan scrambled further inside. He glanced down — and found a deep gash carved along his arm, running from just below the shoulder all the way to the elbow. Searing pain blazed through him.
*What the hell — that speed—*
If he hadn't scattered the Demon-Tracking Powder a moment ago, it would have been his chest, not his arm.
Mo Fan backpedaled quickly. When he looked back, the black creature was staggering dizzily among the shattered glass, dragging itself back upright.
A Black-Beast Demon.
Ice shot through him. That grotesque thing — ape-faced, misshapen, hideous beyond description — was the Black Church's signature creature. Were there Black Church operatives *here*?
"Quick reflexes." A frigid voice drifted in from the entrance. A figure in black had appeared in the doorway — face completely swathed in dark cloth. "A pity, then. There is no way you are seeing tomorrow's sunrise."
"Who are you?" Mo Fan felt a nagging familiarity with the voice but couldn't place the face behind it.
"You don't recognize me... ha. Perfect." The Black Church man laughed softly and raised one hand, slowly unwinding the cloth binding his face. "Let me show you exactly who I am."
The bandages fell away. What looked back at Mo Fan was a face that made his skin crawl.
The left side was nearly gone — the skin corroded as though something strongly acidic had been poured across it, the eyeball sitting raw and exposed in a lidless socket, grotesque and wrong. The right side, though — that half Mo Fan had genuinely seen before. What he had never imagined was that this person was also a member of the Black Church.
"Recognize me now?" The man tilted his head slightly, presenting only his intact right side — a stiff, near-rigid face holding a crooked, unsettling smile.
"Well." Mo Fan felt the shock land cold, but his mouth stayed sharp. "Is that a new mask for scaring children? Impressive work."
"**Shut your mouth!**" The man's mismatched face twisted violently. He turned the ruined half fully toward Mo Fan — festering, raw, radiating a hatred so absolute it bordered on madness. He looked ready to tear Mo Fan apart with his bare hands.
"A young lord of a great noble house," Mo Fan said with a cold snort, "and you chose to be the Black Church's dog."
"This face," the man snarled, voice tearing with pain, "is *your* fault."
"How is that my problem?"
"The one who entered the Earth Sacred Spring should have been *me*. **Me!** If I had delivered the Earth Sacred Spring to Lord Saron, I would have become a Deacon of the Black Church! Do you know what I sacrificed for that plan? Ten years — *ten years* I spent as Mu Zhuoyun's dog, obeying his every command, serving that old bastard like he was my own father, doing everything he asked, all to earn his trust, all so that when the moment finally came, I could seize the Earth Sacred Spring! And then *you* destroyed it all — ten years of deep cover, ten years of my life — and left me looking like *this*. Do you have any idea what it felt like when Lord Saron pressed my face into the wraith acid? Now I am going to make you feel every bit of that same pain. Not just your face — I want your entire body submerged in wraith acid. I will turn you into a slave — just like a Black-Beast Demon!"
His voice had torn itself raw by the end, a scream of pure, unhinged fury pouring out into the silence.