Ten Black-Beast Demons!
Mo Fan studied the near-deranged figure before him and, despite everything, felt the urge to laugh.
The man Mu Zhuoyun had spent years grooming as the heir to one of Bo City's great clans had, all along, been a Black Church sleeper agent planted at his side a decade ago. And this catastrophe — every last thread of it — had been meticulously planned.
Provoking the Wing-Azure Wolves. Digging underground entry points. Corrupting the spring water. Substituting the Earth Sacred Spring. Every piece had been orchestrated by the Black Church. The irony was that Yu'ang — the Church's embedded mole — was supposed to be the one slipping into the Earth Sacred Spring and swapping it out cleanly. Instead, that role had fallen to Mo Fan himself. Which meant the Black Church's grand plan to raze Bo City had been thoroughly derailed.
No wonder Yu'ang's superiors had come down on him so hard, leaving him looking neither human nor monster. All that careful scheming, and they'd tripped over a ditch in the road. And that ditch, apparently, was Mo Fan.
*What a strange turn of fate.*
That said, there was one point on which Mo Fan genuinely sympathized with Yu'ang: he, too, thought Mu Zhuoyun was a rotten old bastard.
"You worthless little wretch — you ruined my plans, you destroyed my face, and today I will make you suffer ten times, a hundred times over!!" Yu'ang roared.
Mo Fan let out a cold laugh, eyes fixed on Yu'ang and the Black-Beast Demon beside him. "You're already a beaten man — throw in another Beast-creature and you'd still be—"
He never finished.
More dark, warped silhouettes emerged from behind Yu'ang — one after another. *Damn it.* The taunt died in his throat. There was no time left for witty banter with a lunatic. Mo Fan turned and bolted for the elevator bank at a dead sprint.
As he ran, he pressed his palm inward and let a fireball begin to coalesce.
No time to think. He hurled the Fire Burst: Blast straight at the mall entrance, buying himself a few precious seconds.
The fireball detonated at the doorway with a thunderous boom. The concussive force alone was devastating to Black-Beast Demons, and the storm of shattered glass that followed made it worse. The creatures rolling on the ground, slapping out the flames, had no chance of closing the gap in time.
Chaos erupted — glass shards and embers flung in every direction. Yu'ang had raised his Enchanted Gear shield to absorb the blast. Once the smoke thinned, he glanced down at the Black-Beast Demons writhing on the ground, beating out the last of the fire.
His eyes had gone utterly savage. He would not stop until Mo Fan was dead.
He raised one hand — and from the base of the steps, dark shapes burst out in rapid succession. They moved at terrifying speed, answering his command and converging around him like a hunting pack assembling for the kill.
Ten. Ten Black-Beast Demons had gathered around Yu'ang in total — and that number alone told the story of how deep his hatred ran.
Saron himself had assigned these creatures, with orders to guard the Demon-Beast entry point. But the sight of Mo Fan had burned away every last shred of Yu'ang's rationality. Nothing else mattered. Mo Fan had to die — completely, irrevocably.
"Yu'ang, come back immediately. A Mage squad is closing in on the Demon-Beast entry point." Just as Yu'ang was savoring the opening act of his revenge, the hawk-nosed man's voice crackled through his earpiece.
Yu'ang ground his teeth. He had wanted to watch with his own eyes as his Black-Beast Demons tore Mo Fan apart piece by piece.
"Fine. On my way." He didn't dare disobey. If Lord Saron ever found out he'd abandoned his post, losing the other half of his face would be the least of his worries. That man was the most terrifying person Yu'ang had ever encountered in his life.
He shot one last venomous look toward the elevator bank. Mo Fan was already there, scrabbling up the stationary elevator shaft with desperate speed. A cruel smile twisted what remained of his face.
"Black-Beast Demons are master trackers. Once they catch you, they'll strip your skin off piece by piece, pick your bones out one by one, carve your organs out one at a time." He called after Mo Fan's retreating back, voice rich with dark anticipation. "So enjoy yourself. There's no version of this where you escape all ten."
The laughter receded slowly into the distance. Yu'ang was absolutely certain that Mo Fan had no chance against ten Black-Beast Demons who hunted in coordinated formation.
In truth, a Black-Beast Demon's individual combat power fell somewhere between a Giant-Eyed Ape-Rat and a One-Eyed Demon Wolf — but in ambush tactics and tracking, it surpassed both. Ten of them hunting together posed a greater threat than ten One-Eyed Demon Wolves combined, and Yu'ang had given them a standing kill order: pursue Mo Fan without rest until he was dead.
Mo Fan didn't let himself slow down for even a breath.
Yu'ang alone he could handle. Yu'ang plus one Black-Beast Demon — he might have found some room to maneuver. But ten? There was no universe in which he fought through ten of them.
He burst through to the elevator bank and forced the doors open.
The car was stopped at the basement level. Without hesitation, Mo Fan dropped into the near-empty shaft and grabbed the hanging cable, hauling himself upward hand over hand.
His physical conditioning was solid, and his climbing pace was quick.
But not three meters up, a horrible shriek erupted from the darkness below — one of the Black-Beast Demons had leaped into the shaft.
Space was limited. The first one missed the cable entirely and plummeted straight to the bottom, slamming into the roof of the elevator parked at the basement level with a bone-jarring crash.
A second one followed immediately.
This one learned from its predecessor's mistake. It snagged the cable with its claws and began hauling itself upward at astonishing speed, powerful forelimbs churning.
"Get off," Mo Fan snapped.
He locked both hands tight around the cable. Arcs of electricity crackled between his fingers, racing down through his palms into the exposed metal line.
The current surged downward. The Black-Beast Demon's claws were nearly at Mo Fan's heels — then its forelimbs snapped back from the shock—
**"Eeeeeeeee—!"**
It shrieked, body tearing free of the cable, and dropped — landing squarely on the first creature, which had just begun to recover and attempt another climb.
Mo Fan exhaled sharply and kept moving, pulling himself upward as fast as his arms would carry him.
But as he broke through the outer tempered-glass wall of the elevator shaft, a sinking feeling crept through him. These Black-Beast Demons possessed genuine intelligence. The moment they recognized that Mo Fan could electrify the cable and deny them the ascent, they adapted — in the most infuriating way possible.
They took the escalators.
A large shopping mall, by design, always had both escalators and an elevator. Four of the Black-Beast Demons stationed themselves at the elevator entrance, pinning Mo Fan inside the glass-enclosed shaft. The remaining six broke into a sprint, charging toward the escalators at the far end — clearly heading for the second and third floors to cut off his escape from above.
The tempered glass of the shaft would be difficult for them to shatter — but elevator doors could be pried open. If they boxed him in from both directions, he was finished.
The moment he reached the second floor, Mo Fan didn't hesitate. He wrenched the elevator doors open and sprinted for the emergency stairwell on the other side.
Once he got there, he'd have a plan.