Caught in the Net!
"Rose Flame!"
Mo Fan's roar tore through the air. Fire of a higher bloodline carries an innate dominance over flames of lesser rank, and at this moment the Rose Flame's aura blazed fiercer than ever.
Energy converged; blazing fire coiled inward. Mo Fan drew every lash of Rose Flame into the ring around his wrist — and that searing band of fire was already straining to break free.
"Blazing Fist..." He raised his fist high, sank into a half-kneel, and drove that fist — packed with every ounce of Blazing Fist energy — straight into the ground, bellowing the incantation with fierce, surging breath.
"Earth Rupture!!"
His voice thundered with overbearing power. The driving fist channeled every shred of Rose Flame force deep into the earth below.
**BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!!!**
The ground beneath Jia Wenqing and Fu Tianming erupted as colossal energy tore it apart — as though some enormous beast were forcing its way up from below.
When the roar faded, crimson fire came howling up from beneath the surface — the fury of a miniature volcano.
The erupting blaze bloomed into one vast, gorgeous flower, saturated with the scent of death and incineration: the Earth Rupture Blossom.
Fire pillars formed its branches. Tongues of flame curved as petals. Molten rock pooled at the heart of the bloom, a scarlet so vivid it was almost violent — its destructive force enough to shake the soul.
Both Ai Tutu and Mu Nujiao had gone still, their faces washed in a deep rosy glow.
Within the inferno, Jia Wenqing and Fu Tianming were frantically summoning their protective Enchanted Gear — but such trinkets crumbled before the overwhelming heat of Spirit Fire of this caliber. Within seconds, every piece of defensive gear they carried was reduced to ash.
As for the two men themselves, the blast hurled them skyward, and they hung suspended in the erupting blossom, wracked by the scorching torment of the Spirit Fire.
The crimson flames burned on and on. Mo Fan showed neither of them a shred of mercy. By the time their bodies came tumbling from the sky — charred to blackened husks — he didn't even bother to look.
They say killing sets fire to the blood. With Yu'ang's two lackeys eliminated, Mo Fan turned that flame-lit gaze directly onto Yu'ang.
Yu'ang's face was hidden behind his mask, his expression unreadable — but the eyes above it laid bare his shock and disbelief.
From the Bo City disaster to now, barely two years had passed. In those two years, someone who had nearly failed to get into a magic high school had somehow come to command this level of annihilating power. Even with the Earth Sacred Spring, that was simply impossible!
A Battle-General-class Cursed Beast Demon couldn't kill him. Two Intermediate-Level Mages had been crushed like nothing. No wonder Gray Two, Gray Three, Gray Four, Gray Five, and so many Black-Beast Demons had been wiped out entirely — this man didn't just possess four-element power; every single element he wielded was grotesquely overwhelming.
"I swear — Yu'ang will make you his slave, unable to live, unable to die!!" The fury surging through him made the rotting flesh on his face tear open with pain.
Yet he knew: there was no way he could lay a finger on Mo Fan today.
Yu'ang didn't dare linger. He gave no thought to whether Jia Wenqing and Fu Tianming lived or died, abandoned even the Cursed Beast Demon, and fled the beast-taming arena in a panic.
Trapped inside the Beast-Taming Cage with no way out, Mo Fan watched Yu'ang's retreating figure and swore his own oath in return: "No matter where you run — I, Mo Fan, will have your miserable life!!"
Yu'ang slipped out of Pearl Academy and found a place to catch his breath. He pulled off the mask, revealing that half-rotted face.
The rotting flesh was bleeding now — his fury had strained the muscles beneath, and they had simply torn apart. He looked monstrous.
"My lord Deacon, our mission has failed." He forced himself to breathe steadily and reported through his communication device.
"My lord Deacon?"
"Deacon..."
A realization struck him like ice. The color drained from his face in an instant.
The Deacon had been captured.
It was over. All of it. With the Deacon caught, how could a lowly Priest like him hope to escape the Tribunal's dragnet?
And once a Deacon fell into enemy hands, virtually none of the Priests beneath him could slip away either — the entire network of Church members hidden within Magic City had effectively been swept up in one go.
Yu'ang stumbled forward, hollow and adrift. The whole glittering city seemed to have a thousand eyes trained on him. He ran. He just kept running, desperate to stay out of the Tribunal's grasp.
*Damn Mo Fan. That accursed, wretched Mo Fan.*
Back during the Bo City disaster, he should have finished him off with his own hands. None of this would have happened.
Now — forget whether he could even escape the Tribunal's full-scale manhunt. Even if he somehow made it back to the Church, the other half of his face was almost certainly gone.
He had nothing to show for it. The Blue-Robed Deacon and every hidden Black Church member had been swept clean. Lord Saron would be livid beyond reason.
No. Even if he managed to escape, returning to the Church was out of the question.
Yu'ang made up his mind: he could not let Saron know he was still alive. What awaited him there would be far worse than falling into the Tribunal's hands.
He had been ecstatic when the order came to deal with Mo Fan. He could never have imagined — not in a thousand years — that it would bring him to this: hunted by the Tribunal, barred from returning to the Church.
"What happened in here? My God — what is *that* thing? That's revolting..."
"A body — there's a charred body! Someone was killed! Someone was killed!!"
"It's him — the one in the cage is the infamous Mo Fan!!"
With the Night Sovereign's Dominion Array dissolved and the Shadow Demon-Beast nowhere to be found, students came flooding into the beast-taming building — only to find that the Beast-Taming Cage sat at the center of a recent, violent battle. Magic blast marks scorched every surface, and deep claw gouges raked the walls.
The claw marks almost certainly came from the creature now pinned to the wall like a grotesque specimen.
But there was also one very real, very charred corpse — and nobody had any idea who it had been.
Mo Fan was badly wounded. The long, ragged gash across his chest was alarming to look at — deep enough that you could almost see what lay within. Ai Tutu and Mu Nujiao pressed their healing medicines through the cage bars, but his wound had clearly been cursed; it simply would not close. The blood kept flowing.
"Mo Fan, are you all right?" Tang Yue's concerned voice came through the Bluetooth earpiece.
"Not dead yet. Did they catch him?"
"They caught him. The Black Church's hidden network in Magic City can finally be pulled up by the roots. There'll be a full sweep tonight." Excitement edged into Tang Yue's voice.
Then she heard the labored heaviness of Mo Fan's breathing, and her tone softened. "This time, we owe you."
"It was Xu Zhaoting..." Mo Fan said, the words carrying a quiet bitterness.
"Regardless — clearing out the Black Church this time, you both made an enormous contribution. I'll make sure the Chief Adjudicator is informed."
"Yu'ang got away. I'm worried he'll go after—"
"Don't be. It won't happen," Tang Yue said. "He was the one running this operation, and it failed. The Church won't take him back even if he tried. We'll issue a warrant — any city with a Hunters' Alliance or Magic Association presence will be closed off to him. He won't dare set foot there. And forget cities — he can't even shelter in a Safe Zone. So even if he slips away, he'll spend the rest of his life keeping company with Demon-Beasts. And Demon-Beasts aren't nearly as welcoming as we are."
Mo Fan gave a small nod. Some of the weight in his chest eased.
Yu'ang had to die — Mo Fan feared the man might target the people around him. But as a wanted fugitive barely keeping himself alive, that threat was slim.
Even so: whenever the chance came, Mo Fan intended to finish it himself. No loose ends. Only then could he sleep easy.