The Demon Wolf's Spirit Essence

"Sorry I'm late — is Xu Dahuang all right?"

A middle-aged man in a deep-blue dress shirt stood tall on the rooftop of an old building. Beneath his feet, a star diagram was fading slowly — a breathtaking display that lingered like the afterglow of something extraordinary.

It was clearly Yang Zuohe. He must have been the nearest Intermediate-Level Mage to this area. Fortunately, Xu Dahuang and Guo Caitang had managed to send word out in time.

Yang Zuohe turned to glance at the bustling commercial street visible just beyond a handful of buildings under renovation. From up here, he could see the shoppers moving among the stalls, blissfully unaware that death had been breathing down their necks.

*If that wolf had completed its ascension and cleared those few buildings — what kind of hell would that shopping district have become?*

Yang Zuohe had served at Bo City's Magic Association for years and had met mages of every stripe. But what this squad had done today — knowingly standing their ground against a Demon-Beast mid-Ascension Phase — that kind of courage was genuinely remarkable.

"Chest torn open, but his organs are intact. He's alive — thank god." Li Wenjie pressed both hands hard against Xu Dahuang's blood-soaked chest, holding the wound closed.

Truthfully, Li Wenjie had never quite understood what drove their captain. Were a Mage's own life and limbs worth any less than the lives of strangers he was fighting to protect?

"I've already sent for a healing mage — do what you can to stop the bleeding. I'll go finish off this animal." Yang Zuohe said.

With that, his figure flickered and vanished. Mo Fan caught only a flash of teal light — a Wind Trail burning briefly in the spot where the man had stood — before Yang Zuohe was gone, already closing fast on the One-Eyed Demon Wolf that Tidal Surge had hurled to the far end of the street.

Mo Fan instinctively followed. He found the wolf at the street's far end, barely visible beneath a mountain of debris, pinned under the wreckage the flood had dragged with it.

Intermediate-Level magic was something else entirely. Its power dwarfed any Basic-Level spell from any element — it wasn't even the same category. The One-Eyed Demon Wolf, which had made the entire squad helpless only moments ago, now looked like a beaten old dog: half-dead, completely still.

It made sense. A wave of that force crashing down — bones were going to break, probably more than a few. Then the rolling, the soaking, the relentless battering — even the most powerful creature alive would be reduced to a sorry heap.

Yang Zuohe clearly had no intention of being merciful. He rode a Wind Trail down to land directly in front of the wolf.

"Wind Disk!"

The call of magic rang out again. In an instant, Yang Zuohe transformed from a Water Element mage into something else entirely — a master of howling gales.

The air turned oppressively heavy.

Then, as if something had punched a hole in the world, the surrounding atmosphere was violently sucked away — and began to churn.

Mo Fan had just caught up. He arrived in time to see the man in the blue shirt thrust one hand skyward, the twin star diagrams blazing beneath his feet and above his head blazing in perfect mirror symmetry — dazzling, almost painful in their beauty.

**WHOOOOOOOOSH —**

This was nothing like the gentle current of a Wind Trail. A Wind Trail was merely a corridor of air that hastened your movement. What Mo Fan felt now was a savage, raw rotation of atmosphere directly ahead — high-speed, unstoppable, tightening with every passing second.

A roiling tornado tore into view, impossible to look at and impossible to ignore.

The Wind Disk cyclone seized the immobilized One-Eyed Demon Wolf and wrenched it clean off the ground. The beast spun through a series of wide, spiraling arcs — rising higher and higher until it hung more than twenty meters in the air.

The tornado had barely finished stealing the breath from Mo Fan's chest when it dissolved just as suddenly as it had appeared.

The One-Eyed Demon Wolf — reduced in that instant to something no bigger than a ragdoll — plummeted from the height in silence.

**BOOM.**

The concrete cratered on impact. Cracks spider-webbed outward in every direction.

The wolf hit the ground and shattered. Blood and viscera scattered across the pavement.

From beginning to end, the creature never managed another roar. The defiant howling that had defined it was gone. In the span of two Intermediate-Level spells, it had been rendered into a ruin — a carcass that looked every bit as wretched as its end had been.

"Is it... dead?" Mo Fan said, barely believing what he'd just witnessed.

"Dead." Yang Zuohe noticed Mo Fan had followed him over. He turned with a faint smile and said it plainly.

"Can I... can I go take a closer look?"

"Go ahead." He paused. "If I'm not mistaken — the Lightning Seal earlier was yours."

"It was."

"Good work, kid." Yang Zuohe clapped Mo Fan on the shoulder. "The Magic Association will coordinate with the Hunters' Alliance and the city government to give your squad an official commendation."

Mo Fan approached the mangled remains of the One-Eyed Demon Wolf. Slowly, he reached into his collar and drew out the Loach Pendant.

The moment it came near the freshly-killed wolf, the pendant's reaction was unlike anything Mo Fan had felt before. It pulsed rhythmically, as if tapping out a beat — a silent call reaching for something no one else could hear.

A wisp of wolf soul drifted out from between the dead creature's jaws.

Mo Fan could see it. It floated like a startled firefly rising from tall grass — tentative, directionless, with nowhere to go.

The Loach Pendant flared. The wolf's soul, as if it had finally found its destination, drifted straight toward the light.

The pendant swallowed it in one breath. Then it let out a single trembling chime — the soft, contented murmur of a child who has just eaten its fill.

*Wait. This one... this one doesn't feel like a Remnant Soul.*

The Remnant Souls the pendant had absorbed before were barely visible — dim, murky sparks that you'd have to squint to see. The pendant had consumed them almost reluctantly, with the enthusiasm of someone settling for scraps.

But this time, the pendant had been *eager* from a distance. It swallowed the One-Eyed Demon Wolf's soul in one gulp, practically humming with satisfaction afterward.

*Could this actually be a Spirit Essence?*

Caitang had mentioned it earlier: this One-Eyed Demon Wolf had been secretly feeding on the Earth Sacred Spring's vast reserves of energy, hiding within the human city as it quietly worked its way toward a breakthrough. In other words, the creature had been nourished by something extraordinary — which was exactly why it had grown so powerful, powerful enough to reach the threshold of ascension.

For a Demon-Beast like that, the chance of yielding a Spirit Essence upon death was remarkably high.

The thing was, Spirit Essences could only be collected by mages of the Undead Element. Even Yang Zuohe — an Intermediate-Level Mage — would have been unable to perceive the pure, luminous essence without a specialized collection vessel on hand.

And an uncollected Spirit Essence would dissipate entirely within three minutes of the creature's death.

Yang Zuohe had clearly never harvested a soul before. He had no particular interest in the corpse. He turned away to give instructions to the rest of the squad about clearing the scene — and in that moment, while his back was turned, a Spirit Essence worth five million yuan quietly passed into the hands of one Mo Fan, who looked every bit the picture of harmlessness.

The wolf's corpse was worth a good deal of money.

But nowhere near as much as a Spirit Essence — something that appeared with a rarity that made it almost miraculous.