The Blood-Marked Giant Demon Rat

Inside the Earth Sacred Spring, a young man in a cheap black street-market shirt sat with deliberate stillness, his face cycling between flashes of excitement and furrowed concentration.

Cultivation, like studying, was a long and tedious business — Mo Fan had learned that better than most. But for the sake of his future as an incredible Mage, he was prepared to endure every slow, grinding hour.

*Hard to say how many days have passed. But I can feel it — I'm nearly at the threshold.*

Mo Fan had withdrawn from Meditation and was taking stock. The most fundamental difference between Basic-Level and Intermediate-Level was the transformation of Stardust in the Inner World into a Star Nebula.

These days had felt like training with an experience multiplier set to maximum. Mo Fan had been meditating like a man possessed. His practice hours had always been double those of his peers to begin with, and now, with the Earth Sacred Spring's warmth sustaining him, he had pushed to nearly twenty-four hours of uninterrupted Meditation per day.

Meditation remained the single greatest driver of Stardust growth, and Mo Fan could feel the difference clearly. Before, the higher-level Star Nebula had been something distant and abstract — a concept he understood in principle but couldn't sense. Now, his Stardust had begun to radiate light in rhythmic pulses, swelling and dimming like a heartbeat, and Mo Fan felt with growing certainty the unmistakable sign of an approaching breakthrough.

His Stardust had always been stable before. Now it wore a strange, aurora-like shell of light. After days of relentless Meditation, it had taken on a palpable restlessness — like a living thing coiled inside an egg, pressing urgently against the membrane that confined it.

Every surge in radiance was the Stardust hurling itself at that barrier; every dimming was it drawing breath, gathering strength for the next assault.

Lightning Element had been Mo Fan's first awakening, and the Lightning Stardust was feeling it most acutely. Its drive to break free was almost impatient — even the Star Motes themselves seemed different now, visibly changed in ways he couldn't quite name.

*Still not enough. Keep meditating. Let the Stardust grow stronger — then it'll have a real shot at breaking through into a Star Nebula.*

Mo Fan allowed himself a brief rest, then steeled himself to push for the breakthrough again.

Then —

A deep **hmmm** resonated through the chamber. A violent tremor rolled in from every direction at once.

Mo Fan's eyes snapped open. The walls around him were shaking.

*What the — is this an earthquake??*

He got to his feet and crossed to the sealed door, pressing his ear against the stone to listen for any sound from outside.

Before he could hear a thing, the specially enchanted door began to swing slowly open on its own.

"A week already? That was fast," Mo Fan said, caught off guard.

The door swung wide — and what met him stopped him in his tracks.

A woman in a milk-white uniform sprinted through the opening. Behind her, the entire underground hall was drenched in fresh blood.

Guards lay scattered everywhere, their bodies torn into pieces. Blood clots and viscera floated in dark pools across the floor. Mo Fan stood frozen, unable to process the sight.

Corpses. So many corpses.

What had happened to the Earth Sacred Spring's guards? How had they ended up like this?

"Captain Liang!!" the woman in white shouted.

Her voice hadn't even faded before Mo Fan saw it — on the far side of the hall, Intermediate-Level Mage Guard Captain Liang was flung through the air like a sandbag and smashed straight into a stone pillar. The pillar snapped in two at the impact. Fortunately, a layer of Water Domain still clung to him like a shell; without that protection, the collision would have been lethal.

*What in the world happened here??*

Ice shot through Mo Fan's chest. Something could throw an Intermediate-Level Mage around like a ragdoll.

He stepped to the side — and finally saw the half of the hall that the stone door had been blocking.

His scalp prickled.

Standing there was a creature the size of a small truck.

Its neck and head merged into a single indistinguishable mass, but the giant rat silhouette was unmistakable. Unlike any Giant-Eyed Ape-Rat Mo Fan had encountered before, this one was covered from head to tail in savage blood markings — twisted, dense, crawling across every inch of its body. They transformed something already monstrous into something that felt almost beyond classification.

Mo Fan had spent a year in the demon-hunting squad without ever seeing a body like this, never seen a Giant-Eyed Ape-Rat wrapped in blood markings. The aura rolling off it reached into his bones and turned them cold.

"This... this is a Blood-Marked Giant Demon Rat!!"

Mo Fan dredged up everything he'd ever absorbed in Demon-Beast Studies class and finally put a name to the thing.

*God, the textbook illustration almost looked comical. Standing in front of the real thing? Completely different story.*

Why was something like this inside the underground hall? Had it killed all the guards?

**"Grk-grk-grk!!!!!"**

The Blood-Marked Giant Demon Rat seemed to catch the Earth Sacred Spring's scent. Its enormous lantern-like eyes swept the hall and locked onto Mo Fan and the female guard.

Its claws pressed into the stone floor tiles with effortless ease, sinking in deep. Mo Fan could feel the creature coiling itself — like a truck engine winding up to full throttle.

"Close the door!!" Guard Captain Liang shouted from the rubble.

Lin Yuxin had bitten clean through her own lip, but she threw herself at the sealed door and slammed her palm against it.

The enchanted doors on both sides crashed shut. In the final sliver of space before they sealed, Mo Fan caught a glimpse of the Blood-Marked Giant Demon Rat's claw thrusting through the gap. He lurched back on pure reflex.

*Too fast.*

The enchanted door was already closing at its maximum speed — yet this creature, a clear thirty to forty meters away, had crossed that distance in a single blink.

**BOOM!!**

The stone door shuddered with a single bone-deep crash. The Blood-Marked Giant Demon Rat had slammed straight into it.

Lin Yuxin's face had gone pale. She looked at the student who had been cultivating inside this whole time.

"What happened?" Mo Fan asked, his heart still hammering.

*That was too close. One second later on that door and we're both dead.* This Blood-Marked Giant Demon Rat was several times more dangerous than the half-advanced One-Eyed Demon Wolf had been. A Basic-Level Mage had no business fighting something like this.

"If you don't want to die in here, follow me." Lin Yuxin had no patience for explanations.

All of Bo City had fallen into crisis. The underground passages were swarming with Demon-Beasts — they had moved as if coordinated, as if planned, launching a frenzied assault on the Earth Sacred Spring from every direction at once.

Above ground, every available Mage was fighting to hold back the invasion. Down here, the spring had already been hit by a surprise attack. Reinforcements were impossible. For now, it was down to the two of them alone to hold the line.