For one terrible moment, the forest stood still.
Then Shen Zhenhai, rather the thing that had once been Shen, opened its blackened eyes, and the world itself seemed to recoil.
He raised his arms slowly, the tendons crackling beneath stretched skin, and flexed his clawed fingers with an audible snap. A slow, delighted breath escaped his cracked lips, as if tasting air for the first time in eons.
"Ahhhh…" the voice that emerged was no longer Shen's. It was deeper, layered with gravel and ash, like multiple voices speaking in unison. A voice that sounded as though it had echoed from the bottom of a pit dug in the bones of the world.
"It feels… good to be free again."
Dark Qi rippled around him like a second skin—sanguine, corrupted, alive. It formed twisting tendrils that lashed and coiled in the air around him, each one dripping with spiritual venom. The ground under his feet turned black, plants withering, stones cracking.
Kai stepped protectively in front of Yin, blade drawn, his eyes narrowed. "Who are you?"
The creature tilted its head, neck cracking sharply. "I am hunger. I am fire in the veins. I am the thirst that drove men mad during the Crimson Cataclysm."
It flexed its shoulders, and the last traces of Shen Zhenhai's composure vanished entirely. His flesh pulsed with veins like thorns, his skin rippling as though something beneath it still writhed.
"I am the Blood Demon and this vessel… is mine."
Yin's heart slammed in her chest. She had read of the Blood Demon in ancient scrolls—an ancient spirit of malice born during the darkest era of cultivation, said to have consumed entire sects for sport. It had taken five guardians to bind it to a void realm. And now it stood before them, breathing through the shattered shell of her former master.
Without warning, the demon raised one hand and clenched it into a fist.
The air exploded.
A crimson shockwave burst outward, distorting space itself. Trees cracked and twisted as if writhing in agony. Stones lifted off the ground, pulled upward by the unnatural current of demonic Qi before bursting into shards. The ground fractured under the pressure.
Kai, Yin and Han were blown backward, their auras flaring just in time to keep them from being torn apart. They landed heavily across the plateau, coughing, bodies battered.
"He's not just possessed," Yin gasped, struggling to rise. "He's… integrating with the demon."
"He's using Shen's cultivation as a foundation," Kai growled. "No mortal body should survive this. But Shen… the pill that he took must have reinforced his body for this."
Han helped Meng Yao retreat to the edge of the battlefield. She was still dazed, barely able to stand. "Go. Hide. Don't come out unless I call."
Her eyes were wide with horror. "Please be careful."
The Blood Demon stepped forward, each movement oddly fluid, inhuman. Where Shen had been a man burning with corrupted ambition, this creature was pure instinct, like an apex predator who had grown bored of hiding.
Kai struck first. He vanished in a silver blur, his sword igniting with refined Metal Qi. A flurry of strikes rained down upon the demon in a perfect pattern—he aimed for the meridian lines, the dantian, the temples.
But the demon didn't block.
He let the blade strike his shoulder, then caught the sword with one hand.
Kai's eyes widened.
The Blood Demon smiled.
"You're fast. But not fast enough."
A shockwave of blood Qi exploded from his palm, launching Kai across the clearing. He struck a boulder hard, coughing blood as cracks webbed across the stone.
Yin moved next.
The Peerless Sword danced with radiant energy, slicing through the thick miasma of demonic Qi. Her strikes carved glowing paths through the air, her footwork precise, elegant, devastating.
The demon countered with sheer dominance.
He raised a wall of condensed blood Qi, and Yin's blade sank into it—but didn't pass through. The wall absorbed the impact and reflected the energy back. A lance of Qi erupted, slamming into Yin's side and sending her crashing through a broken tree.
She gritted her teeth and forced herself up, spitting blood.
Han shouted a battle cry, unleashing his bestial form—a spectral tiger burst from his back, roaring as it charged. He leapt into the air, claws glowing with essence. The beast clawed toward the demon's head.
The demon's gaze didn't even move. With a flick of his wrist, he caught Han mid-air and slammed him into the ground with such force that the earth cratered beneath them.
Han coughed violently. "What… is he?"
"I am evolution," the Blood Demon hissed. "Refined by rage. Perfected by agony."
He reached out a hand and demonic Qi responded. Dark energy rose and formed into fanged serpents that struck out at the three simultaneously.
Kai intercepted one with a spinning counter, his blade igniting in response. Yin brought her palm up and sent a radiant pulse outward—Sunlight Bloom, her mother's technique banishing two of the serpents.
Han grabbed the third one mid-strike and crushed it, his hands burning.
But the Blood Demon was already behind them.
He moved with unnatural speed, appearing as a blur of crimson, and struck all three at once with a twisting motion of his arms. The impact sent a thunderous wave through the forest, flattening trees in a fifty-meter radius.
The trio collapsed again, panting, wounded, dazed.
Yin's limbs trembled as she pushed herself up. "He's too strong. Every attack we make—he adapts."
"He's not just stronger than Shen," Kai said, eyes burning. "He remembers how we fight. He's learned from Shen's memories."
Han clenched his fists, eyes flashing. "Then we need to change the rhythm."
"No," Yin said quietly.
They both turned to her.
She lowered her head. "We're not going to win this. Not like this."
Kai looked at her sharply. "We don't have a choice."
"No," she whispered, eyes locked on the Blood Demon, who was now slowly approaching. "We need to stall him. Long enough for him to burn through Shen's core."
Kai frowned. "You think this form isn't sustainable?"
"Demonic possession demands a soul to fuel it. Shen's soul is still inside—but it's weakening. The more the Blood Demon draws on this power, the more unstable he becomes."
Han groaned as he stood, wiping blood from his mouth.
The Blood Demon raised both hands, and the very sky began to bleed.
Clouds swirled crimson. A ring of blood-red lightning crackled overhead. The temperature dropped, and the smell of rot filled their lungs. The demon's body pulsed with a second wave of Qi, even more vile than the first.
"I tire of these dances," the Blood Demon growled. "You resist well. But resistance only sharpens the flavor."
He slammed both fists into the earth.
A pillar of bloodfire exploded beneath the trio, a cataclysmic eruption of Qi that tore stone from the earth and split trees into flaming fragments. The shockwave roared outward like a tidal wave of crimson lightning, meant to obliterate anything it touched.