This man was an elder of a subordinate minor stockade within the White Bone Alliance, and his combat experience was exceedingly seasoned.
He lifted his head to sweep a glance at Lin Mu in midair, his gaze fixing briefly upon the semi-transparent green wings behind Lin Mu's back, and then, with exceeding decisiveness, he halted his steps toward the open ground.
His figure blurred.
He plunged directly into the dense stand of trees beside him!
"Courting death."
Lin Mu's eyes turned faintly cold; the green wings behind him surged, and he closed in, preparing to suppress and slay this White Bone clan elder.
However, his opponent was clearly exceedingly veteran in experience.
With a single glance he had seen through the Green Wing Gu's advantage of aerial control in open airspace, and he gave Lin Mu no opportunity whatsoever to grind him down from above, instead using thick, massive trees and boulders as natural cover, tightly restricting Lin Mu's dive and flight paths.
"Whoosh!"
Lin Mu controlled his green wings to sweep sideways, swiftly lowering his altitude. His fingertips twitched, and a dark golden Metal Sever Leaf turned into a streak of light that cut into the dense forest.
"Clang!"
A piercing clash of metal rang out.
That veteran clan elder had used a tree so thick it would take two men to encircle it to block this killing strike cleanly and neatly.
The Metal Sever Leaf cut the massive tree in half at its waist, but the old man had already shifted position in the instant the wood chips burst outward.
The next moment, several sharp bone spears shot out of the shadows of the canopy, tearing through the air, precisely anticipating where Lin Mu would halt among the trees!
"Guard!"
Lin Mu's pupils contracted slightly, and he instantly spread the Iron Curtain Gu before him.
BOOM—!!
The bone spears nailed themselves viciously into the black iron curtain of light. The immense impact force shuddered through the defense, pushing Lin Mu's entire body flying backward several zhang, smashing through several dense clusters of branches.
However, in the very instant the old man believed he had gained the upper hand and prepared to close in to unleash a chain of killer moves—
Lin Mu forcibly steadied himself in midair with the Green Wing Gu, and in his eyes there was not half a trace of panic, but rather a calm glinting like a cold pool.
He did not swing the Metal Sever Leaf again to clash head-on; instead his wrist flicked, and the Iron Chain Gu shot out thunderously once more!
But this time, the pitch-black iron chain was not fired at the enemy — rather, like a spirit snake coiling a tree, it wrapped tightly around an ancient ironwood beside the old man, one even thicker than the last!
"Retract!"
Lin Mu abruptly urged his Primeval Essence.
Drawing on the chain's pull and the green wings' force at once, Lin Mu's whole body shifted laterally in a sudden burst, instantly cutting out from between the narrow gaps of the trees at an angle utterly beyond the old man's expectations!
The old man's follow-up offensive struck empty air.
His murky pupils contracted violently.
"What?!"
Before he could turn his defense around, a dark golden gleam — deliberately compressed by Lin Mu to a mere inch in length, its sharpness condensed to the utmost extreme — had already passed like a phantom through the gaps in the leaves and pressed right up against his face!
Shrrk!
The bone shield he hastily summoned was pierced through in an instant, and the dark golden streak of light drove viciously in through his right eye and burst out through the back of his skull!
Thud.
That aged body, which had been radiating the pressure of a Rank 3 mere moments ago, stood rigid in place for half a breath, then, like a length of rotten wood, dropped heavily to its knees in the blood-soaked heap of fallen leaves, all life utterly extinguished.
Lin Mu landed lightly, his chest rising and falling slightly, a fine layer of sweat seeping from his temples.
To accomplish that highly difficult killing blow within such a narrow dense forest, nearly twenty percent of the Flowery Silver Primeval Essence in his aperture had been drained in an instant.
He strode quickly to the old man's corpse.
The man had died too abruptly; the two Gu worms deep within his aperture had not even had time to fully self-destruct before their host's death.
Lin Mu reached into the man's robes and forcibly drove out those two spoils of war, still clinging to remnant will, storing them temporarily within his aperture to be suppressed and tamed later.
However, before he could even regulate his breathing and recover—
Buzz! Buzz! Buzz!
The Sound Transmission Gu hanging at his waist suddenly shook violently.
A roar carrying a shrill sob and utter despair exploded from within the Gu worm:
"Southeast! The southeast is critical!!"
"The beast herds mixed with the White Bone army have torn through the second defensive line! Requesting clan elder support! Requesting clan elder support!!"
Lin Mu wiped the blood from his fingertips and lifted his head to look toward the rolling black smoke rising into the sky in the southeast.
He did not hesitate in the slightest. The pair of semi-transparent green wings behind his back spread violently once more, and his figure shot up from the ground, becoming a long green rainbow that hurtled once again into that even deeper vortex of blood.
...
By the time Lin Mu arrived at the southeastern region, that once lush key territory of the clan had already fallen utterly into a stretch of scorched asura earth.
However, this time, he no longer squandered his Primeval Essence freely as he had at the start.
Amid the continuous bloody battles, Lin Mu's combat technique and mental acuity were growing at a furious pace. He was gradually adapting to the rhythm of this bloody war.
Facing ordinary Rank 1 low-stage beast herds, he absolutely no longer channeled his expensive Flowery Silver Primeval Essence to expand the Metal Sever Leaf; instead he gripped that black staff of the Stick Insect Gu, hard as iron, and smashed beast skulls at close range with broad, unrestrained swings of raw physical strength.
Stray shots and hidden weapons he could evade by relying on the Green Wing Gu and his movement technique, he absolutely no longer casually spread the enormously costly Iron Curtain Gu to take head-on; and the incomparably precious Metal Sever Leaf Gu would only burst forth to reap in the instant he had locked onto an enemy core, or the throat and vitals of a Hundred Beast King!
Any battle he could resolve with one measure of strength, he would not waste half a bit more Primeval Essence on.
Because within this endless, ceaseless meat grinder, no one knew in which breath the next vicious battle would descend.
The war, in extreme bloodshed and chaos, was dragged out into a suffocating scroll painted in crimson.
The first night.
Lin Mu linked up with Punishment Hall's Clan Elder Kuang Xu, and the two led the remnants in a desperate defense of the strategic mountain path due east of Black Wind Ridge, slaughtering for a full four hours, until the sky brightened.
The corpses of savage beasts and humans lay layered upon one another, heaped nearly level with the stone walls of the fortifications.
His face covered in blood, Kuang Xu hacked off a wolf's head with one hand while roaring furiously at Lin Mu through a hoarse throat, telling him to go reinforce the breach on the flank.
Lin Mu could not even be bothered to waste the strength to answer. His wings beat violently and he flew once again toward another position ablaze with fire, straight into the rising remnant sun.
The afternoon of the second day.
Lin Mu hovered in midair, crushing a Primeval Stone in each hand, greedily absorbing the Primeval Essence.
The long robe on his body had long since been soaked with blood until it turned black and stiff, and his right arm bore a wound so deep the bone was visible — but fortunately, Lin Cang had specially provisioned these clan elders with Rank 3 wound-healing Gu worms on a temporary basis, allowing Lin Mu to receive timely treatment.
He did not even have time to return to the mountain stockade. Having just received the signal of an attack on the western side, he forcibly wrenched his body around in the air and charged into the clouds once more.
That same day, on the main battlefield facing Black Blood Stockade.
Patriarch Lin Cang was drenched in blood from head to foot, his Rank 4 Primeval Essence roaring like furious billows. Alone, he had blocked head-on a rampaging Thousand Beast King along with the heaven-blanketing charge of the beast herd, and with nothing but a pair of iron fists he had nailed that nearly collapsed breach back into place.
But Lin Cang was only one man.
He had just stabilized the front when the White Bone Alliance's flanking army launched another savage assault. The despair of tearing down the east wall to patch the west spread through the heart of every defender.
Evening of the third day.
A Black Blood Stockade squad tasked with transporting strategic Gu materials went completely out of contact.
When Lin Mu followed the stench of blood to that remote valley, all that met his eyes were five ruined corpses, gnawed incomplete by savage beasts.
The face of one of those corpses was still faintly recognizable. Lin Mu vaguely recalled that a few days ago, in the corridor of the mountain stockade, this child had bowed to him with eyes full of reverence and called out, "Clan Elder Lin Mu."
Lin Mu paused beside that mangled body for the space of a single short breath.
The Sound Transmission Gu at his waist lit up shrilly once more.
Expressionlessly, he turned around, spread his green wings, and once again became a long rainbow shooting into the sky.
And at the other end of the mountain ranges, the White Bone Alliance's main camp likewise had corpses piled like mountains.
A clan elder of a minor stockade, watching his own direct bloodline killed and wounded to the last, knelt before Li Mang with his heart and gall shattered, attempting to withdraw his troops.
However, Li Mang merely slammed the Bone Spine Scepter in his hand down hard, expressionless, and chilling bone spikes instantly burst up from underground, skewering that clan elder and nailing him dead on the spot before the command tent.
"Keep pressing."
"Black Blood Stockade has not yet bled its last drop. Whoever dares retreat half a step, his entire clan is exterminated!"
The two powers had now become utterly like two mad beasts locked onto each other's throats, refusing to let go unto death, madly contesting who could drain the last drop of blood from the other's body.
...
The fourth day, at dawn.
Days of unceasing slaughter had left thick dark clouds permeating the sky above the whole of Black Wind Ridge, and the acrid stench of scorched flesh would not disperse for anything.
Whether Black Blood Stockade's defenders or the White Bone Alliance's offensive, under four straight days and nights of high-intensity, frenzied slaughter, every man had grown weary to the absolute limit of mental collapse.
And within this utterly brutal deadlock— a figure suddenly plummeted staggering from high altitude!
Bang!
It was a Gu Master responsible for long-range reconnaissance; the flight Gu worm on his back had already burst apart completely.
His entire body crashed down onto the open ground before the great deliberation hall like a kite with its string cut, dragging a long trail of blood across the earth.
Several clan elders immediately gathered around.
That scouting Gu Master's face was ghastly pale, without half a trace of color, his chest heaving violently, blood surging endlessly from his mouth.
He clung desperately to his last breath.
"Three…"
The scouting Gu Master's bloodshot eyes went wide, and using the last of his strength he let out a despairing, hoarse scream:
"Deep in the mountains…"
"A full three Thousand Beast Kings have appeared!!"