Azure Cloud Sect's border region.
High above a vast, continuous stretch of primeval forest where no human foot had trodden in years.
A massive raptor with a wingspan approaching four meters rode the warm afternoon thermals in lazy, contented circles.
This was a Galewind Demon Eagle—a peak Qi Condensation demonic beast of fearsome reputation.
Its dark teal feathers were hard as tempered steel, and the talons that hung beneath it could tear a tiger or leopard apart with casual ease.
It was the absolute aerial sovereign of this entire stretch of wilderness.
Within its airspace, nothing with wings dared challenge its majesty.
At this moment, the lord of the air was sweeping its peerlessly sharp gaze across its territory, selecting today's generous lunch.
Suddenly, its eyes cut through the layered canopy below and locked onto a trembling grayish-white furball huddled in the undergrowth.
A young, recently matured low-tier Giant-Tooth Rabbit.
SCREEE—!
The Galewind Demon Eagle let out a long shriek that could split stone.
It snapped its wings shut and dropped—its enormous body falling like a fighter jet that had lost power.
Carrying a vicious, air-tearing shriek, it plummeted toward the ground with the speed of a thunderbolt!
Wind howled. Leaves tore free and scattered in all directions.
Before the unfortunate rabbit could even process what was happening...
Two talons forged of what felt like solid steel punched through its hide and locked it in an iron grip of hooked spurs.
A perfect hunt.
The Galewind Demon Eagle let out a short, satisfied cry.
It spread its broad wings again, clutching the half-dead, still-bleeding rabbit, and wobbled upward.
Swaggering through the air with the easy arrogance of a creature that had never once been challenged, preparing to fly back to its bone-littered nest on the cliff face.
Time to properly enjoy a fresh, tender lunch.
However.
Just as the aerial sovereign was drifting home with its "takeout" order, humming to itself in contentment (if eagles could hum) and immersing itself in pleasure.
It noticed something.
The airflow on its right side felt slightly... off.
Like an unreasonably large truck had suddenly merged onto a highway that had always belonged exclusively to itself.
The Galewind Demon Eagle turned its great head with mild irritation and confusion.
The next instant—
Something ignited in those razor-sharp eagle eyes that this raptor had never experienced in its entire life.
A horrifying light that threatened to cause its bird-brain to completely blue-screen.
Less than three meters away, hovering in open air—
A human.
A two-legged beast with no flying sword beneath his feet—and a pair of semi-transparent, spectral blue feathered wings spread behind his back.
The human was flying alongside it at a completely unhurried, almost lazily casual pace.
Arms folded across his chest, he was gliding in perfect parallel formation as if this were the most natural thing in the world.
...Guh?
A deeply undignified, comical squawk escaped the eagle's throat.
Before its limited brain capacity could finish processing what kind of reality-defying, common-sense-breaking aberration it was looking at—
The human moved.
With the casual ease of someone palming a cabbage off a familiar market stall, the human reached out one hand and grabbed the Giant-Tooth Rabbit by the ear—right out of the eagle's talons.
"Excuse me, coming through. This rabbit's mine now."
Words it couldn't understand.
Then a lazy flick of the wrist, and an absolutely unreasonable amount of force transferred through the grip...
And the rabbit was simply gone, wrenched clean out of its proudest, most reliable talons.
Aerial robbery! In broad daylight!
And after stealing the food, the human didn't even bother to accelerate and flee.
He hung there, dangling the half-dead rabbit from one hand, turned his head, and gestured at the eagle with the other.
A slow, deliberate, utterly provocative wave—a bad-boy smirk plastered across his face.
How the fuck is this tolerable?!
After a beat of stunned paralysis, the Galewind Demon Eagle instantly entered a berserk state!
As the absolute peak Qi Condensation sovereign of this entire region, no living creature had ever dared challenge its air superiority in the sky!
Let alone steal its lunch right to its face!
SCREEE!!!
The eagle's shriek was a sound of pure, murderous fury.
Its eyes gleamed with ferocity as its wings beat violently.
The ambient spiritual energy in the surrounding air went berserk—condensing into over a dozen wind blades crackling with cold teal light.
It hurled them in an overwhelming, all-encompassing storm directly at Mo Fan's silhouette!
"Bit of a temper on this one."
Faced with a wind blade storm that could reduce a late-stage Qi Condensation cultivator to ribbons in seconds, Mo Fan didn't retreat a single inch.
If anything, the look in his eyes sharpened into something eager.
He'd been flying for a full day and night, crossing mountains and valleys to reach Azure Cloud Sect's border. His hands had been itching unbearably for a while now.
This blind little hawk would do perfectly as a live touchstone to test his Tier-2 combat power!
"[ Death Vision ]. On."
Mo Fan shouted softly in his heart.
Hum—!
The precise, dynamic data-grid unfurled across his retina instantly.
Under LV. 2 [ Death Vision ], the dozen-odd wind blades—originally fast enough to be nearly invisible to the naked eye—had their trajectories broken down and slowed in Mo Fan's perception with crystalline clarity!
His reaction window and dodging space expanded dramatically.
The ghostly blue [ Floating Soul Wings ] behind him gave a single light beat.
Mo Fan moved through the dense wind-blade net like a weightless falling leaf—his body twisting through the gaps in a fluid, incredibly bizarre series of angles.
Slash. Slash.
Two blades he couldn't fully avoid caught him—one at the shoulder, one along the ribs.
But he'd already calculated for that.
"[ Bone Armament ]."
A flash of blue light. A layer of ferocious, heavy white bone mecha snapped into place over both impact points in an instant.
BANG. BANG.
Two muffled impacts.
Wind blades that could cut through metal and stone struck the LV. 2 bone armor—and left only two shallow white scratches before shattering explosively.
They couldn't even shake Mo Fan's mid-air flight posture by a single degree!
Dimensional strike!
"Defense test: passed. Time for offense."
That playful smirk on the corner of Mo Fan's mouth instantly turned into cold killing intent.
He drove his soul wings back in one violent beat, his speed skyrocketing.
Instead of retreating, he shot forward like a blue meteor—crashing directly into the Galewind Demon Eagle's close-combat range!
His left hand clenched viciously at the empty air.
"[ Grave Chill ]!"
A burst of extremely cold, pure death-qi ignored the distance between them and dead-locked onto the eagle's massive frame.
Gah?!
The Demon Eagle let out a terrified, mournful cry.
The joints of its wings—those wings that had always moved like the wind itself—instantly frosted over with a thick layer of gray ice.
Necrotic nerve stiffness caused its proud speed to plummet off a cliff!
Stripped of its speed advantage and air superiority, the aerial sovereign was thoroughly reduced to a clumsy, large flying target.
"It's over."
Mo Fan pressed in close.
His iron fists, wrapped in bone mecha and driven by terrifying blood-qi power, smashed ruthlessly onto the eagle's skull.
In the middle of the fight, he was pleasantly surprised to discover something.
Benefiting from his Soul Strength, the soul wings on his back were extremely condensed, responding to his intent as effortlessly as moving his own arms.
And his perverted, doubled Mana pool gave him an incredibly terrifying sustain capability.
Even engaging in this kind of intense spellcasting and close-quarters dogfight at an altitude of thousands of meters, he didn't feel the slightest bit of Mana depletion.
He even had the leisure to throw in a few high-difficulty mid-air directional shifts just to see if he could!
Crack.
A heavy, powerful whip kick with his full weight behind it snapped the eagle's prized talons clean off.
No suspense. No drama.
This peak Qi Condensation Galewind Demon Eagle—sovereign of this primeval forest for years, utterly undefeated...
It was unilaterally pummeled to death alive in open sky, thousands of meters up, in a fight that looked less like a battle and more like someone working out on a punching bag!
Thud.
The massive eagle corpse, all life gone from it, dropped toward the ground like a meteorite.
Mo Fan let his Mana settle. The ghostly blue soul wings behind him beat slowly, steadily.
Left hand holding the completely dead Galewind Demon Eagle.
Right hand still steadily gripping the Giant-Tooth Rabbit, which had fainted and was foaming at the mouth from sheer terror.
In a cool mountain breeze, he descended slowly onto a towering outcropping of rock at the edge of the jungle like a dark god touching down from the heavens.
Fight over.
He retracted the soul wings behind his back and slowly raised his head.
His gaze crossed the vast sea of forest and settled quietly on the peaks of Azure Cloud Sect rising in the distance—soaring into the clouds, wreathed in immortal mist.
The cool breeze moved through his cyan robes, now spotted with a few drops of beast blood, making the hem snap and flutter.
From the day he'd left for Linshui Village looking for a breakthrough opportunity to right now—it had actually only been a short week.
Just seven days.
However.
Looking at the familiar outline of Azure Cloud Sect's mountain-guarding grand array, a trace of indescribable, profound weight flashed through Mo Fan's eyes.
In just that one short week, both his strength and his state of mind had completely shed their old skins.
Standing here on this familiar border ridge. He felt, strangely and completely, like he was looking at a world he had left behind a lifetime ago.