The terrifying howl vibrated through the dense, fog-laden expanse of Moonleaf Valley, carrying a heavy, ancient weight that seemed to compress the very air.
In an instant, the ecstatic, greedy smiles plastered across the faces of the hunting party shattered into nonexistence.
Chen Hu’s boisterous laughter cut off mid-breath as if a spectral hand had clamped down on his throat, and the Liu twins froze stiffly over the carcasses they were dismantling, their skin rapidly draining of all colour.
Even Old Zhao, who had been heavily resting his exhausted frame against an ancient root, forced his trembling limbs to push his body off the ground.
The entire clearing fell into a deathly, absolute silence—a stillness so absolute and suffocating that Shen Jietian could hear the frantic, rhythmic pounding of his own pulse echoing in his ears.
Thump.
Thump.
Thump.
Nobody dared to utter a single word; nobody dared to shift their posture by even a hair’s breadth.
The chilling sound had originated from the uncharted, dark depths further within the inner valley, but something about its acoustic resonance felt deeply, fundamentally wrong.
It lacked the raw, unbridled savagery characteristic of a standard feral beast’s battle cry.
Instead, the tone carried a cold, calculated cadence.
It sounded like an authoritative warning—a proclamation of absolute sovereignty.
Before their frantic minds could fully analyse the implications, the thick bushes directly ahead began to rustle violently.
Everyone instinctively snapped their heads toward the disturbance; their weapons raised in sheer panic.
Slowly emerging from the shifting mists was a massive gray wolf.
Its physical dimensions were immense, its bulk easily matching the Fifth Layer wolf leader they had painstakingly decapitated mere moments ago.
But before a single cultivator could formulate a reaction to this newcomer, another identical shadow stepped into the clearing.
Then, a third massive form materialized beside it.
Shen Jietian’s breathing grew heavy and shallow as his mind instantly calculated the collective spiritual pressure.
Three wolves…
and each one is radiating the distinct, dense spiritual fluctuation of a Middle Qi Refinement beast.
This meant they were facing three separate creatures at the Fourth or Fifth Layer of Qi Refinement simultaneously.
To an exhausted party whose talismans were depleted and whose primary powerhouse was internally injured, this unexpected development alone was more than enough to tip the scales from a successful harvest to a catastrophic wipeout.
But the nightmare was only just beginning.
From the absolute darkness behind the trio of guardians, a fourth figure slowly and deliberately stepped into the fractured moonlight.
The very moment Shen Jietian’s eyes locked onto this entity, a violent jolt of primal terror shot through his nervous system, causing every single hair on his body to stand completely on end.
It was a wolf, yet it defied all standard biological classifications of its species.
Its dense, pristine coat was completely devoid of the typical grey or silver pigmentation; it was a pure, blinding white, resembling freshly fallen mountain snow.
Interestingly, its physical frame wasn’t monstrously large; in fact, it was slightly more compact than the deceased Fifth Layer alpha lying in the dirt.
Yet, the moment its paws touched the mossy earth, the three massive Middle Qi Refinement guardians instantly lowered their heads, tucking their tails in a display of absolute, unyielding subservience.
It was a king receiving the deference of its court.
As the white wolf slowly glided forward, a palpable, invisible aura of pure spiritual pressure rippled outward from its frame, sweeping across the entire clearing like a heavy tide.
Old Zhao’s pupils contracted violently to the size of needle pins, his breath hitching as his entire face turned a ghastly, translucent white.
His seasoned mind was suddenly assaulted by a vivid, traumatic memory from five years prior—a disastrous hunting expedition involving six capable loose cultivators who had foolishly crossed paths with a single Late Qi Refinement spiritual beast.
On that horrific day, only two people had managed to crawl back to Black Mist City alive.
The suffocating weight currently crushing down on his lungs, the absolute paralysis of his senses, and the overwhelming, undeniable certainty of impending doom—it was all exactly the same.
Late-stage Qi Refinement…
Old Zhao’s mind screamed in absolute despair.
This beast wasn’t a standard alpha; it was a localized king, firmly established at the Seventh, Eighth, or perhaps even the Ninth Layer of Qi Refinement.
It was an entity that had successfully refined its vocal cords and cognitive pathways, existing entirely beyond anything their pathetic, low-tier party could ever hope to oppose.
The rest of the group quickly noticed the sudden, catatonic horror locking up their leader’s features.
Old Zhao was their structural anchor—the strongest, most experienced, and consistently calmest individual among them.
If a Fifth Layer powerhouse looked at an incoming opponent and completely lost the will to fight, it meant only one thing: the situation was completely, utterly hopeless.
The white wolf continued its unhurried advance, its piercing, ice-blue eyes slowly sweeping across the carnage of the clearing.
It looked at the mangled, skinned corpses of its subordinates.
It looked at the dark pools of spiritual blood soaking into the roots.
Finally, its gaze drifted upward, locking onto the five trembling cultivators standing frozen in the mist.
Its gaze was remarkably calm—far too calm for a wild predator.
As those blue eyes briefly lingered on Shen Jietian’s face, the young man felt a chilling sensation wash over his soul.
It didn’t feel like he was being eyed as potential meat by a ravenous beast; it felt like he was being thoroughly examined, weighed, and judged by an intelligent consciousness.
There was no chaotic, bloodthirsty madness in those eyes, only a cold, judicial intelligence.
The realization made his scalp go completely numb with horror.
A beast possessing human-like cognitive awareness…
No, this was absolutely not the time to indulge in abstract analytical speculation.
His survival instincts, honed by seven years of scraping through the absolute margins of existence, violently reasserted themselves, screaming a single, frantic command: Run!
Shen Jietian abruptly pushed off his heels, throwing his weight backward.
Almost simultaneously, the exact same breaking point was reached by the rest of the party.
Without a single word spoken, without a tactical command issued, and without a backward glance, the carefully constructed illusion of group unity shattered instantly.
Everyone simply spun on their heels and bolted into the dark woods.
The meticulously planned ambush, the valuable harvested resources, the pristine silver hides, and the hard-won wolf carcasses—all of it was completely abandoned in a fraction of a second.
In the face of an absolute, late-stage existential threat, none of those materialistic goals mattered anymore.
Spiritual resources were completely meaningless if one didn’t possess a life to consume them.
Jagged branches and thorny brambles whipped violently against Shen Jietian’s face as he sprinted blindly through the pitch-black forest, his legs pumping with manic energy.
His heart pounded wildly against his ribs like a trapped bird, the vivid image of those judging blue eyes permanently burned into his retinas.
With every stride he took, he braced his ears, fully expecting to hear the terrifying sound of heavy paws shredding the undergrowth right behind him.
Yet, strangely enough, several seconds passed, and no sound of pursuit manifested.
No ferocious growls echoed, and no sudden ambush cut off his escape path.
This unnatural, heavy silence was somehow infinitely more terrifying than an active chase; it felt as though the predator was merely playing with its food, allowing them to exhaust themselves before delivering the final strike.
Then—
A low, resonant howl erupted from the clearing behind them.
This particular vocalization was vastly different from the first.
It carried a strange, ultrasonic frequency that bypassed physical space entirely, piercing directly into the spiritual consciousness of the fleeing cultivators.
The moment the sound waves slammed into his mind, Shen Jietian’s body froze rigidly against his will.
His legs suddenly turned as weak as water, the spiritual energy circulating through his Third Layer meridians becoming completely sluggish and unresponsive under the sheer weight of the beast’s spiritual pressure.
An overwhelming, paralyzing waves of existential dread surged from the absolute depths of his soul, causing his breathing to turn into a ragged, desperate gasp.
Move…
please, just move!
his mind screamed frantically, attempting to force energy into his limbs.
But his physical shell completely refused to obey his commands.
For a horrific, brief moment, it felt as though the cold hand of death itself had firmly clamped down on his shoulders, anchoring him to the spot.
Suddenly—
Bam!
A massive, violent concussive force slammed brutally into his left side.
The sheer momentum of the impact completely shattered his fragile balance, sending his body flying sideways before he crashed heavily onto the hard, root-choked ground.
A sharp, white-hot explosion of pain flared through his shoulder as his vision spun out of control, dark mud filling his mouth.
Before he could even process the disorientation to look up, a familiar, desperate figure rushed right past his fallen form without a single microsecond of hesitation.
It was Old Zhao.
The old cultivator didn’t even bother to glance down at the youth he had just violently body-checked into the dirt.
Drawing upon a hidden reserve of compressed spiritual energy, the veteran had deliberately shoved Shen Jietian into the path of danger, using the boy’s prone body to create a physical obstacle—a shield, a sacrificial bait to delay the white wolf’s advance by a few precious seconds while he made his own clean escape.
Shen Jietian stared blankly at the rapidly receding back of the old man, his mind momentarily failing to comprehend the sheer magnitude of the betrayal.
Then, cold, harsh reality struck his consciousness like a thunderbolt.
Old Zhao hadn’t just abandoned him in the chaos.
He had actively, intentionally sacrificed him to save his own skin.
A massive wave of profound disbelief washed over his mind, quickly superseded by a burning, incandescent surge of rage, which was then instantly swallowed whole by pure, unadulterated terror.
The persistent, paranoid concern he had harboured for years about the fundamental reliability of makeshift cultivation partners had just manifested in its ugliest, most lethal form.
Resources, spirit stones, loot, unyielding oaths of mutual assistance—in the cutthroat realm of rogue cultivators, every single one of those concepts was utterly meaningless the very moment survival became a zero-sum game.
The Liu twins were completely gone, having fled down a western ravine.
Chen Hu had vanished into the eastern thickets.
Old Zhao was sprinting toward the valley exit.
Everyone had chosen their own selfish vector of escape, completely abandoning everyone else to the jaws of the king.
Shen Jietian was left entirely alone.
Completely, utterly alone in the dark.
A soft, methodical rustling sound began to echo from the brush just behind his head.
Slowly, almost mechanically, like a wooden puppet whose strings were being pulled by fate, Shen Jietian turned his head toward the noise.
Emerging from the fog, the white wolf was calmly approaching his position.
Step.
Step.
Step.
Its physical movements were remarkably unhurried, perfectly fluid, and dripping with an absolute, terrifying level of confidence.
It moved with the slow grace of an apex executioner who already knew the definitive outcome of the hunt, completely unbothered by the concept of its prey running away.
Shen Jietian’s face turned an ash-grey colour, his fingers trembling violently as his breathing grew completely chaotic.
This is it, his mind whispered, a strange numbness settling over him.
This was real death.
Not the abstract, romanticized concept of mortality that loose cultivators casually joked about over cheap wine in the city tea houses; not the distant tragedy hidden behind the numbers of guild reports.
This was raw, immediate, and absolute cessation of life, standing a mere two paces away from his chest.
The white wolf came to a smooth halt just a few meters from his prone body, its piercing blue eyes boring directly into his trembling pupils.
Shen Jietian’s body completely locked up under the overwhelming weight of the beast’s localized spiritual pressure.
He found himself utterly incapable of movement, incapable of speech, and incapable of even drawing a clean lungful of air.
Slowly, the wolf king lowered its head, its pristine white muzzle hovering just inches away from his face.
It sniffed him.
Once.
Twice.
Its damp nose lingered deliberately near the thick, metallic scent of fresh blood coating his torn sleeves—the unmistakable spiritual scent of the subordinate wolves he had actively helped slaughter in the clearing.
Shen Jietian’s heart sank into an abyss of absolute despair.
It knows, he realized with absolute certainty.
It knows exactly what my hands have done.
A faint, dangerous flicker of intent manifested deep within the beast’s intelligent blue eyes.
It wasn’t the chaotic, ravenous rage of a mindless animal; it was something infinitely colder, calculated, and terrifying.
It was the solemn recognition of a blood debt.
But then, just as the white wolf bared a sliver of its translucent, ivory fangs to rip his throat out, its ears suddenly twitched with violent precision.
Abruptly lifting its head away from the youth, the wolf king snapped its gaze toward the dense eastern forest line—directly toward the exact coordinates where the wounded, heavily breathing Old Zhao had fled.
The magnificent beast remained completely motionless for a fraction of a second, its eyes narrowing into two dangerous slits as it detected the heavy spiritual fluctuations of the old man’s escape technique.
The very next millisecond—
The white wolf completely vanished from sight.
A sharp, violent gust of wind tore through the clearing as a mere blur of white light shot through the ancient trees, obliterating the brush in its wake.
The three massive Middle Qi Refinement guardian wolves immediately followed their king, leaping into the darkness like grey arrows.
Within a matter of moments, the immediate forest became entirely empty, the suffocating spiritual pressure evaporating into the night air.
Only Shen Jietian remained, lying broken, bruised, and violently shaking in the mud.
His wide, bloodshot eyes remained frozen, staring fixedly at the dark path where the white wolf had vanished—the exact path where Old Zhao had run.
As the frantic adrenaline slowly began to recede from his system, a terrible, profound realization slowly formulated within his analytical mind.
The white wolf king hadn’t spared his life out of mercy or ignorance.
It had simply parsed the spiritual residue of the battlefield and identified the far more powerful, far more destructive culprit responsible for the actual execution of its pack leader.
It had merely prioritized the high-value target first.
End of Chapter 4
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