The "moonlight" of the Death Night realm was a cruel, pale luminescence that offered no warmth, only clarity to the carnage.
The moment the stone tablets turned to dust in the Elders' palms and they vanished into thin air, the atmosphere didn't just change—it curdled. The silence lasted for only a heartbeat before a wave of pure, unadulterated bloodlust crashed over the four hundred gathered cultivators. It was a physical pressure, a cold hand squeezing every heart, whispering of an ancient, starving malice that had lived in this darkness long before they arrived.
Raikai was the first to snap. His serpent-like pupils constricted as his survival instincts flared. The bloodlust was a suffocating shroud, but he tore through it with a jagged jolt of lightning.
"Wake up, you fools!" he roared, the purple sparks from his skin acting as a violent smelling salt for those nearby. "Conceal your cultivations and split up! Now!"
His voice was a desperate rasp against the rising tide of fear. Without waiting for a response, he reached out and clamped a hand onto the nearest person—Xue Mor. Her eyes were wide, reflecting the flickering violet of his aura. Before the terror could fully paralyze her, Raikai triggered Spark.
This was no mere sprint. As a low-tier Earth-level skill reserved for the high-ranking members of the Shin Clan, Spark harnessed the raw electrical potential within his own nervous system. He felt his muscle fibers scream as they were supercharged in an instant, the initial burst propelling them forward with a violent, bone-jarring force. The excess energy from the explosion hummed around his legs, sustaining a travel speed three times faster than his natural limit. To the others, he was nothing more than a fading streak of violet light disappearing into the safest shadows he could sense.
Raikai's warning came a second too late for many. As the cultivators scrambled, activating movement techniques and Eternal Arms in a frantic, uncoordinated cacophony, a wall of black mist erupted through the trees. It hit the slowest group with the force of a tidal wave.
Screams, wet and choked, began to echo through the canopy, fueling a fresh surge of panic. From the heart of the roiling fog emerged a nightmare: a Black Winged Serpent. Its obsidian scales were etched with pulsing red streaks, and three wicked horns—two on the sides of its head and one crowning its snout—glinted with a dull, murderous light. When it unfurled its massive red wings, it looked like a demon claiming its due.
The serpent's eyes, glowing a sickly red, locked onto a group of ten cultivators. The gaze was a physical weight, a curse that froze their blood in their veins.
"Hey!" a Sentinel leader screamed at his comrades, his voice cracking with hysteria. "Move! Look at me! Move!"
They didn't. They couldn't. They stood like statues of meat as the serpent's mist inhaled them. In the time it took to draw a single, terrified breath, they were gone, swallowed whole by the yawning black jaws of the beast.
Far from the serpent's mist, another tragedy of the human spirit was unfolding. A group of twenty Sentinels fled through the brush, their movements frantic and loud. One cultivator had activated a Boat Eternal Arm, hovering inches above the glowing moss and weaving through the trees with remarkable grace.
Behind him, a fellow Sentinel watched the boat with eyes narrowed by a sudden, jagged greed. With that boat, I live, the thought poisoned his mind. He began to channel his energy, his hand trembling as he prepared a lethal blow to his own comrade's back.
The boat-user felt the killing intent and frantically pushed more Qi into the artifact. But before he could launch away, the shadows to his left tore open. A Green-Fanged Panther—a beast at the peak of Qi Fusion Refinement—leaped with impossible silence.
There was a sickening crunch. The panther's jaws closed around the man's torso, shearing him in two. His upper half vanished into the beast's throat, leaving only his legs standing, motionless and macabre, atop the boat. A second later, the artifact sensed the final, panicked surge of its master's Qi and blasted off into the distance, carrying its grizzly cargo of severed limbs away.
"That idiot!" one of the survivors wailed, his voice thin with terror. "Why did he activate that treasure? He just rang the dinner bell!"
The panther turned its emerald gaze toward them. No one from that group would see the dawn.
High above the clouds, far beyond the reach of the screams, Elder Bai and Elder Feng looked down upon the formation.
"It sure brings back memories, doesn't it, Elder Feng?" Bai said, his tone dripping with a dark, nostalgic amusement.
Elder Feng didn't answer. He simply watched the flickering lights of the cultivators' auras being snuffed out like candles in a gale. A thin, grim smile touched his lips.
"The luck of these juniors," Bai continued, chuckling as he watched a peak-level beast corner another group. "To draw out so many peak Qi Refinement stage beasts with their little 'showing off' session earlier. They wanted to be seen; well, they were seen by every apex predator in the sector."
He looked toward the direction Raikai had fled. "Safe to say, once the survivors realize that these beasts were drawn by the flair of the three great empires... the geniuses will be targeted by the masses. Ahahah! It seems we are in for a treat indeed, Elder Feng."
The streak of violet lightning finally sputtered out amidst a thicket of Ghost-Leaf Ferns.
Raikai skidded to a halt, his boots carving deep furrows into the bioluminescent soil. The air he inhaled felt like sandpaper against his throat. His sleeveless shirt was soaked through, sticking to the defined muscles of his chest and abs, while the lightning-like tattoos beneath his eyes pulsed a dull, angry red.
He released his grip on Xue Mor. His hand was trembling—the "Spark" technique had pushed his nervous system to the brink.
"Raikai," Xue Mor whispered, her voice steady but her eyes scanning the shifting shadows of the ferns. "Your aura... it's leaking. Dial it back, or you'll be a beacon for every beast within ten miles."
Raikai gritted his teeth, forcing his cultivation to go dormant. The purple glow at the tips of his hair faded into the darkness. "The 'Great Collapse' hasn't even hit the Mortal Realm yet, and we're already being hunted like dogs," he spat, leaning against a tree with scales of silver bark. "Those Elders... they didn't just bring us here to train. They brought us here to be culled."
Xue Mor pulled a small vial of cooling jade salve from her robes, stepping closer to Raikai. She began to apply it to the scorched skin of his shoulders where the electrical discharge had been most intense. "The Elders spoke of 'trash' and 'gold.' They don't care who dies, Raikai. They only care about who is left standing when the ten years are up."
The Tiger's Stand
Miles away, near a crystalline stream that ran black under the lunar light, Shinryu was learning the same lesson.
He wasn't running. He couldn't. He was surrounded by six cultivators from a minor sect, their faces twisted with a mix of fear and growing resentment.
"You!" their leader shouted, pointing a trembling finger at Shinryu. "Your Phoenix Cry Empire... that flashy dragon and tiger display! You drew that serpent to the clearing! My brother is dead because of your pride!"
Shinryu stood calmly, his three eyes open, the white irises glowing with a cold, piercing light. Behind him, the illusory white tiger paced, its golden stripes shimmering.
"The beasts of this realm were always hungry," Shinryu said, his voice devoid of emotion. "Our display merely chose the first course. If you want to survive, stand down. Your anger is a waste of Qi."
"Waste? I'll show you a waste!" The leader lunged, his sword glowing with a weak, flickering flame.
Shinryu didn't even draw a weapon. He simply clapped his hands together. "Gravity Field: Tenfold."
The air around the six cultivators suddenly turned to lead. The sound of their knees hitting the ground was a chorus of sickening thuds. The leader's face was pressed into the dirt, his sword snapping under the weight of his own arm.
"The Elders were right about one thing," Shinryu whispered, looking down at the struggling men. "The competition will be the first to turn on us. You aren't warriors; you're just more weight to carry."
He didn't kill them. He didn't have to. The sound of the Green-Fanged Panther's low growl echoed from the nearby brush. Shinryu deactivated his field and used a flash-step movement technique, vanishing into the canopy just as the shadows moved in to claim the weakened prey.
The Rising Tide
As the first hour of the trial drew to a close, the survivors across the formation began to realize the grim reality Elder Bai had predicted. Small groups were forming, but they weren't based on empire loyalty—they were based on a shared hatred.
In a hidden cave, a group of fifteen survivors from various minor powers huddled together.
"Did you see the Obsidian Shadow group?" one muttered, bandaging a shredded arm. "They just used a group of our guys as a distraction to escape that panther."
"It's the big three," another hissed, his eyes glowing with a dark intent. "The Phoenix Cry, the Obsidian Shadow, the Emerald Sovereignty... they think this is their playground. They draw the beasts, and we pay the price."
"Then we change the game," a tall, scarred cultivator said, his hand tightening on a heavy mace. "If the beasts don't kill the 'geniuses' first, we will. We wait until they're tired, until they're wounded from a hunt. Then we take their treasures and their lives."
The seeds of a different kind of war were being sown under the cruel moonlight. The "geniuses" had become the prey, and the entire Death Night realm was the trap.