"Fellow Daoists!" one of the practitioners shouted with a hint of danger in his tone, which alerted everyone present, including the Dao Realm elders and the Qi Refining cultivators in the Perfection and Great Perfection stages, while he desperately blocked the violent stream of the devouring mist with the talismans in his hands.
The cultivator slowly shifted his hand, pointing down at Mo Lingtian before he was thoroughly consumed by the devouring mist. Almost immediately, the others turned their heads, following the direction he pointed.
Mo Lingtian stood there on the boat, watching with an otherworldly calmness as the devouring mist released by the beast violently corroded the heavenly weapons and scorched the hands of the bull-headed giants.
His gaze bore amusement and curiosity rather than anxiousness and fear.
"Could all this be his doing?" the old hunched man thought in his mind as his qi barrier blocked the invading mist.
"Come to think of it, when we got here, he was the only one present just when the tribulation was about to begin," one of the Dao practitioners said, using his left hand to resist the mist with a blockade made from his qi.
"And if he were truly just an ignorant lone cultivator, the dragon beast would have been the first predator to hunt him," another Dao Realm practitioner added as he too blocked the devouring mist.
"Yet when we came, he was the only one in this place. He didn't even bat an eye when scores of practitioners salivated at the thought of his unfortunate predicament," one of the Great Perfection cultivators of the Qi Refining Realm added.
"It seems like all this was his plan all along," the old hunched man said with a sigh, causing every practitioner present to gasp in shock and terror.
"Little brat! How dare you!" one of the practitioners of the Great Perfection stage yelled as he desperately blocked the devouring mist.
Mo Lingtian, for a moment, turned his head slightly toward their position in the sky and smiled faintly with one hand behind his back.
"He even dares to smile!" one of the Dao Realm practitioners yelled furiously, carving a path through the invading mist with a wave of his hand.
"Wait! If he truly is the mastermind behind all this, then he is either a young master from one of the twenty-two factions," the old hunched man said, halting the Dao Realm elder right before he tried to fly down to Mo Lingtian through the path he had forced open.
"Or what?" a cultivator asked, his voice filled with anxiousness and exhaustion as he burned a high-grade talisman to barely guard against the mist.
"Or he is a wolf in sheep's clothing!" the old hunched man said emphatically, sending chills down everyone's spine.
One of the prevailing rules in the Demon Realm is the law of the jungle, where the strong prey on the weak. Falling into the hands of a greedy, strong cultivator is unfortunate enough, but worse still is to fall into the scheming plot of a wolf in sheep's clothing. They are unassuming, deceptive to the eye, decisive, quick in their execution, and extremely cunning.
They are not always powerful cultivators with immense strength, yet they can bring the strongest immortal to his knees. They are the leaders of top powerhouses and factions in the Demon Realm, holding powerful practitioners in realms far above them as subjects loyal even unto death.
These kinds of people are more sinister than beasts, more cruel than wild predators, and more patient than night crawlers.
"We have really hit an iron wall!" one of the Great Perfection stage cultivators said, which was followed by a collective sigh as they continued to block the devouring mist.
Grunting against the pressure, one of the Dao Realm practitioners let out a yell, slicing through the mist for a split second with the pristine energy of his sword.
"I'm not waiting here to die because of your assumptions, old man," the Dao practitioner spat as he dashed into the path he had sliced open, rushing down from the sky toward Mo Lingtian on the boat.
Some traces of the devouring mist still latched onto his skin despite the path he had carved. It slowly festered his flesh, eating through his clothes even as he descended from the sky.
"You wretched boy, how dare you scheme against me!" the Dao Realm practitioner yelled, crashing down toward Mo Lingtian with a devastating blow terrifying enough to cause the ocean to part into two colossal walls, leaving Mo Lingtian and his little boat in the center as the water towered above him by several meters.
"Is this what the full strike of a Dao Realm cultivator feels like?" one of the Great Perfection stage cultivators said to no one in particular, feeling the devastating air currents stirred by the descending blow.
Mo Lingtian, a cultivator at the Vessel Cleansing stage, was about to take the full strike of a Dao Realm practitioner head-on without any treasure, talisman, or artifact to defend against this cataclysmic attack.
"Brat!!! Die!!!" the Dao Realm practitioner roared, driving his ocean-parting punch directly at Mo Lingtian.
And just as his fist grazed the hair on Mo Lingtian's body, Mo Lingtian immediately teleported a few meters into the sky with a terrifying speed that seemed to dilate time for a fraction of a second, missing the crashing blow by a hair's breadth.
"What terrifying speed!" the old hunched man said, watching the instant teleportation. Apart from him and the second Dao elder, no one else even noticed Mo Lingtian had moved; their physical eyes couldn't keep up with the sudden displacement of space and direction.
The force of that blow from the Dao elder cleared the devouring mist that had saturated the atmosphere, but at the cost of every last bit of energy he had left, leaving nothing but massive craters and explosion marks on the exposed ocean floor.
"Coward! You don't dare to take my blow head-on?" the Dao Realm elder growled, standing at the bottom of the parted oceanic trench and looking up at Mo Lingtian in the sky.
"No, I don't," Mo Lingtian replied coldly, giving him that death stare which undoubtedly sent chills down the elder's spine.
"No matter who you are or where you're from, I won't rest until I kill you today. Unless, of course, you're willing to hand over the antidote to this mist," the Dao Realm elder demanded as an immense aura of energy suddenly erupted from his body.
"Antidote?" a cultivator murmured to no one in particular, dissolving the barrier formed from the high-grade talismans he had been burning.
"You thought he was just a hot-tempered old fool, didn't you?" another cultivator replied. "Trust me, there's no practitioner of that realm who will dash through a devouring mist unless it has something to do with his life or an unspeakable treasure."
"In the next five seconds, my face will be the last thing you see," Mo Lingtian said, looking down at the Dao practitioner on the ocean floor. His voice resounded with a terrifyingly calm tone, causing everyone, including the old hunched man and the Dao elder in the sky, to instinctively retreat a few inches in fright.