Combat erupted without warning.
The primordial beast souls gave Mo Fan no time to breathe, no time to think.
HISSSS——!
The [ Heaven-Swallowing Python ] soul coiled on the left struck first.
It let out a soundless shriek that should have shattered eardrums, its colossal body snapping upright like a toppling mountain...
And came crashing down directly onto Mo Fan.
Faced with that avalanche of force, Mo Fan's physical instincts reacted before his mind could.
He instinctively crossed his arms, tried to channel the blood-qi in his body—even reached for [ Bone Armament ] to take the hit head-on.
But the moment his hands came up, he realized with cold horror—there was nothing inside.
Because right now, he was nothing but a semi-transparent, impossibly fragile soul-body.
"Damn it!"
Mo Fan's scalp crawled. Running purely on instinct, he threw himself into an ugly, desperate lazy-donkey roll across the arena floor.
BOOM——!!!
The serpent's massive skull slammed into the exact spot where Mo Fan had just been standing.
It had no physical substance—but the terrifying gale of pure mental force that erupted from the impact still raked across Mo Fan's back.
"AAGH!"
A scream tore out of him before he could stop it.
The agony of a soul being torn was ten times worse than physical death by a thousand cuts!
The area of his semi-transparent soul-body that the gale had grazed immediately dimmed—as if it might dissolve into smoke at any moment.
He hadn't even begun to recover from that wave of soul-shaking pain when a massive shadow screamed down from above.
The [ Kun Peng ] shade—wings spread like a curtain of clouds blotting out the sky—had launched into a killing dive from altitude.
Those razor talons, gleaming with cold light, raked past Mo Fan's head with a hair's breadth to spare.
Whoosh!
Mo Fan scrambled and rolled clear.
His soul-body, battered by the relentless evasions and the sheer terror of it all, had begun flickering violently—its form destabilizing.
These attacks couldn't be blocked by any physical defense. Every single strike went straight for the root of his soul. He had fallen into a perfect deadlock.
At that moment—
The golden hourglass hanging above the arena began its merciless flow.
Luminous grains of sand poured downward. The countdown had officially begun.
Endure for one incense stick?
Mo Fan pressed himself against the arena's perimeter wall, gasping hard, watching those grains of sand drift slowly past.
A sound of pure despair rose from somewhere deep inside him.
Let alone one incense stick.
Pinned down and hunted like this, even a single breath felt like an eternity of torment.
BANG. BANG. BANG.
The ancient beasts gave their prey no quarter.
Under the relentless assault, Mo Fan was driven—humiliatingly, helplessly—into a dead corner of the arena's barrier wall.
Nowhere left to retreat.
Hissss——
The Heaven-Swallowing Python's head rose high and loomed directly before him.
Inside that gaping maw, a terrifying vortex of condensed mental force churned and spun.
It lunged forward—ready to swallow this weak little human soul whole and leave nothing behind.
In that inescapable, life-or-death instant—
The extreme agony tearing through his soul and the absolute proximity of annihilation acted like a bucket of ice water dumped over his mind.
Mo Fan had never been more awake in his life.
Lin Dong's words—spoken in the world outside—detonated inside his mind like a bolt of lightning splitting the dark.
"The second stage of the Form-Intention Fist is precisely to transition from 'Form' to 'Intent'!"
From Form... to Intent?
Mo Fan stared into the abyss of that descending maw. The terror and despair in his eyes were replaced by something else entirely.
If the first stage of the [ Form-Intention Fist ] was using flesh and bone to imitate the skeletal structure of beasts—
Then here, in this [ Cloud Summit Mystic Realm ]—stripped of all physical form...
In a place that looked only at the naked essence of the soul...
Why the hell was he still trying to imitate apes, tigers, or eagles?!
"I'm not a fucking beast!"
A howl of absolute, unhinged clarity erupted from somewhere at the core of his being.
"My soul's true nature. My 'Intent'..."
"I am a Necromancer who plays with life and death itself!!!"
BOOM——!
With that soundless roar from the depths of his soul—
Mo Fan—cornered, his soul-body dim and flickering, seemingly on the verge of total collapse—
He stopped trying to dodge.
He turned to face the Heaven-Swallowing Python's open maw, and drove the cultivation method of the Form-Intention Fist into full, screaming revolution!
But this time—
The form he was transforming into was not any demon beast.
"RISE!!!"
In an instant, from Mo Fan's semi-transparent soul-body, an aura erupted...
Ancient, abyssal, so profoundly deep that the entire arena of the Cloud Summit Mystic Realm shuddered violently around it.
Pure death energy. Flooding outward in all directions.
This power was drawn from his soul intensity—vast, and still growing from every ordeal he had endured.
Measured against the Mystic Realm's cultivation framework, Mo Fan's soul intensity was comparable to a Golden Core cultivator.
But ordinary Golden Core cultivators had never consciously tempered their souls.
Without knowing it, Mo Fan had reached a level of soul intensity that even many top-tier cultivators had never achieved.
The Cloud Summit Mystic Realm had been designed merely to let disciples feel the pressure of these ancient beasts—the creatures were never meant to truly harm anyone.
Mo Fan didn't know that. And so, caught between what he believed was life and death, utilizing the second stage of the Form-Intention Fist, he detonated completely.
Before the stunned eyes of every ancient beast in the arena—
A colossal shade, dozens of meters tall, erupted from Mo Fan's tiny soul-body and surged into the sky!
It was not a bird. Not a beast. Not any creature from ancient legend.
It was a towering skeletal death god—twin flames of ghostly blue soul-fire blazing in hollow eye sockets like massive suns...
Its entire form radiating nothing but pure, absolute death!
HUM——!!!
A wave of soul pressure—the icy, killing chill that belonged only to a Necromancer—radiated outward from that colossal skeleton like materialized ripples, sweeping across the entire arena in an instant.
The primordial beast souls—which moments ago had been utterly unstoppable—felt that pure death energy wash over them.
And for the first time, something trembled in the depths of their ancient eyes. Fear.
Their massive, crushing bodies—mid-lunge, mid-kill—froze involuntarily in mid-air for half a breath under that pressure, locked rigid against their own will!
But they were primordial beasts after all. The savagery in their bones refused to accept it.
After that brief flash of fear, the humiliation of being suppressed ignited into pure, volcanic fury.
"ROAR!!!"
The Heaven-Swallowing Python and the Kun Peng shade screamed in simultaneous, earth-shattering rage.
Every last restraint abandoned, they came crashing inward—carrying a mental storm capable of annihilating worlds—converging on that massive skeletal shade from all sides!
But the skeletal death god that Mo Fan had become had no intention of defending.
The colossal skeleton threw both arms wide open!
The left hand—massive, razor-edged white bone claws—moved with absolute, overbearing precision and seized the Heaven-Swallowing Python's shade by its vital point...
The "seven-inch" weakness at its throat.
BANG.
The force that could have pulverized mountain ranges—in the grip of that bone hand—was as helpless as a wriggling loach.
Pinned in mid-air, thrashing with everything it had, it could not break free by even a fraction!
At the exact same moment—
The skeleton's other hand snapped upward. Fingers spread wide like an enormous net—and caught the Kun Peng shade's descending killing talons head-on!
RUMBLE——!!!
A catastrophic soul shockwave detonated through the arena.
And the colossal skeleton slowly tilted its massive skull upward.
In those hollow eye sockets, the deep blue soul-fire burned without a trace of emotion.
Only infinite, absolute contempt and suppression.
Endure for one incense stick?
Amid the ancient beasts' shrieking cries, the colossal skeletal death god slowly curled those finger bones—like the closing fingers of the Grim Reaper himself.
Escape had never crossed his mind.
He was here to crush them.