Wei Huan watched those bizarre entities, but he felt no fear.
They were merely monsters. The Challenge World was teeming with such malevolent creatures; he had long since become desensitized to them, meeting their gaze with cold indifference. As for their daunting numbers, they meant even less to him—army-scale warfare was his greatest specialty.
With Ghost Crows as the vanguard, Twin-Headed Hidden Demons as the main force, and Magic Eye Lords providing long-range fire, his legion engaged the enemy with a posture far more vicious and relentless than their opponents.
Boom!
The heaven and earth shuddered. The clashing air currents generated shockwaves that kicked up sand and stones, turning the battlefield into a blur of chaos where the sun and moon seemed to lose their light.
Wei Huan quickly determined the power dynamic through the casualty ratio: these monsters were roughly equivalent to the standard of a Fifth-Grade world, perhaps slightly higher, but they had not yet reached the level of a Sixth-Grade world. One of his Sixth-Grade Twin-Headed Hidden Demons could take on three of these monsters simultaneously without falling.
The attackers were a motley crew of various shapes and sizes. Some moved in swarms; a Twin-Headed Hidden Demon would often be swamped by roughly a hundred smaller creatures. In such cases, unable to fend off the sheer volume, the demon would be torn apart and sent back to the Great Tomb.
However, Wei Huan's arsenal wasn't limited to a single unit. While Ghost Crows were now mostly used for scouting, they were effective against lower-level foes. Their "Undead Screech" exploded in the monsters' minds, causing many to plummet from the sky, where they were promptly shredded by the waiting army of Swift Wolves.
Though the wolves couldn't fly, aerial combat inevitably resulted in wounded enemies falling to the ground. Once they dropped, they never went back up. The Swift Wolf legion was Wei Huan's most numerous force, blanketing the mountains—even the sheerest cliffs. Their claws could grip rock faces, allowing them to scale any peak. Should a monster fly too low, they would pounce, dragging the prey from the sky to be torn asunder.
The Magic Eye Lords acted as stationary turrets. From their grotesque, hideous eyes, they fired beams of black light, causing monsters to drop like stones. Within three minutes of the opening clash, the disparity in strength became clear as the front lines of the monster horde were decimated.
The monsters in the rear were shocked into sobriety. Some began to flee. Wei Huan did not order a pursuit; with the situation still unclear, his priority was the safety of his trio. Seeing the undead did not give chase, the monsters stopped their retreat and lingered at a distance, looking both hesitant to advance and unwilling to leave—a picture of cunning hesitation.
Finally, Wei Huan had a moment to study their true appearance. There were three-headed serpents, headless oxen with gaping mouths on their bellies, swarms of mosquitoes the size of water vats, and "bird-men" with human bodies and avian heads.
Seeing these forms, Wei Huan knew where he was. Barring any accidents, he had bypassed the highway trials and entered the Seventh-Grade World directly. He had occasionally seen these types of monsters when opening treasure chests in the Sixth-Grade world.
The only difference was that those system-controlled chest monsters lacked the vividness and bright eyes of these creatures. System monsters fought to the death; these ones fled when outmatched yet lingered nearby out of greed and cunning.
'Is the world beyond the World Tree merely a Seventh-Grade world?'
Wei Huan felt a pang of disappointment. Even though he knew this was the logical progression, he had hoped for a different answer—though he couldn't quite name what it was he sought.
Currently, his goal was survival over conflict. Once the immediate perimeter was secure, he turned his attention back to his own condition. Feeling slightly more mobile, he tried to sit up. "Dot Mom" released a red 'Great-Great-Grandson' spider. The clever little creature shrank itself, crawled under Wei Huan's back, and then slowly expanded, acting as a living backrest to prop him up.
As his perspective shifted, Wei Huan coughed again. He was about to check on Mu Zhong when a sudden sense of dread washed over him. He snapped his head up.
Something was streaking toward him from the distance at an incredible speed. By the time he perceived the anomaly, it was already directly above the center of the valley.
Boom!
A heavy, plummeting strike aimed right for his head. Fortunately, that was as close as it could get. Wei Huan looked up to see a one-legged monster stopped by a transparent film of light. The barrier was colorless and invisible to the naked eye, revealing itself only through the ripples in the air as it absorbed the impact. The faint arc of the shield covered the entire valley, extending deep underground.
Wei Huan's brow furrowed again as he looked toward the ground at his feet. A simultaneous attack had arrived from the depths of the earth.
Two ferocious strikes, one from above and one from below. The defensive bubble wobbled under the strain. Since Dot Mom reached the Pseudo-God grade, this bubble possessed immense defensive power; typically, only top-tier Grade 6 experts could even make it vibrate. Previously, only Xu Qingqiang in a blood-frenzy had managed to break it.
Seeing the bubble shake, Wei Huan narrowed his eyes. This was exactly why he never stopped training and always felt his "firepower" was insufficient. In higher worlds, combat strength couldn't be judged by the average baseline; one had to exceed the "ceiling" to explore safely.
Wei Huan was already decked out in Diamond-grade gear and possessed artifacts like the Ring of Mofidi and the Book of the Dead. There were fewer ways left to boost his power through equipment. He had to dig deeper into his profession. Because he had leveled up so quickly, his professional skills had never truly reached their limit.
Arriving in the Seventh-Grade world while heavily injured and immediately facing a brutal battle proved his point: had he slacked off even slightly in the Sixth-Grade world, he would be facing a very different—likely fatal—outcome today.
As for the current threat, the shaking bubble indicated the enemy was still far from breaking through. Wei Huan thinned his lips. 'It is impolite not to return a gift.' Since they had started this, they could leave their lives behind so he could see what this world was truly made of.
Lethal intent surged. The undead surrounding him transformed into blood-colored blades, slicing toward the one-legged monster in the sky. The creature was incredibly agile; after its failed strike, it began hopping rhythmically on the air shield, creating constant ripples.
Thud! Thud! Thud!
But that was all it could do. The undead swarm engulfed it. Realizing it couldn't break the shield and that killing the undead was futile, the creature coiled its single leg, preparing to leap away.
But once you've arrived, leaving isn't so easy.
The undead legion descended like a net. Even if it could smash hundreds of them, there were tens of thousands more. It soon became like a butterfly caught by ants—struggling desperately but unable to take flight.
The attacker underground was trickier. Aside from Ghost Crows, Wei Huan lacked units that could ignore physical matter, and while Facehuggers were good at burrowing, they still had to displace dirt. The Ghost Crows had average strength; only "Sister Crow" could hold her own. As the ground shook, fragmented reports came back.
It was a dragon—black and slick as a loach.
'A dragon?'
To the people of Daxia, the dragon was a totem, the ultimate symbol of power and authority. Even Wei Huan felt an inexplicable emotion toward the form. Halfway through the Challenge World, this was his first time encountering a dragon-shaped monster. Even if it was just a "ground-crawler," he wanted to see it.
Preferably after it was dead.
He wasn't naive enough to think of taming these creatures. The Challenge World had hammered home one concept: humanity is one, and anything non-human is inherently alien and untrustworthy. There was no need to consider recruitment; it was better to just kill them.
As he monitored the underground battle, several frog-like "croaks" echoed. Suddenly, lightning bolts rained down incessantly within a thousand-meter radius—a localized storm of blue thunder that blasted Wei Huan's undead to pieces.
As the croaking grew denser, the sparse lightning merged into a solid curtain of electricity. Before Wei Huan could react, a hundred-meter-wide pillar of lightning crashed from the sky. Boom! Everything in its radius was vaporized.
Wei Huan was stunned. The undead protecting him were all Grade 6. Even though he had kept his elites inside the bubble, his standard Grade 6 units—which could walk unchallenged in the previous world—were being mass-slaughtered.
His gaze swept over his elite guards: the mountain-sized Great Bears, the thousand-strong elite Swift Wolves led by "Anus-Poking Bro," and the dozens of ferocious Bichon Frise floating in the air. His eyes finally settled on Dot Mom.
Even if the enemy was powerful, he still had many trump cards. He steadied his heart. It was time to test the combat strength of these high-level Seventh-Grade monsters.
Wei Huan didn't care about losing common undead; what he needed most was intelligence. He didn't rush to use his final trump cards, instead sending out Shura Horses paired with Flying Monkeys. The monkeys buffed the horses and allowed for a "kite" mode, preventing them from being instantly killed in the lightning field. Since both lightning and the Shura Horses were destructive elements, the horses' attrition rate was lower. Soon, they had the one-legged beast cornered again.
The slaughter resumed.
"Croak! Croak!" the one-legged beast cried out with increasing urgency.
Wei Huan shifted his gaze to the ground. After a few seconds, the earth burst open. Two black shadows flew out simultaneously, emitting hoarse, grating cries.
"CROAK!!"
"ROAR!!"
After a frantic struggle, they separated and hovered on opposite sides of the air. Wei Huan looked up.
Sister Crow was now Grade 6, and having reached the Legendary Hero level, her form had shifted away from the original Ghost Crow appearance. She was massive, wreathed in black flames, with three long feathers trailing behind her tail—looking for all the world like a black phoenix.
On the other side was indeed a black dragon with claws. But it looked nothing like the divine dragons of Daxia legend; it looked more like a serpent that had evolved into a ferocious beast. Its hundred-meter body was black and oily, with cow-like horns and protruding fangs. It had no eyes.
A black phoenix clashing with a black dragon—for a moment, Wei Huan felt as if he had been transported into a world of myth. Combined with the one-legged ox, it felt like the 'Classic of Mountains and Seas'.
'But is it possible? Is the Seventh-Grade world Earth's ancient past? Or do these legendary creatures exist across all planes at a certain stage? Could it be that tens of thousands of years ago, Blue Star participated in the Challenge World, and these creatures were the "Leftovers" eternally suppressed in the Seventh-Grade world?'
Countless theories swirled in his mind until the pain in his head forced him to stop. He was severely injured and fighting on sheer willpower; he couldn't afford to waste energy on deep speculation.
He suppressed his curiosity and looked at the black dragon as if it were a dead snake. Underground, it was hard to kill. Now that it was on the surface, it wouldn't be going back.
As Wei Huan's killing intent flared, the Burrow Beasts in Dot Mom's abdomen swarmed out. Burrow Beasts released more Burrow Beasts, and those released even more, until the valley was packed with them—to say nothing of the Facehuggers, which numbered in the hundreds of times more.
In an instant, the black dragon and the one-legged monster were robbed of their movement space. Then, a terrifying scene unfolded.
Explosions erupted one after another. The two monsters shrieked in agony.
Wei Huan focused on one Facehugger. It flew to the black dragon, latched its six arms into the creature's flesh, and then its body exploded. The explosion, amplified by the protective bubble on its skin, shattered the dragon's scales. The Facehugger's white bones acted like shrapnel, embedding into the dragon's body and leaving behind massive patches of mangled meat before the summon returned to the tomb.
Indeed, the Facehuggers now had a self-destruct ability. It was incredibly potent, capable of damaging even Platinum monsters of the Sixth-Grade world. Combined with Nether Fire, the power was catastrophic. Wei Huan no longer had to worry about "one-wave suicide" tactics—the exploding Facehuggers could be resurrected.
This was one of the racial abilities Dot Mom gained upon reaching the Pseudo-God grade. Wei Huan was highly satisfied. These "high-level" monsters of the new world were now being torn apart, screaming in incessant pain.
Wei Huan noticed that when these two monsters shrieked in defeat, the original group of monsters lingering in the distance took it as a signal. They retreated much further, fear evident in their eyes. Some even turned and left immediately.
'Killing the chicken to scare the monkeys,' Wei Huan thought. These two must be high-ranking lifeforms here; seeing them crushed instilled terror in the common beasts.
"ROAR!!"
Suddenly, the bloodied black dragon's body turned ethereal. It transformed into a black shadow and dove toward the earth, attempting to escape.
Wei Huan lacked experience with this. He was used to Challenge monsters fighting to the death. He didn't expect them to flee after taking this much damage. Furthermore, underground combat was his weakness. He could only watch as the dragon vanished into the soil.
He turned his gaze to the one-legged monster, which also seemed poised to flee. His eyes narrowed.
'Sorry, I have experience now.'
The undead legion swarmed the creature, ignoring the friendly fire from the Facehugger explosions. Amidst the thunderous "Rumble," the one-legged beast was blasted into mincemeat.
At that moment, the fear from the surrounding monsters became even more palpable. Those who were still hesitating turned and fled without looking back. The crisis was momentarily resolved.
But Wei Huan wasn't looking at the fleeing monsters. He was stunned by what he saw in the aftermath. He stared at the spot where the monster had died, then struggled to raise his hand, making a grasping motion toward the empty air.
A cluster of white mist appeared in his palm. He opened his hand and stared. His pupils contracted and trembled; his expression was one of total shock.
"Ugh..."
A pained groan sounded beside him. Wei Huan quickly closed his hand, stowing the mist, and looked at Mu Zhong.
Mu Zhong had opened his eyes at some point. Likely due to the intense pain, his body was shaking, and his eyes struggled to stay open. Finally, a single word slipped from his lips: "...Huan."
"I'm here," Wei Huan said quickly.
Mu Zhong endured for a few more seconds before wheezing: "...Where... is this...?"
"The world beyond the fog. We are safe for now. Don't talk, focus on healing yourself," Wei Huan explained briefly. Mu Zhong grunted in affirmation and fell silent.
Wei Huan was still preoccupied with his discovery, but this valley was no place to recover. He summoned Facehuggers to carefully lift the three of them onto Dot Mom's back.
The exertion cost him dearly. He was down to his last bit of strength. Mu Zhong fainted again, and Wei Huan's vision swam with darkness. Dou Lin, at least, was still out—which was probably for the best.
Once things settled, Wei Huan looked at the sky. It had blue sky and white clouds—something the Challenge World lacked. Recalling his earlier theory, he summoned the white mist back to his hand.
The mist was actually the 'Hand of the Undead' condensed into a ball, firmly trapping the soul of the one-legged monster. He could see the ethereal, translucent form of the ox-beast inside. He knew instinctively that this was the soul he had harvested after the kill, and he knew he could control it or even consume it to boost his cultivation.
But the root of his unease was this: he had killed countless monsters and even humans in the Challenge World, yet this had never happened before.
'What does this mean? Are the monsters here special? Or do monsters in the Challenge World simply have no souls? And what about humans? Do humans have no souls either? Then what... what exactly are we?'
His heart pounded. A tightness in his chest forced another cough. He covered his mouth, wiping blood away with the back of his hand, then looked forward with cold lethality.
'Another one?'
His gaze fell on a massive creature shaped like a giant ape with long red fur, its head disappearing above the clouds. Beside it was another monster with an even more powerful aura. Their strength was clearly superior to the one-legged beast. He was in no condition to fight and his mind was a mess.
Suddenly, Dot Mom's body expanded. In an instant, she soared past three thousand meters in height, continuing to grow until she was as large as the ape monster, reaching into the clouds.
The two giants faced off for several seconds. The giant ape remained silent, then slowly retreated.
Wei Huan then shifted his gaze to a beast only a hundred meters long—shaped like a lion, ox, and tiger combined, but wreathed in red flames like a sun. He could feel that this creature was the strongest of all the high-level monsters that had appeared.
He didn't want to fight, but if the creature kept watching them, they wouldn't be able to rest. 'To catch the bandits, first catch the king.' Since this was the strongest, if he defeated it, would it provide lasting peace?
Killing intent surged. The undead army began moving toward it.
The flaming chimera watched the army's movements for a moment. Before they could get close, it turned and flew away.
For the time being, there wasn't a single living soul within ten miles of Wei Huan.
The tension finally snapped. Wei Huan coughed again and ordered Dot Mom to return to her normal size. That brief display had drained half of his remaining Nether Power. But the threat was neutralized; the monsters were intimidated.
Wei Huan looked at the soul of the one-legged monster, then at Mu Zhong with a complex expression, and waited.
Less than twenty minutes later, Mu Zhong's eyes snapped open. He sat up instantly, scanned his surroundings, and rushed to Wei Huan's side. Natural energy flowed from his palms into Wei Huan, mending the skeletal damage from the impact.
"How are you this badly hurt?" Mu Zhong asked. "You're wearing Diamond gear—what kind of impact could do this to you?"
Wei Huan looked at Mu Zhong. Although he looked disheveled and in pain, his complexion was returning.
"This world," Wei Huan replied slowly, "is different."
"What kind of world? Seventh-Grade?"
Wei Huan shook his head. "Yes, and no."
"What do you mean?"
"Look at this..." Wei Huan raised his hand, presenting the soul of the one-legged monster. He watched Mu Zhong's face. "Do you see anything?"
Mu Zhong's face went from blank confusion to deep thought, and finally, to utter shock.