Qingxuan did not move.
The Grade 4 sand python hovered where his afterimage had vanished, its colossal body half-emerged from the desert like a living calamity. The sand around it churned endlessly, drawn toward its form as if answering a silent command.
His heart stilled. Adrenaline coursed within like an open dam of churning waters. Fear was useless in this situation. There was only one goal. To survive. The strength disparity between him and the beast was like Heaven and Earth.
He couldn't fight. He couldn't run away blindly. He closed his left Eye of Heavenly Perception and pulled all the mental energy he could muster into his right eye. The world slowed again. A migraine forced a trickle of blood down his nose.
He pushed the perception of the Eye of Heavenly Essence to its limits , the desert was no longer sand, instead it exploded into colored layers of yuan and demonic energies, and killing intent. The creature's presence was overwhelming, but crude. It wasnt just violent, it was instinctual and singular.
It was fast no doubt, Qingxuan could calculate how fast it had attacked. But it wasn't subtle.
He entered a faceoff with the beast for a minute. The two examined each other. The sand python's head turned to side, its huge mouth expanded and retracted as its senses fixed on Qingxuan.
Meanwhile, he wiped the sweat that dripped down his forehead. He could see a glowing beast core within it, an attribute that was common to Grade 4 beasts and above. Yuan power was stored in that core and from it, the demonic beast could use all sort of abilities.
But the core within the beast was writhing with demonic and corrupted energies. Threads of corrupted consciousness coiled around it like leeches, whispering.
The moment its killing intent locked onto him, he moved.
Dust exploded, like a shower. The two moved instantly. Qingxuan's dragon steps turned him into a shadowy blur. The sand python lunged instantly, its massive head smashing into where he would've been.
Qingxuan did not run in a straight line. He ran like a haphazard line of thoughts. Each step was accompanied by sharp pulses of mental energy that injected into the sand below.
The sand python was relentless. It screeched and lunged furiously, chasing after him. Qingxuan's mental energy pulses that injected into the sand weren't attacks. Instead, they were decoys. The sand rippled with illusions of presence, blooming and vanishing like mirages, a rare expression of his incredible battle awareness and intelligence.
The sand python's perception could probably view the surroundings with something like infra red vision, making it highly susceptible to mental energy.
It thrashed wildly in the sand, smashing through several false traces, its rage growing heavier and denser every passing second.
This was exactly what Qingxuan wanted. Rage dulled perception. The python's massive body pounced mid air. Qingxuan spotted it instantly. He vaulted over a collapsing dune, rolled midair and hurled the stringed dagger into the sand. The moment it landed, he detonated a mental spike through the dagger. The sand erupted.
The python thrashed into the place where he should've been.
He saw the python pause instantly. Maybe it had given up? Qingxuan didn't stop to observe. But the next moment his heart skipped a beat. The sand moved.
It did not surge or explode outward like before, it flowed, silently and maliciously, as if the desert itself had awakened. Qingxuan's pupil constricted.
Before he could take a second step ahead, the ground beneath his feet softened, then collapsed inward. The grains of dark sand began to rotate, slow at first, then violently accelerating into a spiraling vortex.
A sand whirlpool. The force dragged at his legs like countless invisible hands, pulling him downward, deeper, toward the yawning darkness at its center. So this was its true hunting method.
"Tch."
Qingxuan panicked, but he caught himself and breathed into a dead calm. Panic was death.
The massive python let out a shrill, distorted screech as its colossal body rose halfway from the sand, its neck arching high above the vortex. Its mouth opened wide, rows of jagged teeth grinding together as demonic essence spilled out like black smoke.
The sand obeyed it. Qingxuan hatched a plan almost instantly but the pull intensified.
The vortex swallowed him up to the waist. He inhaled sharply and stomped down. His feet slammed into the sand, with intent.
A ripple of mental energy surged out from his soul symbol, thin and precise, threading itself into the demonic currents he had analyzed before. He didn't try to overpower the vortex, that was simply courting death.
Instead, he misled it. Survival through deception. The sand hesitated.
For a fraction of a breath, the demonic flow stuttered, confused by the foreign intrusion into its rhythm.
That was enough. Qingxuan flicked his wrist.
The stringed dagger shot out like a silver serpent, embedding itself into the exposed stone foundation of the distant pagoda with pinpoint accuracy.
At the same instant, he released a second wave of mental energy, a false signal, imitating the signature of a struggling prey sinking deeper into the sand.
The python reacted instantly. The vortex intensified, but with the python's senses manipulated by Qingxuan's mental energy, the vortex intensified in the wrong direction.
Qingxuan yanked the string.
His body was ripped free from the sand with brutal force. The sudden pull from the sand tore open his skin, and blood spraying as he was flung sideways instead of downward.
Azure Dragon's Seven Soaring Steps turned him into a shadowy blur.
His body twisted midair, borrowing the pull of the string and converting it into forward momentum. He skimmed the surface of the sand like a phantom, feet barely touching the ground as the vortex collapsed behind him in fury.
The python screeched again, as it broke out of the hallucination and spotted his escaping figure. The desert rose.
Massive waves of sand surged after him, forming fanged maws and crushing coils, snapping inches from his heels. Qingxuan didn't look back.. he didn't need to. His perception mapped everything.
A surge of mental energy detonated beneath his feet, inward, compressing his mental force into a single point to reinforce his movement. His body shot forward unnaturally fast, tearing through the last stretch of desert like a black-and-purple streak.
The pagoda loomed closer. Its Cracked stone pillars, Collapsed tiers and Ancient inscriptions were barely visible beneath layers of demonic energy.
The python lunged.
Its massive head burst from the sand directly in front of him, mouth opening impossibly wide, demonic essence condensing into a crushing pressure that distorted the air itself.
Qingxuan's eyes sharpened. He had nearly ran out of juice. In one final act of defiance, he opened both eyes, pushed the last dregs of mental energy through them and sent his will, through..
He wasn't targeting the beasts mind. No far from it. He targeted its core. Just a touch. Just enough for it to feel him. This was a do or die situation. He believed in the Supremacy of his Divine Eyes. Divinity always suppressed the demonic. This was Law.
The demonic beast froze.
For a single heartbeat, the consciousness within the core recoiled, as a blurry phantom image of a giant of a massive eyeball, stared straight into it. In that moment, concepts seemingly exploded into existence, as the Laws of Heaven and Earth simply rewrote themselves. It was as if Heaven itself was staring down with nonchalance.
In that moment recognition, rage, and something eerily close to fear swirled within the consciousness.
But, that heartbeat saved his life.
Qingxuan slid beneath the snapping jaws, rolled once, then stabbed his dagger into the stone steps of the pagoda and pulled himself up with everything he had left.
The moment his foot crossed the threshold, the sand stopped. The python screeched in fury, its body slamming against an invisible boundary before retreating back into the desert, the vortex collapsing as if it had never existed.
Qingxuan lay on the cold stone floor, chest heaving, blood dripping from his arms and legs.
He laughed weakly. "I made it." he muttered. "That was close…" Weakness overcame him instantly as fatigue washed over him, sending him into the realms of slumber.
Far below the pagoda, below the secret realms, below the ruins itself, below the wastelands ..
Beneath layers of ancient seals and forgotten formations, deep down into layers of Hell itself..
Something stirred. Within a sealed abyss, an ancient consciousness long buried trembled. Its essence was darkness itself. Qingxuan would recognized it instantly. Its essence was the demonic Qi that corroded the Sacred Ruins.
Its sealed awareness recoiled violently, ancient memories resurfacing as that phantom gaze echoed through the ruins.
"…Heaven…"
Chains of divine inscriptions rattled. Its hatred surged, alongside dread. A pair of eyes it had not felt since the Primordial Era had brushed the world once more.
And somewhere above, the owner of those eyes slept. Unaware that his gaze had shaken something that should never have been noticed again.