Flender had searched for through the streets and alleys of Heaven Dou City , the entire morning, chasing every scrap of rumor and trace of information about Liu Erlong. At last, in afternoon he had received information regarding a fiery-tempered woman heading toward the western roads.
That was all he needed.
He had set out immediately, pushing himself without rest, and his persistence paid off. A charred, lifeless grove stood along the roadside—a fresh scar upon the land. Flender crouched low, brushing the brittle blackened bark with his fingertips. The heat had not yet fully faded.
His jaw tightened. 'She came through here.'
He followed the trail, his wings quick and heavy with urgency, until the roofs of Baskin Town were visible. The dark clouds above the town were threatening to fall down any moment.
As he was flying, his keen eyes caught sight of something strange, a single house stood half-shrouded in smoke, due to burning.
His heart sank.
'Erlong… please… don't let your temper harm someone who doesn't deserve it.'
Her rage was no small matter. Flender knew this better than anyone—how, in the depths of battle, Liu Erlong could lose herself in a feral, destructive frenzy. He had seen it before in the Soul Beast Forest, when her eyes would glaze over and her strikes would fall without mercy, friend or foe.
Qian Renxue would have directly given a diagnostic, that such outbursts were not mere temper, but a deep wound of the mind, born of old grief and festering vengeance. Something rooted in her childhood, something unresolved.
Flender pressed on through as the downpour of rain came down, muttering under his breath,
'Xiaogang… why did you leave her like that? If anything happens to her, I'll hold you responsible for it.'
The smell of wet ash and burnt wood grew stronger. When he came flying down he froze.
Liu Erlong lay sprawled on the soaked ground, rain dripping from her hair, her breathing uneven.
"Erlong!!" he roared, his voice cutting through the hiss of rain.
Crackle!
Lightning flared overhead, throwing harsh white light across the street. In that flash, Flender's gaze shifted past her—to a short, cloaked figure, face shadowed, moving deliberately toward the half-burnt house. Most of the part of the he flames had already been beaten down by the storm. Smoke still curled from the broken timbers, rising like a wounded spirit into the dark sky.
Flender's voice boomed over the roar of the rain.
"Hey, you! Why did you hurt Erlong?!"
His body tensed, soul power surging as he prepared to attack the small cloaked figure standing in the rain.
The figure turned her head slightly, and an almost lazy voice answered,
"Go away. I'm not in the mood to beat you up."
The dismissive tone made Flender's brows knit. Whoever she was, she clearly wasn't taking him seriously. Without waiting for another word, she turned her back on him and strode toward the charred ruins of the house, her boots splashing through some shallow puddles that were formed due to the rain.
Flender blinked in surprise. That voice… something about it tugged at his memory. It felt familiar, but no matter how he tried, he couldn't place it. It was like a déjà vu. He shook his head.
'No… I've never met anyone like her before.'
While Flender's attention was on the cloaked figure some thing strange was happening with Liu Erlong. Her cheeks were flushed, not only from the slap, though that mark was still vivid. Her breaths came heavier.
Rain streamed from the brim of his glasses as he stepped forward. He couldn't let this mysterious attacker just walk away.
With measured movements, Flender closed the distance. His purple soul ring flashed in the downpour.
"Third Soul Skill—Swift Movement."
Power surged into his limbs, and his speed spiked by thirty percent. He slipped into her blind spot, every step silent despite the water-slick street.
Then—
Crackle!
A white bolt split the sky, and in that brief flare of light, the cloaked figure's hand flicked outward as though brushing away an insect.
Flender's instincts screamed.
Unseen by him or anyone else, two golden rings blazed beneath the veil of illusion, the third and fourth of the figure's soul rings. Soul power rolled out like a pressure wave, cold and suffocating.
In the hidden reality of her illusion, hooked talons of pure death tore forward, Fourth Soul Skill: the Dark Gold Terror Claw, masked completely by her soul skill in Third Soul Skill Illusion.
The result was an invisible slash which can mow down anyone.
Inside her mind, Qian Renxue's patience had already worn thin.
'Let's see, Flender… are you even worth keeping alive?'
In her grand design for the world, he was just another moving piece. If he fell here, the path she envisioned could be walked by another man just as easily.
The rain fell harder, drumming against stone and flesh alike. In that moment, the clash between a predator and an interloper hung in the air, invisible but all too real.
However, Flender lived up to expectations.
Years of survival in dangerous territory had taught him to notice what others missed. His sharp hawk-like eyes, a trademark of most bird-type soul masters, caught the subtle wrongness in the scene: the curtain of rain just ahead of the cloaked figure suddenly parted, droplets vanishing in a perfect arc as though something invisible had sliced the air itself.
'What the hell…?' he thought.