The White Bone Demon Lord, after all, was an ancient demon who had roamed unchecked for ages. How could he tolerate such a humiliating insult from a mere Foundation Establishment cultivator? Having lived so long meant he wasn't to be trifled with; he commanded a number of secret arts. His expression darkened, a flicker of reluctance crossing his brow.

But then, he seemed to recall something. Baring his teeth, he flung out a silver talisman that exploded, pure energy coalescing in the void to form an ornate and complex magic array, its luminous, transparent runes slowly circulating. Visibly clear to the eye, the space within the array seemed to be violently compressed to its limit by immense power, twisting and dancing like fire. The array spun furiously, forming a vortex. The old demon leaped lightly, vanishing into it. Then, the array, charged with mysterious power, abruptly dissipated.

"A Space Talisman." City Lord Li, standing atop the city wall, saw his expression shift slightly, murmuring, "The old demon is truly willing to part with it?"

The others present immediately grew tense. Space Talismans were widely renowned yet exceedingly rare and difficult to craft. Those who chanced upon one treated it as their life's treasure, refusing to use it unless facing certain death.

Miles away, Lei Dong had just felt that the distance was finally enough to shake off the old demon. Before he could find a safe, hidden spot to take the False Death Pill and feign death, he sensed a massive energy burst several miles behind him. Simultaneously, the White Bone Demon Lord reappeared, manifesting a boundless and oppressive aura the moment he materialized. With a sinister cackle, he sneered, "Boy, let's see how you escape now." Saying this, he sealed a spell, and thousands of spectral white skeletons materialized from thin air, charging towards Lei Dong like an army of thousands.

Lei Dong, however, remained utterly calm. Given his strength, a direct confrontation with the White Bone Demon Lord would be like an ant attempting to shake a mountain. But when it came to escape, he had invested significant effort in that area. A sparrow, though small, might yet evade the hawk’s dive. He flapped his wings fiercely, blinking another seven or eight miles further away. The army of thousands of skeletons, despite their imposing momentum, clearly struck empty air.

The White Bone Demon Lord was not discouraged. As long as the boy remained locked within his divine sense, no matter how much he hopped about, his fortune would eventually run out. With a wave of his sleeve, he retracted the myriad skeletons and kicked off the ground, soaring in relentless pursuit of Lei Dong.

Although the Asura Wings were a rare supreme treasure, the rate at which they consumed True Qi was truly unbearable. Lei Dong blinked several more times, widening the gap between himself and the old demon, but felt a slight emptiness in his lower abdomen's Dantian; his True Qi was nearly depleted. He quickly tossed another Sume Pill into his mouth and clutched a valuable high-grade spirit stone in his hand, ravenously absorbing its pure essence. It was precisely during this critical moment of depleted reserves that the old demon, like maggots on bone, closed the distance significantly. Yet, Lei Dong quickly utilized the Asura Wings to pull away once more.

Thus, one chasing and one fleeing, in the span of a few breaths, they had covered a thousand miles. Looking out, the landscape had transformed into a desolate, boundless desert composed entirely of gravel. Somber and magnificent, it stretched to infinity. A slight gust of wind could whip up towering vortices of yellowish-orange sand, several zhang high.

But Lei Dong could not escape the Demon Lord's divine sense lock. He had consumed several Sume Pills by now, and the high-grade spirit stone, its energy exhausted, had shattered. His Dantian and meridians ached and stung—he was clearly on the verge of collapse.

However, Lei Dong had managed to slightly lull the White Bone Demon Lord during this chase, leading him to believe Lei Dong could not hold out much longer. Just as the old demon felt a surge of smug satisfaction, Lei Dong suddenly swallowed three Sume Pills and another high-grade spirit stone in quick succession. A violent surge of energy erupted from his lower abdomen, straining his meridians to the point of near rupture.

"Aah!" Lei Dong roared, unleashing the Heavenly Demon Transformation, an art he hadn't used in battle for a long time. His entire aura instantly became arrogant and untamed, yet imbued with profound indifference. Upon his brow and between his eyebrows appeared the Di Mo Seed, resembling a third eye, lending his entire bearing a tyrannical yet mysterious, bizarre, and ethereal quality.

Due to his ordinary aptitude, Lei Dong always employed the Heavenly Demon Transformation when cultivating alone to expend True Qi and physical stamina, thereby pressing his potential. As a result, Lei Dong used the Heavenly Demon Transformation with exceptionally high frequency. This long-term acclimatization had allowed him, unknowingly, to mitigate many of the negative side effects associated with the transformation. Furthermore, the arrogant fervor stimulated by the transformation was gradually coming under his control.

If this were Lei Dong when he first learned the Heavenly Demon Transformation, he might well have succumbed to the technique's stimulus, his mind clouded, and rushed back to fight the White Bone Demon Lord head-on. But now, Lei Dong could harness the explosive power unleashed by the transformation while maintaining a relative grasp over the internal fury.

The power wrung out by the Heavenly Demon Transformation instantly boosted Lei Dong's strength by a vast margin, his entire body feeling infused with an endless, inexhaustible reserve. Lei Dong channeled this overflowing power into the Asura Wings without reservation. A dense, black aura emanated from the wings, forming a faint sheen of black light across their surface.

The space-tearing power residing within the Asura King Wings was greatly stimulated, instantly yanking Lei Dong's form tens of miles away.

...

Lei Dong felt a brutal pressure threatening to crush and shred him. Such a long-distance physical teleportation had surpassed the limits of a Foundation Establishment cultivator's physical resilience. A metallic taste flooded his throat, and he couldn't help but spit out a mouthful of blood. This single maneuver had drained the majority of the power within him. But Lei Dong knew he could not stop now; if he faced off directly against an existence as terrifying as the White Bone Demon Lord, a single move from the opponent could effortlessly obliterate him. The sheer terror of a Nascent Soul stage cultivator was far beyond what a Foundation Establishment cultivator could imagine.

Enduring the agony of tearing meridians, the Asura Wings flashed once more. When he reappeared, he had created a distance of over a hundred miles between himself and the White Bone Demon Lord. Feeling the high-grade spirit stone in his lower abdomen crumble into dust from energy exhaustion, Lei Dong dared not be careless and waved his wings again. However, his trajectory shifted significantly to the left.

When he burst forth from the spatial tear, he felt a bone-shattering, violent pain throughout his body. The True Qi within him was completely spent. He forced the False Death Pill clutched in his hand down his throat, then plummeted directly from dozens of zhang high into the gravel piles below, crashing heavily into the thick sands like a free-falling object.

Lei Dong was a cultivator, so he naturally understood how cultivators detected enemies. Nascent Soul cultivators were not deities; even if their divine sense could span a hundred miles in an instant, finding a piece of rock that yielded no response in this desolate, infinite desert was definitely not an easy task. The effect of the False Death Pill was almost instantaneous. Lei Dong's heart soon ceased to beat, his blood stopped flowing, and his body rapidly stiffened. Resembling a true corpse, he merged with the surrounding gravel, displaying no trace of life. The False Death Pill, an exclusive and costly medicine, commanded such a high price precisely because it was no ordinary substance.

Even within the area affected by the ongoing aerial suppression formation, the White Bone Demon Lord quickly traced the location of Lei Dong’s final explosive teleportation. But here, the Demon Lord lost his last clue. Scanning with his divine sense, or sweeping the surrounding area, revealed no sign of Lei Dong. It was as if, in that brief moment, he had vanished completely.

Within the White Bone Demon Lord’s acutely sensitive divine sense, he registered the lingering ripple where space had been torn, yet not fully healed. However, given his cultivation and mastery of spatial rules, he could not determine Lei Dong’s direction of travel, how far he had instantly moved, or whether there would be a subsequent jump.

The White Bone Demon Lord’s face was livid. In a short span of time, Lei Dong had tricked him twice in succession. The first time, he could still rely on the Space Talisman to regain the advantage. But this time, he had completely lost the youth's trail. Perhaps Lei Dong was somewhere within a radius of a few dozen miles; perhaps he had already left the area.

But no matter how profound the Demon Lord’s Nascent Soul cultivation was, finding a single person within this seemingly identical expanse of gravel was no simple feat. If he were on his own territory, it would be manageable—he could dig thirty zhang deep or even overturn the entire thousand-mile radius. But here...

...

Almost simultaneously, the Saintess, the Prophet Kulkas, and the Barbarian Chief Dage watched with rapt attention the crystal sphere floating before the Saintess. Clearly visible within it was the image of the White Bone Demon Lord, who was now furiously transforming into a gigantic hand in the air, scooping up handfuls of sand and scattering them, yet failing to find any trace of Lei Dong.

"Interesting, interesting. This young Foundation Establishment cultivator actually managed to escape the clutches of the old White Bone Demon," the burly Dage roared with schadenfreude.

"However, now that I mention it," Kulkas murmured, his ancient face thoughtful, "the technique that young man used at the end seems somewhat similar to our tribe's Berserker Art, fully igniting one's inner power to become more than double their strength in a short period. Saintess, what is your opinion?"

"The world is vast; countless marvelous arts and esoteric techniques exist. To my knowledge, several techniques possess similar effects," the Saintess stated calmly. "Dage, since the White Bone Demon Lord has delivered himself to our doorstep, it would be impolite not to accept him. Capture him. Although dispatching the entire Swiftrunner Insect army could achieve the goal, capturing him alive would prove far too costly."

"A trivial matter. The people of Zhuzhou spent a fortune to set up an aerial suppression formation, only to be clever only to fall into their own trap," Dage chuckled, then descended, transforming instantly into a whirlwind resembling yellow sand, vanishing without a trace.