Sairen was fleeing, pouring every ounce of strength, exhausting every reserve of energy simply to escape.

For three days, he had endured the relentless, mad pursuit of the Nightwalker. In those three days, there were at least thirteen instances where he had been on the verge of being utterly pulverized.

Fortunately, the Nightwalker’s speed was not great; rather, its movements were noticeably sluggish and slow, which allowed Sairen to narrowly slip away time after time.

Three days prior, the Nightwalker had unleashed an attack of shadowy black flames upon the space fleet Sairen commanded. The energy shields of every Southern Gate Heavyduty Battleship and Northern Gate Battleship shattered with a resounding crash in less than five seconds under the assault of the black flames. The black flames coiled like venomous pythons, striking every vessel and directly crippling their hulls.

The lighter Northern Gate-class battleships sustained massive ruptures in their hulls, but thankfully, the damage control facilities aboard those ships were excellent, allowing every vessel to escape the scene cloaked in thick smoke.

The heavier Southern Gate Heavyduty Battleships suffered breaches spanning dozens of meters in diameter beneath their hulls, resulting in massive casualties among the personnel inside and severely compromising the ships' operational capabilities.

The overall commander of the fleet was a former veteran space fleet commander from the Earth Federation Military, rehired by the Hardwood Defense Corporation, who held the rank of Major General before retirement. Upon his fleet suffering such devastating damage, this commander fiercely ordered all Southern Gate Heavyduty Battleships to lock onto Heisuojin and the Nightwalker, who were suspended in mid-air, and unleash a full-power saturation bombardment upon their location. Not only were tens of thousands of energy cannons fired, but every space torpedo and missile aboard the battleships was launched.

The simultaneous ignition of all weapons resulted in a colossal explosion equivalent to tens of millions of tons of TNT, sweeping clean every trace of the Roman army within a radius of a dozen kilometers.

Sairen, being whisked away frantically by Aredia, clearly remembered that amidst such a terrifying detonation, the Nightwalker remained suspended in the air, enveloped in fiercely burning black flames, his body utterly unshaken. With a halo of light, he shielded Heisuojin and Porphyris, roaring madly as he absorbed the black airflow surging forth from the slain Roman warriors. His laughter even drowned out the thunderous roar of the explosion, the immense shockwave fragmenting the resulting mushroom cloud.

Gazing at that figure, which resembled a ghost or a god, Sairen suddenly grasped a terrifying truth—if the Nightwalker was not killed, every soldier of the Earth Federation Army would perish by his hand.

The Nightwalker’s attack power had been calculated with excruciating precision; he had delivered that blow based on the defensive strength of the Romans’ newest warships. If the armor plating of the Southern Gate and Northern Gate classes had been comparable to the Romans’ most advanced vessels, that single strike alone would have annihilated the entire fleet. By sheer luck, every ship Sairen brought was constructed using an alloy formula derived from the third bamboo scroll obtained from Gu Yechen—while the ships’ energy shields were not outstanding, their external armor plating was several times sturdier than that of the Roman vessels.

It was only because of this that Sairen's fleet managed to escape the Nightwalker’s grasp, but all the warships were severely damaged, losing at least seventy percent of their combat effectiveness.

Noticing the situation developing from a distance, Banruo and Maha urgently transformed into beams of black and white light, rushing toward the area. Banruo immediately expended all his strength, outputting Zen power to rapidly treat Sairen’s injuries.

Sairen instantly proposed his plan: coordinate with a simultaneous volley from all remaining ships to launch a concentrated assault on the Nightwalker—they had to kill him, or at least cripple him severely.

Banruo and Maha agreed to Sairen's plan without hesitation. They both sensed that near-maniacal aura of destruction emanating from the Nightwalker; he was a fanatic whose ultimate goal was absolute annihilation. The cultivation method he practiced involved devouring the life force and total energy of those he killed to convert it into his own strength—a textbook example of absolute Demonic Path cultivation.

What happened next? Sairen only retained fragmented, hazy recollections.

It wasn't just the four of them—Sairen, Aredia, Banruo, and Maha—they gathered nearly a thousand powerful Realm Cultivators from the Hardwood Corporation, including Medusa, Popov, and Old Billy, for a joint offensive. First, all operational Southern Gate-class battleships launched a second barrage against the Nightwalker, followed by nearly a thousand Realm Cultivators simultaneously hitting him with a psychic shockwave. Sairen, Aredia, Banruo, and Maha then executed a close-quarters counter-attack.

What was the process like?

Sairen swayed his heavy head, his vision blurring in fits and starts. Dim red beads of sweat erupted from every pore, the perspiration carrying a faint scent of blood. He panted, sprinting forward; his lungs burned fiercely, and every breath felt like inhaling a lungful of untamed chili powder instead of air.

The process? The process of the ambush?

The Nightwalker was truly a monster. He actually managed to devour the majority of the psychic shockwave unleashed by the nearly thousand coordinated Realm Cultivators. The negligible residual energy only made him spit up a small, insignificant mouthful of blood. The close-range assault by the four of them was nothing more than a joke. Aredia was the first to be swatted away, followed by the brothers Banruo and Maha, whose bones were shattered before they were sent flying far away. Fortunately, the three of them were rescued by Hardwood Corporation personnel; given current medical technology, survival was not in question.

But what about Sairen himself? Why had he fallen to his current wretched state?

Ugh, what had he done? Sairen painfully shook his head, spat out a mouthful of blood, and stumbled onward in his flight. What had he done to provoke such relentless pursuit from the Nightwalker?

Hmm, it seemed like nothing much? He had merely thrust the ancient bronze sword gifted by the Corpse Emperor into the Nightwalker’s abdomen! That truly was a magnificent blade—utterly sharp, striking without a sound. A streak of cyan sword energy several meters long sliced through the black flames surrounding the Nightwalker like silk, passing effortlessly across his flesh.

Hmm, perhaps that had been a bit excessive? That strike carried the distinct flavor of a sneak attack, and...

The placement was also wrong! It seemed like he had performed a swift surgical procedure on the Nightwalker? The kind of surgery that, in the ancient Gu Hua Kingdom of the Earth Federation, was the specialty of a particular court agency known as the ‘Chastity Chamber’!

“Damn it, no wonder he’s hunting me down like this!”

Managing, with great effort, to sort through the jumble of thoughts in his chaotic mind, Sairen suddenly stopped, leaning over a small stream to gulp down several mouthfuls of water.

Casting a wary glance left and right, Sairen swiftly stripped off the few remaining scraps of cloth and pouches clinging to him, using the icy stream water to wipe down his body. Three days and three nights of desperate flight had carried Sairen deep into the mountains. The stream water here came from the perpetual snow and ice melt on the peaks, making it chillingly cold. The cool water rapidly lowered Sairen's core temperature, causing his already foggy consciousness to snap awake with a jolt.

Fumbling inside the storage pouch tied to his waist, Sairen pulled out several life-saving spiritual elixirs gifted by Gu Yechen and swallowed them. A surge of heat coursed through his body, and Sairen’s frame began to tremble violently. The surrounding stream water rapidly vaporized, and black flames continuously spewed from his core. Fine, dense blisters erupted all over Sairen’s skin. Aided by the elixirs, the blisters subsided quickly, but upon being licked by the black flames, large patches of blisters reappeared instantly.