Blue simply tilted his head a fraction of an inch, letting the fist graze his cheek.

Simultaneously, Blue’s hand shot forward, his palm striking Yanlie squarely in the center of the chest.

Thwump!!!

It wasn’t a loud impact.

It sounded muffled and contained.

But the damage was catastrophic.

Blue unleashed thousands of microscopic, sharp, prickly needles of condensed Qi directly into Yanlie’s torso.

The needles bypassed the Beast Lord’s muscular armor entirely, invading his internal meridians, slicing through his spiritual veins like microscopic razors.

Yanlie’s eyes went wide.

A sudden spasm tore through his chest.

He staggered backward, his hands flying to his sternum.

He coughed, a thick, dark splatter of blood hitting the mud.

’What is this Qi?!’ Yanlie’s mind reeled in shock. ’It is not blunt force. It is not fire. It is sharp... like a thousand tiny swords cutting me from the inside. But the cold... why is it so cold?!’

Blue didn’t give him time to recover.

He advanced, his movements precise, elegant, and utterly lethal.

He struck Yanlie’s shoulder, sending another burst of prickly devastation into the joint.

He struck Yanlie’s ribcage, fracturing the bone from the inside out.

Yanlie roared, unleashing a wave of demonic beast-fire, attempting to engulf the rogue cultivator.

Blue merely waved his hand, his disguised Qi shredding the flames before they could even reach him.

He stepped through the dissipated fire, grabbed Yanlie by the throat, and slammed him down into the swamp mud with earth-shattering force.

The Beast Lord gasped, blood bubbling at the corner of his lips.

His internal organs felt as though they were being put through a meat grinder.

His beast instincts, which usually demanded he fight to the death, were screaming at him to flee.

It appears that the man holding him wasn’t a mere rogue cultivator.

The man holding him was an apex predator of an entirely different magnitude.

Blue leaned down, his face inches away from Yanlie’s.

"If you ever look at him again," Blue whispered, his eyes pitch black, the temperature around them dropping so drastically that Yanlie’s breath crystallized on his lips. "I will not just ruin your meridians. I will peel the flesh from your bones and feed it to the swamp rats."

Blue released his grip, standing up and taking a step back.

Yanlie coughed violently, rolling onto his side.

He glared up at the red-haired rogue, his amber eyes burning with humiliation, fury, and undeniable, primal fear.

"This isn’t over," Yanlie rasped, clutching his bleeding chest.

He looked past Blue, his gaze locking onto Ji’an, who was still leaning against the Banyan tree, rubbing her bruised throat.

"I will find you, chef," Yanlie vowed, his voice thick with blood and possessive obsession. "You smell too sweet to forget."

With a final, feral glare, Yanlie turned, utilizing a desperate, blood-burning evasion technique to blur into the dense foliage, disappearing into the depths of the jungle, leaving a trail of crushed leaves and dark blood in his wake.

Silence descended upon the clearing, save for the heavy, ragged breathing of the two remaining occupants.

Lin Ji’an slowly slid down the trunk of the Banyan tree until she was sitting in the mud.

Her hands were shaking violently.

The adrenaline crash was hitting her like a tidal wave, compounding the miserable, lingering ache in her abdomen.

She looked at Blue.

The red-haired rogue was standing in the center of the clearing.

His back was turned to her.

He was standing still.

The aura radiating from him due to the berserk mood from earlier was terrifying.

It wasn’t the calm, relaxed presence of the man she had met in the market.

It was a suffocating, heavy, incredibly toxic miasma of pure killing intent.

His hands were clenched into fists, trembling slightly.

The air around him was visibly distorting, the mud beneath his boots cracking as it completely froze over.

’He is furious,’ Ji’an realized, a cold sweat breaking out across her brow. ’He just fought a Beast Lord. He used some insane, high-level hidden Qi technique. And he is standing there vibrating like a bomb that is about to go off.’

She didn’t know what to do.

If she approached him, would he lash out?

Would the rage consume him?

She needed to ground him.

She needed to bring him back to reality before his cultivation base deviated from the intensity of his emotions.

And Lin Ji’an only knew one foolproof, universal method for grounding violent, emotionally unstable men.

She pushed herself up from the mud, ignoring the ache in her stomach.

She walked over to the massive, butchered carcass of the Iron-Bristle Boar they had killed earlier.

She didn’t speak to Blue.

She didn’t ask if he was okay.

She simply pulled out her heavy iron wok, a set of thick, spirit-iron skewers, and a bag of glowing, high-grade charcoal.

With practiced, hyper-efficient movements, she built a small, contained fire pit.

She ignited the charcoal with a flick of her Qi.

Then, she took out the massive, premium cuts of pork belly she had harvested, sliced them into thick, generous slabs, and threaded them onto the iron skewers.

She pulled out a myriad of spices, crushed star anise, fiery Szechuan peppercorns, dark soy glaze, and a hint of wild mountain honey, and began to methodically baste the meat.

The sound of sizzling fat filled the clearing.

The rich, deep, incredibly intoxicating aroma of roasting pork, caramelized sugar, and crackling spices rose into the humid air, completely overpowering the smell of ozone, blood, and the toxic swamp.

It was a smell that spoke of hearths, safety, and undeniable comfort.

For ten minutes, Ji’an cooked in silence.

She turned the skewers, watching the pork belly transform into a glistening, dark-red masterpiece of culinary perfection.

Slowly, the terrifying aura radiating from Blue began to recede.

The freezing temperature in the clearing normalized.

The trembling in his fists stopped.

Wangchen’s mind, which had been completely consumed by a dark haze of rage, a rage born from seeing another man press his face into Ji’an’s neck.