In the darkness of night, Nox was all-powerful. To her, the shady forest east of the mountains was the perfect place for her to disappear. What little light streaked down from the moon and stars could hardly penetrate the canopy of the strange mixture of evergreen and demonic trees. As a result, she could use techniques like Shadow Melding to blend into shadows and become invisible to the naked eye and Shadow Walk to practically swim through the darkness at insane speed.

Nox's large hood bellowed in the cold night air as she dashed between the foliage with the mountain range to her back. Her peak Star Core blazed in her chest as she used both techniques to escape, yet a deep frown was on her face.

Behind her was a path of destruction. The forest was ablaze and casting an annoying red hue on everything.

"How is he still following me?" Nox cursed under her breath as she glanced over her shoulder and saw a man overhead standing on a sword of blazing crimson flames that seemed to have no issue keeping his gaze fixed on her general location no matter what she did. Nox had repeatedly paused to check her clothes for a tracking artifact but had come up blank. It made no logical sense that a cultivator a few stages below her could track her during the night while she was using Shadow Melding.

It was frankly humiliating. Not only had Nox turned tail and ran when that immense presence appeared on the mountain peak, but now she was being easily hunted down like a dog.

Nox noticed a massive grey stone wall up ahead that getting over would expose her position, so she stopped under a cluster of demonic trees to try and work out how the Grand Elder was following her. One strange thing she noted was that the Redclaw Grand Elder seemed to avoid hurling fireballs at the demonic trees for whatever reason, so she used them as cover.

"Shadow Creation," Nox whispered as she closed her eyes and exerted her presence on all the surrounding darkness. As per her mental image, the darkness rose and morphed into fiends that were legless creatures with large mouths and claws.

"Spread out," Nox commanded, and the fiends silently moved through the darkness in all directions. She then narrowed her eyes through the scarlet canopy at the Grand Elder in the sky to see if he reacted to her creations.

To her confusion, the Grand Elder seemed unaware of the fiends or didn't care as he continued moving and looking in her general direction.

"So he doesn't have a way to track shadow Qi. I just don't understand how he is doing this," Nox muttered as she perched on the thickest branch she could find.

A small fire whisp drifted past her vision and lazily rose into the night sky.

Confused, Nox followed the origin of the fire whisp and noticed that all of the surrounding demonic trees also had tiny whisps of fire forming on their leaves like water droplets and then casually floating up into the sky.

"Since when did demonic trees have fire Qi..." Nox wondered to herself. Closing her eyes, Nox retraced her steps with her spiritual sense and noticed a trail of fire whisps floating into the sky from most of the demonic trees she had passed, although some emitted a dense mist instead.

So the trees are exposing my location to the Grand Elder? Nox opened her eyes and cursed as she noticed a giant ball of flames heading straight for her. Using Shadow Step, she teleported through the darkness a few trees away and watched as the fireball struck the ground and engulfed the area she had been a moment before in a crimson blaze.

Nox may be a few stages above the Grand Elder regarding cultivation, but that firepower was no joke. Having sacrificed her soul shadow earlier to make an escape, her powers were temporarily halved, so taking such an attack to the face wasn't ideal. "I thought he was avoiding the demonic trees," Nox squinted at the fire but then noticed the trees seemed unharmed and remembered they had been strange fire-cultivating trees, so they would naturally be resistant.

"If the demonic trees are exposing me, I just need to get away from them," Nox concluded as she silently leaped down from the tree branch and landed among the dense foliage of the forest floor. Thankfully, she had no need to cleave a path through the thicket as she could simply Shadow Walk her way to the giant grey wall and escape into the wilderness.

There shouldn't be any demonic trees over the wall, Nox assumed as she approached it at high speed, but then her eyes widened as she saw the gray wall begin to progressively lighten up, which could only mean one thing... there was a fireball heading this way. Glancing over her shoulder, she saw the entire sky ablaze as a literal wall of fire descended on her location.

"Shadow Armor," Nox cursed as she dove to the ground and wrapped herself in the surrounding darkness that had become sparse by the sudden light that blanketed the night sky.

Seconds later, her surroundings became an inferno as crimson flames obliterated all of the forest near this area of the wall. Nox stood up while full plate armor made of shadows protected her body.

She was now effectively cornered as the surrounding fire suppressed her movement techniques, which meant one thing. It was time to stop running and become the hunter rather than the prey.

How bothersome. I wanted to conserve my Qi for my journey across the wilderness and reform my soul shadow as soon as possible, but this persistent Grand Elder is begging to die. Nox crouched down and thrust her hand into the crimson flames. Let's convert his little fire, shall we?

Nox murmured, "Dark Flame Manipulation," her voice muffled behind her shadow helmet. Her Star Core pulsed, channeling shadow Qi into the Grand Elder's fire, which promptly darkened. The blackness surged outward, corrupting the nearby crimson flames, and soon, the entire vicinity was engulfed in a sea of black fire.

"Nox, return that which you have stolen," The Grand Elder's voice thundered from above as he flared his mockery of phoenix wings. A sword, wreathed in dark red flames, pointed at her as if the Grand Elder condemned her to death.

"Why don't you come down here and take it from me then," Nox mocked as she commanded the sea of black flames to morph into a massive claw that surged up into the night sky like a tsunami hitting a wall. The fiends she had summoned earlier used the rising claw as a bridge to reach the man in the sky.

The Grand Elder responded in kind to the approaching attack by conjuring a tornado of flames that emanated from his sword tip and slammed into the rising claw of black flames.

Nox smirked behind her helmet. To fight a shadow Qi cultivator in the dead of night was simply madness. No matter how much the foolish Grand Elder threw at the black flame claw, Nox could endlessly pull from the surrounding darkness to feed it.

"What?!" The Grand Elder seemed to have noticed the situation, as no matter how much Qi from his own Star Core he channeled into his fire tornado, the claw kept rising toward him.

"This is goodbye," Nox muttered as the shadow claw caught up to the retreating Grand Elder and began to crush him in its grasp. However, to Nox's bafflement, a sudden column of light shot up into the sky, instantly turning the dark night into daytime and exorcising her shadow claw as if it were a ghost.

Nox looked at the beam of light in fear, "Is that Lucius going supernova? Did that mysterious, overwhelming presence that suddenly appeared really defeat him even while Lucius was pulling on the power of his god?"

With no intention to wait around and see if she could survive the aftermath of a peak Star Core Realm cultivator going supernova while having his body filled to the brim with light Qi, Nox turned to flee but realized a slight issue. There were almost no shadows left in the face of the blinding light and the now freed Grand Elder seemed hellbent on taking advantage of that as he rocketed down towards her and crash-landed a mere meter away as Nox managed to sidestep the attempt to decapitate her.

"For your transgressions against the Ashfallen Trading Company," The Grand Elder said coldly as he emerged from the smoldering crater while ablaze with crimson flames, "I sentence you to death."

"You don't have the capabilities," Nox half lied as she absorbed the few shadows in her vicinity to form a sword and shield, which weren't her preferred weapons. This is really bad. I can't get close to slit his throat in one move as his flames remove any nearby shadows, and my powers have been halved due to sacrificing my soul shadow earlier to escape.

With the blinding column of light robbing her of the chance of Shadow Walking away and the Grand Elder's flames making Shadow Step impractical, Nox had no choice but to kill this pest before she could escape safely.

The Grand Elder charged forward, leaving a blaze in his wake, and showed Nox why the Redclaws had once been hailed as one of the greatest warrior families. She tried to block his double-handed sword swing, but the blade split her shadow shield with raw strength alone and bit deep into her flesh.

Gritting her teeth behind her helmet of darkness, Nox used the Grand Elder's unstoppable momentum and allowed herself to be thrown like a rag doll to the ground. By twisting her body as she hit the floor, she freed her arm from the sword and then scrambled up to her feet and broke out into a sprint.

"Darkness absorption," Nox hissed as she pulled in some nearby shadows while running to heal her wound. Compared to the healing Lucius could achieve, it was pathetic, but in turn, her stealth and attack techniques were stronger.

Or they would be stronger if not for me missing half my power and there being no shadows around for me to command, Nox lamented as she dove to the side to dodge a fireball that was hurled her way. The sheer force of the explosion that followed knocked her off balance and threw her back to the floor.

"How much Qi does this bastard have," Nox cursed. It just didn't make sense. They weren't in a volcanic region, so all of this fire he was creating had to come from his internal reserve or from pulling in and converting the ambient Qi, but that was very inefficient unless...

Her suspicions were proven correct as she got back up and scrutinized the flames surrounding the Grand Elder's body a little closer. Just how pure are his spirit roots? That flame doesn't have a lick of impurities in it.

That was even more bad news. The more pure someone's spirit roots, the more efficient their Qi usage was. Nox had an above-average spirit root, but her technique's potential power was still dampened slightly by the impurities that got mixed in, so she had to compensate by expending more Qi to output the intended level of intensity.

Nox then remembered the spirit root improvement pill Roselyn had given her and that she had consumed. It helped improve her spirit root, which should have been impossible, but it had only been by a small amount.

I would need to consume three more to get a spirit root on the same level as the Redclaw Grand Elder. Fuck, maybe I should have gotten some more pills out of them before going after the earrings.

It was a regrettable and missed opportunity, but with poison still swirling around her body, she had no intentions of sticking around and being caught in a trap.

Nox was ripped from her wandering thoughts by the Grand Elder barreling into her with his sword once again, accompanied by a superheated blast that devoured her shadow armor and weapons, leaving her defenseless.

Crossing her arms to eat the impact and reaching into the folds of her cloak, Nox pulled down on a pendant, and the moment the chain around her neck snapped, a defensive bubble formed that saved her from losing both her arms to the following sword swing.

"You merchants and your life-saving artifacts," The Grand Elder sneered as Nox kicked him away to gain some distance, "Just cheap tricks employed by weaklings"

The Grand Elder paused as the lights went out, and they were bathed in darkness once more. The column of light depriving Nox of shadows had vanished, and the night had returned instantly. The sky was once again filled with the distant cosmos and large moon, which made Nox grin.

"You were saying?" Nox asked as she pulled on all the surrounding shadows to reform her armor and refill her Star Core. Cultivators were always strongest in a Qi-rich environment that complemented their techniques, and Nox had never felt more powerful.

She may be weak during the day or against light and fire cultivators, but she was nothing short of an empress at night as she commanded the shadows to do her bidding.

"Night Beast Summoning," Nox spread out her presence, and soon the forest became busy as native wolves of the forest emerged from the thicket with coats of shadow and began to encircle the Redclaw Grand Elder while snarling. Unlike the summoned fiends from earlier, these were real monsters that she was mind-controlling and granting heightened strength with her shadows. So, each one of them could exert a force comparable to herself despite usually being weak.

They all leaped at the Grand Elder upon Nox's command, and he struggled to fight them off as the shadows wreathed around their bodies, absorbed the flames, and allowed the wolves to avoid his senses and attack from blind spots.

Nox used Shadow Creation to manifest some throwing knives and threw them at the Grand Elder with the intention of killing, but there was a sudden ripple of spatial Qi in the area, and a rift formed, swallowing her attack.

"Shit," Nox turned to flee. Her entire plan had been to run as far away from the powerful spatial cultivator while they were busy dealing with Lucius, who she had left behind. But if the disappearance of the column of light was anything to go by, Lucius was likely dead.

The gravity around her began to increase exponentially as the spatial Qi rose from the roots of the forest and suffocated the surroundings. Pulling in more shadows to empower herself, Nox pressed on toward the giant grey wall.

With her spiritual sense, she attempted to trace the source of the spatial Qi, but strangely, all she could pinpoint as the source was the other mountain peak next to the one with the white stone palace on it.

What in the nine realms? Is there a massive spatial Qi gathering array built into the mountain, or is there some Monarch Realm cultivator slumbering inside?

Nox had no plans to find out as the world took on a dark hue as she Shadow Walked through the forest toward the wall. Within a minute, she arrived at it, and instead of going over the top, she smashed straight through. As she found out, the stone was runically engraved on the inside and offered quite the resistance, but she was a 9th-stage Star Core cultivator at the peak of their power, so it yielded.

Stepping through the hole in a shower of rock, Nox looked around.

Beyond the wall were endless rolling meadows with only the occasional outcroppings of trees here and there. Which meant fewer shadows to work with but also no more demonic trees giving away her location.

It's still bizarre that they did that. In fact, I couldn't even smell the usual rancid smell of demonic trees due to the acidic soil and the rotting corpses that usually surround them.

Nox concluded that absolutely nothing about this small corner of the Blood Lotus Sect made any sense at all.

"I wonder if that strange demonic tree I saw at the White Stone Palace is responsible for all this" The words died in her throat as a portal manifested above her head and that massive black wooden Ent that was still missing most of an arm dropped through making the entire ground shudder.

Nox wasn't having any of this titan's nonsense as she knew it utilized spatial Qi, so she used Shadow Creation to create an enormous axe out of shadows and charged at its leg before it could get its bearings.

The Ent seemed taken aback as it tried to reach down and crush her with its remaining hand, but Nox used Shadow Step to avoid it and easily cut through one of its legs. As the thing began to topple, she cut the other one for good measure.

What good is some mid-stage wooden golem going to do? Nox snorted as she watched the black wood titan fall like timber and create a small earthquake. It continued glaring at her with its flaming eyes but was unable to get back up. At least fight me yourself instead of sending your minions...

Nox turned to leave but paused as she came face to face with something that made her entire body briefly freeze up. A single indescribable eye floated with the slit of a giant tree and gazed at her with alien curiosity through a rift. Nox felt her body shiver with a mixture of fear and excitement. She had felt this feeling once before, which had drawn her interest in the earrings worn by Stella, but this was on another level compared to the artifact... she just couldn't look away. It was as if the gaze drew her in, wrestling her attention away from her brain and body that so desperately wanted to flee.

I want it. Raising her hand slowly, Nox tried reaching the eye. I need it. But all she felt was pain. Blinking in confusion, she managed to tear her gaze from the eye and look at the thick, thorn-covered vine coiling around her arm. It had only felt like a moment, but apparently, it had been long enough for vines to emerge from multiple portals and begin to devour her alive.