Goatee stood rigid, unable to move a single muscle.
For some reason, everything before him was gradually sharpening into focus.
The fog that had obscured his vision could no longer block his sight.
He could clearly make out the defensive stances of his eldest brother and Black Dog.
And standing right there, so tense he was ready to draw his bow—was himself from just moments ago!
‘Why? Why? How can I be over there?’
‘If I’m over there, then what am I?’
‘But if I’m not the one standing there, who is?’
Instinct urged Goatee to charge forward, to confront or attack the man wearing his exact face.
‘What exactly happened? I was just following eldest brother north. How did I end up back in the southern woods?’
By the time Goatee snapped out of his daze, the three distant figures had already wandered far off. They headed north, their silhouettes gradually swallowed by the fog.
Goatee wanted to chase after them, but his legs were trembling so violently he couldn’t take a single step.
Suddenly, he whipped his head around, staring behind him in terrified vigilance.
He was terrified that another copy of himself would suddenly appear at his back.
But after a long wait, the woods behind him remained dead silent. Nothing appeared.
“Second Brother! What are you doing?” Black Dog’s voice suddenly rang out from behind him.
Goatee flinched violently and whipped his head back around, nearly spraining his neck.
His eyes went wide, and he nearly wept with joy.
The heavily bearded eldest brother and Black Dog were standing just a short distance ahead. Realizing he hadn’t kept up, they had stopped to call out to him.
“I... I think I just zoned out for a second,” he said, taking wide strides to catch up.
But he had barely taken two steps when the two men suddenly vanished into thin air.
“Ah!” Goatee shrieked. He clawed at his previously neat topknot with both hands, driven to the brink of madness.
“Eldest Brother!”
“Black Dog!”
“Eldest Brother!”
“Black Dog!”
The man’s terrified screams echoed through the mountain forest. It was as if they were walled off by something; even though they had only just entered the mountains, his voice couldn’t carry beyond them.
His frantic, helpless cries reverberated through the thin mist, piercing deep into the woods only to bounce right back.
Goatee screamed himself hoarse on the outskirts of the mountain, but he heard no reply.
Suddenly, the entire mountain fell so quiet that not even a beast’s roar or an insect’s chirp could be heard.
He didn’t dare venture deeper into the mountains, yet he wasn’t willing to leave. Exhausted from shouting, he collapsed weakly to the ground.
Right at that moment, he heard his own voice rolling back toward him from all directions.
“Ahhhhh!!!!”
“Ahhhhh!!!!”
As the echoes washed over him, they were incredibly faint, yet the sheer terror laced within them hadn’t faded in the slightest.
Li Ban abruptly opened his eyes.
Sitting cross-legged in a cave, his body was encased in a thick layer of ice and coated in mountain dust. From a distance, he looked exactly like a boulder.
He gave his body a gentle shake and stood up.
The ice and dirt sloughed off him in sheets, leaving his skin and robes completely spotless once again.
Li Ban turned toward the source of the sound.
Despite the heavy, overlapping echoes, he flawlessly pinpointed the true origin of the screams.
His figure vanished. After flickering through the forest a few times, he arrived at the mountain’s edge and spotted the man collapsed on the ground, trembling uncontrollably.
Crunching over the thick layer of fallen leaves, Li Ban reached the man in a few strides.
Yet the man acted as if he couldn’t see him at all, glancing wildly around in a mix of terror and desperate hope.
Li Ban raised a hand and gently swept his sleeve over Goatee’s face. The man violently shuddered, finally registering Li Ban’s presence.
He stared blankly at Li Ban for a moment before snapping back to reality.
“Immortal Master? Immortal Master!”
Goatee lunged forward, trying to grab the hem of Li Ban’s robes.
But his hand phased straight through the fabric, hitting the dirt.
Terror flooded Goatee’s eyes. Scrambling on all fours, he backed away.
Li Ban stared down at him and suddenly asked, “Who killed you?”
Goatee flinched again, freezing stiff on the spot.
“Forget it.” Li Ban knew directly asking probably wouldn’t yield any answers.
He immediately cast Mind Reading to search the memories of the dead before him.
Very quickly, several scenes flashed simultaneously through both Li Ban’s and Goatee’s minds.
The first was of Goatee and his two companions entering the mountains.
The second occurred shortly after their arrival, when they encountered a massive, fierce-eyed tiger in the woods.
The beast was a full five meters long. It stared down at the three men, thick saliva dripping from its fangs.
Knowing they were absolutely no match for this monstrous tiger, the three instantly turned and fled.
But Goatee tripped and fell, making him the first to be bitten to death by the beast.
His two companions desperately fled into the distance.
“So... so I’m already dead.”
Only then did Goatee finally remember what had happened.
He remembered his eldest brother and Black Dog looking back with tears in their eyes after the tiger’s jaws clamped down on him. All he could do was scream at them to run.
After that, his vision had gone black, and he knew nothing else.
Goatee shivered violently; even death hadn’t made him forget that terror.
Having viewed the same scenes, Li Ban was slightly puzzled.
That tiger was indeed far from ordinary.
A small world like this shouldn’t have produced a tiger of such massive proportions.
Moreover, the tiger in Goatee’s memories had eyes that were far too sharp. It possessed a gaze of intelligence far exceeding that of an ordinary beast.
Goatee had no idea why the tiger was so powerful, but simply by viewing the memories, Li Ban could clearly sense the unique spiritual rhinoceros fluctuations of a spirit practitioner radiating from the beast.
“Let’s go take a look.” Li Ban grabbed Goatee’s ghost.
Even though Goatee hadn’t been able to touch him earlier, grasping the ghost was effortless for Li Ban.
The two figures vanished once again, flickering through the air a few times before reappearing deep in the forest.
A small silver bird fluttered into Li Ban’s chest, transforming into a streak of silver light that merged into the center of his brow.
This was the exact spot the Silver Kingfisher had just located—the place with the highest concentration of spiritual rhinoceros.
The moment they arrived, Li Ban spotted a cave entrance on the nearby hillside. Piled in a triangle on the ground right outside the cave were three human heads.
“Ah!!!” Goatee shrieked in terror again.
Li Ban also recognized that the other two heads belonged to Goatee’s former companions.
“It seems they failed to escape the tiger’s jaws in the end.”
Li Ban tossed aside the paralyzed Goatee and walked toward the cave entrance alone.
He had barely reached the opening when the distinct, foul stench of a wild beast hit his nose.
At the same time, fierce gusts of wind blasted out from within. A massive, fierce-eyed tiger slowly padded out of the dark cavern.
It stared down at Li Ban from its imposing height, its eyes flashing with confusion.
The human standing before it looked incredibly scrawny—not even as muscular as the two burly men it had just devoured.
Yet, for some inexplicable reason, this man gave off an utterly terrifying feeling.
However, having only just awakened its intelligence, the tiger couldn’t fully comprehend the massive gap in strength that this terror represented. It merely glared warily at Li Ban, a low, rumbling growl echoing from its throat.
In that brief moment, Li Ban had also completely analyzed the beast, observing it inside and out.
He arrived at a conclusion. “This isn’t elementalization.”
Animal elementalization was the acquisition of a single ability by a physical body. Examples included a mouth that breathed fire, wings that enabled flight, or skin as hard as iron.
Yet the tiger before him had received an abnormal, full-body enhancement. Rather than elementalization, it was more like the beast had become a spirit practitioner itself, or—
Li Ban suddenly leaped into the air, lunging right at the beast.
The tiger violently swiped its massive paw, but it failed to graze even the hem of Li Ban’s robes.
In the next split second, Li Ban was already crouching directly atop its forehead. He plunged his hand straight between the tiger’s eyes.
Keeping his index and middle fingers tightly pressed together, he pinched and drew out a tiny object from deep within the beast’s skull. It was the size of a pine needle—an Embryoless Fragment.