A red haze clouded Xiong Dahuo's vision turning much of the world a lurid shade of red and shrinking his vision until he could barely see beyond the edge of the clearing. Two Red Mist Wolves had fallen to his nine-ringed saber but their deaths hardly did anything to satisfy his thirst for slaughter.
Wet wolf blood clung unnaturally to his saber as he fed on the strength of the wolves he'd slain, boosting his strength a small stage and allowing him to fight with the might and aggression of an enraged late-stage Brawler.
Against the Blood Moon Mist Wolf before him, however, it was barely enough to fight at a stalemate. Both Xiong Dahuo and the wolf bled from numerous small wounds, glancing blows, and shallow cuts inflicted in more than a dozen exchanges as the two circled and tested each other.
While fury flowed like fire through his veins, and blood clouded his vision, Xiong Dahuo refused to surrender his rational mind to the rage provoked by his blood oath. Instead, he rode the saber's edge between cold, calculated brutality and hot overpowering rage.
Lunging out again, crimson energy swirled around his blade giving him the extra reach he needed to inflict another shallow cut on the haunches of the Blood Moon Mist Wolf but the beast twisted its body with an unnatural quickness, preventing the wound from being deep enough to impair it. As soon as its paws touched the soft dirt it lunged again at Xiong Dahuo, catching his saber in its jaws and raking his forearms with its claws.
Xiong Dahuo fell back deliberately under the beast's attack, landing softly on his butt and rolling onto his back as he planted his feet against the wolf, kicking out with his legs and sending the wolf sailing several meters through the air while he completed the roll and returned to his feet.
"Brother Wu," he shouted. "Hold it for me!"
At the edge of Fang Lin's barrier formation, Wu Ling looked from the wolf tearing at the third layer of their barrier to the one charging at Xiong Dahuo and made a snap decision. Pulling two talismans from his cosmos bag he first threw one bearing the character 'Earth' and followed a moment later with the one bearing the character 'Ice.'
The first talisman split itself into four weak streams of energy, bolstered slightly by Fang Lin's Five Elements Augmentation formation, as it wrapped around the wolf's limbs, drawing a thick layer of mud from the ground, sucking it down into the earth. The second talisman arrived a moment later, exploding in a wave of shimmering white and blue energy like the unfolding petals of a frost flower, freezing the mud solid and binding the wolf in place.
The trapped wolf strained against the frozen mud, cracking the ground under the might of its straining muscles. In another two or three breaths it was certain to pull free of Wu Ling's restraint but a single breath was all Xiong Dahuo needed to cleave the wolf's head from its body with a powerful chop from his saber driven by all of his body weight.
The crimson-haired Brawler's stroke continued past the wolf's neck, embedding the last third of his saber into the frozen earth and pulling him down to his knees beside the beast's slumping body.
Xiong Dahuo, however, wasn't finished with the latest victim of his bloody blade. Pulling the knife from the sheath on his wrist, his eyes glowed a brighter red as he began to cut through the slain beast's flesh, plunging his hand deep into its chest in search of its heart.
"In the name of Blood and Slaughter, let demons dance and dye the world red!" Xiong Dahuo chanted as he ripped the wolf's heart from its chest and brought it to his lips, tearing off a hunk of the bloody muscle with a savage bite and gulping it down raw. A rich metallic flavor filled his mouth as power surged within him.
A deep crimson aura swirled around Xiong Dahuo and the corpse of the wolf as he painted a sharp glyph on his cheek with the blood of the wolf. With the speed of wine spilling from a glass, the flesh of the wolf shriveled and drew inward on itself until its corpse resembled a wrinkled prune.
For a moment, the world stilled in horror as Xiong Dahuo retrieved his saber from the frozen ground, drawing himself up to his full height and radiating a might that far exceeded the limits of a Brawler. The strength granted by his gruesome ritual might be temporary but it instantly attracted the attention of the Wolf King.
AAAAAOOOOOOO!
With a blood-curdling howl, the Wolf King's aura surged with rage as the second member of its true pack fell and in such a savage and humiliating manner. The aura covering the remaining wolves glowed with even greater brilliance as the Wolf King gathered its strength and stalked slowly onto the battlefield. A faint mist flowed from the body of the Wolf King, slowly spreading across the ground and covering it in a pale, wispy fog dyed the color of the Blood Moon.
Zhang Buyan, still wrestling with another Blood Moon Mist Wolf, drew even more deeply on the energy of the tides, pushing his greater cultivation to the limits as he attempted to drag at the Wolf King's movements to provide some support for his companion. The Wolf King, however, stalked directly past the bearded Brawler without feeling the slightest bit of drag. Even the mist it radiated refused to be influenced by Zhang Buyan's Golden Tide. To the Wolf King blessed by the Lunar Eclipse, the tides could only ebb and flow as it dictated!
It wasn't until Wu Ling heard the sound of the fourth layer of the barrier shattering and the fifth and final layer of the barrier cracking that he pulled himself back to the fight immediately at hand. Giving Xiong Dahuo the support he needed had allowed the wolf to attack the barrier without opposition and now almost nothing remained of their defenses!