Like the Blood Yang Gorilla, most Mysterious Beasts didn't have Spiritual Senses, replacing them with some other form of heightened sense. Without a Spiritual Sense, one couldn't control artifacts, making it so that the average Mysterious Beast didn't have the tools to use the artifacts that humans and spirits so often relied on. But starting with rank-six Ordained Beasts, the situation changed completely.
Regardless of whether they got their Ordinance from a Devil, Saint or God, rank-six Mysterious Beasts and above all had access to a spiritual sense, supplementing it with Holy Force, Divine Power, or Evil Qi.
Zhiji Jing was no longer the formidable Splendor of the East. Heck, even among rank-five Beast Kings, she didn't have much clout. Nevertheless, her Holy Ordinance remained. Add that to her cultivation base, and she had the means to stimulate one or two earth-grade artifacts.
Dong Ling, Yan Le, the Zhi-Zhu twins and Li daughters didn't laze around, each pouring Spiritual Qi and Sense into the artifacts. The 20 females shared the load, and by the time the Blood Yang Gorilla had snapped out of its trance, the three Dark Moon Scythes had soared into the sky—rippling with surging levels of dark-blue energies.
"Bad beauties!" Ignoring the gold-blood reptile apparition, the Blood Yang Gorilla flew at the girls, raising its tree-trunk-sized fist for a direct punch. The three levitating scythes arched back, channeling the dark-blue energies at the tip of the scythe's blades before falling in one radiant triple slash.
Three dark-purple crescent moons flew at the Blood Yang Gorilla. Its punch reverberated throughout Nameless City, triggering a blaring sonic boom that slammed into the three crescent moons.
In an explosion of formless pressure and light particles, the two sides met. The Blood Yang Gorilla frowned at the three scythes, but unscathed and driven by insatiable lust, it resumed its charge. A rapid succession of dark crescent moons followed, flying towards the Blood Yang Gorilla's neck waist, knees legs and arms. It met each with ferocious punches, putting its oppressive brawn on full display.
Alas, for every three steps that it took forward, the Blood Yang Gorilla would take two backward, recoiling due to the explosive and accumulating impact. But while it struggled to move past the crescent moon slashes, minor scratches aside, it didn't have a single injury.
Still, the Gorilla's frustration mounted. Its eyes darted left and right, here noticing Chun Xu, who trapped in her breakthrough attempt, couldn't move one bit—still sitting crossed-legged.
"Humph! The beauty isn't looking at me. Bad beauty!" Infuriated by Chun Xu's focus on the Sword Hurricane, the Blood Yang Gorilla aimed at her instead, in a flash throwing 300 punches that culminated in an explosion of murderous pressure.
"Oh no…" In a brisk and spontaneous response, the girls spread the scythes' energies, pushing to cast a protective barrier on the scene. The scythes spun on themselves, conjuring a dark-blue energy screen that wrapped the peacock and gals. Alas, the Dark-Moon Scythes were primarily offensive artifacts. Defense was never meant to be their strong suit, so while the barrier channeled three Earth Artifacts…
*BANG*
…it struggled to contain the murderous pressure blast. The collision shook the earth, making the artifacts sway in the air, and the gals struggle to stay on their feet. As the main target of this blow, Chun Xu had it worse. Formless energies swept through her, disrupting her breakthrough attempt. Even with the Sword Key, if Chun Xu failed to break through the hurricane, she died.
She couldn't afford to fail, afford to let the horrible pain hacking through her organs and bones to destroy her opportunity and life. Dazzling rays flashed in her eyes, and tapping into the Soul Force boost she'd gained from refining Tusha's strand, Chun Xu kept control of her senses, bit her lips to dripping blood, and forced a charge through the Sword Hurricane.
"Senior sister!" Dong Ling didn't need to see Chun Xu's face to know that the Gorilla's blow hurled her sworn sister into an impasse. Chun Xu had just recently broken through to the Foundation Building realm and had yet to stabilize her cultivation. How could she deal with both the damages the Gorilla inflicted and control the Sword Key to break through Feng Jian's intricate Sword Hurricane?
Her dantian would rupture before she completed the task!
Ready to throw caution to the wind, Dong Ling aimed one hand at her chest, about to pull out her Monster Core and fuse it with Chun Xu so she could supply her with an enormous energy supply.
The move would end her life.
But at that time, a melody spread throughout the scene. Sorrowful and heart-stopping, it mirrored the cries of broken souls, raged against the world, yet at the same time, dropped to match the emptiness weighing on the musician's heart.
A singer backed the instrument's tune, chanting in an ancient language that Zhiji Jing aside, no one could comprehend.
"A…pipa?"
"The Song of the Fox Emperor?" While Dong Ling recognized the string instrument, Zhiji Jing remembered the song's title. Having heard it once, over ten thousand years ago, Zhiji Jing knew that only the royal family of Qingqiu Island could sing this song. And even among them, the nine-tailed Foxes were the only ones with the ability to sing the whole thing. Thus, the longer the song went on, the more terrified Zhiji Jing became.
As for Dong Ling, her eyes twitched at the pipa sound. In contemporary times, zithers were all the rage. Entertainers would rather learn the zither than play the pipa that was quickly falling out of grace. Only ancient folks still enjoyed playing and listening to the pipa, making her wonder if an elder of the cultivation world had joined the fight.
'Zi girl, if I turn against you, I'm sorry.' Zhiji Jing told Dong Ling through a mental message, aware of the mesmerizing abilities concealed in the ongoing song.
The nine-tailed White Fox clan's bewitching powers were 10,000 times superior to the mermaid clan's. As the number one bewitching bloodline of the world, their song could mesmerize Mysterious Beasts, regardless of cultivation level.
Barring superior soul defenses, there was no way for a mysterious beast to resist the nine-tailed White Fox Clan. Humans had it much easier, so while among the legendary beasts, the Dragon was the strongest, the Kun the toughest, and the Phoenix the noblest, the nine-tailed White Fox would forever be…the monarch of the beast world.
And if one day, a ten-tailed White Fox could break their primordial curse to embark on the cultivation road, then there would likely come a time when the White Fox clan would dominate all under the Heavens.
However, as Zhiji Jing's fears mounted, she noticed that the song only seemed to target the Blood Yang Gorilla. Better yet, the pipa sound fused with Chun Xu, sharpening her Sword Sense, and pacifying her wounds!
Disoriented by the fox's song, the Blood Yang Gorilla drifted in the air, head swaying left and right.
Pulled in by the melody, it ignored the peacock and gals to turn towards the origin of this song.
Two figures appeared in the sky. One covered her face with mystical clouds. The other, with a long veil. But based on their figures alone, all those that glanced at them wouldn't hesitate to call them:
"BEAUTIES!"
