Looking at the clumsily moving creatures, Xue Yueliang had to reexamine their danger level. The difficulty of fighting these beasts would only increase as she moved on. Plus, she would not be surprised if the creatures she would have to fight last would have some special abilities. These points were demonstrated in the other two rooms, so her vigilance was instantly raised.

"Sorry, Hei Yu, but I doubt the battle here would be easy."

She said apologetically, petting his soft fur. In this strange atmosphere, filled with suicidally attacking beasts, Xue Yueliang opted to fight the weaker ones first, getting used to their attacking patterns.

She did not feel like rushing as she had in the previous hall and looking at her current ranking, there was no reason for her to hurry. Out of the living seventy-two participants, she was now ranked fifteenth. Many of the people in the rankings before had died, with their names greyed out, replaced by fresh faces. If she did not choose steadiness over speed, she would follow in their footsteps.

With the many new people still entering, Xue Yueliang was sure the ending was nowhere near.

Feeling that she was now comfortable fighting the boars, Xue Yueliang set her eyes on her next target. A herd of bison that strayed quite far from each other. She felt that something was blocking these beasts from attacking her first, or multiple of them rushing her at once because regardless of how much noise she made, they would not harm her unless she attacked first.

Of course, they might have been just peaceful, but that couldn't be too likely. After all, beasts were just beasts.

"Blood Moon Waves," she said.

The attack landed on the bison, forming a clear cut, but it did not bleed. Instead, a snort came out of its nose, followed by steaming air as it charged toward her.

"How peculiar."

Though she was used to this sight by now, she could not help but still find it strange. She skillfully jumped out of the way and unleashed another attack, this time causing another clean cut on its back, but as it did not bleed, the damage caused was almost null.

"Berserk Dragon Explosion," she recited, quickly forming her hand seals, and the flames rushed into its gaping wound and exploded.

This time, blood exploded like a fountain from its back. Sadly, that did not mark the end of this battle. The blood collected together and crawled back into the bison's body as it tried to reverse the damage done. This was not something that had been done by the boars before, causing her to be shocked.

In her instance of astonishment, she left a slight opening, which the bison took full advantage of. The bison launched itself at her, throwing her in the air and flinging her far off. Xue Yueliang fell far from where they were fighting and landed on another bison, angering it.

"Well, shit." She mumbled.

The current battle was not advantageous to her at all. She still had no idea how a creature could survive an internal explosion, but now she aggroed another with a similar ability. If she did not know better, she would think these creatures were zombies.

She quickly jumped off its back and pulled her distance, ensuring that they could not attack her for the time being. Though she could use more powerful attacks to kill these beasts, she was trying to find a way to kill them without charging and one-shotting, as that would not be possible with whoever was the big boss.

She led the two bison away from the rest of the herd, not wanting to grab the attention of any more beasts before landing between them.

"Invincible Sword Swirl!" She yelled as soon as she landed between, causing the rings of sword light to land on their bodies.

The sword light cut fresh injuries on their bodies, but they just rippled and soon rebuilt, masking any form of that injury that was present. The problem when fighting them was not their physical strength like she had thought but their overwhelming vitality.

Regardless of what damage she caused, it would all be for nothing if it just recovered in the next instant. The only thought she had that could help fend off these beasts was poison. She drew more distance between them and retrieved the wyvern's corpse, protecting herself from its fumes using the Berserk Dragon Flame.

She carefully wrapped its blood with the spiritual Qi and although the wyvern was gone, her Qi was still being deteriorated, showing how toxic this blood was. She chucked the Qi encased acid at the two bison rushing toward her. Her Qi had fully eroded by the time it reached them, and a rain of acid poured down, melting their flesh and turning the blood into nothing more than black goo.

Even with their overwhelming healing capabilities, they were unable to recover. Thinking about it, it made sense to her. Their power came from their blood, and now the blood was changed into something else. She felt their movements slow down as they could not sustain their berserk use of blood Qi, allowing her to sigh out in relief.

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

"Invincible Sword Cuts All," she stated, swinging her sword and cutting horizontally through the decaying flesh.

Due to the extensive injuries to their bodies caused by the acid, her sword passed through, slicing them in half, but she still remained vigilant. Thankfully, the halves did not merge, thrilling her, as she now had a method to beat these beasts.

Her gaze flashed for a bit as she formed a plan that would help her out, but she was still left with one question: "Would the princess' jade bottle manage to retain this?"

For this method to work, she would have to hold the blood slightly longer than she had previously, which was impossible with her own power. Yao Niang's jade bottle was the highest-ranking bottle she had, and if it did not work, she would have to go along with a much cruder and less effective way of what she had stragised.

Clenching her teeth, she retrieved the empty jade bottle from her ring and tried to absorb the wyvern's blood, hoping that it would not be damaged. To her delight, her wishes came true, so on one hand, she squeezed every last bit of drop from the corpse and guided it into the bottle with the other hand.

"You help me even now," she laughed.

In less than an incense stick's worth of time, the corpse turned into nothing more than a dry husk, with only the heart not being dried out. Heart blood of any creature was considered the most potent part of its body. So although she doubted the blood of a beast from a weaker level would affect the master of this hallway, perhaps the heart blood would have an effect, so she left it for later.

"Hei Yu come here," she ordered, turning to the large Hei Yu who had sticky red blood contaminating its usually immaculate black fur.

He had been fighting some of the other beasts on his own, but she no longer needed him to do that.

"Squeak." He squeaked happily, returning to his usual size and shaking the blood that contaminated his fur.

She recalled her battle with a bear as she redid the Berserk Dragon Flame Explosion, this time adding wind energy as she hoped to increase its range. She let go of the jade bottle in her hand, allowing it to float out of her grasp and land in the middle of her brewing attack. Her flames burnt brighter as she continuously added her spiritual Qi, added with the wind energy, it swayed endlessly but showed no evidence of extinguishing and instead appeared to be expanding. She steadily increased the stream of Qi until beads of sweat dripped down her chin, and the spell was at equilibrium. As long as there were no outside interferences, it would remain as such.

"Let's hope my defence is strong enough," she said, "Explode."

With her instruction, the jade bottle exploded, allowing its contents to spill out freely, disrupting the equilibrium she had formed.

"Boom!"

A large explosion was heard as the fiery ball she had created above her spread far and wide, carrying with it acidic rain, bringing down hell onto the beasts. Cries of pain and anguish were heard as the destruction rampaged around.

As for Xue Yueliang, the principal of the storm being calmest in the centre had applied here. Other than unpleasant burns, there was no damage she could not handle, leading her to patiently wait until the smoke had cleared. While awaiting to view her masterpiece, she heard a small whimper from her arms, and looking down, she saw Hei Yu looking at her aggrievedly.

Although he had been protected by her flames, he appeared to be startled, and a faint sheen of flames had covered his body, startling her.

"How?" She questioned but then recalled the bird she had fought.

Thinking about it, Hei Yu had eaten its beast core and burped out a flame. She had thought it was just a one-time thing, but it appeared she was wrong.

"You're fine," she laughed, happy.

During her little distraction, the smoke had cleared, and she could fully admire the destruction she had caused. The already sickly looking ground was charred, with the strange-looking plants gone and dead. As for the boars and bison that hung around, the ones closer to the epicentre were nothing more than a pile of charred bones, impossible to recognise what they once were.

But as they got further from the radius, the amount of damage decreased, from recognisable corpses to seriously injured beasts, lightly injured beasts and some completely unaffected.

However, the most bizarre thing in her eyes was not the amount of damage she had caused but how unbothered the injured beasts were. They mindlessly meandered about, with even one bison eating the flesh of one of its poisoned fellows and dying along with it.

"That's quite something," she muttered, hiding the chill she felt.

The ability to change a creature into something so far off from its nature was worth fearing.

She took a few moments to recover some of her spiritual Qi then she and Hei Yu took off, taking the surviving beasts off one by one, upping her ranking. Just as she was silently minding her business, an amusing thought appeared in her mind causing her to giggle: "This really does feel like a genocide."

The moment she felt relaxed enough to joke about the current situation, she heard an angry roar sound from behind her, causing her to cautiously turn around. She could see a giant lion rushing toward her. If comparing height alone, it was the same size as the bison she had killed and had the iconic red colour like every other beast in this place. However, its bright red mane actually seemed to be formed from blazing blood flames. Its claws were the only part of its body that resembled the colour of a usual lion.

After watching its sweeping tail and flared nose, Xue Yueliang did not feel like fighting. She had just used a technique with huge consumption and had not fully recovered yet; she still needed some time. Looking around, her gaze fell onto the bloodstream, but she did not know if she could outswim it.

"Hopefully, you can't swim," she said, jumping into the stream.

The feeling of swimming in blood was as bad as she had anticipated, as it felt like it was trying to find ways to stick onto her. The pushback from her strokes was stronger than before, but she was not surprised by this. After all, blood really is thicker than water.

"Trespasser, do you think you could beat me with this?" A majestic voice asked, causing her to turn in surprise. The lion stood there as if there was nothing out of the ordinary as it asked this. It did not make any moves to enter yet, indicating its interest in talking to her.

However, to his surprise, she just stared at him dumbly, asking: "You can talk?"