Shao barely managed to avoid the white wolf’s rending teeth. His skin brushed against the beast’s fur, and his cheek was splashed by the creature’s foaming saliva. The white wolf had no intention of giving Shao enough time to retreat, and a scything claw swung up at his chest.

Realizing that he did not have enough time to dodge, and knowing that he would likely suffer serious injury if he blocked the attack, Shao decided to interrupt the white wolf’s attack with one of his own. Stretching the technique’s flexibility as far as it would go, Shao cocked his fist back and unleashed a Crashing Star into the wolf’s ribcage.

To Shao’s immense shock, his technique struck with full force, and the white wolf tumbled more than a dozen paces away from him. Since Shao’s stance and posture were loose when he used Crashing Star of the Southern Heavens, the recoil of the attack threw him to the ground. He landed flat on his back, and the impact knocked the wind out of him.

If he hadn’t just done it, Shao never would have guessed that Crashing Star could be used in such a way. His usage of the technique was such a departure from the way he had been taught it that it was basically an entirely new technique. With enough practice, Shao could probably use Crashing Star in just about any circumstance.

The white wolf found its footing as it skidded to a stop. Blood matted the white wolf’s fur where Shao had struck it, but the damage didn’t seem to slow it in the slightest.

Shao knew that the white wolf would be on them within seconds, so he had to think fast. Acting on the first thought that popped into his mind, Shao said, “I’ll hold it down, and you attack from the side.”

“Wha…” Xiahou Ren began to speak, but Shao had already started sprinting toward the white wolf at full speed before he could finish the first word.

As Shao reached the midway point to the white wolf, it crouched low, and its muscles tensed like a predator poised to strike. The hairs on Shao’s neck once more stood on end, but he knew the surrounding ki was not being manipulated. This sensation was his body’s response to a palpable aura of danger radiating from the white wolf.

Dodge.

With no hesitation, Shao altered the direction of his charge and dived to the side. Just as his shoulder made contact with the ground, he felt a powerful gust of wind against his skin and saw a blur of white pass through the air where he had just been standing.

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Shao’s breath caught in his throat as he realized how close he had just been to instant death or crippling injury. If he had not dodged in that moment, he would have been struck by a thousand jin wolf traveling at the speed of a diving falcon. Even without the white wolf’s iron teeth, simple physics informed Shao that neither he nor the white wolf would escape from such a collision unscathed.

Not wanting to waste a second, Shao jumped to his feet and charged at the momentarily-disoriented white wolf. The giant wolf just began to turn as Shao leapt into the air and wrapped both his arms around the wolf’s neck. As the white wolf thrashed, Shao tightened his grip and swung his legs down to the ground so that he could get more leverage.

The white wolf thrashed viciously in an attempt to get its head free, but Shao’s strength proved too much for the wolf to overcome. The white wolf tried to slash at Shao’s body with the claws on its foreleg, but Shao caught the creature’s paw at the wrist.

With the white wolf’s stance unbalanced, Shao recalled the many times he competed in the Harvest Festival’s wrestling competition, and he used that experience to alter the white wolf’s balance and pull its head to the ground.

His head and arms less than a handspan away from the white wolf’s thrashing teeth, Shao used all of his strength and leverage to simply hold the creature down. He couldn’t spare any effort to try to damage the white wolf, and he had no choice but to pray that someone else would attack the creature before it could break out of his headlock.

Xiahou Ren’s three-tailed fox appeared in Shao’s peripheral vision and immediately began viciously attacking the white wolf’s chest. A moment later, Ren himself appeared beside the fox and began tearing into the white wolf’s chest with two sharp knives.

It took Ren and his fox less than thirty seconds to kill the white wolf, but it felt like hours for Shao. The white wolf’s thrashing became much stronger at first, as the fear of death gave it one last burst of energy. Even with this, Shao was able to continue holding the creature down.

The white wolf began to weaken as the wounds inflicted by Ren and Huxian became too much to bear. Even as the creature weakened and Shao’s wrath turned to pity, he did not release it. Only when Shao could feel the last dying gasp escape from the white wolf’s throat did he finally release his grip.

Shao took a few steps back and looked around to scan the battlefield. Corpses and splayed viscera were scattered everywhere, but there was no evidence of ongoing combat. While Shao had been holding the white wolf down, the fight had ended.

Wolf corpses littered the ground, but nearly as many cultivator corpses did as well. Near the Cloud Ship, the black wolf’s damaged body laid inert on the ground, and Gao Long stood beside it. Gao Long shook the wolf blood of his hands as a previously unseen inner disciple used a piece of cloth to wipe the blood off his sword.

As far as Shao could see, the only people left standing after the battle were Xiahou Ren, Gao Long, the inner disciple, and himself. All of the lower-realm Lianqi were dead on the ground.