When Elder Ji Xing regained consciousness, he felt sore all over and he didn’t even have the energy to stand up.

　　Cold…

　　An endless cold pierced his marrows, which frightened him terribly.

　　What the hell happened yesterday?

　　Elder Ji Xing felt like he couldn’t remember anything. His body felt extremely weak; it was as if his bones were limp and his entire body half paralyzed — he couldn’t get up at all!

　　Had he been poisoned?

　　How could that be…

　　Elder Ji Xing closed his eyes and tried circulating his spirit energy to take a look at his surroundings, but it actually got stuck halfway in his body’s golden core… He hadn’t been poisoned, since he could at least still run spirit energy. If it was a very potent poison, it would definitely have directly shut down all his meridians so that even spirit energy wouldn’t be able to circulate normally.

　　Taking a deep breath, Elder Ji Xing tried using spirit energy to break through the restraints on his golden core. Doing this was very risky, because whether it worked or not, forcibly using spirit energy to break through a seal inside the body was bound to cause serious internal injuries.

　　And Elder Ji Xing was now already very seriously injured!

　　But he had no choice – he needed to know what the current situation was.

　　At this thought, Elder Ji Xing grit his teeth, and enduring the acute pain in his body, he started to exert force on his golden core. It was very uncomfortable, as if he was constipated, and Elder Ji Xing felt so stifled that his entire face turned red. In the end, even the blue veins on his forehead burst! A man of the Demon Hunters Association would never give up!

　　A few minutes later, Elder Ji Xing let out a sudden “wa” sound and spat out a mouthful of blood.

　　So far, he had already broken through the block on his golden core inside his body and could run his spirit energy as usual. However, Elder Ji Xing was suffering from the internal injury it caused. He now couldn’t move, and couldn’t even take out the emergency pills he had prepared, which was what he was most angry about… Sometimes the most tragic thing in life wasn’t that a person didn’t spend his money before he died, but that a dying man who had medicine couldn’t eat it!

　　Step by step…

　　Elder Ji Xing took a deep breath and tried to calm his thoughts as much as possible. Now wasn’t the time to get angry, because rash anger would only aggravate his injuries.

　　At that moment, his spirit energy began to circulate normally, and Elder Ji Xing could finally use a cultivator’s sense of spiritual awareness to check the situation inside the military tent.

　　Everyone…

　　Yes…

　　Everyone had collapsed!

　　Some of the elders had even already completely stopped breathing and abruptly died!

　　The breathing of the remaining elders who were still alive was also very weak…

　　Elder Ji Xing was utterly dumbstruck in his heart. What on earth happened? Why had they suddenly been wiped out like this?

　　And this was the part that was even more freaky, because Elder Ji Xing realized that he couldn’t recall what had happened last night at all, as if his memory had been cut off!

　　At that moment, his face was white and he was covered in cold sweat. He truly couldn’t imagine what kind of Almighty they had offended, who could do things to this extent.

　　They were all elite members of the Demon Hunters Association who had been trained overseas! The weakest of them was in any case still an Itinerant Immortal expert, but at that moment, some had actually fainted and some had suddenly died. In a split second, they had been completely wiped out… And the scariest thing was that Elder Ji Xing had no idea what on earth happened.

　　The coordinates of the military tent from where they were organizing this operation were strictly confidential. This area of mountain forest was protected inside and out by a barrier. If there had been an invasion last night, they should have sensed it early on given how many people they had! But not only hadn’t that “Almighty” made any noise, it had been an absolutely silent infiltration in which they had been quietly wiped out, and even their memories had been erased in the end…

　　Elder Ji Xing couldn’t help sucking in a cold breath of air at this thought.

　　What a frightening and dreadful strategy…

　　He really couldn’t remember anything. And the most, most horrifying of all, was that Elder Mingren, who had taken Nine-Tails for psychological treatment, had also fallen to the ground and was already dead.

　　Who could tell him what the hell happened yesterday?

　　…

　　A few hours before the Demon Hunters Association was wiped out, Elder Mingren, who had taken Nine-Tails for psychological treatment, returned to the military tent where the others were.

　　Because its condition was discovered in time, the Nine-Tailed Demon Fox’s psychological treatment went well. The psychologist sprayed a growth agent on its tails so that the fur would grow out thick again and its original confidence would return.

　　But just as he approached the military tent, Elder Mingren felt that something clearly wasn’t right about the aura inside.

　　He frowned deeply.

　　Had something happened?

　　Elder Mingren reacted immediately, because he could clearly sense that the auras of the elders inside the military tent were very faint, as if they had been injured. Strangely, however, Elder Mingren didn’t sense any enemy aura nearby.

　　“Nine-Tails, enter battle mode.” As soon as Elder Mingren said that, he was promptly enveloped in golden spirit energy. This was an augmentation technique which combined the Nine-Tails’ chakra with the spirit energy inside his body to double his battle strength.

　　But this form couldn’t be maintained for long, because the Nine-Tailed Demon Fox’s original form consumed large amounts of spirit energy inside the body. Currently, they were using chakra the same way Elder Poisonous Dragon had; by sacrificing fat, the chakra as a second energy source was combined with spirit energy to be used together.

　　Elder Mingren thought himself invincible in this mode, since his self-healing ability in this form was more formidable than President Bai’s. Although this mode could only last for two minutes, it was clearly already more than enough time to deal with the enemy.

　　Besides, even if he couldn’t defeat the enemy, he could run away…

　　Taking a deep breath, Elder Mingren stepped inside the military tent.

　　When he pushed the tent flap aside, the scene in front of him was something he would never forget in his life.

　　All the elders were down…

　　Elder Ji Xing, the commander of this operation, was no exception. Some of the elders had even died already, without a single sound.

　　He had to contact President Bai at once.

　　Elder Mingren frowned and canceled the Nine-Tails mode. He then took out his cell phone and dialed President Bai’s hotline.

　　While waiting for the call to connect, Elder Mingren looked carefully at his surroundings again. There was fine wine and croquettes on the table; it was clear that Elder Ji Xing and the others had been celebrating not long ago… toasting the success of the plan tomorrow.

　　Elder Mingren remembered reading Elder Ji Xing’s message on WeChat Moments previously, and had even given a thumbs-up and said that he was on his way back.

　　Who would have thought, not long after that…

　　Elder Mingren sighed deeply.

　　He picked up a croquette from the table, put it in his mouth, and drank the last of the wine.

　　This meatball and this wine represented his grief for Elder Ji Xing and the other elders…

　　…

　　Elder Mingren, died.