Qianye was walking carefully through a thorny undergrowth with his aura retracted. In what seemed like empty air, there were actually wisps of barely discernible black energy floating about. These wisps—as fine as strands of hair—were floating about aimlessly and completely harmless when touched. Qianye, however, knew that these wisps of energy were formed of the Demoness’ demonic energy and were a part of her domain. She would be alerted instantly if he were to touch them by accident.

After some thought, Qianye figured out that these black threads weren’t without a solution. He had seen a small beast fly past, breaking several of the threads without any response from the demonic energy.

It would seem that this domain was intricately controlled, and she would judge whether the target was man or beast depending on the reaction.

Qianye stretched out a finger and tried approaching one of the demonic threads. The thread started to react when his fingertip was within a certain range, and flew over like a swimming fish. When Qianye cut off his external origin power, the demonic thread went back to floating about aimlessly.

Qianye had figured it out—these threads not only served as a warning trap that would send signals to the Demoness, but they were also quite sensitive to daybreak origin power and would seek out the owner proactively.

Such a technique was almost indefensible. If it wasn’t for Qianye discovering them with his True Sight, he would never figure out how he was found out by the Demoness.

Qianye was in no rush to leave, however. He channeled a bit of his blood energy and released it. Unexpectedly, all the demonic threads within ten meters began moving the moment his blood energy was released. Dozens of them swarmed over like sharks that had smelled blood.

This time, Qianye didn’t retract his blood energy and simply allowed the threads to crash into his finger, observing their reaction.

The demonic threads stirred up a fierce reaction after shooting into the blood energy, emitting numerous tiny sparks. The small demonic threads were quickly incinerated by the dark golden blood energy, but their reaction was also quite fierce. They weren't quite at a disadvantage in the contest and would bring down with them an equal amount of dark golden blood energy.

Qianye had never imagined that the demonic threads would be so much more sensitive to blood energy than to daybreak origin power. Apparently, the Demoness either attached great importance to the vampires or it was as he had previously learned—demonic energy and blood energy would attack each other fiercely after reaching a certain level. The conflict between them was even stronger than that between darkness and daybreak origin powers. It was as though only one of them could exist.

There was no telling whether it was a good thing or a bad thing that these threads were so sensitive to blood energy.

Qianye retracted his aura immediately after the test. He was suddenly overcome by a bad feeling as he thought of something. Apart from Edward, there was probably no one else who possessed a high enough blood energy to elicit a reaction from the demonic threads. If that was the case, the Demoness had probably figured out his location and was heading over at full speed.

At the thought of this, Qianye’s figure flickered and vanished immediately. He had used Spatial Flash.

His silhouette had just disappeared when several dark ribbons appeared where he was standing. They weaved together and immediately slashed the space there into dozens of fragments. Qianye would have been in a frantic situation if he were still there.

The Demoness’s figure appeared in the air. “Humph, you do run quite fast.”

In the span of a breath, experts like Anwen, Edward, and Basil also arrived. They kept silent after seeing that the Demoness had failed to overrun Qianye. Her bad temper was notorious. Add to that her peerless combat capabilities, everyone who offended her would meet horrible ends.

Now that Qianye had escaped under her nose, one could easily guess her current mood.

The Demoness said faintly, “He can’t run for long, I’ve already found him.”

Her voice hadn’t even trailed off when her figure disappeared. Anwen followed the trail of demonic energy in the air to chase after her.

The Evernight experts moved like a flash of lightning. After traveling dozens of kilometers in a flash, they saw the Demoness standing quietly in the sky. Apparently, Qianye had escaped yet again.

Actually, this was quite normal because Qianye’s Spatial Flash was unrivaled in escape. Although Spatial Flash wasn’t the only one of its kind, it possessed a suppressive advantage over the others in terms of distance and drain. That was also the reason why Qianye could contend with the Demoness by relying on it.

This time, the Demoness didn’t say anything. After standing there for a while, she pointed in a certain direction and vanished in the form of a black ribbon.

Soon, they saw the Demoness in the air again. The group formed a tacit understanding to wait quietly for her to catch Qianye’s traces.

The Demoness didn’t disappoint them, either. She managed to lock onto Qianye’s position in the span a few breaths and chased after him.

It was a failure again.

At this point, Edward and the other experts were beginning to notice that it was taking longer and longer for the Demoness to find Qianye. This proved that she was slowly losing track of him, or maybe Qianye had found a way to deal with her power.

Qianye’s exhaustion was also considerable after using Spatial Flash repeatedly, and he had also fired from the Wings of Inception twice. Even if his cultivation was able to suppress his peers, it was only natural that he wouldn’t have much origin power or stamina left. All that was left was to see who could wear the other party down faster. For instance, only death awaited Qianye if he collapsed from exhaustion, but he would escape if the Demoness failed to hold out. This would give him much needed time to catch his breath.

As the hunter, the Demoness should be the one holding the advantage. After all, spatial travel was much more taxing than flying. But she was also expending vast amounts of demonic energy to maintain her domain, and lasting this long was already a feat worthy of admiration.

Who would’ve thought that a certain group slaughter would turn into a battle of attrition?

Yet, no one dared to ask the Demoness about Qianye’s tracks, nor were they tactless enough to offer help. There was no telling whether people like Edward were actually gloating inside.

Qianye appeared through the void in the depths of the forest. He immediately locked onto a small beast on his left-hand side and agitated it with his blood energy, causing it to jump up and run about wildly. Qianye dropped to all fours and ran alongside the creature.

The shocked beast ran even faster, and Qianye followed along at a steady pace.

The creature would run into strands of demonic energy along the way, and Qianye also took this opportunity to do the same. He was channeling bloodline concealment at the moment, and just as he had thought, the action didn’t bring about a reaction from the demonic threads. As far as the Demoness’ perception was concerned, they were just two small creatures running about in the taboo zone.

After running for several dozen kilometers, there was no special reaction from the surrounding space. It would seem the Demoness hadn’t noticed them. Qianye knocked the small creature out with a slap and hid it atop a giant tree.

This was the first time he had found some time to rest since entering the Great Maelstrom.

Qianye also knew that his break time wouldn’t be long. Once the Demoness couldn’t find him, she would comb through the areas with demonic beast movement and eventually find him.

Qianye calmed his mind and observed the state of his body. He had used up more than half of his origin power and blood energy. The two Shots of Inception and Spatial Flash used his blood energy as fuel, so it was quite exhausting despite possessing blood energy at the quality of a great dark monarch.

There was only a single luminous feather on the Wings of Inception. He only had one Shot of Inception left. His most powerful attack had been used up on the Demoness, while the other shot was used to intimidate people and open up a path of escape. However, Qianye discovered that the outlines of a black-rimmed feather had already started to form on the other wing.

This meant that he now had two special feathers with great firepower.

Qianye didn’t quite have the time to study how this feather had appeared. He quickly produced the Book of Darkness and poured out the stored essence blood into the Wings of Inception. The Wings of Inception began absorbing the contribution in vast amounts, almost as though they had woken up from a dream.

Soon, one of the ordinary feathers started to light up.

By the time the Book of Darkness was entirely empty, the new luminous feather was already half-lit, and only the tip remained dark.

Qianye made some rough calculations and found that a full Book of Darkness could provide enough blood energy to form a complete luminous feather. The good thing about the Book of Darkness was that the essence blood stored inside would be purer than before, ready for use at any moment. For instance, it could be poured into the blood core to enter a state of blood boil. The essence blood refined by the book was far inferior to the dark golden blood energy, but it would ensure fighting power under emergency circumstances—now, for instance.

Qianye put away the Book of Darkness and glanced at a nearby giant tree. There was a giant python resting in the tree trunk, one that possessed powerful vitality. This represented vast amounts of essence blood, especially since all creatures in the Great Maelstrom possessed bountiful pools of them.

Qianye jumped up and charged toward the hole. He then grabbed the giant python and crushed the serpent’s scale with his bare fingers, digging into its flesh. The snake struggled, but the tree hole was too narrow for it to exert much force. The snake turned toward Qianye but was duly caught by the neck.

The giant python could be considered quite strong, but it was still a bit inferior compared to Qianye and his ancient vampire constitution.

Qianye channeled Life Plunder after restraining the giant python, shooting out sanguine threads into the serpent’s body. Despite all that, it took an entire minute before the creature stopped struggling.

Qianye heaved a sigh of relief, his body drenched in sweat. The book of darkness was almost full again, but the python’s essence blood wasn’t dry just yet. From this, one could see just how terrifying the creatures here were, and also how bountiful.

Qianye’s figure flickered and disappeared again.

The Demoness appeared not long after he had left. She was full of killing intent as she gazed at the corpse of the giant python inside the tree.