Wu Jian, Huǒ Shuchang, and Yōuměi spent one week familiarizing themselves with each other’s fighting styles. They sparred with each other and fought as a group against the magical beasts of the forest.

Wu Jian was mostly a close-range fighter. His strength was such that a single good punch from him was powerful enough to defeat most magical beasts they found in a single blow. Even Huǒ Shuchang could not take one of his blows head on and escape unscathed.

He had assumed Huǒ Shuchang was similarly a close-range fighter, so he was surprised to discover that his new companion was better at long-range attacks. He could shoot condensed beams of fire from his hands and had a myriad of techniques to use that he hadn’t brought out during their spar because of their destructive potential.

Sadly, fire would not be very useful here. The Flame Griffin could be hurt by fire, but it was highly resistant. Only a flame from a cultivator more powerful than it would deal any damage. That meant Huǒ Shuchang would have to get up close and personal with the Flame Griffin.

While Wu Jian and Huǒ Shuchang practiced fighting as a team, Yōuměi would play the role of support. Her ability to manipulate shadows allowed her to tie down their enemies. Wu Jian and Huǒ Shuchang would take down magical beasts after they had been tied up.

While it would never be the same as the real thing, they did practice their plan to defeat the Flame Griffin against other magical beasts. Wu Jian still wasn’t confident it would work. He was worried, but it was better than nothing.

The day soon came when they would confront the Flame Griffin.

The group set out early in the morning and made their way to where the Flame Griffin made its nest. They didn’t see it at the moment. It was likely still sleeping in its cave. There also weren’t any other magical beasts around.

Magical beasts had a tendency to avoid more powerful magical beasts. There were some cases where a strong magical beast brought those weaker than it under its control, but that only happened when they were intelligent enough to enact such a plan. The Flame Griffin had not reached the point in its cultivation where it was intelligent enough to match a human.

That was good for them. Fighting something with a higher cultivation base and greater intelligence would have been impossible.

“Okay. Let’s go over the plan one more time,” Huǒ Shuchang began. “We’ll lure the Fire Griffin out of its cave, Yōuměi will bind it with shadows, and we’ll attack it while it’s down. I doubt that will be enough to kill it, but it should make it angry enough to focus exclusively on us. Once we have its attention, we’ll head back into the forest and force it to chase after us. So long we can wear it down, we’ll have a chance to take it down. The key to this battle will be whittling away its strength. So long as we can weaken it enough, I can use my Flame Splitter Blade to kill it.”

The Flame Splitter Blade was a low-grade Heaven Spirit Weapon. Huǒ Shuchang had shown it to Wu Jian after they watched the Flame Griffin. It was an incredibly powerful weapon, the kind that only someone from a high-rank sect could normally wield. Just how Huǒ Shuchang had such a weapon was beyond him. Could he secretly be someone from a high-rank sect? Wu Jian didn’t ask, and Huǒ Shuchang wasn’t telling him.

“Are you two ready?” asked Huǒ Shuchang.

Wu Jian nodded. “I’m ready.”

Yōuměi growled her readiness as well.

Huǒ Shuchang smiled, though it was filled with nervousness. “All right. Our first step is to lure the Flame Griffin out of its cave.”

“Yōuměi?” Wu Jian turned to his panther companion.

Yōuměi stood up and growled in affirmative. Huǒ Shuchang removed a glowing red fruit from his storage ring. A fiery scent filled the air soon after the fruit was taken out. It contained a hard outer shell with a lot of bumps on it.

It was called Fire Fruit. They grew in places with a strong fire element, but they could also be cultivated by people. These kind of fruits were a favorite of magical beasts with an affinity for fire.

Huǒ Shuchang held out the fruit. Yōuměi took it into her mouth before vanishing into a shadow. Wu Jian turned to the cave entrance. Several seconds after she had disappeared, Yōuměi appeared again. She had reached the end of the tree line. With no connecting shadows, she would have to travel on foot.

She quickly bounded across the ground until she was several chih away from the entrance, set the fruit down, then found a shadow to hide in.

And now we wait…

Wu Jian tried to calm down as they waited for the Flame Griffin to emerge, but his heart was hammering in his chest. They were going to fight a creature with a cultivation two realms higher than his own. Even their strongest fighter, Huǒ Shuchang, was no match for it. Most people would call what they were doing assisted suicide.

But while a part of him was scared, another part was excited by the idea of fighting something so much stronger than him. Could they win? He wanted to find out.

The Flame Griffin soon emerged from its cave. It strode boldly out of its home and strutted across the ground without a hint of fear. Not only did it lack the intelligence necessary to consider the possibility of this being a trap, but it also understood it was the king of this forest. Nothing here could harm it.

The Flame Griffin went right up to the Fire Fruit and leaned down to scoop it into its mouth. It swallowed the Fire Fruit whole.

Several dozen black tendrils suddenly rose from the ground and latched onto the Flame Griffin, who released a startled squawk. Two tendrils latched onto its left front leg, another two on its right front leg, and four each on its two hind legs. The rest wrapped around its body and retracted, pulling it toward the ground.

“Let’s go!” Huǒ Shuchang shouted.

Wu Jian said nothing as he burst out from behind the rock where he had been hiding. He raced down toward the Flame Griffin, which had just released flames across its body to burn the shadows away.

Unlike him, Huǒ Shuchang launched himself into the air. Flames sprouted from his hands and feet, which he used to propel himself through the sky faster than Wu Jian could run. He flipped through the air with acrobatic grace, reached the Flame Griffin in record time, and extended a single leg to drop a heel kick onto his foe.

It never hit.

The Flame Griffin had burned through the shadows in just a few seconds and leapt away. Huǒ Shuchang’s heel slammed into the ground. He ignored the shattering rocks underneath his feet and looked at the creature, which rose into the air with a mighty flap of its wings.

It opened its mouth. Red chi, visible to the naked eye, streamed in toward its open mouth, which ignited with fire. This was one of its attacks. The ability to fire condensed beams of flame from its mouth was quite possibly its strongest ability. Even another cultivator at the peak of the Asura Realm would not let themselves get hit with that unless they had a death wish.

Huǒ Shuchang bent his knees, prepared to run, but Wu Jian finally reached the battlefield. He leapt into the air seconds before the Flame Griffin could launch its attack and slammed an uppercut into its jaw. The attack was so strong that the jaw was forced closed. The flames, left with nowhere to go, ignited inside of its mouth.

Wu Jian covered his face with his arms as he was knocked back by the explosion. The heat from the flames burned his flesh. He landed on the ground and looked at his arms, grimacing at the charred and blackened skin that greeted his vision.

“Don’t lose focus! That attack didn’t even hurt it!” Huǒ Shuchang shouted.

Wu Jian looked back in the sky. The Flame Griffin did indeed look uninjured from their exchange. It could not be hurt by its own flames. Now it was staring at Wu Jian with clear, animalistic anger in its gaze.

“Let’s stick with the plan!” Wu Jian said.

“Time for a tactical withdrawel,” Huǒ Shuchang agreed.

The plan called for them to lure it into the trees. Flame Griffins had a huge advantage over them in an open field like this. Not only could it ascend into the sky where they couldn’t reach, but it could attack from long-range. None of them could deal with it so long as it was airborn.

But they could lessen its advantages by taking the fight into the forest.

Wu Jian and Huǒ Shuchang turned around and bolted back for the trees. The Flame Griffin released an angry screech and gave chase. It didn’t try to fire another one of those beams. Instead, it shot balls of fire the size of a human head. Each ball slammed into the ground behind them and ignited. The hot air pushed against their backs. Heat so intense that Wu Jian felt like his neck hairs were being burnt off washed over them as they ran.

They moved in zigzag patterns, never in a straight line, so as to prevent the Flame Griffin from being able to get a good lock on them. It didn’t take long for them to reach the tree line. And yet, before they could actually head into the trees, a fireball struck the area in front of them, igniting all the trees in that area and making it impassable.

“Dammit! It’s coming!” Huǒ Shuchang warned.

The Flame Griffin’s screech echoed around them as the beast in question descended like an avenging cultivator. Wu Jian and Huǒ Shuchang were forced to split apart as the magical beast tried to claw their bodies. It shot back into the air before they could attack, spun around, and released a continuous stream of fireballs that exploded as they impacted the ground.

Wu Jian could do little more than grit his teeth as he dodged the fireballs. A few struck the ground close to where he was standing and nearly threw him off his feet. There was enough power in each fireball to kill either him or Huǒ Shuchang in a single hit.

The barrage eventually ended, but that didn’t mean they were out of danger. The Flame Griffin was out of reach, and their path into the forest had been cut off. A wide swath of flames burned for several dozen chih. It would take time to go around this fire and enter the forest proper, and the Flame Griffin might just ignite the rest of the forest as well.

What do we do? Our plan to lure it into a place that’s advantageous for us has already gone up and smoke. Do we really have no choice but to fight it here, on its home turf?

While Wu Jian hesitated, Huǒ Shuchang blasted off the ground, fire shooting from his hands and feet. He tried to attack the Flame Griffin with a powerful kick, but the creature dodged, then slammed a clawed hand into the man. Huǒ Shuchang went down. He slammed hard into the ground. Wu Jian couldn’t even see the man, for a crater had formed around his body.

The Flame Griffin was no longer paying attention to him. It glared at the crater, or rather the person inside it, then opened its mouth. Streams of red chi converged around its mouth as a sphere of flames ignited inside of it. This was the attack that Wu Jian had blocked before. The Flame Griffin’s strongest attack.

Wu Jian judged the distance between him and the Flame Griffin and soon determined that he could make it. He ran and used the momentum he built up to leap into the air. Chi flowed through his legs, assisting his leap to gain more height.

Right as he was just a few chih from the Flame Griffin, it turned to him, and Wu Jian suddenly found himself staring at a condensed sphere of incredibly hot fire. The heat was enough to singe the air off his arms. He found himself squinting to avoid letting the flame burn his eyes. He’d never felt anything so intensely hot before.

Right before the Flame Griffin released its attack, Wu Jian performed an uppercut. He was nowhere near the Flame Griffin, but he did one anyway.

A startled squawk echoed from the Flame Griffin as something slammed into its jaw. The attack had enough power to force its head up. A beam of flames so hot Wu Jian’s skin became burned merely from the proximity shot by overhead. It punched a hole clean through the clouds and continued on.

Wu Jian wasn’t quite done. He threw several more punches as he fell. Each one landed on the Flame Griffin even though he was more than a dozen chih away. The confused magical beast squawked in anger as it tried to locate its new attacker to no avail. It soon became so angry that it released fire from its body.

“Hsssss!”

Wu Jian hissed as he retracted his left hand. He looked at the black, cracked flesh of his knuckles and grimaced. Blood seeped from the cracks in his skin. He had been using Space Folding to punch the Flame Griffin from a distance, but it looked like that had backfired on him.

A screech alerted Wu Jian of danger, but the pain had distracted him and he was slow to react. All he could do was cross his arms as a clawed paw slammed into him. He couldn’t even scream as he was sent rocketing away. The wind whistled around him before his back slammed into something hard. It stopped his backward momentum, but he swallowed his tongue, such was the pain.

He groaned and tried to get up, but it felt like his body had been pulverized. His arms, in particular, were in bad shape. They were fortunately not broken, but they were black and bleeding from several gashes where those claws had struck him.

At that moment, the Flame Griffin appeared before him. It hovered in the air and looked down at him. Wu Jian felt like a worm staring at a god. The Flame Griffin soon opened its mouth and prepared to once more launch its all-powerful beam attack.