My dao to eternity

The trees ahead of the ridge began collapsing before the creature itself came into view, trunks snapping in a rhythm too regular to be wind, too heavy to be anything born of Qi Sea or early Core Condensation strength. The fleeing group slowed as one, the particular collective hesitation of people who understood, without needing it explained, that whatever was coming belonged to a different category of danger entirely.

It emerged a moment later — an ape standing several times the height of a grown man, its body corded with muscle dense enough to visibly ripple beneath matted fur, each footfall driving a shallow crater into the forest floor. Its aura spread outward as it came, heavy and immediate, and Li Fan read it the instant it registered against his own senses. Peak Core Condensation. Behind it, arrayed across the ridge in a loose, converging mass, came the rest of what the tide had been gathering — late-stage Core Condensation beasts, mid-stage, early-stage, Peak Qi Sea predators, and beneath all of them, countless weaker creatures pressed forward by the sheer momentum of everything behind them.

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