The skies above the Central Continent slowly turned quiet.
Days ago, roars of beasts echoed across the forests. Smoke had risen in the distance. Scout reports ca in by the hour. But now, things had changed.
The forests were still.
Not because the humans had cleared them—but because the enemy was leaving.
In the northeast, a group of beast warriors stood near a cracked teleportation gate. Their expressions were tight, but no one spoke.
One by one, they stepped through, vanishing in bursts of spirit light. The gate humd softly, its energy pulsing low, then another group arrived to do the sa.
Further west, above an old cave stronghold, dozens of shadowy figures moved through trees and brush.
Beast captains ordered squads to break camp. No fires were lit. No tracks left behind. They moved fast, quiet, focused.
At one base, a young beast soldier turned to his superior.
"Commander… why are we leaving? Didn't we say we'd hold this ground?"
The older beast glanced back at the mountain they had been guarding for nearly a month.
"That was before the Central lines fell."
He didn't say more.
He didn't need to.
They all knew what happened.
The ambushes.
The traps.
The silence afterward.
One by one, beast squads that once spread across the continent vanished. Not in defeat—but in withdrawal.
The teleportation formations they used weren't large. They were custom, hidden in the backwoods and cave networks, placed long before the war had started. Most were one-way, and so would collapse after use. But they worked.
And they moved the beast force fast.
Not randomly.
Strategically and in a precise way which would make the other armies from human races feel ashad.
From the Central Continent… to everywhere else.
But as the beast forces left, sothing else happened.
As each base was abandoned, as the growls and marching footsteps disappeared from the camps, figures began to step out from the forests. From behind the cliffs. From within the soil itself.
Silent footsteps.
Cold eyes.
Black cloaks.
Xu family Shadows.
Dozens of them.
Then hundreds.
They erged one by one, stepping through illusion arrays and spirit concealnt fields.
Not to fight.
But to reclaim.
Behind them ca the special unit mbers. Their gear light, movents practiced. They didn't shout. They didn't celebrate.
They walked through the empty beast camps with asured calm, checking every formation point, confirming every retreat.
Scouts marked trees with paint. Formation experts used jade slips to scan for residual energy trails. They found broken flags, leftover supplies, and discarded tools. It was clear the retreat was real.
And total.
One Shadow squad leader crouched next to a firepit and ran a hand across the cold ashes.
"Gone."
Another nearby placed a hand over a collapsed teleportation gate.
"They're not coming back. Not here at least for now."
The Shadow leader looked up at the horizon and gave a small nod.
"All units," she said, activating a comms talisman. "Begin clearing operations. Mark the camps. Log the positions. Leave no gaps."
All across the Central Continent, similar scenes unfolded.
Where beasts had once stood, Xu family shadows now moved quietly.
And where death had once claid the ground, only silence and strategy remained.
In the Eastern Continent, however, things weren't quiet at all.
Clouds began to swirl as new beast signatures arrived in waves. Not massive armies—but refined units.
Organized, mobile, fast. Many human forces stationed in border regions were not ready.
A city near the mountain pass sounded an alarm as spiritual energy spiked across the northern edge.
Two beast teams appeared from behind the cliffs, already in battle formation. The guards scrambled to respond.
In the Western Continent, the defensive walls of a trade hub city cracked under pressure as a coordinated beast raid ca from all directions. The first layer of walls fell in under two hours.
The human defenders fought back, but most hadn't seen anything like this before.
These beasts weren't charging blindly like earlier tides.
They had formations.
Signals.
Bait units.
Scouts.
They even rotated their soldiers during battle to keep pressure steady and limit injuries.
Human commanders gave out orders quickly, but even then, the losses began to pile up.
A high-level cultivator near the southern border of the Eastern Continent stood on top of a ridge, watching as fla and smoke rose from three villages in the distance.
"Where are all these beasts coming from?" he muttered.
His aide answered, "Scouts say… most of them are from the Central Continent."
The cultivator's face darkened. "So they've changed strategy."
In the early stages, most humans assud this was just another surge. Sothing they could contain.
Their defense lines had held before. Their formations were reinforced. They had spiritual tools and stockpiles.
Many believed the beasts were just angry over their loss in the Central Continent and lashing out.
But it wasn't that simple.
This wasn't a tantrum.
This was a redirection.
And it caught people off guard.
In one coastal city, a general from the Zhu family barked orders from a broken tower.
"Send a ssage to the inner capital! We need reinforcents!"
He glanced around. Half the southern wall was gone. Cultivators were injured, so unconscious. He didn't even know if they had enough spirit pills left.
But even with all of that… the humans didn't fall.
Because this was not the old world.
This was a world after the upgrade.
And in this new world, humanity wasn't weak.
Even with the surprise attacks and early losses, the cultivators of the other continents had grown stronger.
Their bodies had adapted to the thicker Spiritual Qi.
Their foundations were deeper.
Their techniques, though rougher than the Xu family's polished systems, were still sharper than before.
One young cultivator, barely twenty, held off three mid-tier beasts with a single formation scroll.
Another older cultivator exploded with golden light as his newly strengthened core activated mid-fight, turning the tide in a skirmish that had looked like a sure loss.
It wasn't clean.
It wasn't pretty.
But the humans fought back.
And slowly… they started winning.
The price, however, was heavy.
So towns fell before reinforcents arrived.
So patrols were wiped out.
One major sect in the eastern forests lost an entire branch hall.
Dozens of cultivators died.
It was a hard reminder: even if humanity was stronger now, they were not invincible.
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