"What?"
Li Yun and the other four geniuses reacted the instant they saw the Frostmane Lion running away. None of them had expected a Monarch-class Frost Beast to be smart enough to read the situation and slip off while the humans were busy fighting each other.
"After it!"
There was no need to discuss anything. Li Yun, Duan Tieshan, Mo Yuchen, Lan Qingfeng, and Bin Zhaoyang set their conflict aside for the moment and pushed their movement techniques to the limit at the same time. All five of them shot across the frozen landscape after the Frostmane Lion.
Their whole dispute had started over the thousand points that beast was worth. If it got away while they were fighting among themselves, the entire affair would turn into nothing more than a humiliating joke. For now, catching the Frostmane Lion mattered more than anything else.
"ROAR!"
The Frostmane Lion suddenly let out another thunderous roar. Unlike its earlier cries, this one carried for several thousand feet through the snowy mountains, and the answer came almost at once. Roars began to echo from every direction.
One Frost Beast appeared, dozens more followed, and within moments the surrounding snowfields were full of moving shapes.
More than two thousand Frost Beasts poured out of the nearby valleys and slopes. Most were ordinary Frostfang Beasts, but several Commander-class Frost Beasts were mixed in among them. They charged at Li Yun and the others from all sides and quickly formed a living wall between the five cultivators and the fleeing lion.
Li Yun’s eyes narrowed slightly. The Frostmane Lion was clearly much smarter than an ordinary beast. It understood that it could not outrun all five cultivators forever, so it had called the nearby beasts to hold its pursuers back.
"This is going to be a problem," Duan Tieshan said as his expression changed.
A single ordinary Frostfang Beast was not worth much, and with his strength he could kill many of them in one attack. The situation was completely different, however, when more than two thousand showed up at once, because enough ants could bring down an elephant.
Even if they eventually slaughtered every beast here, the Frostmane Lion would be long gone by then.
"I can’t believe we got played by a beast," Mo Yuchen said, and his face turned very dark.
The others looked no better. Only moments earlier, they had been treating the Frostmane Lion as if it already belonged to them. Instead, the beast had taken advantage of their hostility toward one another and had nearly escaped before any of them realized what was happening.
That was when Li Yun made his move.
"Sword Control Art!"
The sword-nurturing gourd opened, and six thousand precious swords whistled into the air. Sharp Sword Qi spread across the snowy battlefield at once.
The swords quickly arranged themselves into several interlocking formations and swept forward like a torrent of metal. Wherever the formations passed, Frost Beasts were cut apart and blood splashed across the white snow, and a path opened almost instantly.
For Duan Tieshan and the others, the arrival of more than two thousand Frost Beasts had nearly ruined their chances of catching the Frostmane Lion.
For Li Yun, though, the situation actually worked in his favor. He was a sword cultivator with the Sword Control Art, so large groups were among the least troublesome opponents he could face. He did not need to stop and fight each beast personally, because his swords could clear the way while he kept moving.
Sword Qi crisscrossed through the air, and Frost Beasts fell one after another. Li Yun sped up, and the moment an opening appeared, he used Aurora Step to dart forward.
He went straight into the ring of more than two thousand Frost Beasts, yet he did not look surrounded at all. He moved through them as if he were taking a casual walk through an empty courtyard, and nothing could stop him.
"Follow him!"
Duan Tieshan spotted the opportunity immediately, and the other three reacted as well. All four rushed toward the path Li Yun had opened. Unfortunately, the surrounding Frost Beasts surged back into the gap before they could get through, and the narrow path vanished almost at once.
"Damn it!" Duan Tieshan cursed.
Mo Yuchen, Lan Qingfeng, and Bin Zhaoyang looked just as grim. They all understood what this meant. Li Yun had already broken out of the encirclement and they had not, so their chance of catching the Frostmane Lion was as good as gone.
"Forget it," Lan Qingfeng said at last, shaking his head. "If we can’t get the Monarch-class beast, we might as well kill as many ordinary ones as we can."
More than two thousand Frost Beasts were surrounding them. Even if the thousand points from the Frostmane Lion were out of reach, killing a few hundred ordinary beasts would still bring in a decent number of points. The four of them turned their attention to the horde right away.
Meanwhile, Li Yun kept moving forward, and a dozen breaths later he broke completely free of the encirclement. In that short time, between five and six hundred ordinary Frostfang Beasts had already died to his sword formations.
Soon afterward, he caught sight of the Frostmane Lion again.
"ROAR!"
The beast noticed him too, and fear showed in its enormous eyes. It lifted its head and roared again and again in an attempt to summon more Frost Beasts, but nothing happened. The beasts in the area had already answered its earlier call. No matter how loudly it roared now, not a single new one appeared.
Li Yun’s expression stayed cold.
"Die."
He felt no sympathy for the creature. The Frost Beasts of the Frostbound Heavenly Range were violent predators by nature, and if he spared this one today, other cultivators would end up as its prey sooner or later.
He raised his sword, and a streak of Sword Qi flashed through the snow. The Frostmane Lion did not even have time to put up a proper defense before its massive body was split cleanly in two.

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