More beast souls began noticing her—an anomaly in their hunting grounds. Driven purely by instinct and aggression, they charged at her without hesitation.
Lauren’s towering phantom waded through the darkness like an executioner, smashing them apart one after another.
Their shrill wails pierced the night sky as their forms disintegrated.
Within minutes, she had slaughtered more than a dozen.
The sensation was intoxicating. Absolute power surged through her like a cheat code granted by the heavens.
Below, the cultivators were frozen in terror.
Moments ago, they had been arguing and fighting. Now, no one dared speak. They clustered tightly together, gripping their lanterns with trembling hands while staring into the endless black void.
Lauren had only just learned how to manifest spiritual combat phantoms, and these beast souls made perfect sparring partners.
She fought continuously.
Slashing.
Punching.
Destroying.
The monsters seemed endless—thousands of them swarming through the darkness.
She battled until the horizon finally began to brighten.
As dawn approached, the black mist slowly dissolved, and the beast souls retreated back into their physical bodies.
Not wanting to attract attention, Lauren hurriedly withdrew into herself.
The moment her consciousness returned to her body, she yawned uncontrollably.
“…God, I’m exhausted.”
Edmund glanced at her lazily.
“You fought all night. Of course you’re exhausted.”
Her eyelids drooped.
“I need sleep… I seriously can’t stay awake…”
She slumped forward, eyes closing.
Suddenly—
Edmund bit down hard on her arm.
“Ah! What the hell was that for?!”
“You can’t sleep right now,” he said flatly. “Tell Dante you’re resting and then inside your spatial dimension.”
Lauren swallowed a recovery pill. It dissolved instantly. The crushing sleepiness faded, but the exhaustion still weighed heavily on her body.
She sent a telepathic message to Dante, telling him to continue ahead and meet her at the entrance to the fourth layer. She intended to remain behind and explore the second layer further.
Dante didn’t question her decision. He simply reminded her to be careful.
Lauren left the tent standing outside as camouflage, then entered her inner space to rest. Edmund remained behind to guard the area.
......
Because the cultivators on the second layer had spent the entire night under extreme tension, the atmosphere during the day was unusually quiet.
There was very little fighting.
Most cultivators abandoned active monster hunting altogether. They only fought when their lives were directly threatened.
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Those traveling in groups rotated shifts—some standing guard while others meditated and recovered.
However, something deeply unsettled them.
Across the snowfield, large numbers of demonic beast corpses had appeared overnight.
None of them showed visible injuries.
Yet every single one was dead.
......
Later, a fatigued female cultivator approached Lauren’s tent and knocked weakly.
“Senior… may I rest under your tent for a moment?”
Edmund answered from inside, his voice indifferent.
“No.”
The woman hesitated. Hearing a male voice, she softened her tone, almost pleading.
“If Senior saves my life… I’m willing to become your servant. I’ll serve you faithfully.”
“No need.”
“Senior, I—”
“Get lost.”
The words cut her off like a blade.
His voice carried the oppressive authority of a Nascent Soul cultivator. The woman felt a chill crawl down her spine.
Inside this secret realm, danger was far worse than outside.
Clutching her still-bleeding leg, she staggered away in miserable defeat.
Moments later, Edmund heard the distant roar of wild beasts… followed by the woman’s agonized scream.
Then silence. She had likely been eaten.
....
An hour later, with the help of an elixir, Lauren fully recovered and stepped out of her inner space.
“Anything happen while I was gone?” she asked.
“Nothing,” Edmund replied lazily. “All quiet. Pack up the tent. We’re moving.”
Lauren dismantled the tent and deliberately kept to the less crowded outskirts of the second layer. Along the way, she hunted several mutated beasts—roughly ten third-tier creatures and one fourth-tier monster.
Each kill was clean and efficient.
The moment a beast dropped, she tossed the corpse into her inner space for Edmund to handle.
Anyone observing from afar wouldn’t find it suspicious. They would simply assume she was storing the bodies in her storage pouch.
Of course, she wasn’t exploiting Edmund. The beast cores were his payment.
While traveling, she also dug up several clusters of Lampwick Grass and passed them to him for cultivation. To accommodate the plant’s harsh environmental requirements, she even cooled nearly ten acres of land inside her inner world, recreating a miniature version of the Far North.
Edmund had mentioned that this strange blue spiritual herb didn’t exist in the Upper Realm.
The flame produced by burning Lampwick Grass had an unusually powerful effect against techniques that combined spiritual sense and Nascent Soul projection. It could become extremely valuable in future battles.
“Hey, Edmund,” Lauren said thoughtfully, “you’re basically a fragment of a Nascent Soul right now. Why doesn’t that light harm you?”
Edmund snorted dismissively.
“If a lousy blade of grass could hurt me, why do you think they bothered sealing me away instead of just killing me?”
“…Fair point.”
His remnant soul could condense into something almost tangible, unlike Lauren’s phantom projection which remained partially illusory.
Along the way, several scattered Foundation Establishment cultivators tried inviting her to form temporary teams.
Lauren declined every offer.
To avoid unnecessary attention, she suppressed her aura and adjusted her visible cultivation to Foundation Establishment level.
The results were immediate.
No one invited her anymore.
Perfect.
By the time she finished scavenging and hunting, dusk was creeping across the snowfield again.
Just as she prepared to set up camp, three Core Formation cultivators suddenly appeared, surrounding her in a loose triangle. Each wore expressions dripping with calculation and cruelty.
Lauren blinked in confusion.
What now?
One of them smirked.
“Little girl, hand over your storage pouches. My brothers and I might spare your life.”
Lauren released her cultivation instantly.
Nascent Soul pressure erupted outward like a tidal wave. Her spiritual sense locked onto them with suffocating force.
“Trying to die?” she said coldly.
The three men turned ghostly pale. The overwhelming pressure slammed them to their knees with a heavy thud.
“Spare us!”
Someone, please explain why a Nascent Soul cultivator was digging herbs on the second layer.
Lauren smiled faintly.
“Alright. I’ll spare you.”
The three men exhaled in relief.
Then she added calmly:
“Leave your storage pouches.”
Their relief froze.
They were rogue cultivators—no storage rings, no backups. Everything they owned was inside those pouches… including everything they’d stolen from other victims.
Each of them was a seasoned Core Formation cultivator. If they coordinated perfectly, they might stand a chance against a weaker Nascent Soul expert.
“You’re pushing it,” one of them said stiffly. “Leave us something.”
“Yeah,” another added nervously. “We’ll give you everything we gathered these past few days. That should be enough, right?”
“You’re bargaining?” Lauren’s lips curved slightly.
She spread her fingers.
Ice exploded upward from the ground, forming towering frozen walls that sealed every escape route.
“Then leave your weapons too.”
“You—!”
Their faces darkened further. Her control over ice spiritual power clearly placed her far beyond an ordinary Nascent Soul cultivator.
“My patience is limited,” she said calmly. “Three breaths. Decide.”
Three breaths?!
“One.”
The two subordinates glanced nervously at their leader.
“Two.”
“Big Brother…”
“Three.”
BOOM.
The ice walls slammed inward like closing jaws.
Two reacted quickly enough, leaping skyward to dodge.
The third wasn’t so lucky.
The crushing ice clamped around his legs.
CRACK.
His lower body flattened instantly. The man screamed, a raw, animal howl.
“Third Brother!”
“You’ve gone too far!” the leader shouted.
Lauren tilted her head slightly, amused.
“You tried to rob me first. I wanted storage pouch. I’m letting you keep your lives. Sounds fair to me.”
“You’re trying to kill us now!”
“That’s because you decided to kill me first.”
