The second is Mr. Carter's daughter, Annie. The young girl had just gotten engaged, but her future husband was bitten to death by wolves on the mountain the very next day while hunting. After hearing the news, she ended up in the same state as that lazy man before. Fortunately, after some time, her soul-loss illness actually healed on its own. But from then on, she became a little crazy, laughing and dancing outside every day for people to watch.

The third is Annie's father, Mr. Carter. So far, there have already been seven victims in a row.

Ethan Sullivan pondered that it was most likely a soul-eating fiend, not a soul-eating beast.

Though the two differ by only one character, they are completely different things. Fiends are of the ghostly kind, while beasts are demonic beasts. In his opinion, perhaps a landslide had collapsed an ancient tomb, or a thunderbolt had split open a coffin, releasing an old fiend that had been resting inside for years. Whether that was the case or not, he just needed to take a look at what kind of coffin it was and whether there were any remnants of a seal. But the townsfolk of Fojiao Town had surely already reburied the charred coffin and gathered the bones back into the earth, so there would hardly be any traces left.

To go up the mountain, one had to take the mountain path from the town. Ethan Sullivan rode his donkey slowly up the slope. After a while, a few people came down with gloomy faces.

Some of these people had injuries on their faces and were all talking at once. The sky was dim, and when they ran into a donkey rider with a face painted like a hanged ghost, they were all startled, cursed, and hurriedly skirted around him to go down the slope. Ethan Sullivan looked back and wondered, could it be that the prey was too tough and they returned empty-handed? After a brief thought, he patted the donkey's rump and trotted up the mountain.

He just happened to miss the complaints that followed from that group:

"I've never seen anyone so overbearing!"

"The head of such a big clan, does he really need to come here and fight us for a single soul-eating fiend? He must have killed who knows how many of them when he was young!"

"What can we do? Of all the clans, the one you can't afford to offend is the Jiang clan, and of all the people, you can't afford to offend Charles Foster. Let's pack up and go, just our bad luck!"

Chapter 7: Arrogance, Part 3 (2)

As it got even later, one would need to carry a torch to walk through the forest. Ethan Sullivan walked for a while and surprisingly didn't encounter many cultivators. He was rather puzzled: could it be that among the families who came, some were still in Fojiao Town arguing endlessly on paper, while others, like the group just now, were at a loss and left in disappointment?

Suddenly, cries for help came from ahead.

"Someone, help!"

"Save us!"

There were both male and female voices, full of panic and helplessness, not sounding fake. In the wilderness, cries for help were nine times out of ten the work of evil spirits, luring the unwary into a trap. But Ethan Sullivan was actually delighted.

The more evil, the better—he only feared it wouldn't be evil enough!

He urged his donkey toward the source of the voices. Looking around, he saw nothing at first, but then he saw it wasn't any monster or ghost, but rather the same rural family he had met earlier by the field ridge, now hanging from a tree in a giant golden net.

The middle-aged man had been leading his family through the forest, scouting for prey, but instead of finding what they hoped for, they stepped right into a snare set by some wealthy person and were now hanging from a tree, complaining bitterly. When they saw someone coming, they were overjoyed at first, but upon seeing it was a madman, they were immediately disappointed. Though the ropes of the Immortal-Binding Net were thin, the material was top-notch and unbreakable. Once caught, whether you were human, god, demon, or ghost, you'd have a hard time getting free—unless you had an even higher-grade immortal tool to cut it. This madman, let alone letting them down, probably didn't even know what this thing was.

They were about to ask him to go find help when the sound of light footsteps on branches and leaves approached, and out of the darkness of the forest came a young man in light-colored robes.

This young master had a spot of cinnabar between his brows, his features so handsome they were almost sharp, and he was very young, about the same age as Ryan Clark, still just a teenager. He carried a quiver of arrows and a long sword that gleamed with golden light, and held a longbow in his hand. His clothes were exquisitely embroidered, with a magnificent white peony blooming on his chest, the gold thread sparkling in the night.

Ethan Sullivan couldn't help but sigh to himself, "So rich!"

This must be a young master of the Lanling Jin clan. Only their clan used the white peony as their crest, comparing themselves to the king of flowers, and by extension, the king among immortals; the cinnabar mark on the forehead symbolized "enlightenment and brilliance, shining like vermilion in the world."

The young master had been about to shoot, but when he saw that the Immortal-Binding Net had caught people, he was first disappointed, then immediately annoyed: "It's always you idiots. There are over four hundred Immortal-Binding Nets in this mountain, and before we've even caught any prey, you people have already ruined more than a dozen!"

Ethan Sullivan was still thinking: "So rich!"

A single Immortal-Binding Net was already worth a fortune, and he had set over four hundred at once. Even a slightly smaller clan would have to bankrupt themselves for that—truly worthy of the Lanling Jin clan. But to use the Immortal-Binding Nets so indiscriminately, catching everything without distinction, this wasn't night hunting at all—it was clearly just driving people away, not letting anyone else have a share. It seemed the cultivators who had left earlier hadn't done so because the prey was too tough, but because the prestigious clan was too hard to deal with.