Seeing the director behave this way, Su Fan simply watched calmly.
The bear was massive, yet possessed speed that didn’t match its size.
Before she could divert the trouble toward them, she would die beneath the bear’s claws.
Sure enough, the director hadn’t taken two steps before the brown bear behind her swatted her directly on the back with one paw.
The terrifying force sent her flying effortlessly. Su Fan’s senses were far sharper than an ordinary person’s—he heard the sound of bones breaking from the female director’s body.
“No!”
The many contestants watching all this from a distance felt a pang of sympathy for the doomed, and let out cries of grief.
But before they could mourn the director who had taken the bear’s blow, they heard the cameraman’s scream of shock and disbelief!
That cry drew everyone’s attention, including Jacob’s.
He whipped his head around, only to find that the cub—which should have been hit by the hunting rifle and killed in one shot—had suddenly leapt up from the ground and tackled the cameraman holding the gun!
The cameraman’s attention had been entirely on the director under attack, and he never could have imagined this would happen.
In his frantic struggle, the hunting rifle was snatched away by the cub!
“This is impossible…”
Jacob’s murmur sounded more like a groan of a shattered worldview.
The country banned hunting with automatic rifles, so most people entering the mountains used semi-automatic firearms.
Even so, the power of a bullet wasn’t something an animal could withstand—once hit, it was certain death.
He had clearly seen the cub get hit, yet in the blink of an eye, the beast was attacking the cameraman full of vigor.
Recalling the earlier interaction between the bears and the humans, along with all the abnormal behavior, Jacob finally had to admit the horrifying truth.
“These aren’t ordinary brown bears at all—they’re monsters!”
What to do!
Barely ten-odd seconds had passed—not enough time for a panicked, anxious teenager to arrive at the right answer.
And the beasts had no intention of giving him time to think.
The mother bear, which had been nuzzling the director’s body as if checking whether she could still resist, suddenly exploded into motion, charging straight toward him and Su Fan!
You beast!
Jacob’s heart raced, his eyes nearly splitting with rage.
Confirming whether the director was dead had been an illusion—its real target was still him and Su beside him.
This monster had never intended to spare a single person present!
Jacob reached out to pull Su Fan away, but grabbed at empty air.
A glance showed that the black-haired young man was no longer beside him, but standing on flat ground five meters away.
He stood motionless, as if frozen by the brown bear charging at him like a mountain, unable to react.
In desperation, Jacob threw all his strength into his legs and sprinted toward Su Fan.
“Get out of the way!”
…
The brown bear—a fierce beast recorded in ancient Chinese texts, massive in size and cunning by nature.
They would imitate human actions, place cow dung on their heads, and on foggy days slowly wave toward passersby in the distance to attract their attention.
When the passersby came closer, they would suddenly lunge out and devour them alive, flesh and all.
Of course, they had a more widely known name—brown bear.
These large predators had no natural enemies in nature, standing at the very top of the food chain.
Unlike big cats such as tigers, bears don’t kill their prey first—they tear it open while it’s still alive.
That sounds terrifying, but the above describes ordinary brown bears.
The two before Su Fan now had the power to kill everyone, yet to toy with their prey, they had pretended to be docile and cute at first.
Add to that the bodies that remained lively even after being shot, and the demonic aura mixed in with the beast’s stench.
These two beasts were already on the path toward evolving into demons.
Just by eating some people, they could cultivate into demons?
Of course it wasn’t that simple.
Su Fan knew there had to be something else going on.
The most likely possibility was that fragment of the bat demon that had escaped.
After seeing the director who tried to divert trouble eastward take a solid swat from the brown bear, Su Fan stopped his warm-up exercises and walked toward the edge of the camp, so these two beasts wouldn’t mess up the place where he’d be resting tonight.
He should have acted sooner, but someone had a death wish, and Su Fan could only oblige her.
Just then, the brown bear—which wasn’t far to begin with—suddenly charged over.
Su Fan was about to raise his hand when his expression suddenly stiffened.
“Get out of the way!”
Jacob, that young man, seemed to think Su Fan was frozen in place by the bear’s terrifying aura and wanted to come to the rescue.
Midway, realizing he was too late, he simply leapt into the air—apparently preparing to deliver a flying kick to Su Fan.
I call you smart, and instead of a flying pounce, you use a flying kick. I call you dumb, but you at least know you can’t kick the brown bear, so you come kick me.
I can really feel your gratitude.
Complaining inwardly aside, the kid hadn’t turned and run—that was loyal enough.
Su Fan turned to face Jacob squarely, stepped back half a pace with his left hand deflecting the force, and pushed out with his right palm.
A standard “brush knee and twist step,” sending him back where he came from.
Without any gap, the giant brown bear’s upper body was already lunging in!
Su Fan turned his head, and the softness of tai chi from before was gone.
The brown bear’s flailing, clawing movements in midair looked no different from slow-motion footage to him.
Without a moment’s panic, he twisted his upper body, swung his arm in a full circle, and it whistled through the air like a long whip!
His extended backhand became an indestructible iron hammer, colliding explosively with the brown bear’s upper jaw.
A beast’s bones are hard, but Su Fan’s body was now as tough as steel!
“Crash!”
With a dull thud, the brown bear’s face—as big as two human heads—had its long snout and mouth directly smashed open by Su Fan’s strike, flesh and blood flying everywhere!
White bone fragments shot in all directions. Amid the scattering droplets of blood, the brown bear’s black bean-like eyes went wide!
Its body couldn’t react in time, but pain had already swept through its nerves into its brain.
What kind of move was that?
How could such a small body unleash this kind of power?
The brown bear couldn’t understand.
And it never would.
In that instant, Su Fan had glimpsed a familiar patch of black inside its shattered mouth.
That tiny piece of flesh had appeared for only a split second before, as if possessing self-awareness, drilling toward the brown bear’s throat!
So it really was you.
A cold gleam blazed in Su Fan’s eyes.
That was the bat demon’s flesh!
It had attached itself to the throat of the brown bear—the apex predator of this region’s food chain.
It kept controlling the beast to devour humans, and while the bear swallowed, it absorbed all that flesh and blood for itself.
Under its influence, the brown bear had gradually gained intelligence and strength that weren’t its own.
The two existed in symbiosis, creating the man-eating bear that posed the greatest threat to humans in this area!
