The huge grey cat and the human-shaped monster’s fight was just like an overpowered animal fight: they clawed, they bit when they were at close quarters, and they threw energy attacks at each other when they were apart. Building materials and tools like paint buckets and bricks were knocked all over the place, and there were cracks on the cement pillars and walls against which they slammed each other.

Caroline and Jason almost got involved in their fight a couple of times - with their current levels of power, they weren’t confident about their chance of survival at all.

The shadows made of and surrounded by black smoke were clearly more powerful than the gifted cats individually, what they didn’t have was the numbers - on average, it was around five to seven gifted cats versus one shadow. And with Caroline and Jason in the battle, the shadows were being annihilated at a faster rate than before. 

The silver Xuanli axe made by Jason and held by Caroline, while not as handy as her usual wooden tomahawk, proved quite powerful thanks to its thin edge and its higher affinity to infusion of Xuanli: Caroline noticed that her strikes seemed to burn brighter with her fiery Xuanli and strike harder when they land on the shadows. And great damage those attacks caused to all those that faced Caroline. But the catch was, that she noticed her Xuanli was drained faster as well. 

On Jason’s side, he made himself a spear-like silver pen just like a bigger version of his wooden pen - as he practiced with his pen-shaped weapon more and more, not only had he grown  better at its usage but also had he become more fond of it as a non-traditional weapon. And right now, he was swinging the weapon like a short spear and a sword, slashing and stabbing his shadowy opponents while also parrying the attacks from them.

A faint scream came from above Caroline, a black shadow with a skeleton face and two completely empty black holes for eyes appeared from thin air and lunged at her. Caroline swung her left fist at the shadow’s face, bashing the shadow’s face in yet was not swift enough to stop its boney claw from leaving a bleeding mark on Caroline’s shoulder.

Jason was knocked into the air by a shadow that came from his behind, Jason was able to turn back and block the blunt of the attack with a silver energy shield. But the shadow’s claw bypassed the shield and stabbed Jason on the waist. 

Just right after Jason’s back hit the wall behind him, he let out an explosion of silver energy that shot dozens of sharp silver energy at the shadow that attacked him at point blank range, blasting it to shreds.

Caroline swung her silver Xuanli axe at the shadow that clawed her shoulder, the shadow disappeared from where it was under a puff of smoke and in the next moment re-appeared behind Caroline, latching onto her back and trying to choke her and bite at her neck. Caroline then immediately turned her Xuanli full on, forming a fiery armor around her that pushed the shadow’s limbs loose and engulfed its body in flame. The shadow screamed and disappeared once again.

But this time, Caroline focused her senses, and when she sensed that some dark and grim energy was about to manifest some place to her left, she immediately swung her silver axe and unleashed a crescent-shaped energy blade in that direction.

The shadow re-appeared, just in time to be cut in half by the fiery energy blade, and with a loud scream, the shadow burned up from both halves and left nothing but ashes floating in the air.

“Boom!” the huge grey cat and the human-shaped monster struggled and banged their bodies against an already cracked-up cement pillar, which broke off half the pillar and exposed more of the rebars inside.

The grey cat was at a disadvantage, it was bleeding through many wounds on its body. The monster rolled on top of the huge grey cat’s back after their collision with the pillar, locking the huge grey cat on the ground raised its two hands: one hand was only bones and no flesh, and the other was made of concentrated grim and dark energy.

Before this shadow was able to deliver its potentially killing blows to the huge grey cat, a silver energy spear shot at its shoulder, forcing it to stop to block the spear, which caused it to almost fall off. The next instant, a spinning silver axe in flames was at the human-shaped monster’s face. Though it crossed its arms in front of it in time to defend itself, it was knocked into the air in an energy explosion and its body created a big hole on the wall.

What shot at the human-shaped monster next was a high speed flying silver sword with the tip pointing at- it was able to move out of the way and avoided being stabbed on the chest. The sword only cut through one of its upper arms, cleanly severing it from the monster’s body.

The huge grey cat jumped up and roared, unleashing a ball of hyper-compressed air which struck the human-shaped monster right in the torso. The monster was blasted through the wall, with splinters from its bones and pieces of rotten flesh splashing all over the place.

The human-shaped monster gave out another loud scream, but instead of barging into the building again, it fled, leaving many black shadows behind.

“You saw its missing hand?” when they finally destroyed the last remaining black shadow, Caroline asked Jason while breathing heavily and examining her injured shoulder: “That’s definitely Dr. Nguyen - or WAS Dr. Nguyen.”

“It did not take that long for her to become like this.” Jason’s waist hurt like hell, and he was walking with a bit of a limp: “But I wonder what’s it doing here.”

“My… children.” the grey cat spoke with a trembling voice: “It was devouring my children.”

“Devouring… why?” Caroline asked.

“It’s recharging.” the huge grey cat slowly stood up as some of the smaller gifted cats surrounded it and started licking its wounds: “It’s a kind of dark and evil practice - it was trying to regenerate its power by consuming other entities of power, draining their life force as well as their powers. Spirits like us, especially young ones like my children, are valuable and easy prey to the foul creatures like that.”

“Hence it kept returning to the movie set.” Jason realized: “There are other ghosts inhabiting the set - it was devouring those ghosts!”

“Thank you human… cultivators.” the huge grey cat led the remaining cats to the exit of the building: “You have my gratitude. I am in your debt. And it will be repaid. You have my word.”

“You’re welcome.” Caroline was still a little pissed about how they were treated by the huge grey cat back at the movie set.