The instant the order was issued, the villa cloaked in darkness was suddenly illuminated once more.
As if stars were detonating.
Amidst the roars, flashes of light burst from the gloom in concentrated bursts; dust violently rose and churned as a torrential rain of metal poured down.
In an instant, from the first floor, second floor, third floor, the basement, the left wing, the right wing... and even out in the dense weeds, dormant firearms suddenly rose from their mounts, opening fire on every living thing.
Crossfire swept across the grounds.
During the nearly one week he had stayed at the villa, Ji Jue hadn't wasted a single day. Bit by bit, piece by piece, he had practically overhauled the entire estate.
After installing fire-control consoles behind dismantled walls, he had put up new drywall, skimmed it with putty, and painted over it. With the aid of Masterwork Nature, the repairs blended seamlessly into the original decor.
Rewiring electricity and plumbing, bricklaying, masonry...
He knew a bit of everything.
Now, the moment the facade was ripped away, this ferocity was laid bare before the intruders.
Steel-core bullets breached the barriers of wood and plaster, instantly tracing ghastly trails of blood across the main hall and hallways. Severed limbs and shattered bones flew; batting and wooden splinters shot into the air. With walls and drop ceilings torn to shreds, crisscrossing lines of fire lashed out like whips, sweeping back and forth. Wherever they passed, they sheared flesh-and-blood bodies clean in half at the waist.
Midst the siege, Old Tom merely turned around and caught a faceful of blood. Yet the firepower that should have turned him into mince began carefully outlining his silhouette the instant it reached him, sweeping past without touching a single hair on his head, leaving him momentarily flabbergasted.
Such large-scale precision control—what the fuck are you, Embers or Tianyuan?
A furious roar echoed from the grand hall.
Countless bullets ricocheted, embedding themselves in the walls and ceiling.
Under the terrifying barrage of heavy machine guns, a burly figure actually raised his arms to shield his face, charged straight into the suppression fire, and kicked the furiously spinning gun barrel until it bent.
Still not satisfied, the raging Celestial Chosen wrenched the machine gun straight off its mount, twisted it into a mangled clump, and smashed it to pieces.
Yet when he turned back, he saw his subordinates behind him—suffering catastrophic casualties, wailing continuously.
Sniper rifles were blowing their heads off through the walls, one after another.
"Old fossil, stop fucking standing there watching the show—!" The Vortex Celestial Chosen, encased head to toe in bone armor, turned back and bellowed, "Do something already!!!"
"Quiet."
A cold voice carried in from the courtyard.
Blazing light flickered in Jin Wujiu's eyes, and faint sparks of electricity danced across his body. He hadn't charged into the labyrinthine villa alongside the main force.
The most terrifying aspect of an Entropy Celestial Chosen was their sheer destructive power, and their weakest aspect was, without question, their defense.
Even with one foot already across the threshold into the Regeneration rank, his defensive capability still couldn't hold a candle to Vortex or Desolate Ruins practitioners at the Metamorphosis stage; one could even say it was barely any different from an ordinary human's. Unless he could fully achieve the Regeneration rank in his lifetime—shedding his mortal coil to ascend into formless, coalescing energy—frail defense would forever remain his fatal weakness.
For this reason, he never set foot in dangerous territory lightly. He was draped head to toe in alchemical equipment designed to ward off all kinds of attacks. Now, with the electrostatic cage he had painstakingly set up blanketing the entire hilltop to ensure no one could escape, he raised his hand once again. Amid the ceaseless birth and death of endless electrical arcs, a blinding, azure radiance swept outward in all directions, drowning the entire villa.
Every light flared for a brief instant before a chorus of popping sounds erupted as they all overloaded. The backup generators all burst, wiring melted and charred, and the servers billowed thick smoke amidst thunderous bangs.
With motherboards overloaded, every mechanical device vanished from Ji Jue's perception in rapid succession.
In the span of a single snap of the fingers, all modern equipment was completely fried by this sudden electromagnetic pulse.
"They're hiding a Tianyuan capable of controlling machinery, too?"
Jin Wujiu sneered. "Setting up such defenses in secret... that Chen Xingzhou really was up to no good! Centaur, hurry it up. Stop dragging your feet and slinking around. Mr. Lei keeps no deadweight around. If you want a pay raise, it depends on your performance."
"Motherfucker, all you do is flap your gums! If you're so great, you do it!"
The Vortex Celestial Chosen known as Centaur cursed impatiently, yet his body swelled once more!
In the blink of an eye, he turned into a giant well over three meters tall. Beneath his shredded clothes were muscles corded with bulging veins, bizarre bone plating bursting from his limbs, and strange contraptions resembling exhaust pipes.
Amidst his roar, near-boiling, scalding blood-qi erupted from the bone exhaust pipes.
Between his ten fingers grew sharp, massive claws tinged with the metallic hue of steel, glowing incandescent red. The bone covering his face elongated and shifted in the intense heat, viscous crimson swirling behind the seams, taking on the shape of a weeping, blood-soaked horse skull of bone. Four eyes veiled by thick irises opened from the fissures in the skull, looking in different directions.
"Heh, let's start with you..."
With a subtle sniff, he keenly distinguished the scent of blood, sweat, stench, and incense lingering in the damp air. In an instant, he locked onto Blondie at the far end of the hallway.
He bared his teeth in a savage grin.
Amidst an earth-shattering roar, floorboards shattered and rubble flew.
"Help help help help help—!"
In the face of the foul wind blowing toward him, Blondie let out a shriek, spun around, and bolted with everything he had, scrambling on all fours. He didn't even forget to turn around and empty an entire magazine from his submachine gun.
Suffice to say, he truly lived up to the White Stag; his balance, reflexes, and sheer running speed made Ji Jue green with envy.
Yet Blondie was on the verge of tears.
God as his witness, he had only gone to take a dump...
How had he ended up on the wrong movie set before he even wiped his ass?
Boom!
The scorching iron claws raked past his back, nearly tearing him in two and gouging four horrifying gashes into the wall. At that, Blondie wailed even louder.
Because he felt a sudden chill on his buttocks.
The pants he had just pulled on were slipping down again.
He fled in blind panic, straining every fiber of his being to escape the monster hot on his heels. Then, he heard a voice from the end of the hallway.
It was Ji Jue.
Full of praise.
"Great job, Blondie!"
Huh? Eh? What?
For a fleeting moment, Blondie was bewildered: *Me? What did I do?*
Wait, that pendant symbol on the wall seems to mean that this place is... a minefield, aaaaaah!!!!!
"Save meeeee!!!!!"
Blondie's wails grew shriller and higher-pitched. The speed that had already reached its limit exploded yet again. In time that seemed to slow to a crawl, he could almost see the floorboards deforming and bulging. Terrifying heat and a violent shockwave suddenly erupted behind him, dispersing and expanding into an endless spray of steel ball bearings that completely engulfed the monster pursuing him.
Yet landmines and explosions couldn't kill him.
At most, they merely opened a crack in the bone armor on Centaur's body. Grown even more berserk, Centaur had blood-qi erupting from his exhaust pipes.
Yet at that exact instant, he finally came within twenty meters of Ji Jue.
Right at the intervention limit of Deus Ex Machina after Ji Jue advanced to Tier 2.
Ji Jue clenched his five fingers.
Then, the phlogiston explosives buried within the walls erupted into blazing light.
The entire villa shook violently in the blast. Walls shattered and shockwaves swept out, flipping the crying Blondie right out of midair, sending him flying over Ji Jue's head, and smacking him flat against the wall like a pancake.
The mere aftershocks nearly killed him. Had it not been for the protection of the alchemical device shaped like a heavy gold chain, this blast would have sent him straight to the ICU.
Meanwhile, the charging Centaur had been slammed into a fissure-riddled load-bearing wall by the shockwave and searing heat, stunned and concussed. The outer layer of his skeleton was burned to charcoal, viscous blood dripping from the cracks.
Even one of the four eyes on his face had been shattered.
"You little... shit... motherfucker..."
Centaur roared, his bloodshot eyes locked onto Ji Jue. Blood-qi surged violently. The power originating from the blessings [Perseverance] and [Winter Storage] had prevented him from being crippled by the sudden catastrophic blow; at the same time, it stoked his fury into a raging inferno, multiplying his speed of regeneration and strength once more.
Yet before that, what he heard first was a faint, muffled thrumming.
Like an engine turning over, its pitch climbing higher and higher.
As if it were right next to him.
Separated by... only a single wall?!
At that moment, as Centaur's pupils shrank, the behemoth on the other side of the wall let out a deafening roar. Flashes of spiritus flared along violent chainsaws as it smashed through the wall.
Amidst the thunderous crash, Centaur fell from the wall, pinned to the ground beneath the steel monster that had burst through the masonry. Three massive, roaring chainsaws swung down in a flurry of slashes.
Tearing through carapace, grinding flesh and bone to pulp, blood surged like a tide, spraying and splattering across the ceiling!
Encased entirely in heavy armor refined and processed through Fluid Alchemy, its once-beastlike body had begun to take on the shape of humanoid limbs, with a long tail as sharp as a blade.
Upon its three arms, the alchemical chainsaws Ji Jue had welded in place roared, carving fissure after fissure deep enough to expose bone across Centaur's body with relentless strikes.
Dragon blood ran scalding hot, the engine revved madly, and scorching machine oil vaporized, billowing out from beneath the steel armor in rolling black smoke.
—Heavy Armored Niuma had launched an ambush!
Boom!!!
Amidst Centaur's screams of pain, his regenerated arms and claws violently grabbed the chainsaw, grinding furiously against the chain Ji Jue had treated. Ear-piercing shrieks rang out incessantly as he forcibly snapped one of the chainsaws in two.
"Get the fuck off me!"
Centaur bellowed. His wounds closed rapidly and his skeletal frame regenerated. On his raised arm, blood-qi blasted from the exhaust pipes like an engine supercharger. A savage punch shook the ground, leaving a vivid fist imprint in the armor plating of Little Niuma's face.
Weighing a full two tons after being fully armored, Little Niuma staggered backward from the punch. But immediately after, under Ji Jue's control, it whipped its limbs, ejecting the broken chainsaw mount, reached behind itself, and drew a massive single-beveled battleaxe from the huge crate on its back.
Milled directly on a lathe by Ji Jue, the axe hadn't even undergone sharpening or quenching. It had merely been crudely reinforced with alchemy and could hardly even be called a weapon—at best, it was an exceptionally heavy and sturdy slab of iron.
Yet combined with Little Niuma's power output and sheer mass, it was more than enough to pulverize anything in its path.
Chop! Chop! Chop! Chop! Chop!
Since the journey in the Border Realm ended, this was the first time it had shed its three-wheeled cart disguise to reveal its true form. Having been modified in turn by the Crucible and the Prophet, the purified dragon blood hungrily absorbed spiritus, cycling with manic fury.
Compared to its former monster-like appearance, it had now grown two backward-jointed legs, while the three thick limbs on its upper body served as arms.
Effortlessly supporting over a ton of composite steel armor, it clashed head-on against a Metamorphosis-rank Vortex Celestial Chosen.
It was as though someone had accidentally wandered onto the set of a horror film, stumbling into a clash between a monster of steel and a beast of flesh. With no thought of defense, they simply swung their steel or bone claws and weapons, battering each other.
The battered hallway and the wing of the villa were teetering on the verge of ruin. Shards of steel and iron shavings rained down incessantly. Amidst the spreading flames, Centaur roared, his entire body swelling yet again as his revitalized muscles grew tougher through regeneration.
Ignoring the cleaving blows of the steel axe and chainsaw, he slammed his body forward, hoisted Little Niuma into the air the moment it lost balance, and hurled it into the floor.
"Trash! Trash! Trash! Trash! Trash!!!"
Centaur laughed maniacally, throwing punches like a pile driver, pulverizing the armor.
The gruesome wounds covering his body closed at a pace visible to the naked eye as his bone armor regenerated. But right after, his head snapped backward involuntarily.
A huge depression caved in!
His brains were nearly beaten to mush...
Yet even if their brains were beaten to mush, for a Vortex Celestial Chosen, regeneration was mere child's play!
This brand of vitality defying common sense was just that absurd. After all, back in the day, the Regeneration-rank Lawrence had relied on his sheer tenacity to trade a couple of blows with Sister Wen even while her hands were bound. Right now, this horse-headed gorilla's regenerative speed was nearly half a Lawrence—wouldn't squashing Ji Jue be a walk in the park?
Now noticing Ji Jue's attack from a distance, the rapidly regenerating Centaur turned back, grinned, and prepared to charge over, only for his ankle to be seized in a vice-like grip.
On the ground, from beneath shattered armor plates, a sharp mechanical claw thrust out, grabbing his ankle in a death grip and yanking back with savage force!
Little Niuma's entire body sprang from the ground, coiling around Centaur. With its facial plating broken off, its maw gaped wide and clamped down hard, ravenously feasting, grappling relentlessly.
Once more, they tangled in a brawl.
Ji Jue emptied his magazine of armor-piercing rounds in a rapid volley, his hands numb from the recoil, yet he didn't dare use the corrupted bullets.
This bastard's vitality was far too ridiculous. If corruption kicked in, he might still cling to life for another ten minutes, and a pulverized Ji Jue would end up topping the mortal realm's leaderboard of embarrassing deaths.
What was more, an Entropy powerhouse was still lurking in the courtyard outside.
Just feeling those violent spiritus fluctuations made Ji Jue break out in a cold sweat.
Thunder rumbled and arcs of electricity continually struck the villa, yet the man had still not truly made his move... What on earth was he waiting for?
And at this very moment, Jin Wujiu was also locked in unprecedented hesitation.
Ignoring his subordinates' cries for help and shouts, he stared fixedly at the darkened villa before him.
It was as if he could sense something lurking in the shadows, watching him with cold eyes, sending wave after wave of chills down his spine.
Just what kind of monstrosity was hidden inside?
Yet whatever it was, he couldn't afford to drag this out any longer...
After a moment of hesitation, he gingerly drew a bell-shaped object from his breast, then meticulously attached a clapper wrapped in silk.
The antique bell dangled from his fingertips in midair. Despite the howling wind, it made no movement.
Until Jin Wujiu's spiritus flooded into it, sucked in as if into a bottomless pit, whereupon a crisp chime rang out.
So distant, yet so intimate.
As if ringing right beside everyone's ear, echoing through the long night and the darkness, bringing waves of eerie chills.
Jin Wujiu's face grew faintly pale; evidently, even at the Regeneration rank, bearing the colossal burden of this blessed creation was taxing.
In that very instant, wails like weeping and lamentation arose from the darkness around and within the villa. One translucent, blurry figure after another manifested out of thin air.
At the first chime of the Soul-Calling Bell:
All dead souls awaken, and all lingering spirits within ten li converge.
At the second chime:
All dead souls descend into a frenzy of hunger and bloodlust, seeking to destroy all living things!
Gritting his teeth, Jin Wujiu wanted to sound the third chime, but unable to shoulder the horrifying strain any longer, he simply raised his hand toward the villa.
In an instant, innumerable lingering spirits shrieked and swarmed forward.
Flecks of ghostly light converged like a tide from the underworld...
At the same time, Ji Jue suddenly sensed the spiritus seal he had left in the basement being disturbed, as if someone were trying to undo Quicksilver's binding from the inside, leaving him dumbfounded.
Damn it, don't tell me a corpse is coming back to life and haunting the place?
But immediately afterward, he heard Blondie's terrified screech:
"Gh-gh-ghosts!!!"
Ji Jue was so annoyed he wanted to roll his eyes. At a time like this, stop repeating words, will you? It's gross!
Yet right now, inside the villa, indistinct silhouettes emerged one after another. Those remnant souls and fractured spirits didn't even have faces, yet they looked utterly ghastly.
Not only from the graveyard outside the villa, but even from the corpses that had just fallen inside, an eerie emerald glow gradually surfaced. Driven and infused by the blessed creation, the grand power of Sovereign Virtue manifested, turning the deceased into puppet-like lingering spirits to assault the living once again.
Just which grandmaster had crafted such a wicked piece of gear?
But Ji Jue had no time to marvel, because the souls of those who had just died at his hands were already diving toward him with shrill shrieks, brimming with malice and bloodthirst, starving and impatient.
Then, Ji Jue saw the berserk spirit leading the charge come to a screeching halt right in front of him, freezing in place.
As if it had actually seen a ghost.
Its hollow eyes were illuminated by an intangible flame.
It was like swinging a machete, kicking open an enemy's front door to exact bloody vengeance, only to find the hall behind the door engulfed in boundless hellfire, with countless agonized, malicious, and despairing faces all turning in unison to stare outside.
Holy crap...
*Excuse me, sorry to bother you.*
*Fuck this, I'm out!*
The terrified spirit rippled violently, instantly trying to fly backward. But before it could flee, a hand covered in tattoos grabbed hold of it.
And it couldn't break free?!
"Where the fuck do you think you're going?" Seeing the duck already in his mouth about to fly away, Ji Jue flared with anger. "Get back here!"
This was free spiritus!
The spiritus manipulation of Non-Offensive engaged, grabbing the pure spiritus remnant soul. Then, through sublimation and transmutation, he forcibly compressed it, rolling it between his hands directly into a pellet-sized bead of spiritus. Loading it into his pistol, he boldly pulled the trigger at Little Niuma!
The spiritus bead, entwined with thick resentment and savagery, shot out and sank into Little Niuma's body. Within seconds, it was digested by the even hungrier, more ferocious dragon blood, replenishing spent reserves and deficits—even the cracks on its arms knitted back together!
Ji Jue's eyes lit up at the sight.
Supplies delivered right to my door?
Thanks for the rocket, bro!
Unfortunately, the spiritus content of a single remnant soul was still meager. Even with Ji Jue's hands furiously snatching and dragging, even when he went so far as to release his own spiritus fluctuations to lure more spirits close, it was still a bit lacking.
Until a mutilated corpse came stumbling along, infested by a swarm of lingering spirits, passing through the hallway.
It locked eyes with Ji Jue for an instant.
And saw Ji Jue's warm, hospitable smile.
"Since you're already here, what's the rush to leave?"
Reaching out with the hand of Non-Offensive, he mercilessly seized the zombie's head. Then, a violent intake—amidst shrill screams and wails, massive amounts of spiritus coalesced, actually condensing into solid form.
And Ji Jue channeled every drop of it into Little Niuma's body.
Under such an abundant supply of spiritus, the boiling dragon blood heated up once more. Little Niuma neighed with exhilaration, growing increasingly savage, sparks practically spewing from the fissures in its joints.
It grappled Centaur in a death grip, meeting strikes head-on, actually showing signs of growing further...
Unfortunately, even lingering spirits knew to bully the weak and fear the strong. Sensing the bizarre anomaly here, the vast majority began giving him a wide berth.
No matter how Ji Jue flared his spiritus, it was useless.
Watching this, Ji Jue grew anxious and frustrated, practically stamping his feet in vexation. Damn it, the fish aren't biting anymore!
He couldn't possibly force himself to find something to chum the waters, could he?
Wait...
In a flash of inspiration, Ji Jue paused, then slowly turned his head.
He looked beside him.
Toward Blondie, who was slumped on the ground wiping cold sweat from his brow.
Blondie was bewildered and subconsciously offered a fawning smile.
And so, Ji Jue smiled back.
Soon, Blondie's shrieks echoed through the entire villa once again... Amidst wails and wild sprinting, a long chain of lingering spirits pursued him relentlessly, strung together like a long train.
In the end, Ji Jue twisted them into a clump and shoved them into Little Niuma's mouth.
Fueling an even more raging engine fire!
Amidst Centaur's roars, Ji Jue didn't relax in the slightest. On the contrary, his expression grew increasingly grave.
Xiao An hadn't provided support for quite a while now.
As if she had vanished into the deep, distant darkness...
Chapter 132