Inside the department store, the battle raged at a fever pitch. With Little Niuma serving as an armored tank, Ji Liu's damage output grew ever more ferocious. Honking horns and raucous laughter echoed without pause, while on the other end of the radio, Ji Jue hesitated several times to speak...
*Wait, how did you two become best buddies?*
*Already?*
One could only say that life was truly bizarre; you never knew when or what kind of ridiculous friends you would make.
If not for the wrong setting and lack of time, Ji Liu would practically have his arm around Little Niuma's shoulders by now.
At this very moment, they were already discussing making plans for a wellness spa day.
*Get a grip, Little Niuma! When he says wellness spa, he doesn't mean a deep-clean detailing package... There's no engine maintenance! No one is going to change your motor oil!*
Ji Jue sighed, tempted to bury his face in his hands.
How could a fine young fellow who spent his days craving poached chicken fall from grace so quickly after coming into contact with society? The Swarm was truly a bad influence!
Reaching out, he took another bullet from Lou Feng and slid it into the chamber.
The blackened round radiated an eerie chill; just holding it sent waves of cold through his fingers. In mere seconds, spiritus shaping had permeated the bullet, endowing it with horrifying lethality.
"How did you do that?" Ji Jue asked, intrigued.
"Workshop secret. None of your business." Lou Feng wore his habitual sour scowl, guarding his craft like a fortress.
"Oh?"
Ji Jue's hands paused slightly at the words. The instant Non-Offensive manifested, the spiritus ripples of the Dissociation Art spread through it, reading the residual traces, and his eyes lit up.
*Ah. Using Deft Craft as a foundation to harmonize material properties and spiritus, he blended his spiritus and matter into one. The property transformation brought by spiritus shaping was overwritten directly into the quicksilver, achieving an exaggerated effect akin to an enchantment.*
It was like turning stone into gold.
Truly an outstanding Ascension!
It was indeed a workshop secret. The principle was crystal clear, but the execution relied entirely on the mastery of one's own abilities, involving both Deft Craft and spiritus shaping. It seemed this convenient technique couldn't simply be swiped.
However, if he had other specially transmuted spiritus as raw material, Non-Offensive was not entirely incapable of bootlegging it...
"What the hell are you doing?!"
Beside him, Lou Feng's eye twitched furiously, his face contorting as his fists clenched harder than Jiang Xuan's. *You're analyzing, reading, and reverse-engineering my craft right in front of my face without even trying to hide it, aren't you?!*
"Sorry, sorry. Occupational hazard, just an occupational hazard..."
Ji Jue gave an awkward chuckle, swiftly chambering the round while still feeling the resentful glare boring into his back like needles.
For a moment, he couldn't help a silent sigh. Comparison truly brought sorrow.
Xiao An was still the best!
His sword qi infusions were fast and clean, he granted every request, had a sweet smile, and would protect Brother Ji Jue.
Unlike Lou Feng, who never showed a good face and was always scheming to stab him in the back...
It was day who-knows-what since leaving Yacheng. He missed him.
"Oh well. A substitute meal is still a meal. At least it fills the belly," Ji Jue muttered wistfully.
Lou Feng had no idea what Ji Jue was mumbling about, yet an instinctive fury flared within him anyway. No matter how he looked at this scoundrel, the guy was definitely up to no good!
If this went on, Lou Feng feared he would bash Ji Jue's dog head in before the Evil Transmutation Cult even showed up.
"All right, stop glaring. I won't freeload off you," Ji Jue said as he pulled the bolt. "I'll show you a trick—"
In that instant, his hand swept across the rifle. Wisps of illusory spiritus light manifested between his fingers, intertwining like delicate neon and auroras before sinking into the weapon's frame.
It was soundless, yet chilling to the bone.
It felt as though the shell of a slumbering beast had been endowed with a soul, or a killing engine had just received its start signal. A fleeting presence flashed from within the dormant chassis—like a cold gaze cast from the shadows of a distant mountain, piercing straight to the soul.
Bestowal of intelligence: complete.
The heavy sniper rifle remained as silent as stone.
A familiar voice rang out in his perception, crisp and clear: *At your service, sir.*
*Recalibrating parameters and wind speed—*
Ji Jue looked down at the calculations Xu Guan had delivered on the notebook beside him. The rifle's scope made a silent micro-adjustment. An unfamiliar frame was integrated and tuned in an instant.
Finally, he gave the command: *Annihilate all. Leave no survivors.*
*Understood.*
The rifle jolted, kicking up a cloud of dust. A thunderous roar surged beneath the night sky, but before it could spread, telekinesis sealed it off, dispersing it into thin air.
Only a searing streak of light burst from the barrel. The vaporized quicksilver traced a blazing beam like a thrusting sword, bridging hundreds of meters to punch through the department store wall with effortless ease.
*Bang!*
A gaping hole appeared in the wall out of thin air.
Right before Jiang Xuan's eyes, the opponent who had been fiercely grappling with him suddenly splattered into a burst of scarlet. Under the impact of the armor-piercing round, the enemy's entire upper torso blew apart into mush. Immediately after, the sinister chill inside the warhead expanded, freezing the spraying blood into scattering ice crystals. When the frozen lower body struck the ground, it cracked like stone.
*Clack!*
As the bolt was pulled back, a scorching casing popped out and clattered onto the floor. Chambered again, aimed. A second silver gleam stabbed forth, piercing through four floor slabs before blowing the figure hiding behind a pillar into a spray of icy dust.
*Clack!*
When the second casing hit the ground, Lou Feng's face twitched involuntarily. Then came the third, the fourth, the fifth...
Grief-stricken, furious roars echoed from within the department store.
A giant rising from the ground like living magma staggered backward as if hammered by an invisible iron mallet. Each time the silver light flashed, another deep crater appeared on his face of layered lava and stone, frost spreading outward.
He struggled desperately, striking out fiercely in an attempt to break free from Ji Xue's harassment, but he could neither shake off that impossibly swift, eerie silhouette nor evade the sniper rounds coming from an unseen perch.
His Desolate Ruins defense, standing at the pinnacle of Metamorphosis, was fully deployed. Magma and stone crumbled and reformed in rapid succession, furiously showering flames and thick, shell-like clots of molten rock, yet he could do nothing to his nimble adversary.
Nor could he protect himself.
In sheer terror, he raised his arms to shield his face, only to immediately feel a bone-chilling dread...
*Boom!*
A shattering detonation rang out. His pillar-like left arm was sheared off at the shoulder, crashing to the ground. Its fiery glow and searing heat rapidly vanished beneath a sheet of frost, splintering into shards.
Next came the right arm. Before it could swing forward, it snapped in two, magma gushing forth like blood.
*Boom!*
A quicksilver bullet tore through the air and drilled directly into his face, boring through iron and stone. It forced him to stagger back a step, his head thrown back.
Then came the second shot, the third, the fourth...
Ji Jue read the real-time map updates Xu Guan fed him, relaying information and making minute adjustments through the weapon. His hands, blessed by Masterwork Nature, served as the steadiest gimbal mount, without a trace of deviation or tremor.
Pouring out firepower.
And so, the one-sided brutalization inside the mall began.
It was as if an invisible giant were swinging an unseen sledgehammer, brutally chiseling into the enemy's face. The rounds bored into iron and stone amid shrieks and wails, spreading malignant cold.
Even when the creature was driven to the wall with nowhere left to retreat, the barrage did not stop!
With every boom, another crack spiderwebbed across the wall behind him, and debris from the ruined ceiling rained down like a storm.
At last, amid a faint, stifled whimper, the flames burned out. The Desolate Ruins Corruptee froze in place. Under the impact of the final bullet, his head exploded completely.
Debris flew in all directions, scattering like coal from a shattered furnace.
"Thanks, Sister Xue," Ji Jue's voice came over the radio. "Pleasure working with you~"
*Working together?*
Ji Xue looked down at the rapidly cooling wreckage, feeling question marks pop up across her forehead without end. *The hell did I work with you on?! I spent the entire time getting chased all over the place—I didn't even get to deal any damage!*
Yet for some reason, looking at the bullet craters riddling the wall, she felt a sudden flutter in her chest—just like watching a livestream host demonstrate a whitening skincare product, resulting in flawless, glowing, glass-like skin where every pore looked like a work of art. *Is it really that good? I want to buy...*
*Wait! You bastard, at least put up the shopping cart link!*
*Boom!*
Above the collapsed dome of the department store, the rapidly gathering lightning was shattered once more beneath a bullet's impact.
Furious roars could be heard faintly amid the thunder and harsh crackle of electricity—an outburst of impotent rage.
Destructive currents slammed into Tong Shan repeatedly like furious dragons, interspersed with piercing bursts of electric light, yet they could not pierce his telekinetic barrier at all.
Instead, like a mad bull slowly bleeding out, the enemy was played like a fiddle in the palm of Tong Shan's hand, unable to see a shred of hope.
In such an ambush, with Tianyuan seizing the initiative, falling into such a miserable state was hardly surprising. In fact, once Tianyuan controlled the field, half the battle was already lost.
It was like leaping into the ocean to fight a shark with overinflated confidence.
One had to contend not just with distant fangs and claws, but with omnipresent pressure, suffocating lack of oxygen, and restless, surging undercurrents...
Even the isolating despair of facing the entire world alone!
Even Entropy, renowned for terrifying destructive power, could make no waves against Tong Shan's consummate control. Tong Shan freely manipulated atmospheric pressure to form layered vacuums of unseen force, guiding countless motes of dust and iron shavings to disperse the lightning... Not even thirty percent of its full power could be unleashed, and even that thirty percent was blocked by the rubble Tong Shan casually pulled in as shields, failing to inflict the slightest wound.
Surging lightning was neutralized, divided, and erased by boundless telekinesis. To rely on the blessing's effects to elevate the lightning's properties and overpower Tong Shan through qualitative superiority was an utter pipe dream!
After a few short seconds, the Corruptee's heart went completely cold. He saw no path to victory.
Yet he dared not turn and flee, nor leave even the tiniest opening.
He could feel the terrifying aura churning within Tong Shan's body. If he let up for even a moment and gave Tong Shan a chance to finish channeling before breaking through the outer containment barrier, he would certainly be reduced to powder first.
He had no choice but to attack in vain, like a frog in slowly boiling water, gradually losing the strength to resist...
*No, he wants to take me alive!*
The moment this realization struck, the lightning-transformed Corruptee felt an illusory chill. An expression of ferocious desperation twisted his face of crisscrossing arcs:
"I'll take you down with me!"
In an instant, disregarding all consequences, he steeled his resolve. The sky full of lightning converged and compressed, until it became a single ray of searing light so blinding it stung the eyes.
He pushed past his own limits, not hesitating even to ignite his soul.
In that split second, behind Tong Shan, the Burning Star Manifestation reemerged!
*Impact—*
No sound could be heard; even the thunderous roar was utterly annihilated beneath the erupting telekinesis. Only shockwaves swept in all directions. The mere leakage of a single slender arc of residual electricity tore through two floor slabs, melting and cracking everything in its path, raining down a torrent of muddy liquid from dissolved stone and sand.
When the blazing light faded into a pungent stench, the entire department store lay in ruins, with countless fragments of shattered stone flying through the air.
Suspended midair in Tong Shan's grasp was a shriveled, emaciated man, blood trickling from his nose and mouth, barely breathing.
Even more gruesome was Tong Shan's right arm.
It was charred like charcoal.
With only two remaining fingers on his mangled hand, he clamped down hard on the man's neck. Pervasive telekinetic force seeped through, taking absolute hold of his life and soul.
With a wave of his arm, Tong Shan slammed him brutally to the floor.
Amid raspy groans, Tong Shan descended slowly from the air, planting a foot on the man's ribs and grinding down ruthlessly. "Give up the route, and I'll spare your life."
*Ptu—*
The man sneered and spat a mouthful of bloody phlegm at Tong Shan without hesitation. But the instant it left his mouth, it was deflected aside. Then, thousands of telekinetic threads cut like knives across the nerves throughout his body, inflicting unbridled agony. The defiant captive screamed, writhing on the ground as his eyes rolled back.
A few short seconds stretched on like eternity.
Yet when the torture paused and he was forcibly brought back to consciousness, the tear-stained, battered face twitched, curling into a mocking grin.
With fading breath, he spat out a curse.
What followed were unending shrieks and wails. In convulsions and spasms, he rolled across the floor, clawing uselessly at his own flesh until his bones showed, yet even that could not blunt the agony Tong Shan inflicted.
Such a brutal sight almost made one wonder whether the roles had been reversed.
Even Ji Jue, who had just stepped inside, couldn't help softening his footsteps, quietly sucking in a breath of cold air from the sidelines and daring not say a word.
Compared to a piece of trash like Yan Chong who betrayed teammates faster than he bent over, this fellow's spine was genuinely stiff!
No matter the torment, he clamped his teeth shut.
"Give up the route, and I'll spare your life," Tong Shan repeated emotionlessly, entirely unmoved.
"...Heh, heh heh... Don't know, got no clue, never heard of it. What is that?" The Corruptee smirked, coughing feebly. "I will never... ever... sell out the Sacri—*Aaaaaagh!*"
The screams went on without end.
In just a few minutes, the Corruptee had wasted away completely. Yet even after his sanity shattered entirely, he still refused to speak, merely mumbling something incoherent over and over.
At last, amid a stifling silence, his breath ceased.
Tong Shan raised his wrist, instinctively wanting to check the time, only to see a lump of iron melted into scrap by the lightning, completely unusable.
"Two and a half minutes," Xu Guan said. "Thirty seconds left."
"Search," Tong Shan said without expression. "Keep looking. Take all related records and files. Ji Jue, search the electronic devices."
"On it."
Ji Jue nodded, taking the lead toward the mall interior.
Unfortunately, Deus Ex Machina was no longer all-powerful in times like this. Aside from a few light bulbs and two or three smartphones, there were practically no usable devices in the mall.
The phones were filled with nothing but porn, devoid of any important messages or intelligence. At most, the only thing of slight value was gossip about so-and-so getting into a fight with a Shepherd from the Dragon Cult...
Inside one room, Ji Xue also found a communication terminal secured by tight verification. Ji Jue didn't dare place a call; he only read the message logs, discovering that the last order had arrived right when they fled the outpost ruins, instructing everyone here to hold the mall and heighten their guard.
Beyond that, nothing.
A wasted trip.
Ji Jue sighed. He looked up, about to speak, when he caught sight of Lou Feng's expression.
Lou Feng seemed dazed.
Head bowed, he studied the patterns beneath his feet, his gaze sweeping across the floor before finally settling on the first floor, right in the center of the mall—at a storefront that had miraculously escaped burial beneath the collapsing debris.
Footprints from coming and going still lingered on the floor.
Yet inside, it was completely empty.
"Something... seems off..."
Lou Feng reached out, brushing the dust on the floor. His Deft Craft matrix keenly detected abnormal signs of processing—what looked like an authentic patch of ruins, perfectly seamless, carried a deliberate artificial aging.
Someone had deliberately made this spot look identical to the surroundings.
Yet along the seams, indelible traces remained.
"There really is a problem." Ji Jue reached out, touched the ground, and bent his knuckles to rap against it. A crisp, hollow sound echoed out, but the spiritus ripples his knuckles sent into the floor encountered a bizarre delay as they spread.
A discrepancy in material properties—like a sonar ping in water suddenly encountering a foreign object.
Those scattered signals and feedback might be meaningless to anyone else, but the Dissociation Art relied precisely on the feedback of spiritus ripples to read the internal state and information of a target.
"A false layer?" Ji Jue asked.
"Not enough space, and a false layer wouldn't deceive Aether," Lou Feng replied. "It's a bit like Mirror's hyper-realistic phantom, overwriting reality... but not quite that strong."
One could deduce with half a brain that it wasn't. If a grandmaster capable of overwriting reality with phantoms were squatting here, their squad would have been toyed with in a hundred thousand different ways by now.
Unbothered by the dust and grime, Ji Jue lay flat on his stomach. Thousands of spiritus ripples spread outward through his hands across the floor. Amid countless noises, useful feedback was sparse.
He merely sensed that something was present here—its reaction faint, yet bearing an implicit resilience, self-contained and exceptionally intact.
It felt just like...
Ji Jue and Lou Feng looked up and met each other's eyes, realizing the truth at the exact same instant:
"—A workshop?!"
*
*Gulp...*
In that split second, from behind the illusion camouflage, the dry sound of someone swallowing saliva rang out.
Inside the sealed space, it was unmistakable.
Chapter 206