In the wake of a storm, the rally suddenly turned fiercely competitive.
The buzz online began to climb steadily as well.
Once the first day's livestream concluded, the organizing committee released official highlight reels of the opening ceremony and the race, igniting another massive wave of interest. In particular, the footage of high-speed vehicles tearing across the desolate wastes, the savage, mechanical aesthetics unique to large-displacement modified beasts, the blood-pumping drive to challenge the world, and frame after frame of cars plunging dauntlessly into blizzards captured the public imagination.
Following the tempest, one racing team after another withdrew from the competition, casting a tragic, heroic hue over the racers still fighting through ice and snow.
And above all... there was so much drama to enjoy!
Someone had pieced together the entire confrontation between Haian and Bailong using clips from official feeds and spectator livestreams, uploading it to various video platforms tagged with the Desert Sea Rally. Bolstered by the rally's sheer popularity, the video gained traction at a blistering pace.
After all, these days people loved nothing more than messy drama and open brawls—bare-chested men wrestling, women tearing out each other's hair, rock musicians smashing guitars over rivals' heads... to say nothing of professional racers airing undisguised animosity in a premier sporting event.
In just a few minutes, the clip delivered a complete narrative arc. The spectator footage from behind the fence was even filmed in pristine 4K, capturing the savage headlights that glared like a beast of prey and the cigarette butt that traced a glowing red arc before dropping onto the hood.
The slow-motion trajectory, the shower of sparks, the stark contrast between light and shadow through the moody filter, and the expressions on both men's faces instantly elevated the details into a classic.
The barrage of comments swept across the screen like a tidal wave, and discussion threads soared to astronomical heights:
[Holy shit, that reverse spin! Love it, love it!]
[A petty villain drunk on a sliver of success—where is the sportsmanship?]
[Flicking a cigarette butt onto an opponent's hood might be bad manners, but look on the bright side: at least he didn't flick it into the guy's mouth, right?]
[LMAO, go watch the other clip—he even bummed that smoke from someone else!]
[I probably shouldn't say this, but that hit the spot.]
[Ever since the day I followed Director Ji, I knew the man had moves.]
[It's a competitive sport! The strong are supposed to crush the weak. Why are Bailong fanboys crying? If you can't drive, go drop coins into a supermarket kiddie ride until you figure it out!]
[I'm standing with Haian on this one, because he's a righteous soul.]
...
Before long, all the promotional stunts and marketing clips from the earlier press conference were dug up and went viral all over again. In particular, Ji Jue's pre-race interview—preaching "friendship first, competition second" while stuffing shameless ads into every breath—triggered a massive surge in sales for both the Huanggua and the Radish.
Normally, competitors would be seething, unleashing internet water armies and haters to launch a coordinated smear campaign. But lately, they had fallen eerily, deathly silent.
Amid the silence, everyone adopted a wait-and-see stance.
Even if Haian was riding high, they were merely passing through this arena; in the end, they would either return to the arms industry or crash and burn once more. Besides, the man was vicious, ruthless, shadowy, and massive. Swallowing the insult was far better than rushing forward to serve as pawns and cannon fodder.
Everyone was waiting for the final outcome.
Though his odds of winning were slim, victory was not entirely impossible... Wouldn't it be far better to flatter the victor or kick him while he was down once the dust had settled?
This was destined to be a battlefield far beyond their reach. Even Echo and the other enterprises funded or controlled by the Southern Big Four could no longer touch the edges of the fray.
On the very first day of the rally, missiles had already been slung around! Holy shit, this was no longer an ordinary commercial war. Charging in would bring no benefit—only an ugly, suffocating demise. Unrelated parties were better off running as far away as possible!
By the rally's second day, grim news arrived in rapid succession.
Beyond the aftermath of yesterday's twin storms, the precipitous drop in nighttime temperatures inflicted further casualties. In the organizing committee's various broadcasts and video updates, search-and-rescue teams recovered numerous mangled vehicles and corpses scattered across the wilderness after the blizzards.
Fortunately, none of them belonged to the competitors.
Most were "rally enthusiasts" who had driven deep into the snowfield to catch the action up close. By the time they were found, they were completely cold, frozen stiff like popsicles.
Quite a few had seen their vehicles catch fire and explode because they had "tried to burn fuel for warmth," incinerating themselves to ash...
Even more mutilated corpses had been scavenged by "wild beasts" or had skidded into icy chasms and frozen to death. As for the bullet holes visible on a few corpses in fleeting camera shots... well, you must have seen wrong. Besides, gun proliferation in the Federation was hardly news—who was to say the wild beasts hadn't bought a few pieces to protect themselves?
In response, the organizing committee issued another solemn warning: While passion is blameless, natural disasters are unforgiving. Rally enthusiasts should stick to watching the livestream and refrain from venturing deep into the snowfield without professional equipment.
The next day, though the prolonged polar night persisted, the sky cleared. Swarms of helicopters and dedicated broadcast airships transmitted an abundance of footage.
Massive, outrageously powerful off-road vehicles barreled through the wilderness, smashing through snowdrifts, crushing ice layers, and conquering sheer peaks and desperate terrain—a spectacle that left audiences roaring in satisfaction.
Yet just one day into the race, many vehicles already displayed visible damage.
Cracks marred the armored hulls of numerous modified trucks, and some even bore scorch marks resembling blast damage. It was utterly bewildering. One could only conclude that survival in the wilderness was fraught with peril—it was practically as harrowing as braving artillery fire!
Regrettably, though Ji Jue had flipped the table and shoved missiles down their throats to kick the Northern Realm into a ditch, the strike had not dealt significant blows to the other competitors.
After all, every team had entered the rally with a fight-to-the-death mentality. Their defenses were maxed out from the start. Aside from stacked rosters and heavy armor, they were loaded with alchemical creations, including precious autonomous defensive artifacts.
Through satellite imagery relayed by Isis, Ji Jue had observed the entire clash.
That unsolicited delivery of "blessings" had forced his opponents to play quite a few hidden cards.
Xinyuan's vehicle had moved like a wraith. Following the initial chaos, it had driven brazenly right through the cluster bomb barrage, completely unscathed, as though occupying an entirely different layer of reality from the explosions. Whether it was the reversal of truth and falsehood from the Mirror branch or an interpretive denial from Ascension, it was hard to tell.
Meanwhile, the cluster munitions that fell toward the Northern Realm's racers proved to be complete duds upon impact, failing to detonate at all. Putting aside their familiarity with their own armaments, there was a high probability that an Entropy-aligned Heaven's Choice was riding inside.
Tiancheng's vehicle showed nothing supernatural at first. But the instant the missiles detonated and shook the earth, a mimetic behemoth resembling a giant manta ray emerged from the snowfield. Spreading its colossal wings, it whipped up a gale that blew every descending cluster munition off course. Through the car window, a blonde female navigator looked up at the sky, her expression flat. Then the manta ray vanished without a sound.
Yet the most outrageous display belonged to Echo's driver...
He neither dodged nor launched a preemptive strike.
The moment the missiles plunged from the sky, the giant-like driver braked to a halt. A metallic sheen rippled across his dark skin as he rose, ascending into the air to unfurl an iron curtain.
And just like that... in a brutal, head-on clash, he took the two missiles Ji Jue had specially arranged for him right on the chin!
Completely unharmed!
Firepower capable of leveling a wartime fortress had failed to shake him in the slightest, and he showed no signs of fatigue after the blast cleared.
He simply turned back around and resumed driving.
Every one of them had a signature trick up their sleeve, not to mention boundless willpower and patience. Who knew what secret weapons they had tucked away, waiting to give Ji Jue a nasty surprise at any moment.
Faced with all this, the frail, helpless, and pitiable driver of Team Haian, Mr. Ji Jue, could only weep bitter tears and tremble in fear—while concurrently using satellite imagery to systematically overrun and crush every blocker and suspicious encampment along his route!
Ever since the race began, he had been driving for thirty-nine consecutive hours. Scaling mountains, crossing immense crevasses and chasms, and surmounting countless steep slopes and ridges, the vehicle had never stopped except for a few hours of maintenance.
With Little Niuma handling the autonomous driving, the wilderness was vast enough for it to run wild to its heart's content.
Never since its creation had it enjoyed such exhilarating freedom.
Besides, fresh scumbags delivered themselves to the doorstep as snacks every so often, offering maximum positive reinforcement.
By now, Ji Jue had relinquished the steering wheel entirely. The moment he boarded, he slipped on an eye mask to sleep or craft consumables. Whenever An Ning raised an alert about bounty-hunting brigands, he would either step out to harvest materials or run them down head-on.
At first, the slaughter was thrilling. But later on, perhaps because word had leaked or the clear weather kept broadcast cameras hovering overhead, no one came anymore!
What a shame. One could never have too much spiritus in reserve, Deus Ex Machina never had enough feed, and Pan Ying still needed plenty of sacrificial offerings before its next tempering.
"What a nuisance," Ji Jue sighed. He poked his head out the window, put on a theatrical smile, and waved up toward the rally's broadcast airship.
"...And here we have footage of the competitor from Team Haian. Yes, Mr. Ji Jue has generated tremendous buzz online over the past two days. He's waving to us now—free of the expected exhaustion, radiant, and clearly brimming with energy."
In the livestream feed, the host smiled and continued, "The vehicle appearing before our viewers right now is a dark horse that broke into the modified 2000cc+ division. Expert, how do you assess this performance?"
"Judging by the technical data from the organizing committee's pre-race inspection, its chassis structure and design share numerous similarities with the Radish off-road model recently launched by Haian Auto. We can view it as an upgraded variant of the Radish, though many of its parameters are far more exaggerated. It's an unadulterated performance monster, far more extreme than what other teams have entered."
Inside the organizing committee's broadcast studio, the expert delivered his analysis with a solemn expression. "However, considering Haian's technological foundation and experience, I believe this strategy is flawed.
"After all, as everyone knows, Haian previously focused exclusively on urban transit and had never ventured into off-road models. Furthermore, they lacked sufficient time to properly integrate the vehicle's components. While the performance jump is brute-forced, the likelihood of subsequent mechanical failures is extremely high. Piling on raw specs without mature design and engineering rarely results in a truly good car."
"Mm, that makes a lot of sense."
Listening to the expert's hollow jargon, the host's innocent eyes blinked with a vacant luster, presenting the unique beauty of knowledge washing through gray matter without leaving behind a single trace.
"Though, there is one thing I'm curious about..."
Lacking even an ounce of tact, the host asked in genuine confusion, "Why is so much of the ice covering the chassis red?"
The studio fell dead silent.
In the hush, the expert froze, staring dumbly at the magnified shot of the speeding truck.
Frost clung to Little Niuma's grille, bumper, and outer plating.
A crimson hue had built up across layers of frozen slush, currently cloaking more than half the vehicle's body and standing out with glaring brilliance against the white snow.
Wait, couldn't that just be blood?
There were even shredded scraps of cloth embedded in it...
Was this something they could discuss on air? No, was this something they were even allowed to broadcast?!
Breaking into a cold sweat, the director frantically gestured to the control booth to stop zooming in and cut to a wide shot immediately. The expert, having choked for a prolonged moment, coughed into his collar and stammered out an explanation under the frantic urging of his earpiece:
"Uh, well, as everyone knows, phlogiston is fundamentally a chemical substance. Heavy phlogiston used in high-horsepower vehicles involves a particularly complex refining process... This phenomenon is likely the result of exhaust gases from combusted phlogiston reacting with algae present in the snow and ice, causing the frost to turn... um, red. It's a rare occurrence, but entirely normal."
Realizing she had stepped on a landmine, the host did not dare press further about why this hadn't happened before or why other cars didn't have it. Forcing a smile, she quickly steered the conversation away: "Now then, let's turn our attention to the competitor from Team Tiancheng... Wow! What a coincidence! Tiancheng's vehicle has actually appeared to the right of Haian!"
High above, the wide-angle camera looked down upon the boundless expanse of snow. Amid howling winds and dancing flurries, two competing vehicles had converged in the exact same sector!
Their trajectories were even subtly intersecting!
On the second day of the race, without any warning, the competitors from Haian and Tiancheng had crossed paths!
It was only natural.
Vast though the snowfield was, only a handful of viable routes ran from Heihe to Kunwu. Convergences were bound to happen. What was more, a gentle pass between two mountain ranges lay straight ahead. Anyone hoping to avoid a grueling, time-consuming detour would find this pass the optimal path.
Except...
*Fuck!*
Before the main monitor, the director's vision went dark, and he felt sick to his stomach.
Damn it, were these two going to throw down right in front of the organizing committee?
Recalling yesterday's lunacy when missiles were casually flung around, everyone behind the scenes in the control room drew a sharp, collective breath.
At least Heihe had cold air to spare.
Yet their hearts sank like stones.
By all rights, they ought to cut the feed, but how would they explain that to the audience?
With viewership numbers and online traffic skyrocketing alongside the prospect of hefty performance bonuses, cold sweat dripped down the director's neck as he vacillated.
Just then, outside the studio glass, an executive who had rushed over flashed a thumbs-up.
The gesture was unmistakable: *Go for it—if shit hits the fan, you take the fall!*
*Fuck your entire family, you son of a bitch, I ought to...*
A smile remained plastered across the director's face, though a torrential stream of curses raged in his heart. Stamping his foot and grinding his teeth, he signaled back: *Broadcast it! Keep broadcasting the damn thing! Worst-case scenario, I quit and find another job...*
As the cameras zoomed in, the two vehicles drew closer and closer.
Out on the snowfield, they were practically in plain sight of each other.
In truth, both sides had sensed each other long before this.
To the heightened senses of a Celestial Chosen, a distance of several dozen kilometers across a flat, snowy plain offered no interference whatsoever. It felt as if they were right next to each other.
They could practically see each other's expressions behind the tinted glass.
"Oh! Both competitors are locked in a dead heat, neither willing to yield! An acceleration—Tiancheng has surged forward, and Haian accelerates too... Good heavens, wait, what is that? That's... a weather alert!"
The host's impassioned commentary sputtered out as red warning icons flashed across the screen.
Behind the mountain range, a violent squall had erupted!
A towering wall of white roared toward the gap, pouring out from beneath the shelter of the two massifs like a surging, deathly pale torrent.
Even from a distance, grit and frozen debris were already being whipped into the air.
"An unexpected meteorological event!" The host's voice cracked, eyes wide. "Heavens, neither racer is slowing down! Neither will concede—in fact, they're accelerating!"
Plunging headlong into the rolling deluge, against a pale tempest that unfurled like a gigantic carpet, the two vehicles hurtling across the snowfield showed not the slightest hesitation.
High above, the airship rapidly ascended, causing the video feed to blur. Yet the television broadcast's viewership surged once more, climbing to heights that had the committee executives grinning from ear to ear. Watching competitors fight for supremacy while braving a natural disaster made countless hearts hammer with adrenaline!
*Boom!*
With a thunderous roar, Little Niuma shuddered violently, spewing billows of thick smoke as cyan-blue flames burst from its exhaust pipes.
Dragon blood surged, the engine pressurized, and the revs spun into overdrive.
Amid the clamor of countless spectators, it edged out Tiancheng, pulling ahead by half a car length!
"Brother Ji, look out—!"
In that split second, An Ning called out a warning from within the cabin. Immediately after, Ji Jue's ears rang with a deafening buzz. A piercing shriek seemed to erupt in his mind, his vision blacked out, and his consciousness wavered. Fear surged like an incoming tide, while anxiety, vacillation, and dread took turns overwhelming him.
His focused state shattered in an instant. Worse still, the turbulent emotions turned inward to corrode his thought processes and intellect, leaving him panting heavily, drenched in cold sweat.
Heart Pivot!
It wasn't just the Five Skandhas of Heart Pivot sowing madness; an Ascension-grade spiritual strike was mixed in as well.
In Tiancheng's passenger seat, the blonde navigator's eyes flashed with brilliant blue light, radiating boundless radiance.
For the longest time, Ascension and Heart Pivot had been conflated by many. After all, they stemmed from a common source, both springing from the mind.
Ascension was the eternal desire of life to climb higher, pursuing comprehension, realization, and transcendence. Heart Pivot, however, represented the innate desires of living things—the likes, dislikes, cravings, and terrors stamped into them from birth.
The debate between divinity and bestiality, the contest between the superego and the id, raged eternally, inherently hostile to reconciliation.
Unlike other Celestial Chosen who walked a single path, her matrix was a hybrid compatible with both! To say nothing of the grueling demands placed upon its wielder, reaching this level made her a threat that could never be treated as merely the sum of Ascension and Heart Pivot combined.
Even with prior preparations and vigilance, Ji Jue's rational defenses were breached in an instant, plunging his mind into utter chaos.
In his daze, boundless determination surged within his soul only to dissolve into nothingness. Despair washed over him, accompanied by an insatiable wave of hunger and lust. The soft breathing of a young woman echoed in his ears, a faint fragrance brushed his nose, and the sensation occupying his mind was the lingering softness of a past handshake.
One silhouette after another drifted past his eyes.
Stripped of all resistance, Ji Jue found himself entirely entranced!
*This is why I fucking hate Heart Pivot!*
Even as he wallowed in the trance, a bout of blinding fury erupted within him: *When the Celestial Conscription happened back then, nine out of the twelve Sovereign Virtues showed up. Did your damn branch just skip out on it?!*
Fortunately, he had prepared contingencies beforehand...
As he rapidly sank into the haze, Ji Jue gritted his teeth and reached out—
In an instant, the interior of the hurtling vehicle shifted. The glove compartment to his right popped open, its structure realigning to push up a hilt.
Ji Jue gripped it with white knuckles!
—Pan Ying!
At that moment, the seal was released. Dragon blood and Quicksilver receded, driven by the surge of spiritus. Boundless murderous intent and madness poured forth like a cataract, rising from instincts and insights carved into the very bedrock of his soul. It erupted, scouring his consciousness and instantly extinguishing all worldly desire and stray thoughts, flooding his awareness and claiming total dominion.
It dyed the world before Ji Jue's eyes in stark crimson!
*Kill! Kill! Kill! Kill! Kill! Kill!*
In Tiancheng's passenger seat, the navigator's face drained of color!
It was as if a tunnel boring machine had punched through a mountain only to unleash a subterranean flood—viscous as blood, bewitchingly scarlet. A cataract formed of infinite death and malice swept outward, filling Ji Jue's consciousness before... surging backward along their psychic connection, flowing upstream!
*Snap!*
The sound of something fracturing resonated through the ether. Tiancheng's driver looked over in shock, turning toward the convulsing navigator beside him. "Hey! Maya, what happened to you—?"
Maya couldn't answer. She gasped raggedly as thick blood trickled from her eyes and nostrils, droplet by droplet.
With a muffled shriek, she severed the psychic link by force.
It wasn't merely the geyser of murderous intent. She had long grown accustomed to the ugliness of human nature; whether dealing with agony or malice, it was always a matter of resisting or indulging. But a deeper instinct filled her with involuntary trembling and dread.
It was as though she could vaguely perceive something lurking behind that sea of blood—some colossal entity!
Something purer than mere murderous intent, more berserk than frenzy forged from death, and more hideous than the absolute limits of despair a human soul could imagine...
Where on earth had this monster come from?!
Just before the connection tore away, the fragmented thoughts she skimmed from his surface consciousness made her scream:
"Look out!"
In that split second, the moment his senses cleared in Little Niuma's driver's seat, Ji Jue instinctively reached out toward his rival, who had drawn within two kilometers.
*Now, it's my turn!*
—[Deus Ex Machina]!
Amid the storm, under the aerial gaze of the broadcast camera, Tiancheng's armored vehicle suddenly wobbled, lurching as dense smoke poured from its engine. Its speed plummeted.
As if on strike, was it about to stall out?
Spectators before their screens instinctively sat up straight, eyes bulging—was it breaking down at such a critical juncture?!
The entire armored vehicle shuddered violently, letting out piercing screeches of metal grinding against metal, on the verge of shaking apart. Beneath the hood, countless spiritus circuits surfaced, resisting the unnatural alterations Ji Jue was imposing from afar. In the driver's seat, the racer's face turned ashen as his force field expanded.
Tianyuan's sphere of control had already blanketed the vehicle, reinforced by the internal alchemical architecture resisting external interference. Yet Ji Jue's spiritus harbored an uncanny vibration and flux, carrying an ephemeral thread of crimson that brought terrifying corruption, seeping inward through every available fissure.
Had the driver not been prepared, Ji Jue would have detonated the engine on the spot!
Even so, falling a step behind at such a crucial moment proved fatal.
Seizing the opening, Little Niuma accelerated again, leaving Tiancheng behind to plunge first into the pale tempest, disappearing into the whiteout.
The victor was decided!
"Fuck!" the driver roared, trading a look with Maya.
Immediately, the colossal mimetic manta ray calamity beast unfurled its wings once more in the sky above. Under Maya's command, it pursued in silence, plunging into the obscured blizzard.
Now that they had crossed paths, there was no reason to let him go.
They would use the tempest as cover to finish him off with lethal force!
Yet before they could act, a harrowing, agonized shriek tore through the howling storm, sounding like the death throes of a slaughtered beast.
Even the roiling storm clouds above were stained with a wide swath of ghastly crimson, diffusing like blood bursting out from beneath a shroud of white cotton.
Then, the moment Tiancheng breached the blizzard and severed the aerial broadcast's line of sight, a berserk, monstrous iron beast trampled over the mangled remains of the giant ray, leaping straight toward them!
The moment it had entered the storm, Little Niuma had whipped around in a seamless transformation, shedding its heavy supply trailer to cast off its restraints and leap back into the fray!
The victor was decided?
*Decided, my ass!*
*Nobody's dead yet—how the hell is it decided?!*
Ji Jue had stalked them using satellite imagery, driving ahead specifically to cut off Tiancheng's path. Did they think he came just to say hello?
In that instantaneous clash, Little Niuma lunged directly at the manta ray, stomping down with massive talons while its hammer and greataxe cleaved in an alternating dance, bounding across the beast's spine. From its empty mechanical hand, Pan Ying shot forth. Under the deluge of spiritus, dragon blood catalyzed, causing the crimson light to swell into a torrential greatsword of raw blood.
In the span of a breath, it pierced and tore through flesh with crushing ruin, trailing forward as the giant claws galloped across the beast.
Until, from head to tail, it sheared the entire calamity beast clean in two!
Before the halves could even hit the ground, the greatsword, drained of blood, rose once more. Riding the wreckage alongside Little Niuma, Ji Jue leapt high into the air, aiming straight for Tiancheng as it breached the storm...
A leaping strike aimed right at their faces!
—*Die, bastards!*
Chapter 359