New Season, New Patch

Amid the brief, dead silence, the gunshot cracked like a bolt of thunder. The bullet whistled through the air. The instant the lever-action rifle had been raised, Lou Feng had instinctively dismissed it, thinking nothing of it. Yet in the very next instant, a sudden chill washed over him from head to toe. Sensing something terribly amiss, he ducked by sheer reflex. Only after the roar had rolled out did he notice the deep gouge carved into his spiritus shield—and the icy dread prickling at his temples. A streak of silver had grazed his brow, plowing a furrow through his disheveled hair. Blood seeped out slowly, thick and cold, bringing waves of dizziness with it. An alchemical bullet! And inside the slug... mercury! The moment he identified the material, a sudden jolt of realization made his hair stand on end. *Fluid Alchemy?!* Yet mercury was also a common alchemical material, still widely used even in modern alchemy. A single bullet was hardly enough to discern the truth. Even so, his mind had begun to unravel. Clutching the shattered bullet core, his eyes gradually turned bloodshot, no longer able to rein in his fury. "Slan, kill them!" "Understood—" The Knights of Homecoming, who had long been waiting, hesitated no more. Their spirit steeds gave shrill neighs as they charged boldly toward Little Niuma, which was weaving with flamboyant footwork. It was like the advance of an iron wall! Though there were only a dozen or so riders, their coordinated press sealed off any room to maneuver, giving their quarry nowhere to dodge or flee. Meanwhile, atop the hurtling three-wheeler, Xiao An, who had been sitting quietly in the back, tugged at Ji Jue's hem and finally spoke up: "They made the first move, Brother Ji Jue." "Yeah." Ji Jue nodded. "Looks like there's no settling this peacefully after all." "If they're enemies, then there's no helping it." The boy blinked and asked that final question: "Can I kill them?" For a moment, Ji Jue fell silent, recalling Wen Wen's words before they departed. Xiao An was a very obedient child—well-behaved, docile, never making a fuss. That was because he lacked common sense. To be precise, having grown up in a place like the House of An, he had never possessed any of the concepts a normal person ought to have, including but not limited to morality, good and evil, and compassion... much like how the people of Yacheng had never seen winter. He knew this full well, which was why he relied on others to guide him, direct him, and do the thinking for him. Therefore, never burden him with complicated matters, and never expect him to think with the softness of an ordinary human. He would protect you, throwing caution to the wind, but never expect him to regard other people as his own kind. Unless absolutely necessary, never let him fight. Yet now, endurance and retreat were no longer options. "Whatever you like," Ji Jue said. *Click!* In that instant, an invisible shackle seemed to slip free. A smile bloomed across that youthful face, delicate as a young girl's. It was gentle and bright, like a child bathed in sunshine at an amusement park. Because blood had just splashed onto his cheek. Ji Jue didn't even see how the boy vanished from behind him. In the blink of an eye, he was simply gone, dissolving like mist. In the next breath, he had already crossed dozens of meters, materializing right before the spirit warhorses. Dark Star slid from his sleeve, pinched between his fingertips. With that, he flicked his wrist at ease! A warhorse and its rider brushed past him, only to be torn to pieces as though they had slammed head-on into an invisible blade. Propelled forward by momentum, they sprayed outward, sketching a fleeting flash of vivid red in midair! Immediately after, a piercing whistle erupted. With a subtle twitch of his fingers, an iron plate shot from his sleeve, turning into a streak of white light amid howling sword qi as it darted forward. Yet right then, Slan's figure abruptly accelerated. Bolting from the rear of the squad straight to the forefront, he planted himself directly in the path of the projected iron plate. Shrouded in blood-colored heavy armor, he raised the buckler on his arm. The blade-scarred shield collided with the white sword qi, unleashing an ear-splitting shriek. The iron plate ricocheted away, but a shrill scream immediately tore from beside him. The deflected iron plate had suddenly erupted with new power, accelerating, correcting its trajectory, and burrowing into another knight's chest from the flank, gouging out a deep, gaping hole! Blood gushed forth—instant, crippling trauma! *Pitch-pot Ritual Manual: Valiant Arrow!* Slan remained unmoved, not even shifting his gaze. Snatching a javelin hooked to his saddle, he hurled it forward. A thunderous roar erupted as the javelin whistled through the air, piercing the earth and pinning deep into the spot where An Ran had just stood. Yet the boy had vanished like a ghost once more, reappearing in Slan's blind spot—right behind him! Dark Star swept out, cleaving through the helmet like dry twigs, only to collide with a reverse-held blade in a shower of sparks! The clash erupted in an instant, yet neither side showed the slightest emotion, their expressions entirely unchanged. One was a veteran of countless battles who had long put life and death out of his mind; the other had never possessed the concept of life and death in his head since the day he was born. A killing machine of the Swarm Path and a hunter of the White Stag Path collided, traded blows, shifted techniques, and disengaged in the space of a heartbeat. Across Slan's visor, a hairline fracture appeared, running straight through the eye slit. Thick blood oozed from behind the gap; his skull had nearly been pierced in that single strike. Landing once more, Xiao An flicked his hand, and a thread of blood dripped from his fingertips. The ghastly gash across his arm rolled back, only to pull shut under the contraction of his muscles, concealing the pale gleam of exposed bone. All that remained was the scarlet slowly spreading across his half-sleeve. He flicked his fingers again. Scores, hundreds of iron plates flew from his sleeves. Like a sky full of stars, they converged into a torrent, roaring out in a sweeping tide to collide head-on with the iron surge of the Knights of Homecoming. In an instant, the pale sword qi was dyed scarlet. The screeches of shearing and snapping steel rang out incessantly, and as the countless stray wisps of sword qi re-converged onto Dark Star in his grip, they forged a crimson blade so concentrated it seemed to drip blood. Slender and elusive, shifting freely between illusion and reality, it swept through the massive hall. It even pulled Xiao An's weightless body upward, allowing him to soar freely through empty space. As if unfurling invisible wings, he broke free from the shackles of earth and gravity. Revealing a brand-new form! *Matrix: Sword Resonance!* A cold snort echoed through the pounding hooves, and silver-white mist abruptly manifested out of thin air. A faint, blurred silhouette took shape in midair. The spiritus-shaped avatar once again unleashed its signature transmutation: countless spiritus particulates were atomized down to microscopic scales invisible to the naked eye, instantly sealing the sky and effortlessly carving slash after slash across the boy's body. Yet at that very moment, Slan's face twisted in horror. "Don't!" The Knight Commander whipped around, roaring at the top of his lungs. He shouted a desperate warning to Lou Feng, who had so ruthlessly intervened! Only then did Lou Feng notice the faint, rustling noise—the subtle scurrying of insects across the floorboards—and a dreamlike metallic gleam! It was mercury! A massive quantity of mercury was flowing across the floor in sheet after sheet, writhing and morphing. As though alive, they sprouted insect-like limbs, scuttling deftly through crevices, up walls, and across the ceiling, or slithering along while dragging bloated "abdomens." By now, they had subtly formed a ring around Lou Feng. Then came a crisp, metallic click. As if something had been pulled, those clumsy, grotesque mercury constructs opened their mouths in unison and spat out familiar-looking objects... Grenade pins?! In that split second, Lou Feng's face turned deathly pale. He whirled around and bellowed: "Ji—" Ji Jue smiled and clenched his fist. *BOOM!* Sixteen violent flares detonated at point-blank range, swallowing him whole. Without batting an eye, Ji Jue had emptied his entire reserve of grenades in a single breath. Amid the spray of countless fragments, scorching heat, blinding flashes, and deafening roars erupted simultaneously. Shockwaves collided into one another, warping the detonations into a shrieking crescendo. The sky full of silver mist contracted in an instant to form a barrier before Lou Feng, only to evaporate at visible speed under the horrific, unexpected concussive force. At the very front of the blast, the spiritus avatar flickered violently. Its blurred face struggled to lift, only for a hand to close casually over that blank visage. A sudden clench. *Snap!* A muffled roar seemed to echo, yet everything quickly fell silent again. Right before Lou Feng's eyes, the spiritus avatar left behind by his clan elder was shattered effortlessly in Ji Jue's grip. Losing its form, it dissolved into viscous spiritus and dispersed into nothingness. Before Lou Feng could even process what had happened, a dark gun barrel lifted, locked onto him, and the trigger was pulled without hesitation. Having just taken the full force of sixteen defensive fragmentation grenades head-on, the Dragonscale Armor shrouding Lou Feng wailed in distress. The impact of the mercury-transmuted slug sent him hurtling backward. He didn't even have time to cry out in shock. *Bang!* "Sorry, balance patch! Spiritus shaping got nerfed!" Ji Jue pressed forward relentlessly, his hands moving without a pause as he pulled the trigger over and over. Without giving his target a moment to breathe, he battered the shielded Lou Feng until he was scrambling across the floor like a dog whipped with a brass buckle: "In the new season, we've introduced tons of very cooool changes, plus more new heroes from sexual minorities—you're gonna love it!" And across his hands, intricate matrix totems shimmered with faint spirit light. This was the sole reason the tide of battle had been utterly overturned, leaving Lou Feng completely helpless—*Matrix: Non-Offensive*! Just how vast was the gap between a Celestial Chosen with a matrix and one without? One only needed to look at how battered Ji Jue had been when he was just an unadorned novice suppressed by Lou Feng. For a Celestial Chosen, the enhancement brought by a matrix was an absolute qualitative transformation! And now, it was Young Master Lou's turn to taste utter humiliation! Not that he hadn't been taking losses all along, but taking a few more wouldn't hurt! *Non-Offensive.* Its effect was just as its name implied: it possessed no active offensive capabilities whatsoever. Even among all the blessings it pointed toward in subsequent advancements, not a single one offered direct lethality. Matrices had their limits. No matter how advanced a matrix was, it was impossible to have everything all at once. You couldn't expect a single matrix to carry Ascension's enhancements to the soul and will, Tianyuan's suppression and territorial dominance, White Stag's speed, armor penetration, and explosive power, Mirror's concealment and treachery, Desolate Ruins' defense and resilience, and Embers' manipulation and mastery over external objects... No such thing had ever existed. Even if a contemporary grandmaster managed to forge one by force, no human soul could ever bear the weight. It would only end up as an idiotic yet gorgeous showpiece in a display case—or perhaps the handiest weapon of self-destruction, should someone be foolish enough to implant it into themselves. And Non-Offensive was the undisputed pinnacle of matrices that discarded all irrelevancies to master a single path. Back then, the Celestial-Humans had adopted an almost utilitarian mindset, stripping away every other possibility and abandoning all offense and defense. What they gained in return was a Sovereign Virtue compatibility widened to the absolute extreme, alongside unprecedented precision! To put it simply, when this matrix was designed, the primary objective was never to resist the foolish, tyrannical rule of the Empire. It was designed to grant its wielder the greatest possible convenience to... Drop everything and run for their life, anytime, anywhere, without a second thought!