In the eastern outskirts of Qiju City, many citizens stared in shock and went pale at the sight of a giant of flesh and blood nearly fifty meters tall, its whole body blazing like fire.
"The Master of Flesh and Blood, God above Gods? Could he be an immortal out of myth and legend?"
"Who cares if he's an immortal? Run first! He's already called us ants. If you don't run, are you waiting to be stomped to death under his foot?!"
"Wait for me! I need a photo for my Moments! If I'm going to die, I should at least die with a sense of ceremony!"
"Are you out of your fucking mind? Shit, shit, shit! You dumbass. Stay here and wait to die if you want!"
"I'm going live! I have a feeling this stream will make me famous from one end of the land to the other, the most famous host in the Federation! Money, women, status—I want it all!"
"Another one's lost it—"
"—"
Zhou Dongqiang had no time for the citizens, whether terrified or wild with joy. He glanced down at the two small fireballs he had just rubbed into being in his hands, then looked up at the crimson giant dozens of meters tall, swallowed hard, snuffed the fireballs out, and shot an uneasy glance at Liu Qingqing beside him. "Sister Qing, what do we do now?"
The two of them could both be counted as extraordinary beings, but only by the measure of ordinary people. Faced with an immeasurably huge giant, so-called control of fire and water and mastery of firearms seemed especially feeble. They might not even be able to break through its defenses.
Liu Qingqing's face had gone a little pale, but her expression remained calm. "A commotion this big—headquarters must already know. Support will be here soon!"
"Support..." Zhou Dongqiang steadied himself. As a full member of the Oddity Management Association who had only just been confirmed, he did not know the Association's hidden trump cards the way Liu Qingqing did, but he did understand some of the strength it displayed openly.
For example, the senior member code-named Ocean Sovereign had signed a contract with the ocean and transformed into a Sea God. He could command the changes of the sea, raise thousands upon thousands of tsunamis, and annihilate a small nation with a wave of his hand!
Of course, senior members of this level were generally people with an extremely strong sense of justice, and they were also bound by the Oddity Management Association. They basically would not set off natural disasters of their own accord. On the contrary, when a tsunami broke out, they would take the initiative to guide and control it, quelling the tsunami into nothing.
Besides the Ocean Sovereign, there was the Fire God, who had fused with the oddity Flame Godhood, mastered the power of the Fire God, and could call forth myriad flames, burning an entire city to ash in a single thought!
The fire-control abilities of Liu Qingqing, Zhou Dongqiang, and the others in fact came from the Fire God's blessing.
If the Fire God descended, he ought to be able to contend with the Master of Flesh and Blood that Xie Yuan had become, even kill him. Zhou Dongqiang's brow locked tight. But Qiju City was too far from headquarters. How could the Fire God arrive at once? By the time he got here, Xie Yuan would likely already have rampaged through the area, killed countless people, and slipped away.
The moment he thought of how very likely he was to die here, his mood grew heavy. What an awful start. He had wanted to become a senior member of the Association someday, uphold order on Canxing, and protect human civilization from being wiped out by all manner of oddities. He had never imagined that his first mission would cost him his life!
He drew a deep breath. Two small fireballs surfaced in his hands again, and his gaze gradually grew firm. Since he could not escape, better to face his fear head-on. Even if he died, he would at least count as a brave man—
Liu Qingqing, beside him, was even calmer. She called out loudly to the giant of flesh and blood, "Xie Yuan, the waters of this world run deeper than you imagine. Do you think that because you've obtained an oddity, you are a Child of Destiny, an omnipotent god?
"You're wrong! There are many extraordinary beings who have obtained oddities, and they are strong! You are certainly not the strongest among them!
"I hope you will calm down as much as you can, and not do anything beyond recall. Otherwise, under the pursuit of our Oddity Management Association, you will have only one road—death!"
Xie Yuan's face showed mockery. "Beyond recall? I've already eaten people. Isn't that beyond recall? As for the Management Association hunting me, or the hostility of other extraordinary beings who style themselves righteous—all of it is bullshit!"
He twisted his neck, lifted his right foot—bigger than a house—and stirred up a fierce wind as he stamped down toward Liu Qingqing and the others on the ground!
"Scatter!"
"Run!"
Liu Qingqing shouted. Zhou Dongqiang and the personnel assisting in the arrest all broke into a run, dodging the crushing tread of the giant foot.
Yet the foot never came down. Xie Yuan's brow tightened. He sensed an extremely powerful fluctuation of energy, turned his head to gaze toward the horizon, and his sight pierced the long sky. He saw a human figure flying in the air.
That person raised his right hand. The instant the palm turned upward, a light burst forth!
The light was lightning, bright and brilliant. It lengthened rapidly and finally became a spear of lightning!
Cyan electric light raced madly along the shaft. Every flash twisted the surrounding air into visible ripples, and the crack of thunder never ceased!
Huang Tian gripped the spear of lightning, raised his arm, and hurled it with force!
The instant the spear left his hand, a boom rang out between heaven and earth!
As if the sky had been torn open!
That shaft of cyan light roared toward Xie Yuan from more than ten kilometers away. Wherever it passed, the layered clouds were split apart, and thousands upon thousands of thunderbolts were born in its wake. Like dragons, like serpents, they coiled and wound about the lightning spear, roaring, and turned the whole sky into an ocean of lightning!
A stretch of sky more than ten kilometers long was filled in an instant by these hundreds of millions of lightning dragons and electric serpents. Like a surging great river, vast and mighty, they poured down!
"This is... lightning?!"
Seeing the lightning spear coming straight for him, Xie Yuan's expression changed sharply. He wanted to dodge, but the spear was simply too fast. He only had time to raise both arms, and upon them grew shields of flesh several meters wide.
"Boom!!!"
The thunder was still at the edge of the sky, yet the spear, bearing thousands upon thousands of lightning dragons, had already struck his arms first!
An exceptionally dazzling glare exploded outward and lit all of Qiju City in an instant!
In midair, the shockwave swept mightily through, scattering the dust-clouds in the sky.
And Xie Yuan's face twisted in that same instant. His arms were blasted by the lightning spear into countless scraps of minced flesh, which sprayed in every direction; part of them became charred ash outright.
Besides his arms, his body shuddered violently. Surging electric light leapt all over him, as if a net had trapped him.
He threw his head back. At the stumps of his arms, muscle grew madly, sprouting buds of flesh. Gritting his teeth, he roared toward the human figure at the horizon, "Who are you?!"
The voice rolled across the sky over the city and set many citizens trembling. Liu Qingqing and Zhou Dongqiang both wore utterly blank looks.
"The support is already here?" Zhou Dongqiang was astonished and uncertain. Was headquarters really this efficient? Or had they specially used some oddity to let the support arrive so quickly?
Liu Qingqing was just as lost. "This... probably isn't support from headquarters?" As she recalled it, headquarters had no oddity that could manipulate lightning.
"If it isn't support from headquarters, then who is helping us?" Zhou Dongqiang wondered. He looked toward the distant horizon, but he could not make out the figure's face at all.
"You may call me Huang Tian, the Lord on High." An extremely calm voice rolled out of the void and exploded beside Xie Yuan's ear.
The next instant, boom!
Another peal of thunder shook heaven and earth!
Huang Tian raised his hand again. Heaven and earth changed color. The clouds churned violently, converging from every direction into an enormous vortex.
Thunderbolts in the hundreds of millions of millions gathered and darted within the vortex. Cyan, blazing white, purple-gold—lightning of every color surged and swam, weaving into a net of lightning. The net spread wide, crossed the long sky in an instant, and unfurled toward Xie Yuan!
Feeling that all-encompassing aura of destruction, fear showed in Xie Yuan's eyes. Liu Qingqing's earlier words flashed through his mind. The waters of this world ran very, very deep!
Deep indeed!
So deep the bottom could not be seen!
Qiju City was only an utterly ordinary little city, and yet a powerhouse this terrifying had appeared!
He wanted to curse aloud, but he had no time even to open his mouth. He only stamped the ground with all his strength, sinking the earth beneath him, and his whole body flew into midair, trying to dodge the lightning net.
Yet as he moved, the net woven of hundreds of millions of bolts of lightning turned with him, locked on his body the whole time, and spread across the sky as it came down!
"Aaaah!!!"
A scream of agony. Countless bolts of lightning covered his whole body in an instant. He had already been wounded, and now he could endure it even less. Densely packed electric serpents crowded into his body, burst, and exploded, blasting all his flesh into powder and shocking it into nothingness.
Xie Yuan opened his mouth in vain, as if he meant to give one last roar of rage. But before that roar could leave his throat, his head had already turned to flying ash.
"He's dead?"
The countless citizens below were shocked and overjoyed at once. None of them had expected that the insufferably arrogant crimson giant who had styled himself a god would so easily be blasted to ash by lightning that came flying from beyond the heavens.
"Is Huang Tian, the Lord on High, a true immortal god? The giant was a monster that wanted to eat people, so the immortal grew angry and sent down his powers to subdue demons and eliminate evil?" someone said in a daze.
"It must be! The God Huang Tian is merciful and loves the people. He shelters the world!"
"Immortals, gods, demons, and monsters. Isn't our world a proper world of technology? How have so many things beyond the ordinary suddenly popped out? So all of you have been secretly evolving and just left me behind, is that it?"
"We need an explanation! Why has the government been hiding the truth of the world from us all this time? We need to know what is really hidden behind Canxing. Alien technology, immortal cultivation, or the awakening of special abilities?"
"Right! The truth must be made public. I don't want to be killed out of nowhere someday by some monster that crawled out of who knows where!"
Hearing the talk coming from not far off, Zhou Dongqiang's scalp prickled. "Sister Qing, have we made a mess of this? Public feeling is running high now. They're all demanding to know the truth."
Liu Qingqing gazed toward the horizon, where Huang Tian, the Lord on High, had already vanished. Her brow was tightly knit. She slowly shook her head. "Don't worry. Very soon they won't remember what happened today."
Zhou Dongqiang blanked. They wouldn't remember, very soon?
How was that possible? Something this enormous could not be forgotten in a lifetime!
Unless—
"Could it be... using an oddity?" Zhou Dongqiang guessed.
Liu Qingqing nodded. "Of course. Otherwise, why do you think so many oddities have appeared on Canxing without ever causing a great commotion?
"Whenever something causes an enormous impact, an oddity is specially used to erase the related memories. Not only people's memories, but every trace left online. For example, the photos and videos in their phones right now will all be thoroughly erased."
Zhou Dongqiang's mouth fell open in a daze. At once he guessed that his own memories must have been deleted too, and certainly more than once. He could not help stammering, "W-why do it?"
"It's simple. For the peace of the world, it has to be this way." Seeing the knot of unease in him, Liu Qingqing explained a little. "Let me ask you. If everyone in the world knew about oddities, then what would someone do after obtaining one?"
"Lie low and level up," Zhou Dongqiang answered without thinking.
"Exactly. That's the problem. If they kept hiding the whole time, and waited until their divine arts were fully perfected before emerging from seclusion, the destruction they caused would be immense!
"But when they don't understand oddities, they can only be like Xie Yuan, believing themselves Children of Destiny, and they can't help exposing their abilities early. That way, we can deal with them more quickly and avoid brewing a great disaster."
Liu Qingqing smoothed her hair. "Beyond that, it's to guard against certain special oddities. Meme-type oddities, for example. Very often, the more one knows, the more easily one is affected by an oddity.
"For instance, there once appeared an oddity named Ghost. Its property was that anyone who believed ghosts existed in the world would be haunted by Ghost within three days and killed.
"Now I'll ask you again. If everyone in the world knew of the existence of oddities and all kinds of extraordinary powers, then would they believe that ghosts exist?"
"They definitely would. And then, if the Ghost oddity couldn't be dealt with within three days, humanity would surely suffer countless deaths."
Zhou Dongqiang drew a deep breath and finally understood.
At that point he suddenly slapped his forehead, remembering something. "Sister Qing, is Xie Yuan really dead? What about his oddity?"
Liu Qingqing blanked as well. She looked all around and saw no sign of the oddity. Connecting that to Huang Tian, the Lord on High, who had just vanished, she hurriedly said, "Spread out the personnel at once and conduct a carpet search for the oddity!"
"Yes!"
In the eastern outskirts of Qiju City, on the ground of a nearby street where the battle had broken out, a lump of flesh the size of a thumb quivered slightly. Then, with a soft pop, it arched up, looked left and right, and began to wriggle toward the end of the street.
At the end of the street, against the wall, a stray dog with filthy fur was curled up. It seemed ill. Its whole body trembled faintly, and its eyes would not open.
Bit by bit, the lump of flesh wriggled up in front of the stray dog. Then it leapt onto the dog's head and bit down hard, tearing open a breach, and drilled in through the opening into the head.
The stray dog gave a violent shudder and whimpered in pain. Yet after only a few seconds it made no more sound, and its eyes rapidly turned crimson.
It slowly stood up, shook its fur, shedding some of the filthy mud and dust, and swept its gaze in every direction. At last its eyes fell on a little girl in a blue dress beneath a street sign.
"Hrr~" A low growl issued from its throat. It set its legs moving, lowered its body slightly, and crept toward the little girl.
But before it had gone more than two or three steps, it jerked to a halt, because a shadow had enveloped its entire body.
Somewhat stiffly, it slowly raised its head, and saw a young man standing before it, looking down. A kindly smile showed on his face, ghastly white teeth visible.
"Did you think you could escape?"
Chapter 239