Outer space.
A dense mass of bats flew as usual, entirely unaffected by the harsh environment.
In the center of the countless bats, Marcus’s body radiated crimson light. Once the Aska came into naked-eye view, he slowed his flight, contemplating how to breach the warship’s interior.
The most important rule of being alive was to rely only on oneself.
Marcus had once been human, but after contracting the virus, he became this world’s very first vampire.
Over the course of his long life, he had learned one thing: whatever truly mattered must be gripped tightly in one’s own hands, and one must never trust anyone else.
Because of trust, he had lost ten wives, five sons, and six daughters. He would never trust anything again.
Right now, his plan was very simple: infiltrate the interior of the Aska, slaughter every living organism inside, claim the vessel for himself, study it at his leisure, and ultimately flee this world.
As for who he would take with him at that point, that would depend entirely on his mood.
"Bloody Art!"
After observing for a moment, Marcus extended his hand.
In an instant, the scarlet radiance in his palm coalesced into a massive rifle.
The Bloody Art was Marcus’s strongest power—an ability he had mastered only after "evolving." Against targets below the Star Rank, it was practically a dimensional-strike level of overkill.
He could use the Bloody Art to simulate any item, generating effects identical to the original, yet far more potent and devastatingly explosive.
Aiming the rifle at the Aska, he gently pulled the trigger. A crimson bullet composed purely of Bloody Art energy shot forth.
The bullet was tiny, yet the energy it carried was utterly terrifying.
Inside the Aska, Yu Xian and the others immediately sensed the approaching projectile. Muse went so far as to sound an alert, warning everyone that a high-energy attack was closing in.
Yet everyone present remained calm, because the very second Marcus launched his attack, Yu Xian vanished into thin air.
Out in space, a hand appeared from nothingness and cleanly caught the bullet. The bullet instantly began to violently vibrate, twist, and warp, looking as though it would detonate at any moment.
Yet simply held within that grip, it could not explode at all.
"Yu Tian!"
Marcus looked at the owner of the hand and knitted his brows.
Although the man before him had many differences from the Yu Tian he had seen in photographs, he had only seen pictures, and ones from over a year ago at that. Discrepancies were hardly strange.
The key was intuition.
He believed the person before him was Yu Tian, and intuition never lied.
However, it would have been fine if he hadn't mentioned Yu Tian. The moment he did, Yu Xian's composure instantly shattered.
If one were to rank the people Yu Xian hated most, Yu Tian would easily place in the top three. Yu Xian thoroughly loathed this version of himself.
The next instant, Yu Xian lashed out in anger, flinging the bullet in his hand straight toward Marcus.
Marcus frowned as he manipulated the incoming projectile to gradually collapse into the shape of a liquid droplet, catching it in his palm. He was utterly baffled by Yu Xian’s reaction.
Could simply having his name called out really cause him to fly into a rage from sheer embarrassment?
The real question was why Yu Tian had become so powerful. Just a few days ago, word had it that he was nearly captured by the combat police.
Before he had any time to ponder the matter further, however, just 0.001 seconds after Yu Xian hurled the bullet, a character swap took place.
Nora materialized in a flash, holding the gun World, and cleanly pulled the trigger on Marcus. Although the Marcus of this world shared a name with Nora's father, they did not look alike in the slightest.
Consequently, Nora did not connect him to her father at all, striking without the faintest hesitation.
A single shot.
Marcus's eyes went wide. His pupils slowly rolled upward as a bloody hole opened between his brows.
What the hell kind of attack was this? It was absurdly fast! And if it was just a bullet, with his regenerative abilities, it should have healed in the blink of an eye.
Yet with just one bullet lodging in his brain, he was struck by the sensation that he was being torn into pieces.
No!
He had to piece himself back together!
Where was the wound? He couldn't find the wound!
Marcus clenched his jaw tight, exhausting every ounce of his power to fight off death and search for a way to heal. His stubborn vitality allowed him to hold out for ten full seconds before his eyes rolled back, his body becoming a piece of trash floating in space.
The bats encircling him dissolved into black flames, burning for a fleeting instant before disappearing entirely.
Yu Xian switched back, staring at Marcus's corpse and sucking in a sharp breath. Nora's World paired with a Brave Bullet was truly terrifying.
[Yu Xian + Nora, Combat Power: 350]
[Marcus Bessolens Faridi, Combat Power: 250]
They had Marcus outclassed in level to begin with, making World all the more unreasonable.
After dealing with Marcus, Yu Xian stowed away his corpse. He was somewhat curious about the vampires of this world, after all, and the moment Marcus appeared, he had been one hundred percent certain of his race.
Since Marcus had courted death by attacking first, Yu Xian had naturally shown no mercy, making this a good opportunity to put the waste to use.
"Nora, do you think if I show up in Huaxia right now, I'll be mistaken for Yu Tian and hunted down by everyone?" Yu Xian asked, looking toward Earth after storing Marcus's remains.
Nora couldn't help but chuckle. "If you're really worried, I can represent you instead."
"No, I want to pay a visit to Qilin myself, and let the people of this world know that in another world, there is a good man named Yu Xian who is completely different from that Yu Tian," Yu Xian said through gritted teeth.
With that, he immediately flew toward Earth, simultaneously using his abilities to commandeer the planet's electronic devices and broadcast his movie. Crescent Bay had already been flooded with it anyway, so one more world learning of his "glorious" deeds hardly mattered.
Earth, in the middle of a desolate, wild mountain range.
Having finished draining a monkey of its blood, Yu Tian simply sat in a tree and fished a phone out of his tattered trousers, turning it on.
Naturally, the phone was not his own, but a trophy salvaged from one of the adventurers he had killed. Its greatest value lay in being unregistered, the sort typically used for shady, under-the-table dealings.
Clearly, that adventurer hadn't been a good person either, or he wouldn't have needed such a phone.
Now, this device had become Yu Tian's sole window into human society. By checking the news, he could gauge where danger lurked so he could avoid it, and where was safer so he could hide out for a while.
Today, however, an anomaly occurred. The moment he unlocked the screen, the display went black, followed by several large characters slowly appearing: Legend: Shiny Vampire.
"?"
Yu Tian stared at the words, a question mark popping up in his mind.
The screen proceeded to play the film, and the question marks in Yu Tian's head multiplied. What kind of bizarre situation was this? Could the Yu Xian in the movie actually be him?
Except this Yu Xian hadn't killed Lano, but had teamed up with her instead?
Dammit, there was an option like that?!
For some reason, watching the on-screen Yu Xian join Qilin and gradually become a pillar of the nation left an increasingly foul taste in Yu Tian's mouth. An auditory hallucination even seemed to chime in his ears:
"True love is vast like the grassland,
Undeterred by layers of wind and rain.
The clouds will part and the sun will rise,
Ten thousand beams of sunlight shining upon you and me..."
Once the film ended, Yu Tian shot to his feet, roaring at the sky, "Could it be that I got this problem wrong?!"
He raised his arm, itching to smash the phone to pieces to vent the tumultuous emotions churning inside him, yet with his hand raised, he couldn't bear to destroy it. After all, it was the only entertainment he had in this savage, blood-drinking life.
Hmph!
In the end, it was nothing more than a fictional tale.
Yu Tian drew a deep breath, slowly lowered the phone, and gave a cold sneer in his heart.
How could the world ever be so wonderful? If he hadn't killed Lano back then, his corpse would probably have grown cold long ago. He refused to believe a word of the movie. Fake, it was all fake—nothing more than a made-up story.
Chapter 274