Before the two could decide whether to provide backup, the monster severed one of the distant young men's arms with its razor-sharp claws.
"Not good. Stay here, I'll go support them!" Qingniao's expression shifted slightly at the sight. She spoke to Yu Xian, and the next second, transformed into a blue bird and flew out of the bubble.
After ingesting the Death Curse Blood, the ability Zhou Tai Five gained was simple and brutal: an exceptionally powerful body covered with bony blades built for slaughter.
"Is this all you've got?"
"So weak, so out of your depth! Who gave you the courage to come court death?"
Zhou Tai Five caught up to one of the dodging youths, unhinging his massive jaws in a roar. He lunged downward, aiming to crush the man's head in a single bite.
*Boom!*
Yet the moment he snapped his jaws down, Qingniao swooped in.
Her beak slammed heavily into Zhou Tai Five's cheek, unleashing a terrifying sonic boom.
Zhou Tai Five's defenses were astonishingly tough. Concentric ripples tore across his cheek from the impact, yet his flesh remained unbreached. Pausing for merely a fraction of a second, his eyes flared with murderous rage. He seized the youth by the shoulder and hurled him straight at Qingniao.
Qingniao had intended to punch clean through Zhou Tai Five's skull in one strike.
She had never imagined his head could be so hard. Unable to pierce it, she had no choice but to use the recoil of the impact to turn back, planning to circle around and strike again.
Yet a single misstep ruined the entire board.
Qingniao had not expected Zhou Tai Five's reflexes to be so fast.
She had flown less than five meters when the youth Zhou Tai Five threw struck her squarely in the back.
While her top speed was indeed ten times the speed of sound, her momentum had ground to a halt the instant she struck Zhou Tai Five, and turning around required time to accelerate.
Now, slammed by the youth, her flight faltered entirely.
"Die, all of you!"
Zhou Tai Five gave Qingniao no room to breathe. Taking advantage of her drop in speed, he kicked off the ground, slashing at both of them with his wicked bone blades.
He clearly meant to cut down both the youth and Qingniao in one fell swoop.
*It's over.*
Qingniao glanced back at the incoming bone blades, her heart sinking.
She hadn't anticipated that Zhou Tai Five's seemingly wild and reckless behavior hid such calculated cunning, backing her into a corner in a single move.
At the critical juncture, two bubbles surged past Zhou Tai Five, cleanly enveloping Qingniao and the youth. When Zhou Tai Five's bone blades slammed into the bubble's surface, dense ripples instantly spread across it.
He tried to press the attack, but the two bubbles ascended rapidly into the air. Possessing no flight ability of his own, he could only watch helplessly as they floated away.
"Saved!"
Reverting to human form, Qingniao looked down at Zhou Tai Five below and let out a deep breath of relief.
For a moment just then, she had truly thought she was dead. Zhou Tai Five's strength was likely around high-tier Snake rank, vastly superior to hers.
"Qingniao, are you two all right?"
In midair, Yu Xian drifted over inside a bubble, peering at Qingniao through her bubble.
Qingniao shook her head. "I'm fine. Thank you. If not for you, this time..."
"All right, we're comrades. No need for pleasantries. Next, I'll go meet him!" Yu Xian cut in, his gaze turning to Zhou Tai Five.
On the ground, Zhou Tai Five roared and turned to butcher the other squad member, only to find that the man whose arm he had severed had also been carried away to safety.
"Aaargh! Who was it?! Who is it?! Come out!"
He bellowed in fury, only to be struck by a bubble that arrived without warning, ramming him deep into the rocky hillside.
Yu Xian descended from the air, maneuvering the bubble like a wrecking ball to pound relentlessly against Zhou Tai Five. He had to admit that Zhou Tai Five's body was terrifyingly tough; even with the rocky cliff smashed several meters inward, the monster remained largely unharmed.
However, Yu Xian then generated a second bubble, alternating the two in a V-shaped battering assault. Gradually, the bone blades on Zhou Tai Five's body began to snap, and his form twisted out of shape.
Even steel could not endure repeated battering, let alone flesh and blood.
Within minutes, Zhou Tai Five was battered beyond human recognition.
Once certain that Zhou Tai Five was rendered powerless to resist, Yu Xian walked over and asked, "Which Zhou Tai are you?"
"Kill you... I'll kill you..." Zhou Tai Five muttered feebly to himself.
Yu Xian nodded and said calmly, "Understood. So you're Zhou Tai Five."
With that, he imprisoned Zhou Tai Five inside a bubble, intending to ask the captain later how to dispose of the creature.
*Wait.*
Yu Xian turned to leave, only to realize something in hindsight.
While Zhou Tai Five was not particularly formidable to him, the monster was a nightmare for most others.
In fact, Zhou Tai Five's combat power surpassed that of the previous giant ape. If the other Zhou Tais had also survived, they might genuinely manage to break out.
Recognizing the gravity of the situation, he quickly pulled out his phone to contact Jin Sheng and relayed the information.
Jin Sheng immediately took counteraction, ordering Qingniao to patrol the surrounding area and notify everyone nearby the moment she spotted a Zhou Tai so they could muster backup.
At this point, both Yu Xian and Jin Sheng mistakenly assumed Zhou Tai's sudden surge in power was a variable caused by tapping into the abilities of aberrant creature bloodlines.
While Jin Sheng adjusted their strategy, Zhou Tai Three crouched in the shadow of a boulder atop a peak near the edge of the cordon, watching Yu Xian in the distance.
Thanks to Plato's warning, they had naturally stayed as far from the metal lotus as possible. Consequently, Zhao Yi's strike had destroyed only the metal lotus and the swarms of aberrant worms unable to flee in time; all of the Zhou Tais had escaped.
"Yu Xian, little brother, what kind of monster are you really?"
In Zhou Tai Three's perception, Yu Xian resembled a bloodthirsty beast voraciously devouring everything in sight.
Originally, Zhou Tai Three had thought Plato's 'reality' was horrifying enough, but now that he saw Yu Xian's 'reality,' he found Yu Xian even more terrifying.
It was a beast of indescribable form, its entire body composed of countless vortexes, seemingly ready to drag anything that approached into its depths.
Even more frightening was that it fed without pause, its body an abyss of endless appetite—who knew how much it needed to devour to be sated.
*Still, a challenging opponent is far more fun!*
Zhou Tai Three felt an itch to fight. Even if he did nothing, this body would perish after a single day anyway; he might as well indulge in a wild game and see for himself just how strong Yu Xian had become.
He leapt swiftly down from the peak, bounding from one mountain to the next as he closed in on Yu Xian at blistering speed.
After reporting the situation, Yu Xian did not idle about, continuing to eliminate the fleeing beasts.
Their guard post was stationed along one of the few paths down the mountains; the remaining terrain was either sheer cliffs or impassable thickets of briars where any animal entering faced certain death.
"Little brother, I've come to play with you again!"
Suddenly, a wild ox was flung high into the air, hurtling straight at Yu Xian just as Zhou Tai Three's voice echoed.
Sitting inside his bubble, Yu Xian saw the ox hurtling toward him and instantly altered the bubble's properties, shifting it from rigid to exceptionally elastic while expanding its diameter from two meters to five.
The wild ox slammed into the bubble and rebounded the very next second.
"Are you the Zhou Tai from the school? Zhou Tai Three?" Yu Xian asked, looking at Zhou Tai Three, who caught the ox and leaped out of the stampede.
Zhou Tai Three opened his jaws, tearing off a massive bite of the thrashing ox, and grinned with a blood-smeared mouth. "Looks like you investigated thoroughly. That's right, I'm Number Three. You can call me Little Three!"
With that, he suddenly spat, launching a chunk of ox flesh straight at Yu Xian like an artillery shell.
Yet his attack was effortlessly deflected by the bubble, the flesh ricocheting right back, forcing Zhou Tai Three to tilt sideways to dodge.
"Where did the rest of the Zhou Tais go?" Yu Xian scanned the surroundings, pressing further.
Zhou Tai Three's moods were volatile. Now visibly annoyed, he grumbled, "Little brother, you're playing with me right now, so why are you always thinking about the others?"
"Fine. I'll take care of you first, then hunt down the rest," Yu Xian replied flatly.
In an instant, dense clusters of bubbles converged from all directions, pelting toward Zhou Tai Three like a storm of bullets.
Ever since his mutated Blood Energy had gained bubbles as a dedicated skill, Yu Xian's fighting style had transitioned from that of a melee brawler into a noble mage. Often, he didn't even need to lift a finger to crush his enemies with ease.
Zhou Tai Three possessed exceptional dynamic vision and reaction speed. Retreating rapidly to open up distance, he darted side to side, constantly evading the incoming bubbles.
Though the bubbles appeared hollow and gave off a buoyant, weightless impression, both their speed and destructive power were surprisingly immense.
As he dodged the barrage, the surrounding vegetation and rocks suffered the consequences.
Boulders shattered instantly under the bubbles' impacts, while the flowers and foliage looked as though they had been gnawed by swarms of insects, riddled with circular and semicircular bites.
Compared to their encounter at the school, the current Yu Xian was vastly stronger.
This rate of growth was simply staggering.
Chapter 40