Chen Chuan's footsteps rang out crisp and clear in the empty underground tunnel, every stride echoing back. His pace was steady and rhythmic.
Yet as he drew closer to Meng Huang, his Second Self showed intense signs of blurring and insubstantiality, which grew progressively stronger with each step.
Aunt Yu followed close behind him. Sharp prosthetic finger armor now covered her hands. After just a few strides, however, she seemed to sense something amiss. She raised her wrist—the edge of the bracelet she wore was gradually turning black. Touching her earring, she felt it growing faintly warm.
She reached a swift conclusion, thinking to herself, *Five minutes at most...*
She glanced at the jade bangle on Chen Chuan's wrist and the ornament hanging from his waist. Those items had likely been issued by the Disposal Bureau. They were slightly better than hers, but only marginally; they wouldn't hold out for more than seven minutes.
She gave a solemn warning: "Enforcement Officer Chen, watch out for 'contamination.'"
Chen Chuan glanced at his bangle and nodded slightly.
The dossiers provided by the Disposal Bureau had mentioned that the longer one remained in contact with an entity from the other side, the more vulnerable one became to its influence. Beyond mental assault, one's mutated tissue could also undergo uncontrollable alterations—the very "contamination" Aunt Yu spoke of.
The jade bangle and the pendant existed to keep mutated tissue stable for a limited duration. Once they lost their efficacy, one would have to rely on their own vital essence to maintain control and suppress the changes. As for mental pressure, it could only be resisted by expending one's constant spirit.
Consequently, an entity like this could only be handled by third limit fighters; ordinary fighters wouldn't even be able to draw near.
He tapped his boundary credential, attempting to contact the outside. Down here, even the specially configured signal booster struggled immensely; the transmission crawled outward so slowly that it looked like it would take several minutes to finish sending.
Still, he couldn't afford to wait. He didn't know what Meng Huang's ultimate goal here was, but it was almost certainly tied to his own existence and power, so Chen Chuan could never let him succeed.
He stared at the massive form writhing against the vault door. Taking a few more strides, he lowered his center of gravity slightly and leaped forward. Lifting the long saber at his side, he closed the distance in a flash and slashed down with explosive force!
Against such an enormous bulk, missing was out of the question. Yet when the blade swept through, the struck flesh dispersed like insubstantial smoke. The feedback through the blade was completely hollow, as though the strike had inflicted no damage whatsoever.
He tapped down lightly onto the ground with the balls of his feet. At that moment, a shadow flickered across the ground near Meng Huang, and a limb that had been clinging to the ceiling swept down toward him like a crashing pillar.
He bounded sideways, dodging the blow. The limb immediately whipped around in pursuit. He intended to sever it with his saber, but met the exact same outcome as before—it was like cutting through nothing more than intangible mist.
Even so, he had no desire to take a direct hit from it. Backpedaling steadily, he moved out of range, and the limb retracted once he crossed a certain distance.
Chen Chuan looked up. The reason he couldn't make physical contact was likely that Meng Huang had previously been bound by the esoteric ritual and unable to unleash his true capabilities; now that he was free, he could undergo this kind of transformation, just as he had been able to phase straight through the floor.
According to the Disposal Bureau's records, entities from the other side varied wildly. Most entities descending into this world could be struck and touched by fighters possessing sufficient mutated tissue.
Only a few special ones required connection on a spiritual level to make contact. While their strength was not necessarily higher than the former, dealing with them was far more troublesome and tricky.
It seemed the entity before him was very likely one of the latter.
*If that's the case, then...*
He closed his eyes. The space between his eyebrows pulsed slightly, and a faint red mark surfaced there.
Stripping away his ordinary senses and perceiving purely through spirit, he felt an indescribable monstrosity loom before him. Its form spread across the entire subterranean hall along the shadows clinging to the floor and walls—not off in the distance, but slithering and undulating right beside him.
Its outlying parts were countless tentacles drifting through the air, clustering densely around him, with several swaying mere inches from his cheeks.
Every time they drew near or brushed against him, the luster of the jade bangle dulled a fraction.
With eyes still closed, he slowly raised his saber with both hands, then suddenly exerted power, sweeping through a full rotational slash on the spot. This time, the sensation was as though he were cutting through a multitude of tough, fibrous objects.
In a nearly three-meter radius around him, every tentacle was scythed down like grass, falling to the floor and dissolving into wisps of vapor.
At that same moment, he felt a subtle sensation and looked at the Xuejun Saber in his grip.
The moment the strike connected, it felt as though something had been sheared away from that entity and absorbed into the blade.
He could sense that the thing slumbering within the Xuejun Saber was now extraordinarily excited, transmitting an urgent, ravenous craving to him.
He paid no mind to what it was for now; as long as it helped slay this monstrosity, it didn't matter. With a flick of his blade, he sheared through another dense cluster of encroaching tentacles. Stepping forward resolutely, he hacked through the obstructing appendages like brambles, advancing step by step toward Meng Huang's position.
Aunt Yu rushed in to assist. Initially, she had likewise found herself unable to strike Meng Huang's physical form. While she lacked Chen Chuan's unique spiritual perception, she could achieve a similar effect by expending her changeless mind to elevate her spirit.
However, that method was difficult to sustain for long, so she exercised extreme caution. She dodged the indistinct tendrils whenever possible, only swatting them away or severing them with her prosthetic claws when avoidance failed. Her sheer offensive efficiency wasn't high, but she genuinely relieved some of the pressure from Chen Chuan's flanks.
One leading and one following, the two rapidly closed in on Meng Huang's true body. Sensing the danger, Meng Huang whipped a thick limb that had been curled before him sideways in a brutal swat.
Aunt Yu leaped forward, rounding her arms into a hoop and shoving outward. With a heavy bang, she braced firmly against the limb, clearing a path for Chen Chuan to surge ahead.
Chen Chuan did not let the opening slip. In a flash, he burst forward. Another limb descended from the ceiling above, but only managed to smash into the empty air behind him.
A wheel of blade light slashed across over ten meters in an instant, cleaving ferociously into the colossal back Meng Huang had turned toward them!
The strike opened a deep, elongated fissure across his body, from which countless plumes of black mist and fine fragments spilled into the air.
Meng Huang—or rather, that entity—convulsed violently.
It seemed that at first, its sole focus had been breaking through the vault door barring its way, or perhaps it believed it could easily withstand substantial damage, and thus had only casually tried to drive the two of them away.
Yet Chen Chuan's strike had evidently inflicted severe damage, pushing it past its breaking point.
On the surface of its body, swellings bulged one after another. As they ruptured, even more limbs burst forth, flailing wildly before raining down on the two of them in a furious barrage.
Recognizing the danger, Aunt Yu immediately used nimble footwork to retreat. As she backed away, she rapidly deflected two limbs lashing at her from left and right.
Yet upon impact, the shock sent numbness rippling through her arms; the force was far greater than before, and the black stain on her bracelet spread noticeably wider, startling her.
She stole a glance toward Chen Chuan, but could see nothing—her line of sight was completely blocked by the flailing mass of limbs.
Chen Chuan kept his eyes fixed above as the limbs crashed down toward him. Just as one nearly brushed his body, he swiftly pivoted sideways to let it pass, then leaped backward to evade another limb whipping horizontally across. Touching down, he kicked off the floor and ducked into a forward charge, slipping through the gaps between several limbs.
At the same time, the long saber in his hand swept out in rapid succession, carving deep slashes into those limbs. Black smoke seeped from each wound, leaving a pile of severed, slender tendrils writhing on the ground.
Another limb slithered silently toward him to entangle him, but in the next instant, a flash of blade light severed it, sending it thudding to the floor. Without pausing for a second, he darted away. A split second later, several crashing limbs smashed a massive crater into the spot he had just vacated.
He wove and dodged through the gaps between the crisscrossing limbs, constantly clearing a path with his blade while staying in motion. Yet he wasn't dodging aimlessly; he was observing with cold detachment.
He noticed that although the number of limbs had multiplied, grown considerably thicker, and possessed vastly greater strength, their swinging speed had actually decreased.
According to the records, a body coexisting symbiotically with an entity from the other side, like Meng Huang's, might wield incredible power due to the entity inhabiting it, but so long as it remained in the material world, it was bound by certain insurmountable limits—partly dictated by the upper threshold of the host vessel.
If the host had originally been an ordinary mortal without the aid of extraordinary items, the upper limit of its performance would at most reach the level attainable by a third limit fighter—the ceiling touchable by mortal flesh.
Unless the entity from the other side completely disregarded its host vessel; but if it did so, once the physical body collapsed, it wouldn't be able to persist in this world either.
Of course, even within the third limit, differences in mass and size created a vast disparity. Meng Huang had now reached a height of six to seven meters, meaning the strength he could bring to bear was formidable.
However, Chen Chuan had his Second Self, which could absorb a certain amount of damage, and he held a clear edge in speed. As long as the enemy's attack methods did not exceed his comprehension, he had a chance to cut down and eradicate it.
Right then, a soft chime came from his boundary credential—the message he had sent earlier had finally finished transmitting. With that, if all went well, reinforcements from the Disposal Bureau should arrive soon.
Yet since Meng Huang had dared to come today, he might well have prepared countermeasures, so Chen Chuan did not pin all his hopes on outside help.
As for the situation before him...
He glanced at the bangle on his wrist, more than half blackened by now, and at the limbs and tentacles crowding nearly every inch of the surrounding space. Tightening his grip on his saber, his skin suddenly turned scalding hot, and wisps of white vapor began rising from his body.
Even alone, he was far from out of options.
Chapter 395