Outside the building, the two Exploration team members still lingered. Xu Chan had not ordered them inside, so they remained in place; besides, space within was limited, and the five of them together would have had no room to fight freely.
Seeing Captain Wang's battered state, the mustachioed man called out from a distance, "Captain Wang, you all right?"
Leaning against a roadblock, Captain Wang rolled his neck. "I'm fine. Just testing its strength. Quite a punch."
As he spoke, he clenched his fists. Popping and cracking echoed from his arms as torn flesh and fractured bones drew together and knitted tight, mending with startling speed.
Seeing that Wang would still need a moment to make a full recovery, the mustachioed man flicked away his cigarette butt. "Let me give it a shot." With that, he stepped right up to the front and took a stance.
Instead of entering, he clenched his fists right where he stood. The muscles in his legs swelled fiercely, knots of muscle bulging across his back, his eyes locked dead ahead.
From this position, he could look right through the breach in the glass facade and see Wu Qi's massive form. As he gathered his power, a plume of scalding vapor hissed from his mouth and nostrils.
Even though his teammate was some distance away, he could clearly feel the searing heat radiating from his body. Moments later, the ground shuddered, and a large crater burst open beneath his feet.
Cocking his fist back, the mustachioed man rocketed into the building like an artillery shell. Shards of the glass facade sprayed in all directions as a thunderous sonic boom jolted the air. In a mere instant, he arrived right in front of Wu Qi.
Then, he swung downward with savage fury!
A ring of compressed air exploded outward.
Just as his fist was about to slam full-force into Wu Qi's head, a long whip lashed out at even greater speed, striking him first. With a deafening detonation, the blow sent him hurtling over a hundred meters into the lobby wall, etching a web of cracks across its surface before he rebounded and crashed heavily to the floor.
Across his waist, abdomen, and ribs, a massive gash had torn open, exposing internal organs, while a whole swath of flesh had been ripped from one side of his face. He was drenched in blood, a truly gruesome sight.
Yet his gaze never wavered. The intact half of his face burned with undiminished fighting spirit. The bones in his body snapped and popped back into alignment, and as his vital essence surged, his wounds began to mend.
He paid no mind to the wound on his face. In his eyes, superficial damage like that was trivial and would not impede his combat performance; there was no need to squander vital essence on it when it could simply heal on its own over time.
Although his strike had not landed cleanly, it had not been in vain.
When the tentacle struck him, it had also exploded midair, with the sections that made contact almost entirely destroyed. Moreover, a fraction of his jin had still hammered into Wu Qi's head, forcing the colossal active conscious entity to sink down uncontrollably and throwing its overflowing field into momentary disarray.
This undoubtedly bought an opening for his comrades.
In a blur of motion, Captain Wang seized the opening to charge in again from behind, while Captain Lyu, already inside the lobby, leaped high into the air.
Both moved with blinding speed—one high, one low—converging along separate paths toward the active conscious entity with seamless coordination.
Wu Qi had lost one whip-arm. Even if it could regenerate, it would not regrow so quickly. Its two whip-arms were meant to coordinate, one covering range and one covering close quarters. With the close-range arm shattered, the distant one had not had time to pull back.
Yet at this moment, the creature displayed extreme agility. Shifting its four lower limbs, it rotated its body preemptively, shielding vulnerable, fragile areas and presenting its hardened armor to the two men.
Captain Wang slid in low along the ground, inverted head-down. Thrusting off the floor with both hands, he spun his body and drove a kick straight upward. With a sharp crash, his heel slammed into Wu Qi's leg joint, the impact ringing out with a dull, muffled shockwave.
Meanwhile, Captain Lyu aimed a punch straight at Wu Qi's face, expecting a clear shot. Yet the remaining stump of the severed tentacle snapped upward, stiffening and hardening instantly to block his path.
The blow landed like a strike into exceptionally tough timber. Although fragments of tissue splintered and flew, it clearly failed to inflict major trauma. Lyu reacted instantly, unleashing a second burst of jin.
Hardening the whip-arm had its advantages and drawbacks: the upside was stopping the assault, but the downside was that Wu Qi's shoulder and flank absorbed the force as well, forcing its upper body to tilt backward.
As if anticipating the scene above, Captain Wang kicked out once more from the ground, striking squarely against its supporting leg.
Taken individually, neither the high nor low strike would have done more than inflict superficial damage on Wu Qi, offering little tactical value. But delivered in tandem, they successfully disrupted Wu Qi's center of gravity.
Flipping in midair to diffuse the recoil, Captain Lyu brought his foot down hard against Wu Qi's chest. The kick landed with pinpoint precision. In an explosion-like roar, muscle and a row of compound eyes burst apart, spraying fluorescent green fluid outward.
Down below, Captain Wang sprang to his feet, slashing a hand down like a blade onto the junction of a leg joint. A surge of razor-sharp jin sheared inward, carving a wide gash. Had it not been protected by the exoskeleton, the leg would have been severed entirely.
The mustachioed man silently cheered at the sight. As long as the two maintained their momentum until he and the remaining teammate rejoined the fray, they could steadily expand their advantage.
Yet at that exact moment, a colossal wave of mental power erupted outward from Wu Qi, instantly making his head spin.
He was not the only one affected. Through the haze, he heard two heavy thuds, and both Lyu and Wang were sent flying back.
Xu Chan, who had remained motionless until now, suddenly materialized at Wu Qi's flank just as the two were hurled away. Seemingly unaffected by the mental shockwave, he launched a punch that appeared slow yet moved with startling speed, striking square in the creature's abdomen.
On the surface, the blow seemed unremarkable, yet Wu Qi stumbled sideways like a drunken man, its massive body swaying uncontrollably.
The strike left no visible wound where it landed. Yet an instant later, a hole large enough to fit a person violently ruptured through its back, showering flesh and tissue across the floor. A shrill screech tore from the creature's throat and abdominal cavity.
Xu Chan frowned. An even more intense wave of mental force washed over him, disrupting the faint gleam shimmering on his fist and preventing him from gathering it again.
As Wu Qi retreated, an eerie, ghostly glow emanated from its chest. A thick membrane swiftly enveloped the tears and wounds, beneath which mutated tissue could be seen rapidly multiplying and knitting together.
This was the regenerative membrane, capable of shielding against external damage in real time and secreting high-energy substances to rapidly repair injuries.
Xu Chan watched with a grim expression. After testing it, he had a clear grasp of its capabilities. Next...
Just as he was considering how to eliminate it, a muffled sound came through his boundary credential.
Though distorted, the message came through clearly enough.
"Hold it off for at least two hours, is it..."
Aboard the airship, as Chen Chuan absorbed pure substance in steady succession, he felt his inner self growing increasingly lucid. The lingering burdens and barriers seemed to dissolve away, leaving him feeling lighter and more unconstrained. Yet the more he ingested, the more he felt the need for more.
This was inevitable. A fighter with a solid physical foundation naturally demanded a greater amount of pure substance.
This was by no means a bad thing.
Higher-ups were no longer withholding information from him; he had already learned that this Fumu division would not exceed fifteen waves, which meant it could continue until tomorrow afternoon.
He estimated that if the later stages yielded no less pure substance than the current one, he might just gather enough to meet his needs.
He glanced at the scene transmitted from the front line. Though heavily distorted and disjointed, as a fighter, it was not difficult for him to piece together the state of the battle between both sides from the fragmented footage.
It was evident that the five men on site were formidable, but the active conscious entity possessed extraordinary regenerative capabilities. Unless its energy was exhausted, it would not be easily slain. Moreover, it was not the only thing he would have to deal with this time.
There was also an entity lurking in the shadows nearby.
Earlier, during Wu Qi's first mental shockwave, the Disposal Bureau's active conscious entity, Andun, had detected a faint anomaly.
Andun did not specialize in combat; its strengths lay in defense, observation, and analysis. Thus, faint though the abnormal fluctuation was, Andun had caught it nonetheless.
Unlike a human, it would not dismiss it as an illusion. Instead, it ran an in-depth analysis and concluded that the field power did not originate from any known organism in this world.
According to the analysis, it was likely emitted by an entity from the world beyond, currently lurking inside the Ferris Wheel Company.
Lurking so close to Wu Qi, its motive was self-evident: it intended to use the active conscious entity, turning this body into its vessel.
Human bodies were ill-suited to serve as vessels, but an active conscious entity could allow its power to be brought to bear in full, and an active conscious entity could also endure extensive modifications.
If its standing was high enough, it could even raise the vessel's threshold limits, dragging even more power into this world.
However, forcing it out into the open right now would not be a wise approach. That would mean fighting an entity from the outer world alongside an active conscious entity simultaneously, likely ending in failure on both fronts, which ran contrary to their original objective.
Andun had therefore proposed a plan: strike a lethal blow at the exact moment this entity attempted its takeover, before it could gain full control. In doing so, both targets could be destroyed in a single stroke.
And that strike would fall to Chen Chuan.
Until then, he needed to recover his physical stamina as much as possible and tune his strength to its peak.
Taking one last look, he closed his eyes and concentrated wholly on absorbing the pure substance.
Soon, more than an hour slipped by.
A voice came through the boundary credential at his ear: "Captain Chen, we have received orders. The airship is departing Shenwei District and heading toward Yinglu District. Do you have any objections?"
Chen Chuan checked the time: 10:55. "No objections. Move out."
At the same time, the airship slowly banked and set course for Yinglu District.
Chapter 586