by <unknown>
It had been a long time since Li Yao was as furious as this.
He was so angry that he felt that teeth were growing inside his heart and biting together!
"The Temple of Immortals… Immortal Cultivators…"
An hour later, when Cai Qi's squad reached the Lofu Supermarket on Peace Road, which was in the secondary central zone of the tenth space ring, there were only a hundred and fifty Cultivators left in the team.
The rest of the Cultivators had not been swallowed by devils; they were escorting the citizens to the shelters.
The Lofu Supermarket was a seventeen-story building. The bottom four floors were a supermarket, and there was a movie theater, a Grand Illusionary Land entertainment center, a magical equipment experiencing center, and other recreational facilities on the floors above. It was the center of the ten blocks nearby.
Right now, the Lofu Supermarket had lost its usual liveliness. Gloomy wind was blowing, and ghosts were crying. The place felt like the deepest level of hell.
All the glass windows of the building had been broken. Greenish flames flowed out of the dark windows and wound all their way to the top of the building like vines. They then soared into the sky and congregated into a swirling cloud above, reaching the dome of the tenth space ring.
Inside the cloud, waves were surging, and bubbles were rising up and down. Now and then, a large number of devils would rush out of the void into the tenth space ring!
As the Cultivators had expected, there was indeed an altar in the Lofu Supermarket that broke the boundary between the three-dimensional universe and the four-dimensional universe and lured endless devils from somewhere unknown in the boundless sea of stars into Heavenly Saints City!
If the altar was not destroyed, new devils would arrive incessantly, even if all the devils in Heavenly Saints City were exterminated!
Hiu! Hiu hiu!
Sensing that a large batch of Cultivators had arrived, thousands of devils rose up to the sky from the Lofu Supermarket and formed a great army.
These devils were different from those Li Yao had met previously. Not only were they much clearer and more vivid, there were also covered in delicate armor. Li Yao could even vaguely see complicated stripes on the armor!
Moreover, they were in a neat battle formation like a real army, which looked indeed magnificent and intimidating!
"They are the real extraterrestrial devils. The previous devils we met were no match for them at all. Be careful, everybody!"
Barely had Cai Qi finished his sentence when thousands of ordinary people possessed by the devils leapt out of the alleys nearby again!
In the air, the army of devils were drawing close.
On the ground, countless devilized people were charging in, absolutely fearless of death.
"I will resist the devils. You go to rescue the citizens!"
Cai Qi soared into the sky. The dozens of crescent flying swords suddenly emitted dazzling ivory brilliance and formed a half-circular ring more than three meters in diameter with edges on both sides.
The two ends of the ring were sharp, and its middle part was broad. The 'crescent moon' emanated freezing brilliance. The surging aura from the blade alone was already enough to make a lot of devils that were drawing close scream and crumble!
"Demons and devils, be purged now!"
At this moment, Cai Qi finally revealed the full capability of a Nascent Soul Stage Cultivator. Just one man and one sword, yet the cold blade auras covered the entire sky like milk and gel. The army of the devils was frozen in midair by him alone!
The giant flying sword that looked like a crescent moon condensed together and flashed past thousands of devils and then split into dozens of minor moons and executed the devils that were running away!
Thousands of demons were slain by Cai Qi alone. The smoke shivered like chopped meat, but before it had the chance to be condensed again, storms of swords came again and tore it to pieces completely!
Li Yao and the other Cultivators felt that their blood was boiling just watching the fight. They took the opportunity to deploy the arrays and rescue the people!
Hiss!
When thousands of devils were mercilessly slaughtered by Cai Qi, an upsetting shriek suddenly burst out in the depths of the Lofu Supermarket.
A streak of greenness soared into the sky, and hundreds of tentacles darted about the area.
Caught unprepared, almost a hundred devils were tied up by the tentacles and absorbed into the greenness, vanishing from sight!
After swallowing hundreds of devils, the greenness expanded and suddenly constricted into the elegant shape of a human.
The young man seemed plain and looked like a smiling young man.
However, its appearance put a lot of pressure on all the Cultivators. The higher their Cultivation was, the more terrified they were!
High-level Cultivators with keen senses such as Li Yao seemed to be seeing mountains of corpses and seas of blood. Skeletons were screaming right next to their ears, which seemed to have been pierced through by gold needles!
Pu!
The chest of the 'young man' suddenly fluctuated as he spat out a mouthful of green fire, which split into dozens of streams and darted at the Cultivators.
The Cultivators all dodged, but two of them reacted slower and were hit by the devilish fire!
"Ah!"
The devilish fire instantly turned into a green cloak and wreathed the two Cultivators.
Although they were protected by crystal suits, the two Cultivators were still dancing and shouting crazily inside the flames.
An uncanny scene happened. The screams were suddenly transformed into weird laughter after several seconds. The devilish fire crawled into the crystal suits through the gaps as if they were small bugs and merged into their bodies!
A while later, miserable chuckles echoed inside the crystal suits.
The two Cultivators both slight bent down, their hands and feet cramping crazily. The spiritual energy around their bodies became more furious, chaotic, and irrational!
"Not good, the negative emotions deep inside their brains, including their fear, hatred, jealousy, and everything else, have been magnified to the maximum. They have been swallowed by their own dark side and possessed by the devil. They are now demonic Cultivators!
"This devil right in front of us is the real king of the devils here. I'm going to deal with it. Half of you will resist the army of the extraterrestrial devils; the other half will go into the super market and destroy the altar!
"If the altar remains intact, countless more devils will arrive in this world!"
Beep!
Two different colors were blinking on everyone's crystal processor. They were organized into several teams according to their Cultivation and characteristics.
As the situation of the battle changed, everybody would get to know their latest mission instantly.
Li Yao and Ye Hongfei looked at each other and accelerated to the maximum speed in the blink of an eye. They bypassed all the devils and devilized people and charged into the broken supermarket after a few jumps.
Inside the supermarket, the air was so stinky that it seemed as if it would condense into blood at any point. They felt that they had entered the stomach of a titanic beast.
Crimson, evil murals were everywhere on the walls nearby. One look at them was enough to make one's head dizzy and remind them of their gory and terrible memories.
"The scent of blood is very strong here. The devils' altar should be on the second floor!"
Ye Hongfei was carrying a sword in each hand, but sword auras were coming out from both ends of his swords. He led the charge and sprinted toward the stairs while he minced two devils that were lurking below the stairs into pieces along the way!
Chapter 697: Slaying a Nascent Soul |
Li Yao's nostrils flared, and his eyes stopped briefly at the ceiling. Then he sprinted to the northwest corner of the first floor and rose up like a rocket, crashing through
the ceiling into the second floor!
BOOM!
After a huge explosion, dust was sent everywhere.
The second floor was the food area of the supermarket. Almost a thousand shelves used to be kept here. But right now, the center of the second floor had been cleared. A great altar made of bones had been established there.
More than ten crimson giant pillars were standing around the altar. They looked both like totems and gargantuan candles.
On the 'candles', mysterious lights were blinking, and their flames interweaved with each other into an enormous net whose threads were all wriggling as if it were a living thing.
Countless bright green vesicles were formed on the net. There were more than a thousand of them.
As the giant net shivered, the vesicles fluctuated, too. Their color turned from a bright, translucent green into a deep green. In the end, they were as dark as ink, and it seemed as if liquid would leak out at any point.
Pa!
A dark green vesicle suddenly exploded, unveiling several devils that were wearing solid armor and surrounded by intense evil flames!
The common devils could arrive into the world of human beings through the cloud in the sky.
But the stronger devils could not be teleported directly. They had to be bred around the altar before they were finally born!
The flight of stairs up which Ye Hongfei had marched into the second floor was guarded by hundreds of devils.
However, none of the devils expected Li Yao to be so unreasonable as to crash into the second floor directly from the floor below their feet.
Pa!
Li Yao snapped his fingers.
Floating Six-barrel Vulcan Machine Guns appeared from his Cosmos Ring one after another.
Four… Eight… Twelve… Sixteen…
Sixteen Floating Six-barrel Vulcan Machine Guns formed a four-by-four matrix in front of Li Yao. The heads of the barrels were all glimmering mysteriously. The agitated bullets and spiritual energy were roaring inside the magazines!
The devils were not afraid of real-entity bullets, but Li Yao never had the habit of using only bullets.
The large-caliber bullets that he employed were all embedded with crystals or even entirely made of crystals. They also carried a lot of attack rune arrays.
With a gloomy face, Li Yao growled a word through gritted teeth. "Die!"
The guns roared, and the bullets flew toward everything. Lines of fire interweaved with each other. Thunder was echoing; electric arcs were shining; freezing wind was blowing. Surging sword and saber auras dominated the area!
Six Floating Six-barrel Vulcan Machine Guns blew out a fire network almost a hundred meters in radius, covering more than half of the supermarket.
All the devils within the range of Li Yao's barrage were fleeing or being minced apart directly. The devils' altar and the fetuses of devils that were not mature yet all turned into twisted smoke and perished!
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
Li Yao savaged everything and went on a killing spree!
Ye Hongfei, who had reached the second floor just now, was utterly shocked by such brutal firepower. He quickly retreated down the staircase, in case he became the victim of the 'best warrior of the six tribes of Iron Plateau' when the guy was killing too happily to think about who he was attacking.
The room temperature increased by almost fifty degrees; it felt like a boiling cooker.
The ground was riddled with bullet holes and looked like a honeycomb. The floor had been significantly weakened, to the point that one might have fallen onto the first floor accidentally if they stepped on the wrong area.
Li Yao moved forward slowly, searching every corner with a pair of cruel eyes. Cracking noises were echoing nonstop as he stomped the devils' altar into powder!
It was not until this moment that Ye Hongfei craned his head carefully. His shocked voice came over in the communication channel. "Master… Master Sand, that's quite impressive!"
Li Yao was briefly silently before he replied casually, "In fact, I'm more of a shooter."
Ye Hongfei was rendered speechless. He leapt on the second floor with his double-edged sword and searched for remaining enemies together with Li Yao.
Hiss!
A devil that had been hiding in the gaps of the wall suddenly lunged out, intending to crawl into his crystal suit while Li Yao was turning around.
But Li Yao seemed to have eyes on the back of his head. One of his Six-barrel Vulcan Machine Guns pierced forward from an unbelievable angle into the devil's chest.
Open fire. Explode. Over!
Right then, Li Yao vaguely heard a baby's cry in the place where Ye Hongfei was searching.
Li Yao was dazed for a moment. His pupils constricted violently, and his eyebrow stood up like needles!
"Master Ye, don't!"
Li Yao suddenly turned into a streak of brightness and passed through the entire supermarket in a breath.
In a temporary warehouse in the northeast corner of the supermarket, dozens of broken bodies were piled up. Intermittent cries of a baby were echoing from the depths of the corpses, but the volume of the cries was dropping, as if the baby could not hold the weight of the dead bodies any longer.
Ye Hongfei was digging into the mound of bodies.
Since he was afraid that he might hurt the baby, he did not dare blow up the bodies with his spiritual energy. He could only move the bodies away one after another with his spiritual threads as well as his bare hands.
However, while he was moving the seventh body, a streak of redness suddenly darted out from the bottom of the bodies!
The eighth 'body' sudden became alive. A cluster of redness blew into Ye Hongfei's chest and burst out behind his back brutally!
What burst out together was a series of overjoyed chuckles whose owner's evil plan had worked out.
Ye Hongfei grunted and fell backwards. His double-edged sword triggered dozens of auras and enshrouded the eighth 'body'.
However, the 'body' felt like a slippery loach. After the previous attack, it took a few turns and escaped from all the auras, before it accelerated to the maximum speed and dashed toward the window!
But then, it ran into Li Yao's saber and turned into a real body, a body that was chopped in half.
It was not a devil, nor did it show any sign of being possessed by one. Instead, it was an assassin from the Temple of Immortals who had been lurking below the bodies the whole time.
"Master Ye!" Li Yao bellowed and gave Ye Hongfei a hand, only to find a big hole on the left side of his chest. More than half of his heart had been blown away. Blood was spurting out more magnificently than a volcanic eruption.
Ye Hongfei's facial cover opened, revealing a pale face. He sealed his fractured veins forcefully and condensed membranes with his spiritual energy to cover his broken heart. Finally, his face regained some color, and he mumbled feebly, "Baby… A baby's down there."
"There are no babies here!"
The baby's cries came to a sudden halt after the assassin of the Temple of Immortals died. Li Yao liquefied his spiritual energy and poured it into the dead bodies like mercury. He scanned carefully for a long time and was certain that none of the dead bodies were in the size of a baby.
Naturally, it was safe to say that the cries of the baby had been faked by the assassin.
"There are none?"
Ye Hongfei was dazed for a moment. He breathed heavily in relief. "That's good… That's good…"
His voice gradually fade out.
"Master Ye, hang in there!"
Li Yao gritted his teeth and retrieved a red pill that had wrinkles all over its surface and looked like a nut.
The pill was named 'Great Red Pill'. It was a present that the Silver Moon Tribe had offered him when he was back on Iron Plateau. It was said that the pill could revive the deceased and was the best medication for injuries.
Only one pill could be made after several years of refining the cores of
four apocalyptic beasts as well as hundreds of other Heavenly Materials and Earthly Treasures. Therefore, such pills were extremely precious.
Even Li Yao had only one such pill himself. He had planned to save his own life with the pill at a certain time.
However, he stuffed the pill into Ye Hongfei's chest without any hesitation.
The Great Red Pill shivered the moment it touched blood. Streaks of redness were flowing out of all the wrinkles as if it were a budding seed or a sponge that was absorbing water. The shocking wounds were sealed until no gap was left.
"Wu…"
Ye Hongfei took a long breath and felt that a hot spring was flooding into his chest and solidifying his soul. He knew that the rich man from Iron Plateau must have used very precious healing drugs for him.
Ye Hongfei lowered his head and smile bitterly. "I—I'm sorry, Master Sand. It is funny that I told you to be careful while in fact I'm the reckless one here.
"You were quite right. I'm in serious lack of real-life combat experience. Even such an easy trap fooled me."
Li Yao was both anxious and angry. He said gravely, "Master Ye, did you not guess that this was very likely a trap made by an assassin?"
Ye Hongfei coughed a mouthful of blood out and replied softly, "I did. But what if it were real?
"I knew it could be a trap, but what if the assassin of the Temple of Immortals had captured a real baby?
"But I know that there are no babies here now. That's good. That's good…"
Li Yao did not know what to say.
He felt that his nostrils were itching as if many ants had crawled inside.
At this time, the follow-up squads finally broke through the devils and devilized people outside and charged into the supermarket.
"Master Ye, this is not going to work out!" Li Yao said in a hurry. "The command center has to change the strategy. The closer we get to the downtown, the more traps appear. We will suffer a lot of casualties in the end even if we successfully save all the ordinary people in the tenth space ring!"
Ye Hongfei's eyelids gradually fell down. He was silent for a long time, before he replied softly, "Master Sand, the strategy is not going to be changed.
