Inside the Rift was another world.
The sky was a dark, brooding red, and scorching magma surged through cracks in the ground, casting an eerie glow across the entire space.
The air was thick with the stench of sulfur and rotting meat; every breath felt like rubbing sandpaper against the back of one’s throat.
This world was like a living hell.
As the Blade squad stepped out of the aerospace craft, the Punishers from the other two ships had already begun their final preparations.
They checked weapons and armor, tested communication channels, and confirmed the status of the ships before marching forward.
“Maintain formation. Advance.”
The voice of the captain, Song Zhiyi, crackled over the communication channel. The seven-member squad moved in an arrowhead formation at the front of the line.
Luo Yang and Qiu Shubai were protected in the center.
A thunderous roar erupted from ahead as three bone-armored crawling mutant beasts crawled out of the magma fissures, lunging toward the squad's flank.
Level 2 mutant beasts: bone lizards.
They had no special abilities, but their inherent defense and offensive power were formidable.
The vice-captain, Zhou Yan, was the first to meet them. His ability was a Sharp Edge rank power called “Rock Body.” It allowed his skin to achieve a hardness exceeding granite for a short duration.
As a Level 9 Core Consolidation Punisher, he could already maintain this ability for about five minutes.
Zhou Yan turned his shoulder and braced himself, slamming directly into the lead bone lizard.
With a muffled boom like thunder, countless cracks spiderwebbed across the bone lizard's armor, and it was sent tumbling back.
The short-handled axe in his hand followed immediately, splitting the skull of another bone lizard.
It was a third-tier battle axe—a piece of custom equipment exclusive to Zhou Yan with exceptional performance.
In an instant, one bone lizard’s head was split in two.
Green blood splattered across the ground, emitting a nauseating stench.
The first bone lizard that had been knocked over scrambled back up, the cracks on its bone armor healing rapidly. It pushed off with all four limbs, lunging to bite at Zhou Yan’s exposed nape.
At that moment, Zhou Yan’s axe was still lodged in the other beast's skull, leaving him unable to pull back and defend in time.
In the next heartbeat, a flash of white sword light streaked through the air.
It was Qiu Shubai’s ability, channeled through her weapon, Bloodfall.
Precise and restrained, there wasn't a single wasted movement. The tip of the sword pierced through the bone lizard’s left eye socket, tore through the cranial cavity, and emerged from the right eye.
Blood energy, containing violent destructive power, condensed into a single line and detonated inside the bone lizard’s head.
The mutant beast collapsed instantly.
Qiu Shubai withdrew her sword and turned, skillfully masking the sight of Bloodfall absorbing the blood, before taking two steps back to her original position.
From drawing the sword to sheathing it, less than two seconds had passed.
It was so clean and efficient that it didn't seem like the work of a student who hadn't even graduated yet.
“Thanks,” Zhou Yan said with a grin.
She nodded slightly but didn't respond.
She deliberately kept the glow on the blade low; she didn't want anyone to know what had just happened.
By now, countless mutant beasts were swarming toward them. Almost every Punisher had engaged the enemy and entered a state of combat.
Yet Luo Yang walked calmly in the center of the formation, hands in his pockets like a tourist.
His mental power had already woven a massive web. Within a two-hundred-meter radius of the squad, the position, movement trajectory, and attack intention of every mutant beast—as well as the position, blood energy flow, and breathing rhythm of every soldier—were crystal clear in his perception.
Zhou Yan’s Rock Body had developed minute cracks after taking seven consecutive heavy hits.
Song Zhiyi’s shield was off by three degrees, which would create a 0.5-second defensive gap on the left flank.
A lower-ranked Punisher pulled his trigger 0.2 seconds too early; the bullet would graze the edge of the bone armor.
He was like someone with a god’s-eye view, reaching a level of near-omniscience.
All of this was achieved through his powerful mental power.
Luo Yang’s ability, Weapon’s End, Ember’s Birth, allowed him to control weapons, and there was no upper limit to the number of weapons he could control at once.
This meant that as long as his capacity was sufficient, he could control thousands or even tens of thousands of weapons at once.
That would be a true “grand return of the myriad swords.”
The only thing that limited the number and precision of his control was his mental power.
To this end, he had spent a vast amount of time training and had even experimented with certain experimental potions.
If he had spent that time increasing his blood energy instead, he probably would have become a Clear Heart rank Punisher long ago.
Sensing everything on this battlefield, Luo Yang’s fingers twitched slightly inside his pockets.
An extremely subtle ripple of blood energy spread out, so faint that even Qiu Shubai, who was standing right next to him, didn't notice.
The firearm in the hand of that lower-ranked Punisher trembled slightly.
The bullet's trajectory underwent an imperceptible shift, changing from grazing the bone armor to precisely drilling into a seam in the plating.
Green blood sprayed. The mutant beast’s pounce slowed by half a beat, and it was promptly decapitated by Zhou Yan’s axe.
Song Zhiyi’s shield tilted three degrees to the right without anyone noticing, quietly closing the defensive gap.
On Zhou Yan’s Rock Body, those small cracks were gently covered by a soft force, allowing him to complete another cycle of blood energy flow, causing the cracks to knit back together.
No one noticed any of this. The members of the Blade squad only felt that today’s battle was exceptionally smooth and their coordination was unusually perfect.
Only the captain, Song Zhiyi, frowned slightly.
He was the only Clear Heart rank in the squad and could faintly sense something flowing across the battlefield, like an invisible hand nudging the scales.
But the “hand’s” movements were too light—so light that he couldn't be sure if it was real or an illusion.
On a strange impulse, he glanced back at Luo Yang.
The young man in glasses still had his hands in his pockets, his pace leisurely.
Sensing the gaze, Luo Yang even flashed him a smile, looking entirely harmless.
Song Zhiyi withdrew his gaze and decided not to think about it for now.
The advance continued for four hours.
Qiu Shubai struck sixteen times. Each strike was neither too much nor too little, just enough to solve the problem.
The most she had to do was three strikes when a Level 2 mutant beast tried to ambush them from the rear flank.
The first strike severed its right forelimb, the second broke its skull, and the third completely shredded the mutant beast’s core.
After the three strikes, she immediately retreated, the sword light dimming once more.
Her blood energy consumption was precisely controlled.
If blood energy were a pool of water, then after four hours of combat, less than a fifth of her pool had been ladled out.
Luo Yang’s fingers moved over sixty times inside his pockets.
Each time was a micro-adjustment.
Correcting bullet trajectories, stabilizing weapons shaken by impacts, and even applying a momentary resistance to the joints of mutant beasts.
He didn't kill enemies or steal credit; he simply erased all the accidents and mistakes that would have happened before they could occur.
Ahead, the glow of the magma suddenly dimmed.
It wasn't that the fire had gone out, but rather that it was being blocked by something massive.
A barrier piled high with pitch-black bone and purple flesh enclosed two dark red rocky mountains and a broad road that seemed to have no end.
Viscous dark purple energy surged across the surface of the barrier like the quickening of a living womb. Every vibration made the air feel heavier.
They had reached the core area.
Behind the barrier lurked at least twenty mutant beasts. Five of them were exceptionally massive, the energy surging around them causing visible distortions in the air.
Song Zhiyi made an immediate judgment.
Level 3 mutant beasts—and top-tier ones at that.
He raised his right fist, and the entire team entered a state of high alert.
Qiu Shubai took a deep breath, her grip on her sword tightening slightly.
She could feel that behind that disgusting barrier, something was watching them.
That instinctive alarm of being targeted by a predator sent a chill down her spine.
Luo Yang finally pulled his hands out of his pockets. But he still didn't draw his blade; he merely pushed up his glasses and looked up at the barrier that reached toward the clouds.
“Rest for fifteen minutes,” Song Zhiyi’s voice rang out. “Check your equipment and adjust your state. In fifteen minutes, we break into the core area.”
Qiu Shubai nodded and leaned against a nearby rock, closing her eyes to focus her mind.
She had over eighty percent of her blood energy left. Although she had expended some physical strength, it was minimal; her condition was quite good.
She opened her eyes and happened to glance over at Luo Yang.
He was squatting on the ground, using a dagger to scratch something into the earth. Looking closely, he seemed to be drawing some kind of diagram.
Sensing her gaze, Luo Yang looked up.
“Finished resting?”
“I’m not tired.”
“Alright then. I did some calculations. The energy structure of that barrier has about three layers, and the node distribution is quite interesting. Want to hear about it?”
Qiu Shubai stared at him for two seconds before closing her eyes again.
“No.”
Luo Yang shrugged and went back to scratching his talisman-like patterns on the ground.
Rate on N.U.
