“Click.”
Before the crisp sound of the guard snapping open could spread through the air, the crossbeam beneath Luo Yang’s feet let out a sudden, terminal groan of structural failure.
He plummeted like a block of pig iron dropped from the third floor, plunging straight toward the densest part of the dark red sea of flesh below.
The wind of the fall rushed into his tattered white shirt, scraping against the jagged tears in his skin that had yet to scab over.
A needle-like dizziness from excessive blood loss pricked his brain. He bit the tip of his tongue, the taste of rust spreading through his mouth as he forcibly dragged his blurring focus back to reality.
Below, two aberrations the size of water vats were frantically squeezing through the factory’s broken walls. A dangerous, pulsing red light was already bleeding through the surface of their slimy fascia.
Their cores were about to blow.
Luo Yang curled his fingers in mid-air, and a blinding silver glow erupted from the surface of his space ring.
Two Grantee Longswords appeared out of thin air, whistling as they tore through the sweltering air of the factory.
The sword tips struck with unerring precision, skewering the centers of the two bulging masses of meat.
The massive kinetic energy sent the two monsters, teetering on the edge of their critical point, flying backward. They were pinned over thirty meters away, slammed deep into a heavy load-bearing wall at the edge of the factory grounds.
Boom! Boom!
Deafening sympathetic detonations erupted one after another, making the very foundations of the factory tremble violently.
A dark red shockwave, mixed with shattered bricks and charred chunks of meat, swept outward in a radial blast.
Luo Yang used the air pressure from the explosion to cushion his descent, his boots slamming heavily into the slime-covered ground.
His kneecaps let out a sickening thud, and his calf muscles twitched uncontrollably as they absorbed the force of the landing.
He didn’t stop. Using the momentum of his crouch, he rolled forward, drawing Night Owl-Slash in a wide horizontal arc.
A ghostly blue blade-light swept across the ground, slicing through the base of an aberration.
Foul-smelling, dark yellow pus geysered out instantly, drenching his pant legs with a nauseating sizzle.
The fabric was burned through, and the flesh on his calves was immediately corroded into several charred, bloody pits.
He didn’t let out even a grunt. Or rather, he felt that vibrating his vocal cords now was a waste of precious energy.
His core muscles tightened as he forcibly stabilized his sliding boots, and Luo Yang dove headlong into the writhing meat grinder.
The stench of rot, acid, and the pungent smell of fat roasting at high temperatures plastered itself against his face.
An aberration wriggled its massive body toward him. It had no eyes or mouth, only rolling granulation tissue on its surface that sought to envelop any living thing that drew near.
Luo Yang ducked to avoid the falling mass of rotten meat and delivered a backhand slash into its side.
The blade was caught tight by the resilient fascia, a thick resistance traveling up the hilt and into his palm.
Instead of pulling back, he gripped the hilt and pressed down with all his might, slamming his left palm against the back of the blade.
Riiip—
The meat was forcibly torn open, exposing the unstable core within. Its red light flickered rapidly.
Luo Yang immediately withdrew his blade and retreated, his left hand reaching into the void.
A third Grantee Longsword shot out, skewering the meat-clump from bottom to top and launching it over ten meters into the air.
Another massive, dark red firework exploded overhead.
Scalding blood and flesh rained down, coating Luo Yang from head to toe.
He didn’t bother wiping the gore from his spectacles. His gaze remained fixed through the slimy red light, locked onto the living mines around him that were ready to detonate at any moment.
With his feet treading through corrosive pus and his body surrounded by thrashing clumps of mutated flesh, he looked like a bomb-disposal maniac running blindly through a minefield. Night Owl was responsible for slicing the hides, while the Grantee Longswords triggered the detonations.
When he saw a core glowing red, he immediately drew a sword and pinned the creature to a distant scrap steel frame.
When he saw another beginning to swell, he used two swords in a cross-guard to launch it into the air to explode.
Explosions echoed through the factory like a continuous roll of muffled thunder.
Dark yellow fluids and green pus splashed everywhere. A large glob of corrosive liquid hit Luo Yang just below the collarbone, melting the shirt’s collar instantly.
The strong acid gnawed through his skin and melted through the dermis, exposing pale fascia. Agonizing pain crawled along his nerve endings and into his brain.
He didn’t even blink.
What were a few more scars?
In his current state, his killing efficiency was already lower than usual.
If the blade in his hand was even a fraction slower, the people surrounded in the center wouldn’t even have the chance to be scarred; they would be turned into dross inside the bellies of these rotten heaps of meat.
He squeezed out the last bit of light from the golden tree in his Sea of Consciousness. His blade moved so fast it left overlapping ghostly blue afterimages around him, forcibly plowing a bloody path through the wall of disgusting flesh.
At the gap in the defense line.
The deputy captain who had been blown away earlier was slumped in a pile of broken bricks, coughing up large mouthfuls of bloody foam.
He watched as an aberration as thick as a water vat squeezed through the gap, its granulation tissue already brushing against the boot of a nearby casualty.
He didn’t even have the strength left to curse. Despair washed over him like ice water.
Then, the massive thing suddenly took flight.
A silver longsword flew in from nowhere, skewering the meat-clump and pinning it like a piece of fruit on a stick to a broken crossbeam diagonally above.
Boom!
Dark red flesh showered down, hitting the faces of several Punishers at the gap. The scalding temperature made them shudder violently.
The offensive of the aberrations crowding around them suddenly faltered.
Everyone stared forward in a daze through the blood matted in their eyelashes.
On the outer perimeter of the wall of flesh they had thought was impenetrable, red lights began to ignite one after another.
Immediately following that, those meat-clumps were treated like sandbags—either launched into the sky to explode or slammed into corners to be reduced to piles of sludge.
A path was forcibly torn open by violent blade-light and flying swords.
In the flickering firelight, they saw the shadow that had charged in.
His white shirt had long since lost its original color, soaked into a nauseating, mottled dark hue by various bodily fluids.
His exposed arms and legs were covered in charred pits and upturned flesh, blood dripping from his fingertips.
But the hand holding that blade was terrifyingly steady.
There was no large force, no heavy fire support.
Just one man, one blade, and the constantly appearing flying swords weaving through the air, leveling the meat grinder as he walked.
He looked like a god of slaughter who had crawled out of hell to claim lives.
The deputy captain’s deadened eyes twitched.
He recognized that face, half-covered in blood and filth; he recognized those plain glass spectacles covered in bits of meat.
He recognized the monstrous external aid from the Yuanxing City Ability Bureau, the one rumored to burn through equipment.
The members of the Third Section, who had thought they were surely dead, felt their breath hitch.
In the deathly silent factory, only the sound of Luo Yang swinging his blade and the explosions of the meat-clumps echoed.
The young Punisher who had dropped his broken staff earlier stared blankly as Luo Yang kicked over an aberration and sliced it in half with a backhand stroke.
He suddenly raised his hand and slapped himself hard across the face.
The crisp sound of the slap rang out abruptly within the defense line.
“F*ck this...”
The man scrambled toward the pile of rubble, clutching the half-length wooden staff stained with his own blood.
“Reinforcements are here! I’m not dead yet!”
He roared at the top of his lungs, his voice cracking with a desperate, scorched-earth rasp.
That one shout ignited the frozen blood of everyone in the defense line.
The man with the limp arm tucked his broken limb into his belt, and with his remaining hand, he grabbed a notched combat blade, scraping the edge hard against a machine tool.
The Punisher whose legs were covered in corrosive sores spat out the bloody foam in his mouth, braced his back against a broken machine, and forcibly straightened his knees.
Even those whose weapons were all broken and whose blood energy had long since been drained stared with bloodshot eyes, picking up steel rebar, bricks, or simply raising their scarred fists.
“If you’re still breathing, don’t just lie there playing dead!”
The deputy captain propped himself up against a broken beam, kneeling on one leg. He plunged his broken blade into the mud and squeezed a roar out of his throat like a dying beast.
“Push them back! Kill!”
The will to survive was stretched to its limit, erupting into a near-frenzied fighting spirit.
Over twenty battered survivors roared as they charged into the rain of corrosive blood, throwing themselves at the writhing masses of dark red flesh.
Fists slammed into slimy fascia, rebar pierced pulsing vessels, and even as the acid exposed their bones, they refused to let go.
In the blood-soaked factory grounds, the surging tide of the counterattack completely overturned their despair.
Luo Yang heard the roars behind him. He pointed his blade diagonally toward the ground and gave his wrist a sharp flick, shaking off several drops of green blood clinging to the edge.
Facing the aberrations that were regrouping ahead, he set his heavy legs in motion once more.
Rate on N.U.
