Eerie Tentacles, the Aberration Source
The group sprinted back toward the defensive camp.
Before long, the roars and thundering footsteps of Feral Beasts came pressing in from all directions.
Encounters grew more frequent as they ran — but with Lu Yuan up front clearing the path, they scraped through each one without serious harm.
They even crossed paths with several other squads along the way, each pushing just as hard for the camp.
Whenever Lu Yuan's group came across them, he naturally lent a hand. Squad by squad, they fell in alongside him, letting Lu Yuan lead the way as the combined group charged toward the defensive camp together.
At full sprint, it didn't take long before the camp walls came into view.
Even before passing through the gates, Lu Yuan could see rows of Gene Warriors standing at attention along the battlements. Spirit Cannons lined the walls, powered up and glowing with pulsing spirit light. The air was taut with killing intent.
Inside the gate, he found that a great many Guard Corps soldiers had just returned. More than a few were soaked in blood, their wounds serious. Healer Type Gene Warriors moved between them, working as fast as they could. Other Guard Corps squads worked alongside, lending whatever support they could.
Maige, Zhu Zhengyang, and Yan Jing were all there.
When they spotted Lu Yuan, their eyes lit up and they came forward at once.
"A-Yuan! You're all okay? The beasts outside have gone crazy."
Maige was the first to reach him.
Lu Yuan shook his head with a grin. "We're fine. You know what I'm capable of, senior."
Beside him, Yan Jing's eyes sparkled as she looked at Lu Yuan. "True — little brother Lu Yuan has made quite a name for himself around camp lately."
Zhu Zhengyang raised an eyebrow, a sly grin spreading across his face.
"The 'Spirit Crystal Warrior,' you mean?"
His expression shifted to something almost pained.
"I still can't believe how many Talismans and Psionic Bombs you burned through. If you converted all that into Spirit Crystals... I don't even want to think about the number."
Lu Yuan shook his head. "I joined the Scout Unit — I have to carry my weight. I can't guarantee every scout's safety, but my own squadmates? I'll always find a way to bring them home."
Behind him, a trace of something moved across Groat and the others' faces.
Zhu Zhengyang quickly raised a hand. "Hey — I'm not saying you did anything wrong, junior. I'm just feeling the financial pain on your behalf."
Yan Jing smiled warmly at Lu Yuan. "Quite a few Guard Corps soldiers already think of you as a hero, little brother."
Maige cut in, his tone turning serious. "Alright, enough of that. A-Yuan, all of you should get back and rest. Word is a Battle Emperor-rank warrior has headed into the Endless Mountain Range. Once the fighting there escalates, the Beast Tide out here is going to peak — and when it does, the pressure on us will be enormous. You might not get another break. You scouts are already running on fumes. Rebuild your strength while you can; you'll need it when the killing starts."
Lu Yuan nodded. "Understood. We'll go rest then."
His group and the other returning squads dispersed from the gate and moved deeper into the camp.
Endless Mountain Range.
High above the valley, the sky had turned to night.
An artificial darkness smothered the entire region. Enormous, crushing auras churned through the air — and even powerful Feral Beasts in neighboring areas raised their heads, turning toward the unnatural dark, their colossal eyes full of cautious light.
Within that darkness, Li Xinghai stood suspended in midair, facing a strange silhouette.
It was a massive hound, over ten meters tall, its fur dark red. Across its body, black tentacles had erupted and spread. They writhed and twisted, bleeding sickly dark-green light. Its enormous eyes glowed with that same eerie green.
Li Xinghai's brow furrowed slightly. He spoke without urgency.
"A Flame Demon Hound. I didn't expect it to be you."
The Flame Demon Hound curled back its lips. Unnatural fire flickered behind its glowing green eyes. The tentacles on its body twisted and swayed, producing a low, discordant sound.
"Li Xinghai. Didn't expect me, did you? Last time you ran a sword through me — this time, I'm here for payback."
Li Xinghai glanced at the writhing tentacles coiled across its body, then let out a short, contemptuous laugh.
"What, you think looking like *that* means you're dangerous again? You're still nothing but a beaten cur."
**"ROAR!!"**
The Flame Demon Hound erupted in fury. A thunderous roar tore from its throat, and sheets of dark-green flame blazed to life across its body, condensing into fireball after fireball of that grotesque, unnatural green, hurling themselves toward Li Xinghai.
The terrifying heat made the darkness itself ripple. The raw force of the blasts bent the space around them.
Li Xinghai felt the power behind the strikes, and his brow tightened fractionally.
*Considerably stronger than before.*
The sword in his hand sang with razor-sharp brilliance as he swept it through the sky.
Jet-black sword qi — dark as ink — unfurled across thousands of meters, weaving together into a dense blade-net that swallowed every last fireball whole.
Blade-net and fireballs collided.
**BOOM!!**
A deafening explosion shook the heavens.
Dark-green flames surged and rolled, spreading across the sky in a blazing sea of green that stretched for dozens of kilometers. The mountain range below caught the fire; peaks dissolved and warped under its touch, leaving behind bizarre, smoldering craters. Trees, rock — everything — was simply vaporized.
Follow-up strokes of pitch-black sword light came streaking down, carving gashes thousands of meters long and of immeasurable depth into the earth below.
It was fortunate that every beast in the area had already fled the moment Li Xinghai and the Flame Demon Hound released their auras. Nothing could have survived in that killing ground.
Li Xinghai glanced at the devastated terrain below, frowned, then launched himself upward — through the atmosphere.
The Flame Demon Hound, already incensed, roared and threw itself after him, all its tentacles lashing wildly.
The two broke through the atmosphere and erupted into the cold, silent void of space.
Li Xinghai's eyes turned black as ink. Waves of dense, rolling darkness spilled off his body and radiated outward until everything within dozens of kilometers around him was consumed in absolute shadow.
He became indistinguishable from the void itself.
The Flame Demon Hound threw its head back and howled. Terrifying green shockwaves pulsed outward in rings as its body expanded at frightening speed.
Ten meters became fifty. Fifty became a hundred. A hundred became five hundred. It kept growing — two thousand meters tall, nearly three thousand meters long.
A true nightmare colossus.
And the black tentacles rooted into its enormous body swelled with it.
Those tentacles were covered in eyes and mouths.
The eyes locked onto Li Xinghai. The mouths stretched into grotesque grins, parting almost soundlessly — and releasing sounds that belonged to no natural creature.
Crushing, suffocating auras erupted from both of them. Even the vacuum around them began to distort.
The Flame Demon Hound struck first. Dark-green flames blazed across its entire body. Massive fireballs — each dozens of meters across — materialized before it, burning without being extinguished even in the vacuum. The fireballs streamed toward that lightless expanse of shadow.
At the same time, dozens of tentacles stretched outward from its body; from the thousands of eyes packed across them, green beams fired in concentrated volleys toward the darkness.
Thousands of those eerie green rays streaked into the shadows. The darkness churned — then went still.
Then it exploded outward, surging over the Flame Demon Hound.
And from within it, silhouettes condensed — shadow after shadow, each one Li Xinghai, each bearing a sword.
Every one of them swung.
Sword light hundreds of thousands of meters long sliced through the void in dense, overwhelming arcs, falling over the Flame Demon Hound like a cage closing in.
The Flame Demon Hound refused to yield, firing back with wave after wave of green beams and fireballs.
Green brilliance and pitch-black light clashed silently in the void — soundless explosion after soundless explosion bloomed between them. Their battlefield spread across thousands of kilometers of space, filled in equal measure with terrifying sword light and green fire.
Space itself began to buckle and warp under the pressure.
While Li Xinghai and the Flame Demon Hound clashed in the void above, down below in the depths of the Endless Mountain Range —
Li Qinghe, Si Tingyu, and a gathering of Battle Sovereign and Battle King rank warriors glanced briefly upward, then swept their eyes over the terrain around them — the landscape already scarred and carved by the battle's distant shockwaves.
One Battle Sovereign warrior stared at the sword scars stretching beyond the horizon and murmured in awe:
"Battle Emperor Xinghai is as terrifying as ever."
"Of course he is — that's My Lord Xinghai, the man who once entered the Endless Mountain Range alone and hunted Emperor Grade Feral Beasts until they didn't dare raise their heads. How could he be anything less?"
A male warrior grinned, admiration gleaming in his eyes.
Li Qinghe's brow arched slightly, her expression hardening.
"Gentlemen — now isn't the time for this." A beat. "They're coming."
Si Tingyu's golden-red dragon eyes narrowed to slits, her gaze sweeping the surroundings.
The rest of the group tensed.
In the near distance, aura after aura surged toward them, pressing in from all sides.
As far as the eye could see — Feral Beasts.
And every single one of them had black tentacles growing from its body. The tentacles writhed and twisted, grotesque and deeply wrong.
Even the Guard Corps warriors present — Battle Sovereigns and Battle Kings who had encountered Aberrant Feral Beasts before — felt something cold settle in their guts at the sight.
Among them was one powerfully built warrior: dark-skinned, with a fighter's stocky frame, wearing spiked gauntlets. He had volunteered to join this elite strike team tasked with destroying the Aberration source — had done so eagerly, in fact. But he had also learned, at great personal cost, what a tentacled Aberrant beast could do. Despite ranking among the stronger Battle Sovereigns at his level, he had nearly come to grief against just one of them.
Seeing this many at once, every instinct in him snapped to attention.
"What the — ?! There are *that many* beasts with those things growing out of them?!"
**"ROAR!!"**
**"AWOOO!!"**
Beast after beast howled and charged.
Every warrior's face locked down. They surged forward to meet the tide.
The moment both sides collided, a thunderous cacophony shook the entire mountain range. Under the raw power of Battle King and Battle Sovereign rank warriors, whole sections of the Endless Mountain Range trembled and fractured. Mountain peaks shattered into rubble under the force of their blows. Craters several kilometers across gouged themselves into the earth one after another.
The ground seemed to be turning inside out.
Warriors and beasts rose from the earth into the sky, their battle cries and bestial howls reverberating without end. The entire sky blazed with surging spirit light.
The artificial night Li Xinghai had conjured had not yet dispersed. That surging spirit light became the only illumination in the darkness — brilliant streaks of color cutting through the black.
Li Qinghe stood cloaked in threads of dark light, her expression cold and composed, a heavy sword gripped in both hands.
Four King Grade Feral Beasts encircled her.
Two Flame Demon Hounds. Two Frenzied Demon Apes.
Every one of them was covered in tentacles — and every one of those tentacles bore eyes, all of them fixed on Li Qinghe with something deeply wrong in their gaze.
Li Qinghe swept them with a glance and clicked her tongue, contempt flickering across her face.
"Only four King Grade beasts? Is that all? How insulting."
She took one step forward — and vanished.
The next instant, boundless black sword light erupted from the void without warning, engulfing one of the Flame Demon Hounds entirely.
Sovereign Grade Combat Technique — Dark Shadow Instant Slash!
This was a Transcendent Gene of the Space and Darkness alignment — one that even Li Xinghai had never mastered.
The countless blades carried devastating, razor-sharp killing force. The Flame Demon Hound howled in fury as dark-green light blazed across its body; flames and green beams poured outward in every direction, straining to deflect the onslaught.
Against an equal Battle King rank opponent, though, they were shredded apart with contemptuous ease.
The storm of sword light swallowed the Flame Demon Hound whole — and detonated.
An instant later, the creature came apart in fragments.
A haze of blood mist drifted down through the air. Then threads of eerie green vapor tore free from the remains and shrieked toward Li Qinghe.
Li Qinghe raised an eyebrow. She disappeared from where she stood.
Sword light flooded the space, swallowing the green vapor entirely.
An instant later, it was annihilated.
The three remaining beasts stared at what had just happened. Rage surged into their blood-red eyes — now tinged with a creeping, grotesque green.
"Kill her!! Kill this human!!"
Howling with fury, the remaining Flame Demon Hound threw open its jaws and spat green fireball after green fireball, its tentacles unleashing a simultaneous barrage of green energy beams.
The two Frenzied Demon Apes blazed with green fire around their bodies and hurled themselves directly at Li Qinghe, their tentacles pouring out relentless volleys of green beams in every direction.
Countless green beams laced the air so densely they nearly sealed off every possible escape route.
Li Qinghe's expression didn't flicker. She stepped into the void and was gone.
She reappeared behind one of the Frenzied Demon Apes — and sword light blazed to life once more.
Not far away, while Li Qinghe kept four King Grade beasts occupied, Si Tingyu was locked in her own struggle against a different four.
Four King Grade Feral Beasts — all Flame Demon Hounds — poured down a relentless barrage of green beams and fireballs against her.
Si Tingyu's expression was severe. She wore a heavy suit of golden-red armor, both hands wrapped around a spear over three meters long.
The imposing light in her golden-red dragon eyes blazed to life. A dragon's roar resonated from somewhere in the void.
Brilliant scales surfaced across her body, gleaming like facets of polished golden-red gemstone. In that moment, she looked less like a warrior and more like a dragon that had taken human form.
She planted her foot against the air — a sharp crack rang out as the air shattered beneath her step, sending a shockwave rippling in all directions — and hurled herself directly at the nearest Flame Demon Hound.
A torrent of green fireballs and energy beams crashed against her body. She didn't flinch.
She plowed straight through the barrage and drove her spear clean through the Flame Demon Hound's chest.
The other three Flame Demon Hounds: *??*
They snarled and howled with fury — but when Si Tingyu's gaze swung toward them, they found themselves backing away without meaning to, content to keep their distance and hurl attacks from afar.
Against her, they felt less like they were facing a Guardian warrior and more like they were facing a humanoid beast. None of them wanted her anywhere near them.