The scooter's horn blared. No one could understand what it was yelling, but everyone believed it was cursing in the filthiest way possible. Still, nobody cared about what exactly it was “saying.”

That nightmarish horn rang again in Lou Feng’s ears.

Beep beep beep beep beep—

It was as if the shadow of that infamous fecal suction truck from the past had returned, accompanied by that rhythmic, piercing squeal. It plunged Lou Feng once again into suffocating dread, swallowed by memories he could not escape. This time, what came at him was no longer an indescribable tide of terror, but a blinding burst of light like exploding stars.

It was not just conventional steel-core rounds. Mixed within them were silver bullets infused with An Ran’s sword qi. The moment they left the barrel, they burst into dazzling flashes.

With Horsey violently swerving and shaking, countless bullets poured out, erupting from the muzzle in a continuous stream of fire, sweeping across everything with savage force.

After four hundred years, this vast, broken hall once again met a storm and hurricane, its surfaces rapidly eroding and cracking under the relentless bombardment.

In a panic, Lou Feng instinctively raised his spirit-matter shield. At that moment, he felt what it meant to be utterly overwhelmed by sheer output, so much so that his eyes rolled back and his system nearly collapsed under overload. Even though the spirit-matter shield was barely holding up, it at least bought him a brief second.

On his wrist, an alchemical device flashed with light, and the ice-iron wall rose again from the ground like a fortress. Deafening impacts echoed without end as pale cracks spread continuously across its surface.

At least it held...

Before Lou Feng even had time to let out the breath he was holding, he suddenly realized something. That damn shitty scooter could move. The beeping sounds came from around him, circling and weaving.

With its maddening horn blaring, Horsey raced wildly, unleashing its brutal firepower. As it carved deep trenches across the ice-iron wall, the machine gun fire had already followed its charge, bypassing the barrier entirely and pouring fire at will.

There were flickering bursts of light and splashes of blood. The fastest to react was Silan. He shouted as he drew his sword, his face turning deathly pale, as if he had lost too much blood. He looked gaunt, almost skeletal. Yet within the surging blood-colored light, that massive figure rose again. It drew a long blade over ten meters in length and brought it crashing down, nearly cleaving Horsey cleanly in half from the center.

Panicking, Horsey sped up even further, darting around like a headless fly, all the while dragging behind it terrifying firepower that could kill anything it merely brushed against. It was like a seal desperately crapping itself while being chased by an orca, except that just made things even more impossible to deal with.

With a furious roar, Silan burst out from within the blood-colored light and charged straight into the storm of machine-gun fire. The overwhelming barrage that could shred fortifications and the soldiers behind them landed on him, only to be blocked by the silver light surging from his arm shield.

The silver light swayed like a lotus battered by rain, unstable and flickering. Yet the charging Homecoming Knight kept closing the distance step by step until, from dozens of meters away, he unleashed the curved blade in his hand with a furious cry.

The thrown blade let out a piercing howl as it spun through the air. It sliced through the torrent of machine-gun fire head-on, cutting the already red-hot barrel weapon into fragments. An explosion followed, but the sword’s momentum still pressed forward like an unstoppable force.

Just then, faint fluctuations of spirit matter appeared. That strange hybrid of tricycle and scooter suddenly blurred, fading away for a moment.

Shadow Transformation!

However, even shadow spirit matter could not withstand the savage strike born from the Swarm. Immediately, it collapsed, scattered, and burst apart like liquid. Strangely, a faint spirit matter fluctuation appeared again. Something that looked like a human head briefly emerged from within, its lips moving silently as if saying something.

Then, an invisible gravitational pull manifested. The scattered, disintegrating shadows flowed back like liquid, converging and reforming. Speeding, Horsey burst out from within it once more, completely unharmed.

Even Horsey had no idea what had just happened as it blinked its headlights in confusion. Only the figure in the front basket, the Seer, slowly closed her eyes, as if going back to sleep.

Only then did Silan hear the scream coming from behind him. There was a surging tide of sword qi.

It was fast, way too fast. It surged forth even if the gap lasted for a brief second.

When time slowed to an extreme, An Ran had already detected the brief chaos among the Homecoming Knights and Silan’s movements, and he vanished from where he stood. What replaced him was a roaring torrent.

“I offer this prey to the White Deer.”

With this whisper, the sword qi across hundreds and thousands of metal shards converged, nearly dissolving and consuming him entirely. Countless strands of sharp light gathered into a single beam, shooting straight forward.

An Ran had turned himself into a blade and hurled himself forward.

This was no longer the technique recorded in the book of Hurling Pot Ritual. It had already transcended it, becoming the higher secret art, Archery Rite. It could turn one’s body into a blade, advancing without hesitation, and it was referred to by a single simple word: Ferocity!

Ancient texts once recorded that one day and one night equaled thirty xuyu; one xuyu equaled twenty luoyou; one luoyou equaled twenty finger snaps; one finger snap equaled twenty instants, and one instant equaled the time it took to form a single thought.

Right now, it was nothing more than the time required to shape a single thought.

A pale sword light tore through the air at extreme speed, piercing through formations and breaking every defense. It shredded all obstruction, staining both enemy and self with blood that blazed into a radiant crimson glow. There was no inertia, hesitation, or evasion. There was only a streak of pure white and red brilliance. Everything that stood in its path was reduced to fragments.

The further it advanced, the harder it became. Breaking through the center of the bloodflame and the Homecoming Knights’ interception, the long, luminous edge of sword qi gradually wore down. Yet the shorter it became, the more terrifyingly brilliant the intent within it burned.

In the end, when the rushing sword light finally came to an abrupt halt within the entanglement of bloodflame, An Ran was already drenched in red. His abdomen[1] had been pierced by a long spear and he was pinned to the ground. But in his hand, that faint, almost imperceptible sliver of sharpness had already been released, heading straight for the dazed Lou Feng.

Ice-iron walls, repulsion fields, and spirit-matter shields were all shattered, pierced, and torn apart. Even the crystallized Time-Sand Beads on Lou Feng’s wrist cracked one after another. His alchemical clone did not even have time to manifest before it was torn apart by an invisible vortex, shredding away half of its body.

A hand still blocked Lou Feng’s front, tightly gripping that nearly imperceptible trace of cold light.

The cold light vanished.

Lou Feng was drenched in cold sweat, and he collapsed to the ground. His face was deathly pale as he gasped for air, unable to speak. He instinctively tried to laugh, but then felt a strange itch at his throat.

When he raised his hand, he finally sensed it.

A line of blood spreading across his neck. His fingertips were stained a shockingly bright red. He had been only a hair’s breadth away from decapitation. Never before had he been so close to death. He was almost swallowed entirely by that darkness...

“Kill... kill them!” he ordered hoarsely.

No one moved. Everyone stared, not at him, but at the wall behind him, where a crack had silently appeared. From within that crack, the barrel of a scorching hot gun slowly extended.

When it pressed against Lou Feng’s scalp, it hissed softly. His pupils rapidly dilated, and he trembled uncontrollably.

“Ji Jue!!!!”

He forced the name from deep in his throat and spun around abruptly. The alchemical bracelet on his wrist flared with light, transforming into endless flames that spat forward, intending to incinerate the enemy before him into ashes.

Unfortunately, that never happened, despite what he wished for. The flame-engraved bracelet flickered only for a moment, then went out completely. There was no longer any response from it. Not just the bracelet, every single alchemical device had gone silent.

Within the eerie glow of the floating devil’s work ball on Ji Jue’s shoulder, even abilities and matrices seemed frozen, showing no reaction whatsoever.

The temporary workshop was deployed. Within a three-step radius field, three major modules had fully activated: spirit matter suppression, matrix suppression, and ability silence.

“You think you’re the only one with cheats, huh?!”

Ji Jue swung his arm without hesitation and slapped Lou Feng hard across the face, sending him spinning in midair before crashing back onto the ground. Then, he jabbed Lou Feng with the butt of his gun.

“You think you’re the only one who has a teacher, huh?! You think I’m just gonna sit back and let you keep powering up endlessly?! And you still want me to hand over Pacifier?! Why don’t you hand over your damn mother in exchange then?!”

The beating was merciless, to the point it was pure abuse and humiliation, until Silan screamed, “Stop!”

Bang!

A shotgun blast echoed. The pellets grazed Lou Feng’s face and buried into the ground, leaving a spreading line of blood.

“Keep your voice down, I’m jittery,” Ji Jue said flatly, lifting his eyes to look at Silan, and then at An Ran, who was pinned to the ground by a spear.

Silan’s curved blade was pressed against An Ran’s neck, inching forward and cutting into the skin. So Ji Jue pulled the trigger again, aiming at Lou Feng’s right hand without hesitation.

Amid blood spray and screams, Silan’s face twitched. The blade returned to its original position. He had never expected that a Homecoming Knight squad of mostly level-three fighters, plus himself at level five, along with a heavily equipped employer, would end up in such a state.

“Release the hostage, and I’ll let you go,” he said.

Ji Jue fired again. The bullet scraped past Lou Feng’s hair and buried itself into the ground. Only after one more scream did he respond, “Cut the crap and say something useful. Drop your weapons. I’ll count to five. Otherwise, say goodbye to your boss and your own left hand. Five, four, three...”

Silan’s face twisted. For a moment, he even felt the urge to chop off one of the brat’s limbs just to make Ji Jue understand what was coming. But he didn’t dare to do so.

Those utterly emotionless eyes had been fixed on them the entire time. Even when a blade was about to sever a comrade’s neck, they did not waver in the slightest. They were as dark as a lightless ocean.

He had seen eyes like that far too many times in the Central Lands, and he had never expected that when he saw them again, they would belong to an unknown youth from Cliff City.

Snap!

At his signal, one knight dropped his spear and curved blade. Then a second followed. Weapons were thrown into Horsey’s cargo bed.

Soon, all six surviving knights had been disarmed. All except Silan, who still held his blade without loosening his grip.

“Relax, young man,” someone beside Silan said as he lifted a box out of the bloodstained ground and tossed it over. Inside the open case were the spoils they had gathered along the way. “We’re just here for money. We’re a bunch of poor working stiffs. Why make things difficult for us? Everything’s in there. You let our boss go, take your friend, and leave. We won’t stop you.”

Ji Jue glanced at the box, then lost interest and looked away. “It’s not enough.”

The corner of Silan’s eye twitched again. He nearly laughed from anger. “You don’t want this kid to live?”

“Of course I do. No need to keep emphasizing the price. But my friend is injured, and we’ve paid too much already. So it’s not enough.” Ji Jue’s finger did not waver on the trigger. “I hope I made myself clear. Don’t waste my patience.”

“Fine,” Silan said with a cold laugh. “It won’t be enough for you even if we trade two lives for one. If you kill our boss, how will you fight all of us?”

The answer came in the form of another rift opening behind Ji Jue.

“Let me make this clear. If I want to leave, you can’t stop me,” Ji Jue said flatly, as if stating a fact. “You can kill my friend, but your boss is dead for sure. Not just your boss. You, too, and your family and your friends. For the last time, my teacher is a master, and I’ve got the Security Bureau backing me. Even if the Lou family wants retaliation, they can’t touch me in Cliff City. But you’re different. The Security Bureau might let you off the hook, but I won’t.

“Ten years, twenty years, thirty years... no matter how long it takes, the moment I qualify as a master, the first thing I’ll do is post a bounty for you on the Wasteland Assembly. As long as I’m alive, I’ll do everything I can to destroy you,” Ji Jue stated calmly.

1. The raw says “chest” here, but in the next chapter, it’s said that the most dangerous wound on An Ran’s body was the one penetrating his abdomen, so I decided to make this change for the sake of consistency. ☜