Night of Despair-Chapter 127 - : Mark of 125

Chapter 127: Mark of 125

In the safety bunker within the cave.

Yu Hong carefully drew a Vortex Rune Array with Large Pyroxene Stone graphite powder on the skin of his right leg.

“Still not working, huh? It’s too easily dried up and cracked. The rune lines are quickly dried by the skin, and any slight movement will prematurely destroy the structure of the rune lines, causing the absorbed radiation to release,” he murmured as he tested and found it unsatisfactory.

“Then let’s switch to engraving it on the suit instead.”

He swiftly grabbed the Polar Bear Suit and began to inscribe the Vortex rune patterns on its surface.

Due to his extremely high proficiency, it took him only a few minutes to finish inscribing two suits along with a Wolf Fang Club, all adorned with talisman arrays.

...

Next was waiting for them to dry and absorb the radiation.

“This way, during combat, I can continuously detonate the Vortex Talisman Plates to forcibly control the Evil Shadow.”

Feeling the growing strength of the Evil Shadow, Yu Hong was carefully considering a method.

‘How to use the Black Mark to forcibly enhance the same item continuously.’

His Inner Qi had now reached the second layer with two strands, enhancing his speed, strength, protection, and endurance in all aspects.

He could handle the Blood Tide Monsters, but facing the shadow and Evil Shadow, he was clearly out of his depth.

“The Evil Shadow’s abilities are bizarre and varied; it’s essential to have marking items to probe in advance for higher safety,” Yu Hong reaffirmed his idea. Checking that enough time had passed, he returned to his desk to review information on the newly completed enhancement.

‘Countermeasures against the Person Behind.’

The name was distinctly marked on the new sheet.

Below were lines of content with numeric identifiers.

‘1: The attacks of the Person Behind follow a three-strike rule, but it’s not about seeing three times; it’s hearing the noise made three times.

2: The Person Behind’s attack method focuses on sustained attrition without explosiveness. The main method is to forcefully reduce the target’s ambient negative Red Value, and once it drops to a critical point, the target will be instantly devoured.

3: The Person Behind adheres to a unique singularity; one Person Behind can only target one individual at a time.

4: When bombarded with a significant amount of negative radiation, the Person Behind will be forced out of hiding and into rigidity. If attacked while rigid, the Person Behind suffers great damage. The rigidity duration formula is: (Negative Radiation Shock Amount – Person Behind’s own Red Value Amount) / 800 = Rigidity Duration, in seconds.

5: If the damage received during rigidity exceeds the Person Behind’s own total Red Value, the Person Behind’s physical reality will be shattered, waiting to recover.’

“Tsk, tsk, tsk… Now that’s detailed,” Yu Hong carefully examined the paper, finding this information far more detailed than the minimal intel provided by Zhou Xueguang.

“If the channel is still open, maybe I could exchange it for some goods or resources…” he mused, feeling much more relaxed while holding the paper.

Many dangers are not to be feared for the enemy’s strength but the lack of effective countermeasures.

As long as there is hope, as long as there is a method to harm the enemy, all fear is diminished.

With the paper in hand, he quickly moved to the communicator, which had been on without making a sound. The silence persisted.

He pressed the paper to one corner of the communicator and then continued the next round of enhancement.

After previous tests, the Silver Talisman Plate was almost outdated, so he planned to find a powerful item that could deal with the current predicament.

‘Since the normal talisman array enhances the effect of luminous stones and the Vortex Rune Array stores radiation effects, can the two be combined for use? First, the Vortex Rune Array stores the radiation, then the released radiation is amplified by the normal rune array, creating a greater destructive force.’

Yu Hong’s approach was straightforward.

Such a construct was merely a simple linkage structure.

He took a Vortex Talisman Plate and wrapped it in a layer of soft cloth, then drew amplification array patterns on the cloth.

After drying both, he tied them up with a string.

It took him less than half an hour to complete a simple combined talisman array system.

“Let’s give it a try.”

Yu Hong weighed the cloth-wrapped talisman plate in his hand with some anticipation.

The Vortex Talisman Plate was saturated with radiation, and with the newly drawn amplification rune…

He pinched the cloth-wrapped talisman plate with one hand, silently thinking ‘Enhance.’

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‘Enhance the Radiation Hand Grenade. Direction: Structure optimization with the goal of amplifying power.’

A black line flowed out of the Black Mark, soon followed by a feedback sound.

‘Would you like to enhance the Radiation Hand Grenade?’

A countdown appeared on the cloth-wrapped talisman array: 13 minutes.

‘Yes.’

Yu Hong felt satisfied.

Simply having the Black Mark reinforce and optimize the link between the two greatly reduced the time required, especially since the Vortex Rune Array was already a finished product.

In just a few minutes, he simply moved a stool to the desk and sat down to wait.

Soon.

The time arrived.

The cloth-wrapped talisman array hissed and blurred out, and in the blink of an eye, it transformed into a black-brown rigid object with a handle.

Yu Hong was surprised and carefully inspected the item.

It was about the length of a smartphone and as thick as a cucumber, cylindrical, with an anti-slip pattern that made it easy to grip. The overall texture was hard, seemingly made from a plastic-like material.

There was also a red switch that could slide up and down, with a line of tiny text beneath it: Flip open and throw after three seconds.

“This thing…” Yu Hong held the object, filled with an unexpected mix of surprise and curiosity.

“Logically, the enhancement should be proportional to the time spent; just a few minutes, and the material has even changed… This doesn’t fit the pattern I’ve summarized before.”

He frowed, mentally noting this anomaly for future study.

With the grenade in hand, Yu Hong approached the door, gently opened it, and walked into the yard.

The yard was glowing in the dark night, filled with the radiant white light of enhanced pyroxene grass.

Outside, there were no Blood Tide Monsters, just an inexplicable chill that kept spreading in the dark fog, pervading the area.

Yu Hong, holding a Radiation Hand Grenade, wandered around the yard several times, quickly locating a direction with the help of a detector.

He carefully reached forward with one hand, gently extending it into the black fog outside the wall.

“Hello, is there any brother nearby?”

Whoosh!!

In an instant, a black shadow abruptly appeared in the fog where he had reached his hand.

The shadow also reached out, moving extremely fast to grab at Yu Hong.

Its speed was so fast, so fast that an ordinary person would have no way to react. Even an enhanced person would most likely be unable to retract their hand in time if caught off guard.

And indeed, Yu Hong’s speed was not fast, and he also did not react.

Of course, he didn’t want to react. From the moment he noticed the shadow flickering into existence, with his other hand he turned on the Radiation Hand Grenade and smashed it forward.

Plop.

The hand grenade spun, gently brushing past the shadow’s body as if it had passed through an illusion, a shadow, and lightly fell onto the grass.

And then….

Boom!!!

A circle of transparent, invisible, lightless explosion instantly centered around the shadow and burst open with a bang.

The black shadow dissipated like a bubble, shattering in an instant, vanishing without a trace.

Beep!!

The enhancement detector on Yu Hong’s body simultaneously blared, the reading jumped from a negative value of over one hundred to negative seven thousand plus in an instant, sustained for two seconds, then quickly fell back to around negative two hundred.

Yu Hong blinked his eyes.

“Still there?” he moved his hand, waving the one he had extended to test the waters.

No response.

The fog outside was still there, but the shadow had long since disappeared.

“Hello?”

He waved his hand again.

No one responded.

He then took out the Red Value detector, reached out, and measured into the darkness.

‘-271.241.’

“…” Yu Hong was at a loss for words; he had not expected that just a simple pairing of two runes would unleash such tremendous power.

Of course, it was also because of the targeted intelligence, the optimized combination of Black Marks, that such good results could be produced in one go.

‘Later on, first cause stiffness in the opposition’s back, then destroy their physical body with a massive dose of radiation. Combined, as long as the radiation can be elevated to over six thousand in a single breath, a two-stage explosion might be able to temporarily take down the foe. As for the recovery time after they are destroyed, that’s a matter for later.’

Yu Hong climbed over the courtyard wall and calmly walked into the darkness outside.

The air still carried an extremely powerful negative radiation.

After picking up some dry wood on the way back, Yu Hong changed into his suit and continued to enhance and manufacture new Radiation Hand Grenades.

This thing might be useless against other monsters like the Multi-eyed Bird, as those creatures regenerate quickly and require sustained damage to wear them down.

But for dealing with invisible enemies like the Evil Shadow that are elusive and difficult to handle, it has strong specificity.

‘What I encountered just now probably was a shadow or the like. When facing the real Evil Shadow, who knows what the situation will be. Besides, there’s not just one Evil Shadow; I must prepare more hand grenades for emergencies. Fortunately, Radiation Hand Grenades cause little damage to physical bodies, and though their impact is strong, it’s brief. I don’t have to worry about affecting myself at close range.’

Returning to the cave, Yu Hong began to quickly manufacture new Radiation Hand Grenades.

After testing the hand grenades, their effectiveness was quite astonishing. It just remains to be seen what will happen when facing the real Evil Shadow.

Yu Hong was somewhat looking forward to it.

As night fell, time slowly trickled by. As the Black Mark continued to be enhanced, more and more Radiation Hand Grenades emerged on the wooden table inside the cave.

The number of these things entirely depended on how much material was available for the Vortex Talisman Array and Large Pyroxene Stone graphite powder.

Soon, a total of five hand grenades were perfectly arrayed in front of Yu Hong.

He picked up a hand grenade and carefully placed it in the sealed pocket of his suit.

‘No time to delay; there’s no Blood Tide anyway, so I might as well go to the post office and get the binding mark’s living creatures.’

The enhancement was complete, and instead of letting the Black Mark idle, doing nothing, it was better to get the materials now and synthesize them in advance.

After packing up, Yu Hong tidied up his suit, opened the door, and stepped out quickly.

*

*

*

Thud.

The stone door of the post office was suddenly knocked open.

Li Rushan, holding his daughter and draped in a luminous stone blanket, ran madly.

He crossed the steps, barged through the yard’s fence, and rushed frantically towards the direction of Yu Hong’s cave.

‘Hurry hurry hurry!’

‘I absolutely cannot die! Absolutely not!!’

Li Rushan’s eyes were blood red, his muscles tensed to the extreme, and sweat, accompanied by violent breathing, constantly splattered to the ground.

His legs made muffled thuds on the ground as he ran through the darkness, leaving a chaotic trail of footprints that were messy and seemed to float.

“Daddy… are we going to die?” Aisena asked calmly, curled up in Li Rushan’s arms. At just a few years old, she seemed to have no fear of death, just calmness.

“No… Daddy won’t let you die… You will definitely live on! Definitely!!” Li Rushan managed to squeeze out a faint smile and wrapped the blanket tighter around his daughter.