Chapter 298: Striking Again
After hearing what Xuan Che said, Yu Sheng couldn't help but think a little more, and his mind filled with further guesses about the Sacred Seclusion Conclave's activities in the Borderlands.
But a faint sound suddenly emerging from the mist interrupted his thoughts.
*Plop.*
It sounded like the noise of a foot stepping in a puddle of water.
Yu Sheng immediately turned toward the direction of the sound, but only saw milky white mist slowly undulating and flowing not far away.
The ground all around was dry, with no standing water at all, let alone anyone walking through the mist in puddles.
Yet the more this was the case, the more alert Yu Sheng became.
An unnatural sound appearing in the visible environment could only mean that something "unreasonable" was drawing near.
"The sky is getting darker," Hu Li muttered beside him.
Prompted by the fox-girl's reminder, Yu Sheng immediately noticed the change in the sky.
When they had left, the real-world was still broad daylight, so this "city in the mist" that always "corresponded" to the real was also daytime. Despite the heavy fog, the sky still showed clear brightness. But somehow, that bright sky was rapidly growing dim.
It was as if thick black clouds were hanging over this fog.
Yu Sheng frowned, and just then, he heard that strange sound again: *plop.*
The sound of a foot stepping in a puddle came again, and this time it was closer!
And almost at the same time this footstep sounded, he heard a second and a third!
*Plop, plop.* Successive footsteps instantly became dense, coming from multiple different directions, some far, some near.
A sudden intuition welled up from the bottom of his heart. Yu Sheng whirled around to look at the mist a few meters away, and another footstep came from that direction almost simultaneously. This time, he finally saw some trace.
Nearly transparent splashes of water rose in the fog, as if a creature from another dimension was stepping on invisible puddles, and the splashing water dampened the mist of the current dimension.
The moment Yu Sheng saw that faint trace, a vague sound of something cutting through the air abruptly rang out, and something lunged at him.
Yu Sheng only saw an almost transparent shadow that warped slightly in the fog.
Hastily raising the club in his hand, he swung it horizontally forward, then sidestepped. Relying solely on that fleeting afterimage, he lifted his leg and kicked toward the empty air!
The spiked club seemed to hit something. He saw bright sparks burst in the air, and a tremendous recoil made his tiger's mouth go numb. But he also succeeded in slowing the lunging enemy. The latter's momentum stalled, and it had no way to avoid being kicked by Yu Sheng.
It felt to Yu Sheng like he had kicked a piece of metal.
The next second, he found his judgment was correct—the attacker's "invisibility" was broken by his powerful strike. A "knight" completely wrapped in heavy brass armor suddenly materialized in the air, flew sideways through the sky, and slammed to the ground with a loud crash, shattering into a mess of loose armor parts scattered on the floor.
Seeing this, Yu Sheng was startled on the spot. "Holy shit! What the hell is that?!"
And then things got even weirder.
The brass armor that had fallen into pieces lay still for barely a few seconds before a large quantity of black, sticky, repulsive matter—reminiscent of swamp mud—began to flow out from within. Great globs of that "mud" writhed violently like some kind of mollusk, making nauseating sounds as they separated from the armor. They rapidly coalesced, wobbled upright, and took the shape of a hunched humanoid form. Then—
Then a Fox Carrot Fireball (a massive wad of fox fire) roared over and burned that humanoid mud to ashes.
"What the hell is that?" the little puppet on Yu Sheng's shoulder also cried out in alarm. "Something really disgusting flowed out of that shell!"
"How the hell should I know what it is," Yu Sheng said loudly, while keeping a close eye on the brass armor that now seemed completely motionless and the ashes of the mud, constantly adjusting his stance to prepare for the next attack. "I should have brought Little Red Riding Hood out—she knows more!"
"She's in class right now—she's a senior in high school!"
Yu Sheng was about to say something else, but the sudden clatter of murderous footsteps all around interrupted him. Then, one after another, the sounds of things tearing through the air ripped through the surrounding mist.
It seemed that the death of the first attacker had enraged the "brass knights" hiding in the fog. The ones that had only been adjusting their encirclement now launched a dense assault. As illusory water splashes rose from the mist, nearly transparent figures pounced from all sides!
Yu Sheng only had time to shout "Watch out!" before he had to wield his spiked club and focus on the enemies coming at him.
The next instant, a dense net of black threads burst out from beside him. Those threads silently wove through the mist, covering every direction where enemy presence or strange noises appeared.
The spreading web swept indiscriminately through the air. Even though the enemies were invisible, they were touched and entangled by the sweeping strands. With just one contact, Irene could at least cause them a few seconds of interference and delay. The disrupted "brass knights" were immediately hindered mid-charge—some stumbled and fell, some froze in place abruptly. And with that interference, their concealment was instantly weakened, and translucent phantoms resembling glass sculptures covered in a film of water emerged one after another in the air.
Yu Sheng did not miss this excellent opportunity. He swung his spiked club and smashed an enemy that had suddenly frozen in front of him.
The heavy, solid brass armor disintegrated in midair, and the sticky black matter burst and splattered like mud squeezed out of a container.
Hu Li ferociously pounced on another suit of armor that had appeared in the air. First she kicked it away, then closed in, grabbed its arm and ripped it off, then the helmet, the thick chest plate, the legs... She dismantled the armor into pieces almost instantly, relying purely on bestial strength. Then fox fire exploded behind her, and the blazing flames burned all the muddy matter around her to ash.
And then a chill aura suddenly appeared on the battlefield, accompanied by a clear, resonant metal hum.
Yu Sheng subconsciously looked toward the direction of the sound, just in time to see Xuan Che take a step forward. A sword that constantly emitted faint blue cold air had somehow appeared in his hand. The blade cut through the air, instantly freezing even the surrounding thick fog into countless fine ice crystals that fell to the ground.
Frost spread everywhere; icy cold air radiated from Xuan Che as the center and swept through the entire mist.
Yu Sheng was instantly captivated by the sight. A thought sprang to mind: *No wonder he's a cultivator—just look at those special effects!*
Then he saw Xuan Che step forward, casually flick his hand, and the icy sword left his hand. But instead of flying toward an enemy, it floated behind him as if it had a will of its own. Then he raised a hand, formed a seal, and rapidly drew a few golden runes in the air. With his other hand, he turned over his palm and somehow produced more than a dozen various pills, which he threw into his mouth one after another...
Yu Sheng: "...?"
The next moment, he saw multicolored lights rising from Xuan Che's body one after another. With each pill he swallowed, the radiance gathering around him seemed to grow stronger. Then the man quickly produced all kinds of talisman papers from who knows where, casually scattering them into the air. The talismans spontaneously combusted in midair, turning into streams of light that circled his body. Before those talismans had even finished burning, he pulled out another handful of pills and tossed them into his mouth as if they cost nothing...
After going through several rounds of this in the blink of an eye, he finally stopped. He walked up to a brass knight that had been restrained in the air by spider silk, stopped, slightly lowered his hips, raised his hand, gathered his breath, and threw a... simple, unadorned straight punch.
Yu Sheng heard a very muffled *puff*, as if someone had blown away a puff of dust. Then came an eerie, low hum.
The thick mist that had filled the entire street instantly dissipated. A gentle breeze brushed his face. The seven or eight brass knights in front of Xuan Che, along with a building further away, were simply blown away.
Yu Sheng even suspected that the space in the distance had warped a little, because he saw blurry, suspicious cracks appear in the air.
But he had no time to marvel at the guy's ridiculously cool straight punch.
Because at the moment the surrounding mist cleared, and a large number of brass knights were forced out of invisibility by the residual force of that punch, he suddenly sensed an aura—the small amount of blood he had separated earlier.
It was that "artificial saint"!
This aura was approaching at an astonishing speed, almost teleporting from some hiding place to the vicinity. Yu Sheng only had time to look up in the direction of the aura, and saw a dark shadow suddenly appear in the air a dozen meters away. That familiar, tall, slender "steel" puppet leaped directly out of the shadow, as gracefully as a dancer, but as swift as lightning, viciously thrusting toward Xuan Che, who had not yet withdrawn his fist.
In the nick of time, Xuan Che's figure flickered just before those sharp, deadly blades got near his back. Then he turned into a flash of lightning and blinked to a spot a dozen meters away. Almost simultaneously, several blindingly hot beams of light shot out from beside Yu Sheng's face, fiercely sweeping toward the suddenly attacking "artificial saint."
Irene (Pro Edition) had been holding back all this time because she knew that although the brass knights were strange, they were no match for Yu Sheng and Hu Li. Besides, there was Xuan Che, who seemed quite capable. And since Yu Sheng had said the "artificial saint" might be lurking nearby, she was well aware that her body's energy was limited, so she had held back until now.
Faced with this sudden, unfamiliar attack, the artificial saint reacted extremely quickly—she instantly dodged to the side, bending her joints to nearly breaking-point limits, and managed to avoid most of the beams.
But one ray still struck her flank.
That armor shell, which only left a black mark when hit by fox fire, could withstand various small-to-medium-caliber firepower and was immune to most spells—was directly penetrated by that "Irene Ray."
(End of this chapter)