Jiang Junyi’s fists rained down like a torrent upon the massive energy figure; the giantic Bound Spirit let out a deep, muffled roar that could not penetrate its internal form.
Suddenly, two other vibrations arrived.
“Run, the other two are now here too.”
“Damn it! W- We waded just a little too deep and we hit all three of them!”
All six crushed their Ability Spheres simultaneously, their speed bursting into high momentum as they scattered and dove into the surrounding alleys.
A jeering laugh came from the island’s edge: “Hahaha, the mighty Longteng team is fleeing helter-skelter in terror!”
“Wang Qianjue, if you’ve got the balls, go ahead. I’ll be waiting to buy your ‘Bound Core’.”
When Wang Qianjue and his group had just reached the island and spotted that Jiang Junyi, who had originally been running in the opposite direction, was suddenly altering his course to come their way—with three Bound Spirits hot on his heels—their faces instantly changed in shock.
“Hey, don’t come over here! Ah, you old bastard!”
This group immediately crushed their Ability Spheres and darted away like the wind.
“Damn, we haven’t even warmed our seats yet, and we’ve already burned through two hundred years.”
The team shouted as they ran.
Making each Ability Sphere required a principal of N Duration, plus the sequence units spent to acquire them. This one retreat of seven or eight people alone cost over two hundred years of sequence time.
Just as everyone was being chased by the three massive Bound Spirits, a booming roar erupted from deep within the isolated island. The three monsters halted simultaneously, turned their gazes inland, then changed direction and charged towards the island’s core.
Those fleeing stopped in their tracks and looked deep into the island.
“What’s happening in there?”
“It’s too deep in—who knows? Could it be Cheng Yunze and his team striking again? But they haven’t issued a notice.”
Jiang Junyi walked over and said, “I checked with the Four-Phase Team this morning. They’re stabilizing a Grade-A Abyssal Ground for the newcomers this month and don’t plan to come here.”
Everyone’s expressions shifted at once.
“So someone else can get deep into the island?”
One person beside Wang Qianjue spoke up: “Someone should have entered the depths by a stroke of luck, but it’s unlikely he’ll make it out.”
Waves of dense mental pressure spread out, clearly indicating that someone had angered a powerful being deep within the island.
“Little Ahua has a point.”
“He’s pissed off a horde of bound spirits. He’s doomed.” the person by the shore said.
……
Furious roars echoed relentlessly in the night.
Hong Haocheng ran for his life along the path he had scouted earlier.
“Damn it, why did I have to run into that thing.”
The bound spirit, whose body flickered with obscure, dim lines, wasn’t large, yet it detected him as soon as he approached within about two hundred meters, letting out a booming roar.
Other Bound Spirits’ roars seemed muffled within their bodies, unable to travel far beyond. But its voice was thunderously loud, and its speed wasn’t much slower than his.
“Still chasing! Damn it, I didn’t even take a speck of mud from your territory!”
Crack crack crack, boom boom boom!
Sounds of countless buildings shattering echoed around them as many Bound Spirits converged toward the roar. Fortunately, their goal was to protect the one that had roared.
Swoosh!
“Bang!” – something struck Hong Haocheng from behind.
[I neutralized 30N.]
[I failed to neutralize 350N.]
“Wh-What the hell!”
Hong Haocheng felt a sharp pain as his body was pierced. His consciousness wavered for a moment; he quickly clenched his teeth and focused his attention on running, ignoring the internal pain for the time being.
Blood continuously dripped, forming a trail across the ground, much like the dashed lines he had once sketched.
A roaring explosion sounded; at least dozens of figures rushed to the side of the screeching monster. Fortunately, because of the helpers blocking the way, the monster that had been relentlessly biting him gradually receded into the distance.
Hong Haocheng spat out a mouthful of blood. A dim halo in his gaze glowed faintly. He bent his legs slightly to build momentum and grabbed a branch with one hand, but he fell again.
[Good thing these people are, at least, fools.]
Hong Haocheng stumbled into a weed-infested house that was nothing but a foundation and crashed down into the cellar with a thud.
Then Hong Haocheng completely lost consciousness.
……
When he woke again, the Boy heard the faint chirping of insects.
On checking, his body had indeed healed again. This super-resilient recovery ability never failed to amaze Hong Haocheng, no matter how many times it happened.
“Forget it. I won’t thank you then.”
He patted his solid muscles, and then his eyes were drawn to a blood-stained object on the ground. It still emitted a faint glow.
As Hong Haocheng bent down and touched it, he felt as though his finger had been pricked by something.
[I absorbed 30N of force.]
[I failed to absorb 50N of force.]
Hong Haocheng stared blankly at his broken finger, a hint of joy mingling with the pain.
This familiar ache instantly told him what that thing was—it was the very weapon the Bound Spirit had used to smash his body earlier.
He had thought it was a stone, but it turned out to be a piece of iron.
“These edges are so sharp.”
Carefully, he picked up the fist-sized iron ball. What had just stabbed him were the sharp protrusions covering its surface, and the pain cut deep into his bones, as if the sting of a needle had been instantly transmitted to the depths of his soul.
Taking a closer look, Hong Haocheng noticed a half-ring of iron at the back, where a chain could be attached.
“Could it be a meteor hammer?”
Hong Haocheng tore off some vines and branches, tying them together to fashion a makeshift weapon. After a moment’s thought, a model glowed on his chest, and a broken line shot into it.
[This ‘Virtual Zero Sequence Chrono Weapon’ does not belong to me, so I cannot perform a chronological transfer on it.]
[My investment has failed, but it has taught me a lesson.]
After toying with the weapon for a while, Hong Haocheng climbed out of the underground chamber and returned to the edge of the island, only to find that the distant yacht was gone.
Hong Haocheng frowned. With no way to contact the person in the silver-white model, he had to search for Zhang Miao and the other two on his own.
“Come on, everyone, look! This is the Dragon Soar Team, so shameless—they stole the little Bound Spirit we discovered.”
“Bullshit! We were the ones who took it down first.”
“If we hadn’t shown up here, would you have even gotten a chance?”
Upon first hearing these quarrels, Hong Haocheng only wanted to take a detour, but he suddenly noticed a small boat dragged ashore. The people inside were gone!
Instantly, a surge of anger rushed straight to his head!
The boy gritted his teeth tightly, closed his eyes, and tried to recall the combat knowledge imparted by Feng Juguan and others, which flashed through his mind one after another.
“Dare to mess with my people.”
He prowled around the nearby area without making a sound. As time passed, Hong Haocheng grew increasingly tense inside. It was clear that all three—Zhang Miao and the others—were missing, yet their boat was still there! Could something fatal have happened to them?
He secretly made a note of the faces of those few men, along with the names shouted in their quarrelsome scoldings.
“Wang Qianjue, huh? And that old man. You better not have done anything to piss me off.”
He slipped silently back under the water, approached their vicinity from the bottom, and carefully crawled ashore on the far side of the small boat under the cover of night.
Twenty or thirty meters away, two groups were still locked in a fierce argument when suddenly they heard the ‘vroom’ of an engine roaring. Wang Qianjue and the others turned their heads to look—a yacht was breaking through the water surface and speeding out into the lake.
“Thief!”
“Damn it, are they so destitute they have to steal a boat too?”
Jiang Junyi’s gaze was incredibly sharp, even versatile enough to notice—long before the engine even moved—the shadowy figure slipping into the gloom on the shore. However, he was more than happy to grant these poachers of earthbound-spirits the lesson they deserved.
“Captain, that man’s hairstyle looks… kind of familiar,” whispered a woman by Jiang Junyi’s side, her hand over her mouth.
Pfft, he didn’t care. A faint, inexplicable smile crept onto his face.
……
On the boat, the furious Hong Haocheng sailed off a mile or two before his eyes fell on a pile of food, among which were a few homemade weapons and a pistol. As he was about to examine the marks left by grilled fish on the boat, which seemed to have disappeared, he suddenly heard a rumble in the distance.
Lights and faint voices drifted across the lake.
As Hong Haocheng steered the boat closer, he looked in bewilderment at the three people on the other boat, who were equally surprised.
“Brother Hong, you’re finally back.”
“Uh-huh.”
The two boats gently bumped into each other on the lake.
“This boat of yours…”
“Well…”
Li Yongqin was the first to stand up, rubbing his hands together. Zhang Miao said, “Brother, you didn’t just pick up another boat from someone else, did you?”
“I… I was just in a hurry to find you all, so I borrowed it from a friend.”
Hong Haocheng looked down. The two boats were strikingly similar—no wonder he felt this one didn’t have the ashes from the grilled fish he recalled.
Watching Hong Haocheng’s clumsy lying expression, Cui Rong chuckled and said,
“Borrowed again, huh… Forgot to tell you, Chief. Some city folks make these boats. Once they’re finished, they let someone without a model stay nearby for a day or two. That person turns into a Demonic Nightmare, and after killing them, they get a Demonic Nightmare boat instead. That’s why they all look pretty similar.”
“Kill? But these boats look fine to me, no damage at all,” said Hong Haocheng.
Even his own Demonic Nightmare aircraft had been blown to pieces by Ruan Jiancheng.
Cui Rong, wrapped in a blanket, said, “They have their ways. Oh, by the way, President, be careful of those with telepathic attacks. They’re too terrifying and unresolvable; the Holy Device simply can’t defend against them.”
Listening to his account, Hong Haocheng’s face flickered with surprise. “There’s even mental attacks? That scary, huh?”
Zhang Miao and Li Yongqin’s brows furrowed slightly.
“Indeed, this is truly a different world! This is the kind of otherworld I imagined!”
Hong Haocheng exclaimed with considerable astonishment.
Then, as if reminded of something, he looked around and spotted his iron ball on the deck. He had just set it down carelessly, and its spikes had already embedded into the ship’s hull.
“Let me show you something interesting.”
Hong Haocheng shook the iron ball, which was linked by branches and several vines.
“Be careful, though. This thing carries a Holy Device attack that’s partially undefendable.”
Before Li Yongqin across from him could react, Cui Rong suddenly looked at the ball in shock.
“Undefendable?! Don’t tell me… this was enhanced by a Critical Binding Core? No way.”
Hearing this, Zhang Miao and Li Yongqin’s expressions shifted. Cui Rong looked at Li Yongqin, who stood frozen for a few seconds. The man then glanced down at Cui Rong, his gaze clearly saying: *Did you just hit the nail on the head?*
Zhang Miao said with difficulty, “Brother Hong, you’re not joking, are you? You just wandered around all day and… picked up this kind of weapon?”
Hong Haocheng shook the iron ball in his hand. “You guys seem to know what this is?”
“May I take a look at it?”
Li Yongqin picked up a wooden board and held it flat, allowing Hong Haocheng to place the object on top. He then cautiously touched the safe spot on the spiked iron ball with his finger.
Then the man looked at Hong Haocheng with a shocked expression.
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