Chapter 44: Awakening and Shadow-Moon-Level Enemy -2

{Who else is here? Why are only you weak little bugs here?}
Alien words entered their minds from the outside world, and the thunder temporarily subsided.
“I… we were locked in here by someone.”
{And so restricted in movement? Did the crystal’s master run away? Hah, a coward, planning to use me to take out an opponent.}
A sigh came from outside.
{Then I’ll grant his wish.}
Boom!
Liang Xi had already thrown out his steel sword, and after this round of thunder erupted, it trembled violently on the ground by the window, struck by lightning—at this moment, any metal served as a natural lightning rod.
Outside, the few people on the ground didn’t even have time to scream before they shattered amidst the bolts of thunderlight.
……
“Another unfamiliar language that I can understand directly.”
Usually, in such situations, what they encountered were difficult foes to handle.
Luo Bin whispered nervously, “It’s here. Remember what I said? In these places, seeing a humanoid figure is not a good sign.”
Though it wasn’t certain if it was human, at least it spoke in human language.
Knock, knock, knock.
“What!”
The three of them looked toward the old wooden door being knocked. Who would be coming to knock at such a time?
{Won’t you invite me in for a sit?}
“Fall back!” Yang Zicang swiftly pulled Liang Xi behind him. “Jump through the window and run far away.”
“No, I still have a few thousand years of lifespan left; it’s my turn to protect you, Uncle!”
Liang Xi broke free from Yang Zicang’s grip. A faint golden glow of ethereal shadows enveloped him as he stared wide-eyed at the door.
Creak.
The door was pushed open, revealing a man standing outside, clad in a gray-and-white wool tailcoat, with a pale, cracked face, exuding an eerie, weathered and peculiar charm.
He slightly bowed, placing his arm across his chest in a salute, then straightened up with a faint smile.
{Are you also the victims trapped here?}
Snap! With a light flick of his finger, a surge of thunderlight burst forth.
Rumble, rumble, rumble, rumble!
[Scheduling has been maxed out to the highest grid!]
A vacuum seemed to appear within the electric field. Yang Zicang’s scalp tingled as he grabbed the two people beside him, but fine arcs of light still relentlessly extended onto them.
“Who are you?”
{Oh? A question-and-answer model? Hmm, no… you’re trying to interrogate me.}
He adjusted his dirty gloves, stepping in leisurely with composure.
{How amusing. I haven’t been interrogated in years… Who am I? I’m the last guest of this theater.}
“Were you trying to divert our attention just now?” Luo Bin continued.
This damn lunatic— even at a time like this, he wouldn’t let go of the chance to greedily collect intel from a terrifyingly powerful monster like him through the model’s data efficiency.
Yang Zicang dismissed the thoughts about the drunkard. His mind raced: this was only a C-rank intersection; they shouldn’t meet someone absolutely unbeatable.
The other party’s strength should only be slightly higher than the one who took his weapon.
So, he wasn’t invincible.
Recalling the terrifying thunder that had manifested outside but had not yet unfolded in the room.
“He’s stalling for time. For my investment.”
Yang Zicang called out loudly.
{Stalling for time? What if I am?}
The man across from him flicked his finger again. As lightning flashed, his figure merged into the thunderstorm and instantly crossed space, reappearing behind the group.
Thump!
Liang Xi only felt a numbness rush through his body. Intense pain spread across every inch of his skin, and even his stomach spasmed as if twisted into knots.
As his palm pressed against the boy’s back, a crackling thunderous light exploded within the boy’s body.
With a booming sound, Liang Xi was flung away like a tattered rag.
One strike, five thousand time-shifts! Liang Xi’s last thought, while still airborne, was the feedback from his model losing five thousand sequences.
Yang Zicang’s fist, carrying a fierce gust, blasted toward the monster that appeared abruptly beside him like a cannonball.
[Luo Bin has added an investment of 3000N for me!]
A faint smirk curled on the man’s lips, and with a crackling sound, the fist passed right through his body.
The strange figure had already appeared abruptly by the wall; the punch wreathed in intense golden radiance had only hit his departing afterimage.
But the next second.
Boom, crackle!
The gust imbued with fist intent suddenly expanded, spreading out as a surge of golden radiance that flooded onto the strange man.
As if struck by a truck, the figure smashed heavily into the wall, blasting a large hole through the entire structure.
Another shadow of a punch came hurtling down.
{This is…}
[Amplification 1000N!]
Bang, bang, bang!
Yang Zicang appeared before him with equally rapid speed.
{What kind of skill…}
Before the strange figure could react, he was pummeled by a relentless barrage of fists—each time his finger twitched, Yang Zicang’s fist would slash down first with a ferocious blow!
The time-sequence offsets differed across various parts of his body, and Yang Zicang rapidly probed for weak points.
Found it!
{This doesn’t seem like…}
The strange figure pinned beneath the wall had no chance to move, absorbing dozens of punches within a single second!
Bang! Suddenly, a crimson shadow punched down, and the gruesome figure’s body shuddered, emitting a cracking sound.
{No… a bloodline aura… it’s not that, a secret skill?}
Thin blood was already oozing from his mouth, indicating he had little left to guard internally.
“Don’t move!”
The gruesome figure turned his head with great effort, casting a murderous glare around.
“I said don’t fucking move!” Yang Zicang roared wildly.
Bang! This punch, carrying the esoteric essence of centuries of training and Yang Zicang’s last bit of Amplified Chrono, slammed into the monster’s eye socket.
The skin that had shown no injury after countless punches finally yielded with a heavy, dull thud under this blow.
His skull burst open, spattering red and white matter.
The monster’s vitality was terrifyingly tenacious; even with half its head gone, its body could still move. Its index finger and thumb strained to come together.
Clang!
Liang Xi, his clothes tattered and covered in dust, his hair standing on end like bristles, wrapped a thick layer of grass around the sword hilt and cleaved the monster’s right hand clean off.
At the same time, Yang Zicang destroyed its left hand.
The corpse of this monster finally lay still.
[I have gained 100N.]
[I have gained 100 N.]
Yang Zicang and Liang Xi both sensed the feedback from Chrono at the same time.
Yang Zicang thought nothing of it, but Liang Xi, who had just been through life and death, was overjoyed—he had never before obtained such a large amount of Chrono in a single battle.
“He actually attacked you first just now.”
After a brief rest, Yang Zicang gave Liang Xi a thumbs up.
The boy, feeling a bit embarrassed, scratched his head and said,
“Hehe, he probably thought, after hearing what I said, that I had the most Sequence… you’re amazing, big bro!”
“It’s alright. Your courage bought us that opening.”
The opportunity was fleeting, and Yang Zicang seized it.
Luo Bin, whose clothes and pants were now blasted with countless small holes, slumped down onto the straw mat with a weary thud, listening to the voice that resounded in his mind.
[As you survived until the moonlight dissipated, you have gained 30N.]
“And you still said you didn’t get a Skill from that dream,” Luo Bin gasped, shooting Yang Zicang a sideways glance.
“I didn’t acquire it there; I trained and developed it inside that place. It’s called the Explosive Wind Fist.”
“Trained?”
“Didn’t you say that when I get intel on the Complete Stamp Emblem, I should remember to sell it to you? How much Sequence are you planning to spend on it?”
“Huh? Dude, we’re like brothers here, still need to be so formal? I just gave you everything I had left, my absolute last resort.”
Luo Bin had just invested over three thousand years of his Sequence into himself. Without it, it would have been far from easy to handle this suddenly appearing monster.
“Ha, alright then. Consider this my repayment for that free information you gave me before. And yes, I’ve spent most of the four thousand years I earned in there.”
“Spent that much!”
Luo Bin had, in fact, heard that completing the Stamp Emblem would cost quite a bit of Sequence, but he had predicted it would be a few hundred years at most. Even that figure was incredibly tough for an average person to accumulate.
“You can’t tell me you spent Sequence to extend time inside that realm or something.”
“Exactly.”
“What’s the ratio?”
“No ratio—whatever you spend is what it costs, except you can accelerate.”
“Huh? One-to-one!” Luo Bin’s neck shrank, and his mouth fell open in surprise.
Liang Xi also caught on, staring at Brother Yang incredulously.
“So… you spent several thousand years practicing martial arts inside?”
“Ha, not that extreme—most of that time I skipped through with acceleration.”
[Under the fading influence of Moon Shadow, the frequency with Clearmoon has decreased.]
[The intersecting space is now fully stabilized.]
The figure on the ground quickly dissolved into motes of light, which expanded and then coalesced. A small human-like statue appeared on the ground—like a miniature black granite figurine.
“Is this the bonded statue you mentioned?”
Yang Zicang’s heart stirred—could this be a type of monument?
“Heh heh, I know what you’re thinking, but sadly it’s not counted as a Bloodline Resonance Statue. However, once it resonates with the headquarters’ statue, it can remotely use the larger statue’s abilities—essentially a small clone of the headquarters’ monument.”
Liang Xi shot a glance at Yang Zicang, and upon seeing his nod, stepped forward to pick up the small statue.
“Whoa—with this, we can control this area’s opening and closing. We’ll be able to open the channel door anytime.”
“It can do that?” Yang Zicang was taken aback.
Luo Bin stood up, walked over, and took the statue in his hand to sense its power. Sure enough—it worked. This was intelligence even he had never known.
“Hahaha, now I see why those folks held their bonded statue so dearly—it can also seal off the space here after stabilizing the compromised zone. Still though, it takes a hundred years of time sequence to resonate.”
The man’s face was about to split from grinning.
“In that case, let’s make this our base from now on. Who’s going to resonate with this thing?”
The three of them exchanged glances, and Liang Xi said, “Let’s vote. I cast my vote for Brother Yang.”
“Vote for your grandpa.”
Luo Bin casually tossed the statue to Yang Zicang.
……
The three looked down through the window, where several charred, human-like shapes lay on the ground.
But suddenly, they heard faint sobbing sounds—someone was still alive.
Yang Zicang leaped down from the upper floor in one go.
Yu Chen, hanging beneath the staircase, swayed his body like drying meat, nearly driven mad by fear.
“You actually survived.”
“Where it hung wasn’t conductive.”
“Brother, big brother, I was blinded by greed. I know I was wrong.”
To have survived under such circumstances, he was indeed a fortunate person.
“Contact your men outside to come and get you, then get the hell out.”
“Thanks, thank you, big brother. But I don’t have any men left,” Yu Chen said, on the verge of tears. “They’re all dead. The one outside should have been taken out by that guy who ambushed us.”
Helplessly, he looked at Yang Zicang, his heart now devoid of any bitterness.