Chapter 124 Rescue Operation
Ji Huaisu brandished his light shield and emerged from a pile of rubble. The dust explosion came too quickly and suddenly. Even though the ice houses protected the city from damage, the aftermath of the attack sent the citizens careening off their horses.
She found Vander, who had been knocked out of her pocket. The Eye Demon lay facedown in the mud, its tentacles occasionally twitching, looking like a piece of shredded squid. She picked Vander up and quickly activated the communication relic: (Akong, how are you over there!)
(Hold on, save the city... Find the Iceman...) Chu Hengkong's voice was intermittent due to the interference of magic power, (Be careful... Fire Corpse...)
(the same as you.)
She paused her communication, dodging a glowing claw. Glittering masses of mud rose from the ground, transforming into amorphous humanoid forms. The Scourge's characteristics began to unfold. The innocents killed in the first earthquakes transformed into glowing corpses, and another evil force was brewing.
Ji Huaisu knew she couldn't waste any more time. She grabbed Fander and rushed towards the direction with the highest concentration of water elements. Fander's eyes were still rolling around. "What class is it now?"
"Wake up, useless college student! You should have graduated long ago!"
"Oh, oh, oh." Vander rubbed his eyes confusedly. "I saw so many students and thought I was..."
Ji Huaisu slammed on the brakes and swerved. She saw the students too. An entire elementary school across the street had taken refuge in the playground, guided by their teacher. This would have protected them from falling objects, but it was of little use in the face of the natural disaster unleashed by the stone monster. The school building they faced was already teetering on the brink of collapse, poised to fall upon the children in the next second.
Ji Huaisu leaped onto the playground and pressed a metal piece resembling a token onto her light shield. The faint glow suddenly grew, forming a vast shield that enveloped the playground. This was a reinforcement device developed by Youyou, capable of flexibly adjusting its range as long as power was continuously supplied. At the critical moment, the collapsing building was stopped by the light shield, and Ji Huaisu breathed a sigh of relief. But then she saw a wriggling shadow, pulsing behind the children as if possessed.
A beast covered in sharp blades leaped from the shadows. It was the Plasma 2 Scourge, the Slayer! From a distance as close as a finger, the beast, which delighted in stripping flesh and blood, pounced on the child. Ji Huaisu had made a mistake. Her light shield cast a large shadow, shielding it from external attacks while also providing a path for the Slayer to sneak in.
The gleaming black blade blocked the beast's fangs, and with a brilliant strike, it severed the fangs, forcing the slayer back. A girl in a yellow outfit descended from the sky, her scarf fluttering behind her.
Ji Huaisu was overjoyed: "You are Miss Retreat!"
"Yeah, let's just take it as it is. It's a coincidence that we met here, Miss Light Shield." Qing Ye drew out another long sword. "I roughly understand the situation. The tentacle man on your side is fighting with the mayor, right?"
Fander was shocked when he heard this: "You know all this?"
"Don't underestimate my reasoning ability!" Miss Qingye took the opportunity to brag, slashing out a cross of blade light to force the killer ghost back, "We can talk later, let's deal with this one first-"
A twilight glint flashed in Fander's eyes, and the incredibly agile Ghost Slayer, under the influence of hypnosis, froze in mid-air, unexpectedly taking a cross-cut from Qingye. Its body was cleaved apart by the blade's light, and Ji Huaisu seized the opportunity to transform his shadow into a blade and strike out, completely slashing it with the enhanced power of the shadow blade.
"Let's take care of this killer ghost..." Qingye's jaw was about to dislocate. "Did you really kill the killer ghost instantly with the two of us?! And what kind of technical shadow can you use like this?!"
"With Vander's help, killing a dog is not a problem." Ji Huaisu put away the shadow blade, and couldn't help but sigh in his heart that hypnosis is really an amazing thing. If Vander had been brought to the field back then, Kanin would not have had the chance to act so rampantly.
She patted Qingye, who was still in shock: "What did you want to say just now?"
Qing Ye came back to his senses: "Come with me to rescue the Iceman, it will be too late if you are slow!"
"Kid, can you be more realistic? We can barely protect ourselves in this situation. Do we really need to save it from a single particle of turbid tears?" Vander pointed to the sky. "Look at that huge ice cap. It's already withstood several waves of bombardment. If they cover us up, we'll—fuck!"
The Eye Demon let out a shrill scream. Ji Huaisu looked up when he heard it, and gasped after seeing clearly.
Through the ice cap, she saw a massive "funnel," an incalculable mass of gravel swirling high above the city. A thin brown line extended from the cone's lower end. That line pierced deeply into the igloo, and the brown color, representing the stone demon's power, spread through the ice with the speed of a drop of ink falling into clear water.
The brown color was the Stone Monster's dust. Like a swarm of hungry locusts, they dismembered, divided, and assimilated the ice, seizing it with a higher power. Seeing that its bombardment was ineffective, the Stone Monster changed its strategy and began to pierce the igloo with needles of sand. When the color penetrated the obstacles and reached the ground, the entire igloo, along with Sethron himself, would be devoured by the Stone Monster!
"Damn it, what the hell is this fight?" Ji Huaisu cursed. "Why does a Wu Ding Chen have to swallow his tears? Is this the strength of Particle 3? I think it's not much worse than Mo Biao!"
"Shut up your crow's mouth! If Mo Biao had come, we would have all been dead!" Vander's eyes turned pale. "You said before that those gray mosaics were your kind, right? Can you tell your cute elves to think of a solution? If they keep going on like this, this city will be destroyed!"
At that moment, light and fire burst forth in the distance, and another violent earthquake shook the ground. Chu Hengkong fired a second shot from his Dragon Spear to stop the landslide, but everyone knew that this was not the end of the crisis. The igloo in the sky could collapse at any moment. The initial earthquake was still continuing, and the building was crumbling every moment.
Both Chu Hengkong and Shax were assassins, specializing in one-on-one battles between powerful opponents. However, the Scourge were tyrants known for their wide-area attacks. The aftermath of a single Stone Demon's battle was enough to destroy the city twice. There was no safe place in Golden Leaf City right now. The Scourge's influence was becoming increasingly pronounced, with demon-killing auras appearing one after another and glowing corpses lining the streets. They wanted to rescue Sethron, but they couldn't leave the helpless child beside them.
Ji Huaisu also realized this. She was desperate and shouted, clutching her chest: "Ancestors, if you know what's happening, please show your wisdom! If you don't come out, we'll all die!"
The shadow knights rose from the ground, and their heavy light shields connected to each other, like a shining wall blocking the civilians!
The elementary school trio was stunned. None of them had expected their plea for help to come true. A slender knight, his armor the brownish-yellow of the earth, stood before Ji Huaisu. His eyes swept between Ji Huaisu and Qingye.
"Allied... forces...?"
When Ji Huaisu heard the yellow-armored knight's voice, he nodded vigorously without thinking: "Allies! I am an Allied!!"
The knight in yellow armor struck his breastplate with one hand, as if in a salute. The other knights drew their swords and pointed their shadow blades at the back of the knight in yellow armor to deliver power.
He plunged his massive sword into the earth, halting the tremors that had shaken the city. With the knight's sword at its center, an ochre-colored magic circle emerged from the ground, spreading across the city in the blink of an eye. Twelve stone prisms rose from the magic circle, calming the shaking earth and supporting the collapsed buildings.
Discipline Seal: Earth Lock.
The yellow-armored knight's silhouette vanished into dust, dissolving into the wind after the blow. Another tall knight stepped forward, his head held high, his armor a crimson as blazing. Using his shield of light, he glided across the city, approaching Chu Hengkong, who was battling the avalanche. The lingering flames of ambition seemed to be drawn to the knight's shield.
He raised his azure shield of light and dove into the flames along with his weapon. The flowing flames instantly grew tenfold, forming a wall of fire that surrounded the sand funnel in the air.
Discipline Seal: Flowing Fire Seal.
The other knights formed a tacit understanding, using light shields to protect the civilians and shadow blades to fight the natural disaster, solving the urgent problem. Ji Huaisu cheered and pulled Qingye towards the ice house.
Qing Ye hadn't bothered to talk since just now. After finally digesting the current situation, she spoke with difficulty: "Are you... a necromancer?"
"What the hell is a mage? I'm a knight!!"
Fander's sharp eyes caught sight of a furry gray ball emerging from the ruins. Gulibo, frantically carrying a large flower pot, ran about with sweat dripping from the tip of his nose. "Take me with you! Let's go too!"
·
High in the sky, at the top of the gravel funnel.
Chu Hengkong retracted his spear, resisting the urge to catch his breath. The intense battle with Shax had already consumed a great deal of his energy, and the two consecutive dragon-patterned spearshots were like draining the fuel from the fire. Meanwhile, Yiqi Qianqiu was still in operation, exerting increasing pressure on him with every moment.
At that moment, he actually missed Yingshi Town a little. Back then, if they lost the Immortal Machine, the worst that could happen was that they all died together. There was no psychological pressure. Now, he could survive no matter what, but the hundreds of thousands of civilians below him couldn't. It was precisely because he was free from fear for his own life that the burden on his shoulders felt particularly heavy.
He spoke with great emotion: "You don't have to destroy your own city."
For the first time since the battle began, a man's voice rose from the gravel. A stone demon with a hollow head emerged from the dust, twirling its withered fingers like a musician.
"Have you ever played with building blocks, Monk Wu?" the stone demon Jinye's voice was vague. "I really like playing with building blocks. I stack the small blocks and piece them together to form beautiful buildings. I use the buildings to build small cities. When the city is complete, I kick it and let it collapse into dust.
It's so much fun, it relieves stress and relaxes my mind. Creating and destroying are equally pleasurable, and I'm enjoying my life now!"
It nodded its empty head and laughed harmlessly. "Do you think I have no reason to target a worker? No reason to push over and smash these little building blocks? No reason to be your enemy? I really have no reason to do it, but I also have no reason not to do it. So why don't I take action~~?"
"To do whatever I please, to become a god or a demon in a split second, this is the true meaning of Unfixed Dust. Crushing your reasons and meanings makes me feel... immense joy from the bottom of my heart!"
The stone monster's torso was pierced by a single shot, and a thousand laughs rose in the dust. Hundreds of stone monster clones fell, surrounding Chu Hengkong and clapping and laughing.
Chu Hengkong stopped talking. He finally understood why these heretics were called "demons." It was incomprehensible, without reason or logic, like a natural disaster given form, its destruction unleashing primal emotions. The moment it touched upon the secrets beneath the earth, the magical scholar Jin Ye went completely mad. Now, he had lost his human form, a mere demon wielding his power.
"What good luck! It's like God is helping me! I'm just looking for someone to put my many brilliant ideas to the test, and here comes someone like you who is indestructible and invincible. Don't die so easily, make good use of your consumables!"
The stone monsters, noisy like flocks of birds, were born one after another amidst their malicious laughter. Stone, soil, gravel, air—the matter affected by the Scourge—multiplied amidst their laughter. The golden leaf began to unleash its true power. Nearly half of it focused on drilling funnels through the ice, while the majority gathered in the sky to form transparent spheres.
The sphere's volume could easily encompass several city blocks. It was completely transparent yet unmistakably "visible," as every tiny particle within it vibrated at an extremely high frequency, resembling a fuzzy, unstable space. The transparent sphere brushed past the wall of fire at the edge of the funnel, and with a precision unattainable by sight, the flames were broken down and devoured, a third of the blaze instantly extinguished.
"Overclocked Vibration Cutting Sphere...ah, that's too ugly, let's just call it this." Jin Ye whistled, "Eraser."
The sphere, engulfing everything, paused in mid-air before descending with lightning speed. Chu Hengkong thrust his tentacles high into the sky, gathering the fire of ambition into a pillar of flame that reached the heavens.
Green roast!
He made his decision without hesitation, unleashing his daily burst of strength. A pillar of cyan flame erupted, like a blazing pillar bearing the golden leaf's all-consuming attack. However, the stone demon merely smirked, and several more similar gusts of destructive wind blew, ready to attack as soon as the pillar of flame vanished.
Beneath their feet, nearly a third of the ice buildings supporting the city had been assimilated into the sand. Goldleaf City was in imminent danger.
(End of this chapter)
Continue read on readnovelmtl.com
