Feng Weilan suddenly stood up. "I'll lure it away. You all find an opportunity to throw the bombs."
"No!" Feng Qingping grabbed him. "I'll go! My movement technique is the fastest!"
As the two argued, Jiang Yifan had already rushed out. "Both of you shut up! I have the highest cultivation base here!"
He summoned several low-grade magic tools, detonating them to clear a gap within the mass of tentacles. The mother nest was indeed provoked, and even more tentacles lunged toward him!
"Fourth Senior Brother!"
Quick to react, Feng Weilan snatched a jade bottle and hurled it violently toward the writhing tentacles.
The emerald jade bottle drew a glowing arc through the air. Simultaneously, Jiang Yifan's figure retreated rapidly as his fingers danced through hand seals. The moment he withdrew to stand before the other three, a streak of scarlet fire shot from his fingertip, chasing after the jade bottle.
Boom—!
Amidst a deafening explosion, a cloud of emerald-green fire soared into the sky. Feng Qingping had already unfolded her array disk, its pale gold protective barrier barely blocking the rampaging shockwave.
Within the flames, the tentacles twisted frantically, their surfaces carbonizing and peeling off at a visible rate.
To their surprise, the explosion also ignited the surrounding bone-rotting trees, forming a wall of fire that temporarily blocked the mother nest's pursuit.
"Now's our chance!" Feng Weilan was the first to react. "Break through toward the northeast!"
The four of them quickly retreated, using the chaos created by the explosion. As she ran, Li Nanzhu looked back to observe, finding that the fire was indeed continuing to burn, even igniting more tentacles burrowing out from underground.
"It's not enough!" Li Nanzhu shouted while running. "There are too many tentacles. Even if some are set on fire, the mother nest can completely discard them!"
"Can you make more, Little Junior Sister?" Feng Qingping was constantly setting down arrays behind them, attempting to block the spreading tentacles.
"I need at least the time it takes to finish a cup of tea!" Li Nanzhu bit her lip. It wasn't hard to burn the tentacles on a large scale, but the difficulty lay in the mother nest body itself. As long as the mother nest body didn't die, the tentacles would keep coming endlessly!
To stop all this, she had to create a bomb powerful enough to directly destroy the mother nest body!
"Cover Little Junior Sister!" Feng Qingping suddenly came to a halt, and Li Nanzhu quickly pulled two bronze alchemy furnaces from her storage bag.
Without a word, Feng Weilan drew a silver arc with his long blade, severing all the pursuing tentacles.
Jiang Yifan directly tore off his damaged vambrace. "Use my star-patterned iron!"
Feng Qingping acted even faster, her belt buckle already flying from her hand, drawing a silver light in the air. "Catch!"
"Is it enough?" Feng Weilan asked, while Jiang Yifan began to melt the star-patterned iron with true fire.
"It's still far from enough!" Li Nanzhu took the vambrace fragments, her gaze sweeping over the remaining star-patterned iron equipment on the three of them. "I need more!"
Three crisp clinking sounds rang out.
Feng Weilan's blade qi precisely shaved off the remaining star-patterned iron protective gear from the three of them. Simultaneously, the true fire in Jiang Yifan's palm surged, instantly melting the fragments into molten iron!
Li Nanzhu took the molten iron and poured it directly into the alchemy furnaces, carefully adding bone-rotting resin at the same time.
Her movements were so fast they almost left afterimages, her fingertips controlling the temperature with precision. "The reaction intensity needs to be increased this time..."
She knew she had to be extremely cautious; the potency of the concoction had to be enough to destroy the mother nest, yet it couldn't exceed the limits of the alchemy furnaces.
The slightest error, and they would be blown to pieces by their own weapon before they could even wound the enemy.
Even more pressing was that the opportunity was fleeting.
The mother nest could launch a fatal blow at any moment. There wasn't much time left, and the time it took to finish a cup of tea was the absolute limit of what they could bargain for.
Li Nanzhu had no choice but to force her divine sense to split into two, monitoring the reactions in both alchemy furnaces simultaneously. The temperature of the left furnace had to be kept below the critical point, while the right furnace required continuous pressure.
She gritted her teeth, fine beads of sweat appearing on her forehead. Any mistake could turn this carefully planned counterattack into a tragedy of self-destruction!
"Stay steady..." she whispered in her heart, even making her breathing intentionally light.
The whistling sounds of the tentacles cutting through the air and the sounds of her senior brothers and sister fighting around her became distractions she had to tune out.
But at this moment, she didn't dare make even a single strange sound—any distraction could cause her companions to reveal a weakness, and in this life-or-death situation, one weakness was enough to be fatal.
"Suisui!"
Suisui had long been standing by. Their long-term coordination during alchemy allowed it to immediately understand her intent.
Just as Li Nanzhu spoke, Suisui exhaled a large cloud of ice mist. A layer of white frost quickly formed on the furnace surfaces, and the vibrations finally subsided slightly.
"Good job, Suisui!" Seeing the alchemy furnaces stabilize, Li Nanzhu continued to control the fire temperature steadily, while Suisui flew forward again to help the others fend off the tentacles!
"It's done!" It felt like a long time had passed, yet also only the blink of an eye. Li Nanzhu opened the furnace lids, and the liquid inside revealed an eerie silver-blue color. "This time, we must burn the mother nest body!"
Just as she was about to divide the liquid, the ground suddenly shook violently! A tentacle as thick as a water bucket burst from the earth, aiming straight for the alchemy furnaces!
"Look out!" Feng Qingping threw out an attack, but it only managed to shave off a layer of skin from the tentacle.
In the nick of time, Jiang Yifan violently shoved Li Nanzhu aside, but he was grazed by the tentacle on his shoulder, blood instantly gushing out.
"Fourth Senior Brother!" Li Nanzhu shouted instinctively.
"Don't worry about me!" Jiang Yifan bit his lip and tore off a sleeve to bind the wound. "Keep going!"
Li Nanzhu took a deep breath, quickly dividing one furnace of the concoction into thirty small bottles, while storing the other furnace's contents separately—this was the ultimate weapon specifically prepared for the mother nest body.
She didn't want to use this final resort unless it was absolutely necessary. After all, its power was too terrifying. Whoever went to execute it might not have time to escape; it was the last of all last resorts.
"Fifth Senior Sister!" She quickly tossed three bottles of the concoction to Feng Qingping. "Use these to lure them away!"
Feng Qingping caught the porcelain bottles and darted toward the densest cluster of tentacles!
The three bottles exploded one after another, and waves of silver-blue fire instantly swallowed more than a dozen tentacles, forming a fire wall in the passage.
"Go!" Feng Weilan grabbed Li Nanzhu. "Break through now!"
The four of them sprinted toward the outskirts of the Blackwater Marsh, throwing a bottle of the concoction every time the tentacles drew close.
Li Nanzhu noticed that the explosion's effect was better than expected and immediately adjusted their strategy. "Don't throw them at the same time. Space them out by three breaths to create a continuous explosion!"
Feng Weilan immediately understood her intention, precisely controlling the rhythm of his throws.
For a time, continuous explosions rang out in the passage. Waves of silver-green fire came one after another, forcibly suppressing the mass of tentacles ten yards away.
At the same time, Li Nanzhu observed the spread of the fire as she ran, her pupils suddenly shrinking. "Something's wrong! The mother nest is severing its own limbs to survive!"
She saw those tentacles swallowed by the flames actually severing themselves, while new tentacles grew frantically from the breaks, even faster than before!
"It's evolving too quickly..." Jiang Yifan's face was pale. "If this continues, we'll be worn down! We won't be able to escape the Blackwater Marsh..."
The notoriety of the Blackwater Marsh was no joke—even the Forest of Demonic Beasts, known for its dangers, seemed mild in comparison.
Every inch of this marsh hid killing intent. However, at this moment, the horror displayed by the mother nest made those original dangers seem like mere background scenery.
Suisui suddenly started chirping and clicking.
Li Nanzhu looked down and saw countless tiny flesh buds emerging from the mud!
"There's no more time." Her knuckles turned white. "This time, we must strike the core directly."
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