Qiu Shubai’s sword pulled out of a bone lizard’s eye socket. Before she could even shake off the white slurry clinging to the blade, two more pounced from her left.
She didn’t retreat. Instead, she took a half-step back with her right foot, twisting her waist while pulling her blade across in a horizontal sweep.
The white light of Bloodfall carved an arc through the night. The heads of the two bone lizards, along with half their cervical vertebrae, were sliced off, landing in a pile of bloody slush three meters away.
This was the forty-first one she had slain tonight.
Tang Xuan was the one keeping count for her. That girl was crouched atop an overturned armored vehicle twenty meters away, a ball of white light held in her hand while she chewed a piece of bubble gum.
Every time a bubble popped, she would let out a curse, then chew, blow, and pop another.
“Chief, thirty meters to your left-rear. Those green-skinned bastards are creeping up again. At least twenty of them.”
Tang Xuan’s voice squeezed through the comms channel, her words coming out as fast as a tongue twister. “I need ten more seconds to charge up. Can you hold them off?”
Qiu Shubai didn’t respond; her sword had already met the incoming swarm.
She had never been one for talking during a fight. It wasn’t that she was cold or aloof; it was simply that her breath was more valuable when used elsewhere.
Breathe, grit teeth, and swallow the metallic taste of blood back down.
Speaking would break her rhythm, and in a siege of this density, once the rhythm was lost, the price would be another wound on her body.
A dozen or so meters behind her, Li Qiang stood next to an overturned military truck.
His hands were raised level with his chest, fingers spread wide as the energy of Flowing Cloud Stardust transformed into a faint silver mist, spreading out from his palms.
The silver mist rolled along the ground, weaving around broken bricks and corpses to flow precisely beneath the feet of Qiu Shubai and Tang Xuan. It then climbed up their legs, seeping into their uniforms and pressing against their skin.
Qiu Shubai could clearly feel the wound beneath her shoulder blade, which was still seeping blood, beginning to close. This was a normal reaction to the accelerated clotting caused by the replenishment of blood energy.
She didn’t look back, but her sword strikes grew a few degrees faster.
Li Qiang’s support never required a thank you, and he didn’t care for one either. However, when no one was looking, he would use his sleeve to wipe away a nosebleed.
The intensity of channeling his blood energy was too high; the mucous membranes in his nasal cavity were the first to give out.
Others on the defensive line were also fighting—military Punishers, members of the Ability Bureau, and several middle-aged men wearing the badges of the Punisher Association.
Everyone’s position shifted constantly under the onslaught of the mutant beasts, like reefs being repeatedly pushed by the tide, moving back and forth over shredded meat and shell casings.
Luo Yang arrived at this exact moment.
He didn’t rush toward the front line. Instead, he slipped into a half-collapsed power distribution room on the right side of the bridgehead, standing with his back against the wall as his mental power spread out like a net.
The golden tree in his Sea of Consciousness swayed gently the moment he expanded his perception, the light flowing between its leaves brightening by several degrees.
Within an eight-kilometer radius, every energy fluctuation was as clear as if viewed through a magnifying glass.
The mutant beasts swarming the bridgehead were a mix of Level 1s and 2s, numbering roughly over three hundred.
The number wasn’t small, but their energy signatures were scattered and chaotic.
The bone lizards charging at the very front were covered in bullet holes and blade marks—clearly remnants of previous waves that had been battered and then regrouped.
The real threat was hiding in the back.
Several larger creatures were crouched in the shadows of the bridge piers, surrounded by a dense cluster of low-tier mutant beasts.
They weren’t moving, even keeping their breathing patterns extremely low, as if waiting for a signal.
Snow lions.
Luo Yang remembered the standard illustrations in the textbooks clearly. Their silver-white manes would glow with a cold light when they were filled with energy.
This type of mutant beast stood about 1.8 to 2 meters tall at the shoulder. Their forelimbs were thicker and stronger than their hind limbs, and their explosive pounce could cover a distance of fifty meters in under two seconds.
Furthermore, they had weak social instincts and strong territorial awareness; they usually didn’t appear in groups in human settlements unless forcibly integrated by a higher-level member of their species.
At this moment, six Level 3 snow lions were all squeezed under a single viaduct. This scene was more absurd than seeing six tigers in a wet market.
Luo Yang suppressed his blood energy fluctuations to the absolute minimum, even slowing the rise and fall of his chest.
Yan Zhi had it even easier. She didn’t have much of a fluctuation to suppress in the first place, standing there looking no different from a broken lamppost.
He didn’t want to alert the prey. These Level 3 snow lions likely already recognized his aura.
If they sensed his presence, they would most likely turn and run, then scatter to other defensive lines.
If that happened, he would spend half the night just chasing them down, losing the chance to wipe them all out in one go.
The situation at the bridgehead continued to deteriorate.
A Level 2 bone lizard braved the dense hail of bullets to leap onto the barricade made of concrete debris, its front claw swatting away a soldier who was in the middle of changing a magazine.
When the man landed, the back of his head struck a piece of rebar, and he didn’t get back up.
Immediately after, a narrow gap was torn in the left side of the defense, and two bone lizards squeezed through the opening.
A Punisher from the Ability Bureau lunged forward to block them but was bitten on the calf by another lizard from the side. The sound of bone shattering mixed with the shrieks, making one’s teeth ache just listening to it.
The gap was plugged, but at the cost of two corpses and one critically wounded soldier.
Luo Yang’s gaze swept over those who had fallen without stopping for a moment.
In his mental perception, those snow lions under the shadows of the bridge piers finally moved.
This was exactly what they had been waiting for.
The six snow lions prowled out from the shadows.
The one in the lead was the largest, its silver-white mane streaked with grey. Its energy signature was the strongest, appearing to have already touched the threshold of Level 4.
They stepped over the broken bricks and bloody slush, their footsteps as light as a cat’s. With the composure of those thinking, “Finally, it’s my turn,” they walked step by step toward the humans locked in battle.
When they were only fifty meters away from the human line, they began to accelerate.
Fifty meters took them just over a second.
Six silver-white shadows sliced through the night, crashing into the defensive line almost simultaneously.
The barricades were no better than paper in front of them, and concrete fragments were sent flying in all directions.
A fist-sized stone grazed Qiu Shubai’s ear and slammed into the truck door behind her, leaving a deep dent.
Qiu Shubai took on the one in the lead. Bloodfall collided with the snow lion’s front claw, white light and silver radiance twisting into a mess. She was knocked back a dozen steps.
The soles of her boots dragged two scorched black streaks across the asphalt. The wounds on her hand that had just begun to heal split open again, blood trickling down the hilt of her sword.
She didn't have time to look at her wound; she was already focused on the snow lion’s next strike.
The snow lion didn't give her much time. Its silver mane flared out as energy formed a visible circle of cold light around its body, and its second claw swiped down at her head.
Tang Xuan’s Light Flame exploded from the other side. She had jumped off the armored vehicle, her hands clasping together before pulling apart again.
A pillar of blazing white fire erupted from her palms, burning through a snow lion’s mane defense and blasting a scorched wound into its left shoulder.
The snow lion let out a low roar of pain, but instead of retreating, it pressed forward. Its forelimbs stayed low and its back arched; in the next second, it pounced right in front of Tang Xuan.
She didn't have time to recharge. She rolled to the side, diving under a scrapped bus.
An instant later, the snow lion’s claw slammed into the ground where she had just been, leaving a half-meter-deep crater.
She rolled out from the other side of the bus, her face covered in dust and her bubble gum stuck in her hair. She cursed colorfully before adding, “Li Qiang, give me a heal!”
Li Qiang didn't have time to answer; he had been targeted by another snow lion.
He had no close-combat capabilities. Flowing Cloud Stardust was a purely supportive and long-range ability. Being closed in on by a snow lion within twenty meters was equivalent to having a knife held to his throat.
He wasn't slow, but the snow lion was faster.
He barely managed to dodge the first pounce by twisting aside, but the second pounce followed immediately. The tips of the claws were less than an arm’s length from his back.
At that moment, Qiu Shubai threw her sword. The hilt struck Li Qiang’s shoulder, knocking him half a step off balance, while the blade grazed the space between the snow lion’s claws and its flesh, sending sparks flying everywhere.
Li Qiang tumbled into a pile of broken bricks, the sharp edges digging painfully into his back, but at least he was alive.
Bloodfall returned to Qiu Shubai’s hand, but the price of helping her teammate was that the snow lion she was facing took advantage of the gap to tear open the left side of her uniform.
Three bloody gashes stretched from below her ribs down to her waist. They weren't deep, but they were long, and beads of blood drifted down from the hem of her clothes.
Luo Yang stepped out from the shadows of the power distribution room. He didn't draw his blade, nor did he manipulate any swords yet; he simply released the blood energy fluctuations he had been suppressing.
The energy aura of Clear Heart Level 3 spread through the night. The golden tree in his Sea of Consciousness vibrated slightly, and the golden light flowing between its leaves seeped from the depths of his consciousness into reality.
That pressure radiated outward like a rising tide, silently washing over the perception of everyone on the bridgehead.
The snow lion currently engaged with Qiu Shubai paused its movements.
It was as if it had been startled, or perhaps it was some primal instinct.
When a higher predator on the food chain suddenly appears within one’s sensory range, the first reaction of any living creature is to freeze.
A one-beat pause to judge the threat level, then a decision to either continue the attack or retreat.
All six snow lions stopped their attacks almost simultaneously.
Behind Luo Yang, eighty Grantee Longswords flew out of his space ring one by one.
Their silver blades lined up under the firelight of the viaduct like an iron curtain frozen in mid-air.
Controlling eighty swords at once was a massive test of his blood energy and mental power, even after breaking through to Clear Heart Level 3.
If it weren't for the mysterious divine tree in his Sea of Consciousness, he truly wouldn't have been able to control so many weapons at once.
But with the tree, although Luo Yang felt an immense amount of pressure, he still had the surplus strength to maintain precise perception within a half-kilometer radius.
Snow lions wouldn't gather for no reason, especially those that had broken through to Level 3. Their independence and territorial instincts were far too strong.
In Luo Yang’s hypothesis, there was only one reason they would join forces.
That was the presence of a Snow Lion King nearby.
However, in Luo Yang’s perception, such a hypothetical enemy did not exist.
It was possible it was concealing its aura, or perhaps it was giving orders to these snow lions from a greater distance.
Regardless, if it truly existed, it would certainly be observing this battlefield where it had committed so many of its forces.
One had to realize that for the snow lion race, which had poor growth potential, Level 3 individuals were already incredibly precious.
A Snow Lion King was a Level 5 mutant beast, and only one had ever been observed in human history.
If it appeared here, it would be a catastrophe for the city. At that time, forget South City—half of Yuanxing City would likely be razed to the ground.
He now had to use a grand and magnificent victory to issue a declaration to this powerful enemy that might be nearby—or might not exist at all:
“I’m covering this place.”
“You guys—” His voice wasn't loud, but the wind at the bridgehead carried his words into the ears of Qiu Shubai, Tang Xuan, and Li Qiang.
“Take a break.”
He took a step forward. All eighty swords tilted forward simultaneously, their tips dipping slightly as if performing a silent salute.
“Leave these big ones,” he said, “to me for now.”
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