“Kill!”
The deputy captain’s hoarse roar was drowned out by the squelching friction of writhing meat.
The remnants of the Third Section, like a wolf pack driven into a corner, threw themselves into the encirclement against the nauseating, sour stench of rot.
A length of rusted rebar was plunged deep into an aberration’s slimy fascia, pulling out a long string of yellow-green pus as it was withdrawn.
The Punisher who struck it stumbled back two steps, the uniform splashed by the pus immediately emitting pungent white smoke.
The searing pain of burning flesh forced a roar from his throat, but he didn’t let go. Instead, he swung the rebar backhand, slamming it into the side of the meat-clump and denting it by sheer force.
Their notched combat blades couldn't cut through that thick layer of fat, so they resorted to bludgeoning the creatures with the hilts.
Someone was tripped by the suckers at the base of a meat-clump, seemingly about to be swallowed by the rolling, rotten flesh, when a companion with a broken arm lunged forward, using his one good hand to desperately claw at the vessels on the creature's surface.
Everyone was fighting for their lives, but there were simply too many wounded. Every step they took dragged a long trail of blood across the ground.
The momentum of their counterattack had only just ignited before it was smothered by the slow but massive bodies of the aberrations.
The situation on Luo Yang’s side was entirely different.
The blade of Night Owl cut frigid trajectories through the night. Holding the hilt in a reverse grip with the spine of the blade against his forearm, he slammed himself into the embrace of an aberration, using his momentum to drive the edge into the heap of rotten meat.
Foul-smelling organs and pus spilled across the ground in a deluge, making the soles of his boots slip and slide.
He shook the bits of meat from his blade and ducked low, evading a lashing tentacle from the side before spinning to slice the top off another aberration.
He cut with extreme speed, his feet never stopping, while his peripheral vision swept over toward the Third Section.
The remnants of that squad had been bogged down again by the surging aberrations; the encirclement was closing in once more.
Time was running out.
Luo Yang’s throat bobbed, the veins at his temples throbbing violently as clusters of black spots began to flicker at the edges of his vision.
The leaves of the golden tree in his Sea of Consciousness had long since stopped swaying, and a parched, dark hue was creeping across the trunk.
He ignored these warnings and clenched his left hand toward the void.
Ten Grantee Longswords erupted from his space ring.
Silver light tore through the turbid air of the factory, the sword blades letting out a terminal hum under the activation of Weapon's End, Ember's Birth.
Luo Yang bit the inside of his cheek, using the sharp pain to forcibly pull his scattering focus back together, as ten strands of mental power gripped the sword hilts with a death-grip.
“Go!”
The longswords traced ten parallel lines through the air, plunging directly into the ten most densely packed aberrations standing between Luo Yang and the Third Section.
The sword tips deliberately avoided the unstable cores, wedging themselves into the toughest layers of muscle. The massive kinetic energy forced the two-to-three-hundred-pound heaps of meat off the ground.
The ten dark red meat-spheres were propelled by the sword tips, slamming toward the high ceiling of the factory.
Luo Yang opened his fingers, severing the mental power links.
In mid-air, the longswords instantly disintegrated into gray-white powder. Deprived of support, the aberrations plummeted under the force of gravity, the cores inside their bodies finally crossing the critical point after the violent agitation.
Boom! Boom! Boom!
A chain of explosions echoed through the air, the sound so sharp it made eardrums ache.
It was as if a scalding red rain had begun to fall from the factory ceiling. Shredded meat, fascia, and corrosive fluids mixed together, pouring down onto the ground in a deluge.
Luo Yang raised his left arm to shield his face, several smoking holes burned into his sleeve by the heat.
Treading over the scorched, rotten meat covering the floor, he quickly crossed the vacuum that had been blasted open.
The sympathetic detonation of the ten aberrations had forcibly cleared the obstacles in the middle.
However, nearly fifty aberrations remained on the field. Currently knocked over by the shockwaves, they were writhing at the edges, attempting to regroup.
He had to take this chance to rush over and link up with the Third Section!
But as he ran, Luo Yang’s steps suddenly faltered.
The firelight from those ten explosions reflected off his plain glass spectacles. It felt as if a rusted blender had been shoved into his head, churning frantically.
This wasn't the exhaustion of blood energy, nor was it the depletion of mental power. Deep within his consciousness, there was still a reserve of mental power left in the Sea of Consciousness.
But as a human, his physical body seemed to have reached its limit.
His neurons were screaming in protest; every breath felt like inhaling shards of broken glass.
He used the spine of his blade to prop himself against the ground, dropping to one knee in the sour, slimy sludge. He held this position for only half a second before forcing himself upright again.
The deputy captain propped himself up with his broken blade, spat out a mouthful of shattered teeth, and stared at Luo Yang as he approached.
The twenty-odd blood-soaked men behind him, supporting one another, also stopped their movements. Their chests heaved violently as they looked warily at the meat-clumps that had yet to regroup.
Luo Yang had no time for pleasantries and no energy for nonsense.
“Follow me.”
He dropped those two words and turned back toward the direction he had come from.
The tip of Night Owl dragged across the ground, kicking up tiny sparks as it scraped against concrete debris.
The deputy captain didn’t ask where they were going. He hoisted a semiconscious, heavily wounded man onto his shoulder and roared to those behind him, “Grab the others! Keep up!”
Over twenty people stumbled through the blood-slicked water, following closely behind Luo Yang.
The line was stretched thin, and the scent of blood was so thick it wouldn't dissipate, drawing the surrounding aberrations to begin writhing toward them again.
A few Punishers whose legs were still functional moved to the rear of the group, clutching rebar and bricks as they glared at the encroaching meat-clumps.
Luo Yang walked at the very front. With every rise and fall of his blade, Night Owl mechanically sliced through two surviving aberrations blocking the path. Two more Grantee Longswords flew from his ring, launching the two heaps of soon-to-explode meat into the distance.
The soles of his boots were worn flat, but he took massive strides.
The aching of his wounds and the burning sensation in his lungs pulled at him from both sides. Blood matted the edges of his spectacles, blurring the right half of his vision, but he didn't have the strength to wipe it away.
Every time he swung Night Owl, a dull, tearing pain radiated from his wrist—a sign that his body was severely overloaded.
He kept his breathing slow and deep, trying his best not to listen to the heavy footsteps and suppressed cries of pain from the group behind him.
Qian Yao was still lying in the ruins of the ore factory.
Images of that mangled leg, the blackened wound, and Yan Zhi squatting nearby with two fingers extended flashed through Luo Yang’s mind.
He gritted his teeth until they nearly cracked.
He was going to get all of these people out.
Every single one of them, alive.
The cold wind of the factory grounds blew through the collapsed walls, dispersing some of the stench.
The exit ahead was within reach; the silhouettes of abandoned forklifts and ore transport trucks loomed in the night.
Luo Yang was just about to step over a pile of twisted steel frames when his pace came to a sudden halt.
By the broken wall at the exit, the spot where Qian Yao had been lying was empty. A long, dark red smear of blood dragged across the ground, extending into the nearby ruins.
Only Yan Zhi stood there alone. She was holding a blood-stained deep blue sleeve, her head tilted back, staring into the darkness higher above.
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