Chapter 325 - Desperation
After the treasure matter was partially settled by Bai Zemin and Shangguan Bing Xue, he did not comment again regarding Chen He and simply moved on to his own business.
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The huge sphere of solidified blood belonging to the giant Second Order ape began to turn liquid once again. With Bai Zemin using his skill Blood Manipulation with great efficiency, from the top of the sphere strands of blood slowly began to detach and automatically began to fly towards the jewel in his hands.
"So that"s how it is." He muttered with a slight smile as he held his Liquid Storage Jewel up high.
The speed at which the blood began to turn liquid increased more and more and the speed at which the glowing strands of blood flew out towards the pearl also began to increase explosively.
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As the rain poured down relentlessly and the loud claps of thunder announced the imminent arrival of the bright lightning, Shangguan Bing Xue silently marveled as she watched the spectacle unfolding before her with a position that was practically unparalleled.
The bright red blood of the Second Order giant ape shone so brightly that it reached the point of looking like beautiful gems instead of horrifying blood. The strands of blood looked like beautiful strings of pearls that one after another disappeared into the Liquid Storage Jewel in Bai Zemin"s hands.
Everything within several meters around with Bai Zemin as the center took on a faint crimson glow. In the midst of the dark forest, such a glow was too bright to be ignored and in the midst of such darkness, Shangguan Bing Xue could not help but feel a bit of warmth coming from that light capable of frightening any living being due to the horrifying aura it exuded.
Approximately two minutes later, the huge globe of blood had completely disappeared, like an optical illusion that had never really existed in the first place. If one looked carefully at the ground, the only thing one would be able to find would be the mark of where the blood sphere had been in the past.
Bai Zemin looked at the pearl in his hand and noticed that the glow had turned more crimson after absorbing the blood.
"So that beast had 60 liters of blood inside its body..." Bai Zemin sighed as he confirmed the amount of liquid the Liquid Storage Jewel contained inside. "Truly a beast."
"It probably had more blood in it." Shangguan Bing Xue remembered, "It"s just that your previous attack practically tore it apart."
"Shan-" Bai Zemin recalled her previous request so he suddenly stopped just as was about to say something.
Shangguan Bing Xue looked at him silently and raised both eyebrows as an amused glint flashed in her sky-colored eyes.
"Bing Xue." Bai Zemin corrected himself and then continued with complete calm, "Can you make an ice chariot or something to carry the body of this giant ape and the skeletons of the white tiger?"
The body of the mutated Second Order spider had been completely destroyed after being hit full on by the blood trident. The only thing left behind was the skeleton of the white tiger and the considerably damaged body of the giant ape.
Such remains were too valuable to be left behind. Bai Zemin would not let even the bones go!
"Okay." Shangguan Bing Xue nodded and pushed both hands forward.
With her skill now evolved to the Second Order, it was an incredibly simple task for her to make a large ice chariot st.u.r.dy enough to support several tons of weight.
After she finished her work, Bai Zemin moved the giant ape"s body onto the chariot. Then, Shangguan Bing Xue sealed the beast"s corpse inside a huge ice chamber over fifteen meters in diameter on top of the chariot to prevent other beasts from touching it.
"Let"s continue what we were doing."
Bai Zemin and Shangguan Bing Xue separated and began to search for the treasures that the mutated Second Order spider had dropped but had been sent flying who knows where due to the huge explosion caused by Crimson Blood Judgment.
* * *
Meanwhile, about two kilometers from the forest and five kilometers away from the base located in the north of the subdistrict.
Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!...
The sound of gunfire became more and more intense with each pa.s.sing second.
The roars and yells intermingled with the cries and growls provoked by humans and beasts as they clashed fiercely with each other.
Of the army of over five thousand mutated beasts that had come out of the forest after being frightened by Bai Zemin"s attack and the battle between Second Order existences that possessed the power to crush them all, over two thousand beasts had fallen to never get up again.
Small puddles of blood spread relentlessly, joining with other small puddles of blood and slowly forming pools of blood. Those pools of blood also joined other pools of blood and slowly formed what seemed to be a great red river with iron smell that grew rapidly due to the fierce storm that kept falling from the black clouds high in the sky.
The corpses of the slaughtered beasts piled up on each other forming tall mountains up to more than thirty meters high across the abandoned city on the outskirts of the base.
While some corpses were small and tiny, there were also others that were monstrously gigantic. Such beasts possessed vast quant.i.ties of thick blood within them, which only served to further feed the ferocious river that roared back and forth amidst the now collapsed houses.
Under the seemingly endless burst of fire, most of the mutated beasts could only fall helplessly after being hit again and again or after receiving a powerful bullet hit in the middle of the head.
However, even though more than two thousand beasts had been slaughtered, the humans did not take their lives for free and with smiles on their faces either.
A burly man held a Type 79 machine gun with a fierce expression on his face. As he fired uncontrollably with bloodshot eyes and claimed the life of a wild cat that was the size of a tiger before the apocalypse, two level 9 soul evolvers stood several meters ahead preventing the monsters from sneaking in and reaching the back.
This was the formation that Lu Yan had moved the troops: Armed men in the back and soul evolvers in the front.
Each soul evolver below level 15 had the only mission to prevent the mutated beasts from reaching the rear. Otherwise, if a single beast slipped in there, only disaster would descend.
While the gunmen were from a certain point of view the greatest power the base had to deal with large crowds of weak enemies, they were also the most fragile since they themselves were just normal humans who had not even reached level 1 or who had barely reached such pitifully low levels that in such a battle they would serve as nothing more than fodder if they did not get a firearm.
If a fast beast reached that area, then the base"s defensive troop would begin to face annihilation.
A soul evolver using a sharp bone belonging to a mutated beast as her weapon fiercely slashed and decapitated a huge squirrel that stood a meter tall, absorbing the creature"s Soul Power immediately.
Just as she was about to continue her ma.s.sacre after reaching level 10, she saw a black shadow flicker next to her out of the corner of her eye. At first, she didn"t pay too much attention to it, however, a moment later she noticed how the world around her was spinning and the next moment she saw her decapitated body still standing before the lights went out for her.
"A panther!"
"Watch out!"
A group of fifteen armed men noticed the death of the soul evolver and soon after the second soul evolver was also decapitated by a panther-like animal. It was only because the creature stopped for a moment to kill the two soul evolvers that the soldiers standing more than fifty meters back managed to spot its silhouette.
The burly man who was killing mercilessly raised his Type 79 machine gun and was about to shout "fire" when the same thing that happened to the two previous soul evolvers happened to him.
Seeing the burly man"s head flying through the air and steaming blood flying everywhere, a woman holding an a.s.sault rifle ten meters away panicked and turned to flee.
However, a shadow flashed at lightning speed and the woman felt a sharp pain from her waist. Before the woman even managed to scream, her lower and upper body separated and after she fell to the ground and realized what was happening, the woman finally let out a piercing scream as she writhed in pain.
A moment later, the huge b.l.o.o.d.y mouth of a tiger over two meters tall was reflected in the woman"s eyes. Before she could think much or say anything, her head was crushed in a b.l.o.o.d.y mess by the beast"s jaws.
The beast was actually a vicious First Order Shadow Tiger!
Bai Zemin had faced this type of creature in the past so he knew firsthand how terrifying the speed of these felines was. Worse yet, in the middle of the night, if not for the flares that lit up the skies, this kind of monster whose fur was as black as a wolf"s mouth would definitely become mankind"s worst nightmare with its terrifying agility!
Lu Yan suddenly felt that something was wrong and when he looked behind him after slicing the monster he was fighting in two he finally realized that a First Order monster had sneaked in.
"s.h.i.+t!" he cursed before grabbing the radio and yelling anxiously, "Evangeline! Some agility monster is slaughtering the back lines!"
Among the soul evolvers present, probably only Evangeline had the ability to defeat the Shadow Tiger without suffering losses. Even Lu Yan"s right-hand man, Yan Tu, would have some drawbacks as while he was incredibly strong his slow movement speed was his greatest weakness.
Therefore, Lu Yan"s only hope was for Evangeline to move. Although he did not have the authority to give her orders in normal situations, under the condition that the officer in charge granted him sufficient power, Lu Yan could order anyone regardless of their strength.
The highest-ranking officer present was Kang Lan, but she had given full control to Lu Yan because of her inexperience in directing such operations. Therefore, Evangeline had to obey Lu Yan even though she was stronger.
Such were the military rules and thanks to these rules there was some order.
"I am busy right now. Yan Tu and I are fighting six First Order beasts. We don"t have the time nor are we in a position to look somewhere else."
Evangeline"s cold but slightly exhausted voice came from the other end of the intercom before the communication cut off.
"Six First Order beasts...?" Lu Yan"s face lost all color as he muttered such words and for a moment he stood there distractedly.
Although he was far from reaching such a level, he did know how terrifying those beings were. Of his men, only a couple of them had the ability to face them but fortunately they were also few in number and so far they had only encountered three or four before.
However, six of them appeared at the same time just now...
"It"s the end." Lu Yan sighed with a pale face and his heart filled with regret.
Not only regret for what was happening now or for what had happened before, mostly his regret and pain came from knowing that his daughter, who was inside the base probably waiting anxiously for news, would end up being eaten by one of these monsters due to his own incompetence.
Lu Yan not only suddenly felt that he failed as a human or as a father, but he also felt like a failure as a man.
In the end, unconsciously he could not help but think of that young man whom he had not met for a long period of time but had seen accomplish great things in a few days.