Chapter 416

Chapter 417: “Yun Qing Zi”

Yun Qing Zi.

The name struck Yu Sheng the instant he saw the giant crystal heap form a human shape. The voice and the images flashing on the crystal faces locked in his guess, and shock surged up from his heart.

How could Yun Qing Zi be here? This was just a battlefield ruin. Shouldn’t Yun Qing Zi be hiding in a secret realm that rains forever like the world of Sentinel Silence? Shouldn’t he be guarded by those black-robed cultivators and the Hermitage Order? Why was he on Garrison-3? And why in this form?

Questions crashed in his head, but his body reacted fast. The moment the mass took shape, he lifted a hand. With Door Opening he pulled out his Tetanus Staff, even if he wasn’t sure it would help against Yun Qing Zi. At the same time he got ready to Summon the mass-produced Irene legion.

Beside him, Foxy in giant Demon Fox form called up a sky full of ghost-blue flame and crouched low with a warning growl. Luna slipped into a fighting stance, her figure turning unreal in shadow mode. Irene raised an arm and let faint Spider Silk spread around her.

They all tensed, scanning for weak points, flaws, or a source of power. They had fought weird enemies before and were used to foes that didn’t even look human. Even so, this crystal lump that barely resembled “Yun Qing Zi” felt extra wrong.

What surprised Yu Sheng was that “Yun Qing Zi” didn’t attack right away.

The huge mass still surged at the crack like a flow of crystallized liquid that kept changing shape. The old man’s image, knit from crystal, kept forming and falling apart. In the many crystal faces the “Yun Qing Zi” looked around, dazed. A crowd of voices overlapped, mumbling like he was talking to himself: “Am I alive? Am I dead? Did I return? I’m not here… Looks familiar… who? Me? How odd… heretics… spouting nonsense. Bored to death… Sovereign’s Legacy… that kind of might, yes, we need that kind of might to… no, wrong, that isn’t my thought. No. No. Don’t go there!”

His mutters grew messy and sharp, like anxiety and anger spiked all at once. The whole “person” shook. Crystal boiled over his surface, filling the crater with the sounds of rubbing, shattering, and rebuilding. All across the impact crater the clusters began to do the same, collapsing and reforming everywhere.

Yu Sheng didn’t know why, but he could tell the thing was on the edge of losing control. He lifted a hand to signal the others to back up so they wouldn’t set it off, then spoke with care: “Senior Yun Qing Zi, can you hear me?”

“Yun Qing Zi” jerked and stopped mumbling, like his broken thoughts had snagged. He turned his head. The whole crystal mass, and every image on every surface, locked their stare on Yu Sheng.

A cold prickle ran down Yu Sheng’s back. [I shouldn’t have said anything.]

A low tremor rolled out from the crystal depth: “A threat.”

Warning flared hot in Yu Sheng’s chest. Crystals shot up as a strange howl ripped the air.

From every side, clusters burst out of rifts in the ground. In a blink they grew like towering trees. The “Yun Qing Zi” doubled in size in a heartbeat and smashed a fist toward Yu Sheng. Blades of crystal shrapnel roared down like a storm. Between the shards, faint violet lightning crackled as it crashed over the team.

The entire impact crater turned into a sea of crystals. From deep within that sea, a steady pulse shook the ground: “Eliminate the threat.”

“Move!” Yu Sheng’s scalp tingled. He darted aside, his body blurring like an afterimage to dodge the storm. He threw out his hand.

Hundreds of twisted Rifts snapped open around him, and figures flipped out of them one after another.

Hundreds of Irenes appeared.

At the same time, a sharp whistle split the air from Foxy’s side.

Eight Fox Carrot Missiles streaked up and slammed into the giant body. Blinding fire blossomed. The blast shattered wide swaths of crystal and made the huge shape reel and tilt back.

A heartbeat later, a wall of Scorching Rays lanced out from the mass-produced dolls.

The little dolls stood in ranks around Yu Sheng. The blasts and the wild crystal growth didn’t shake them. Freshly born as they were, they still carried the “combat knowledge” of their main body. They knew how to use their strength. After a few seconds of cooldown, they lifted their right hands again. Their index fingers pointed at the enemy.

More than a hundred Scorching Rays fired together. The layered firing sounds merged into a deep, fearsome hum. With a thrum, Yu Sheng’s vision filled with white light.

“Yun Qing Zi” blew apart again. Two full waves of heat-beams hit the same spot until the stored energy detonated inside the mass. The toppling body split into pieces and burst. Countless crystal fragments flew up and fell like heavy rain.

Yu Sheng only felt shock and caution.

[Was it really over?]

That huge, scary foe got blown up by one round of missiles and two rounds of rays? Could it be that simple?

As if to answer his doubt, the sound of rapid crystal growth swelled again.

He snapped his head up.

The whole impact zone had become a crystal forest. Pale clusters with gray-black streaks grew wild from the earth, branching in midair like giant trees. The forest was thick. Deep inside, one “tree” reshaped fast into the form of Yun Qing Zi.

“Eliminate the threat.”

The crystals trembled in resonance and attacked again.

The fight turned bitter.

“What even is this?” Irene shouted while directing her legion to rake the shapeshifting “Yun Qing Zi” forms with Scorching Rays, then blurted, “There’s no way this is the Yun Qing Zi Xuan Che talked about. The ‘human content’ on this thing is so low it wouldn’t even count as a person on our team!”

Yu Sheng fought as he fell back and said, “You still have jokes at a time like this? This can’t be Yun Qing Zi. Something is off. This might be worse than anyone thought.”

Another sharp whistle tore in.

Several crystal lances punched through the dolls’ fire net and Foxy’s barrage and shot straight at Yu Sheng.

He moved fast, smashing the ones he couldn’t dodge with his Spiked Mace, but one still ripped a deep gash across his shoulder.

Before that, many smaller shards had already nicked his arms and legs.

A dull buzzing built in his head. He watched his blood soak into the crystal jungle, but this time the link through blood felt different. He could barely sense anything clear or logical through it, only a muddy hum, vague whispers, and that pull that kept pointing across space to Sentinel Silence.

A dark blur cut in from the edge of his sight. Luna swept past like wind and intercepted the next wave of crystal lances meant for Yu Sheng. Her Fingertip Blades shattered them. Tiny fragments pinged off her alloy shell without leaving a mark on her battleship-grade body.

The buzz in Yu Sheng’s mind turned more chaotic. He shook his head. In the corner of his eye, several mass-produced dolls were getting buried under a rain of crystal shards. The little dolls couldn’t dodge the dense “bombardment,” but before the shards could wreck their bodies they each folded into a twisting, inward-turning Rift and vanished from the field.

By now, about a third of the mass-produced dolls had already retreated back into the valley.

The remaining two thirds were running out of power fast. Even so, their endurance had already exceeded what Yu Sheng expected.

It was just that “Yun Qing Zi,” or rather this whole crystal jungle, was far trickier than anyone guessed.

[What are these crystal things that look like “Yun Qing Zi,” really?]