Chapter 435

Chapter 435: Contaminated Sub-Bodies

When danger hit, a Martial Uncle was the safest person alive. When things were peaceful, he was the most dangerous. And on rare occasions, he managed to be both at once.

The light screen Xuan Che had thrown up while being swarmed by dozens of attackers shattered instantly under Immortal Yuan Hao’s “support.” But somehow, against all odds, Xuan Che still broke out of the encirclement. The intention had been good and the execution had been a disaster, but the man himself was built like iron.

“…I suddenly feel like Xuan Che has it pretty rough,” Yu Sheng muttered. He sat on Foxy’s back and stared into the distance, letting out a quiet sigh.

Irene turned and glanced at Zheng Zhi. “You two really know how to survive.”

Zheng Zhi waved both hands in a panic. “He’s just tough as nails. I’m just lucky. We’re not the same.”

“…Is that so?”

“Alright,” Yu Sheng cut in before the bickering could spiral. His gaze fixed on the smoke not far away. “This isn’t the time to argue semantics. Looks like there’s still trouble over there.”

As if to prove him right, the moment the words left his mouth, a streak of lightning flared inside the dust and smoke.

It dove straight at Foxy in midair. Her protective spiritual aura caught it head-on, and the shockwave blasted apart the mushroom cloud Immortal Yuan Hao had just punched up. A heartbeat later the rain clouds gathered again, and through the curtain of rain Yu Sheng saw a familiar figure.

Tall and imposing, draped in white like some classical demigod carved from marble, a middle-aged man wrapped in lightning strode out of the smoke. He stepped on the air itself, one step at a time, his face dark as he stared their way.

The instant Yu Sheng saw him clearly, the suspicion he’d felt at the lightning overhead turned to certainty. He jolted. “…You’re not dead?!”

The man hovering in the distance acted as if he hadn’t heard. He stared only at the Little Doll beside Yu Sheng, expression blank. Fine sparks flickered in his eyes, but the gaze itself was crystalline cold.

Foxy cautiously shifted her position in the air. The Hermitage Order’s Great Sage in white tracked her with his eyes, still expressionless, still looking only at the doll sitting on the nine-tailed fox’s back.

Yu Sheng was still trying to make sense of it when Luna drifted closer, voice low.

“Yes. The clone body,” she murmured, watching the Great Sage warily. “But something’s wrong with its state.”

“Clone body?” Yu Sheng’s eyes widened. Understanding clicked into place—just as the white-robed Great Sage moved again.

He lifted a hand toward Irene. Instantly, layer upon layer of lightning bloomed behind him. The space itself seemed to become charged. Even the falling rain glittered with countless tiny arcs, and outside Foxy’s protective aura the air crackled as the electric field scraped against it.

Irene, of all people, looked delighted. “Hey! You’re doing this again? You really never learn, do you?”

Before she could finish, the Little Doll had already raised a hand. Dozens of spatial rifts tore open across the wilderness. They expanded and flipped, and one blank-faced, mass-produced Irene after another poured onto the battlefield.

The first thing the dolls did after teleporting in was lift their heads together and fire an “Irene beam” at the Great Sage in midair. A dense barrage swept across the sky.

At the same time, Irene smacked Foxy’s back hard. “Silly Fox!”

No explanation needed. Foxy understood instantly and dropped altitude, diving toward the ground.

Sure enough, the Great Sage’s eyes snapped after them at once. The tiny scorching beams weren’t enough to threaten him—only to whip the air around him into violent ripples—but his attention stayed locked on the real Irene. As Irene rode Foxy in a breakneck dive toward the earth, he swung his hand.

The lightning in the air… scattered.

And where it gathered for the last time, countless black rifts appeared instead—rifts of every size, carpeting the sky. In the next moment, endless pale crystals poured out like a storm and smashed down on the land.

“What the hell?!” Irene looked up and froze so hard it was like her whole body had blue-screened.

Her plan had been perfect: summon the mass-produced dolls, have them “catch” the lightning on the ground, then fly over their position so the Great Sage would bring down a wave of electricity. The dolls would charge instantly. Even if it wasn’t a Pro max-level overload, a coordinated volley of dozens of beams should have erased him.

But the meteor-shower of crystals ruined everything.

Crystals hammered down in a relentless barrage. Foxy wove through it, but cluster after cluster slammed into her protective aura, explosions chaining without pause. Shards sprayed across the wilderness. The mass-produced dolls that had just arrived instantly fell into chaos—running in every direction, failing to dodge the falling crystals, then triggering their return commands one after another and vanishing back to their origin point.

“Ah, what the hell, this isn’t right!” Irene watched her “army” evaporate and screamed in frustration. “Where are all these crystals coming from? Isn’t that guy lightning-element?!”

Yu Sheng was no less shaken. He stared up at the Great Sage as more of those strange crystal rifts opened overhead. Crystals piled across the wilderness, and more pushed up from cracks in the ground like they were answering a call—sprouting from rock and soil in quick, violent growth.

It looked exactly like what had happened at Garrison-3.

Foxy let out a low growl. At last she found a gap in the barrage. She twisted hard, and several tails snapped forward with a roar.

Jets of thrust flame trailed behind them like comet tails as they shot straight at the Great Sage. He didn’t dodge at all, as if he couldn’t care less whether he lived or died, and he took the bombardment head-on.

Booms shattered the clouds. Foxfire detonated into a blazing fireball across the sky.

When the flames thinned, a shadowspawn outline of the white-robed Great Sage hung in the smoke.

There wasn’t much “white robe” left anymore.

His body had been blasted nearly to pieces, but no blood spilled from the torn flesh. Chunks of limbs floated in midair, and every fractured surface shone with a clear, crystal-like luster. That ruined shell hovered in wind and rain—then each fragment twitched, writhed, and swelled into something even more grotesque.

Tiny crystal “branches” sprouted from the broken ends, extending and linking between fragments, trying to stitch him back into a whole.

Now everyone understood what Luna had meant by something being off.

“Sweet doll progenitor…” Irene stared, eyes wide. “So he’s already been eaten. Weren’t they supposed to be on the same side?!”

“Same side with who?” Yu Sheng’s voice was oddly calm. The sight of a person turning into a pile of mutated crystals didn’t shock him anymore. It only filled him with grim inevitability. “With the controlled ‘Yun Qing Zi’? Or with the ‘Yanxing Entity’ behind Yun Qing Zi?” He let out a tired sigh. “This is what happens when you weld a detonator to a light bulb. I knew these cultists would play themselves sooner or later—and when they did, someone else would have to clean up the mess.”

As he spoke, the Great Sage slowly turned his head. Cold eyeballs sat inside a shattered skull, and even with his body reduced to fragments, those eyes still locked onto Irene.

His crystallized brain was exposed to the air. Somewhere inside it, a remnant implant component flashed urgently—like it was packed with pure resentment.

Irene shivered under that stare and reflexively shrank into Yu Sheng’s arms. “What’s your problem? You’re already like this and you’re still mad…”

“If I had to guess,” Yu Sheng said lightly, “the last, deepest grudge he had before Yanxing Entity swallowed him was getting poked to death by a doll. And the power behind that poke was electricity he charged into her himself.” He clicked his tongue. “If that happened to anyone, they’d carry it into their next life. Even after drinking Lady Meng’s soup, they’d still kick Lady Meng to the ground and rant for two hours.”

Irene blinked. “…Who’s Lady Meng? Did you meet a new doll again?”

Yu Sheng didn’t answer. Foxy had already finished lining up another round of fox carrot missiles and fired without hesitation.

The Great Sage, still trying to regenerate, was blown into glittering debris.

Pale crystalline matter drifted down through the wind and rain, shining with an eerie sheen amid the fading foxfire.

But Yu Sheng didn’t relax. If anything, his posture tightened.

In his arms, Irene went still, sensing it too. The Little Doll poked her head out and stared at a spot on the wilderness below.

She blinked.

The ground bulged.

Rock and soil burst apart with a roar, and crystallized matter erupted like a fountain. From the center of the spray, a familiar figure popped out.

It was still the Great Sage.

A Great Sage made entirely of crystal.

“I knew it,” Yu Sheng sighed, not sounding surprised at all.

And then, as soon as the sigh ended, a second fountain erupted. Then a third. With the teeth-grinding sound of crystals scraping, cracking, and recombining, one Great Sage after another stepped out of the growing crystal clusters.

Yu Sheng froze. “…?”

Irene poked his arm. “Did you predict this too?”

“…This isn’t right,” Yu Sheng said through clenched teeth. “Back at Garrison-3, those Yun Qing Zi at least regenerated one at a time. How is it that on Shu Ji these things can pop out all at once?!”

Irene sighed like a veteran gamer who’d seen too much. “This is what a trash monster is. They don’t change the model—they secretly tweak the mechanics, then multiply the numbers by ten and throw a pile of it in your face.” She paused, then added bitterly, “And the best part is, you still don’t get good loot when you kill it.”