Chapter 201: The Probability

Old Bai took a step forward and pulled out two potion bottles from his pocket. Mo Fei stared at them and murmured. "He... Carries them?"

He quickly shook his head to subside his thought and waited. Finally, Old Bai stopped near the door and glanced back. "Boom time."

Mo Fei’s eyes twitched by that eccentric phrase. "F**k you mean boom. There are better words."

"It makes the situation less worse to hear." He mixed both bottles together, shook them for ten seconds, and then poured the purple liquid at both sides of the gate.

Suddenly, a violet mist emerged from the ground. Old Bai took ten steps back and commanded. "Stay back."

One... two... Three.

BOOOM!!

The ground bulged and exploded outward, slamming the dirt and sand around. The mere wind caused by the explosion nearly pushed them off balance.

Mo Fei covered his eyes with his right arm. His top hat almost left his head, and he quickly grabbed it back.

Lionel only closed his eyes and let his hands remain in his pockets. His long coat fluttered with the rushing wind, and he only opened his eyes when a loud thud echoed through the market palace.

Before them, the large walls around the door broke apart, long cracks running through the pillars, making the iron door fall without any support. "What the hell is that potion, Old Bai, and did you not get any better option? Everyone in the marketplace is looking at us like we are traitors." Mo Fei pointed at the people surrounding them.

"Listen, Sherlock, you should remember a rule of this world... boom boom is never a question...boom boom is the way." Old Bai said while pulling his mask out and placing it on his face to hide it.

"What?"

Lionel coughed, taking their attention, and spoke. "Well, the sight ahead is... bizarre."

Mo Fei paused and looked ahead. When the dust settled, the obscured path ahead showed the madness; the shadows of the various pillars contracted, then expanded outward with an unimaginable speed. They danced alongside the lantern lights, and from deep within the darkness, faces looked at them.

Old Bai stared at the shadows and finally turned toward the marketplace, where people were watching them. "Leave the market!! Empty it, there is an emergency!" He shouted, and the very next moment, the screams of the crowd erupted from every corner.

All of their eyes were horrified as they looked at the emerging eldritch entities.

The violet mist from Old Bai’s explosion was instantly swallowed by a greasy gloom that smelled of stagnant river water and burnt wood smoke. From the ruptured pathway of the market palace, the darkness poured out a sludge that tracked their pathway toward the door.

The faces within the shadows grew distinct. Their features visibly melted, eyes multiplied in the recesses of hollow cheeks, blinking out of sync. A discordant, multi-toned screeching echoed that bypassed the ears and any physical defense, threatening to distort their thoughts into chaotic madness.

"Try to avoid direct contact with the entities that have multiple eyes. Fight physically with those who have tails or insect-like structures." Old Bai warned. His fingers flicked a silver coin into the air. Suddenly cosmic gale emerged from the edge of the coin. That silver object settled into the air, hanging by an invisible string of probability. "The Wheel of Alignment."

Finally, the coin flipped once more, and an invisible ripple cascaded outward. Three of the emerging amorphous entities, massed with twisting tentacles and weeping eyes, suddenly tripped over their appendages. The heavy stone archway above them, weakened by the previous blast, collapsed with precise timing, burying the creatures under tons of rubble.

Mo Fei snapped his head toward Old Bai, a question directly echoing in his mind. ’That coin... he used a coin as a weapon. Is that the Fortune Teller Authority? I have never seen an Ascender of that Authority before.’

The Fortune Teller authority had manipulated the subtle probability of the immediate environment, weaponizing pure bad luck against the tide of madness. Though Old Bai was an Ordinal Eight, he had fully unraveled the potential of his rank, turning chances into a seamless shield.

Even then, the darkness ran deep. More entities slithered over the debris, their very presence warping the geometry of the palace walls.

Some of them looked like a lizard made from a skeleton; some looked like an eyeless monster with a wide jaw and a tail. A few were also shaped like a large snake, a mixture of centipedes alongside. They all rushed in, threatening to exit the doorway.

"Lionel!" Mo Fei shouted, his left hand instinctively clamping onto the brim of his top hat as the ambient temperature plummeted.

Lionel took his hands out of his pockets. His cosmic Authority erupted. With a casual swipe of his right hand, the space between Lionel and the oncoming horde violently compressed. A terrifying distortion tore through the air — a literal fold in reality. The eldritch entities that had been twenty paces away suddenly found themselves displaced, their bodies severed along fractured spatial planes.

Simultaneously, Lionel exhaled a low breath. A wave of crimson flames surged forward, when the red fire washed over the writhing mass of flesh and eyes, the ten creatures that were about to exit froze mid-shriek. The frost coated their skin and locked their life force, turning the eldritch horrors into statues of flesh that shattered into crystalline dust under the pressure of the wind.

The spiritual ribbon in his wrist glowed faintly, showing the rank. An Ordinal Eight of the Cosmic Authority, the Gardener, was a master of the battlefield’s geography.

Yet, a towering shadow loomed behind the frost. A silhouette covered in thousands of chattering teeth, radiating a psychic pressure that made Lionel’s spatial barriers groan. Behind it, the large snakes made of green flesh emerged with a venomous hissing.

Mo Fei stepped forward, Lionel and Old Bai rushed in behind him to seal the doorway once they enter.

Though officially an Ordinal 10, the Mimick, yet the spectral presence woven into his soul — the stark, imposing embodiment of Jian Yue in his ear stirred. The Warden of Silence Embodiment fused seamlessly with Mo Fei’s own innate powers, artificially elevating his spiritual stature and authority to the heights of an Ordinal Seven.

Mo Fei reached into his coat and drew his revolver. It was an ordinary-looking weapon, yet its cylinder spun with a continuous hum that never ceased. It held no physical bullets, for its chamber fed directly upon the infinite depths of his lightless authority. Of course, created by the soul-cutting Glaive, those bullets were strong enough to shatter spirituality of these entities.

Mo Fei raised the revolver and pulled the trigger.

Bang! Bang! Bang!

There was no reload, no pause. A relentless, never-ending volley of projectiles erupted from the barrel. Each shot was a condensed bullet of his own spirituality. Where the bullets struck the towering giant entity, it went directly through its chest, forcing its steps to back.

The entity thrashed, but under the oppressive, blinding barrage of Mo Fei’s revolver, its large form began to unravel, forming a gigantic, shapeless being of flesh that had multiple eyes embedded everywhere. Twenty thick, elongated spines came out of everywhere and launched toward them.

Old Bai caught his silver coin, his eyes bright behind the mask. "The tide is beginning to rise. Remember my warning and rush in."

Lionel kicked a rock, pouring his spirituality directly inside the stone and changing it with a dagger from a nearby marketplace. The spine came forward, and he quickly deflected it with the rusted dagger used to cut fish. Sparkles erupted as it grinded against the iron edges. "Let’s finish this being first, we can manage others."

Mo Fei sidestepped when another strike launched at him, then he pushed himself toward Old Bai and used the butt of his revolver to alter the direction of the spine that reached for Old Bai.

"How are we going to get close to this thing?"

Lionel threw the dagger with an impressive speed that stabbed directly the middle of the shapeless being. Afterward, he kicked a rock, then picked another one from ground and changed the first rock’s position with himself. He quickly glanced back while remaining in midair and found the heavy boulder. Without wasting another moment, he swapped places with the heavy boulder.

Squish!!

The flesh of the entity was pushed down by the heavy stone. Lionel finally called out. "Sherlock, your turn."

Hearing that, Mo Fei pivoted in his heels and shot three barrages of his revolver, the bullets piercing through its three eyes.

The very next moment, Old Bai pressed his palms together and lifted his two index fingers and curled the left hand’s finger in an O shape, then he pulled his pinky finger of the right hand out and pressed his thumbs together. "Spectral Dice."

The sound of two dice hitting the heavy surface echoed through the chaos. Suddenly, the entity’s spirituality erupted to its maximum limit and began to heal itself at such an unimaginable speed that its own flesh began to eat itself.

An odd thing that had an extremely low chance of happening for an eldritch being, but certainly not impossible. Its body collapsed on its rising spiritual presence that had been sealed to maintain its shapeless form.

The very next moment the entity crumbled, the remaining monstrosity pulled up. All of them opened their jaws wide and lunged toward them.

But they quickly entered the door, and Lionel called out the words. "Spatial Lockdown."