Chapter 1317 - 1008: Kill Him!

Chapter 1317: Chapter 1008: Kill Him!

A brief two seconds of hesitation allowed the Ruler to read a small amount of fragmented memory, including two insignificant conversations, a sonnet, a painting given to a friend, and even part of the plans concerning what lay beneath the depths.

And also, a few strange names.

"All useless crap."

The Endless Sea of Flowers fell into a short contemplation, then abandoned the effort. It was just a cluster of happy little blossoms, not good at thinking about such complicated problems.

"Your brains are well-developed and useful. I’ll leave it to you."

So it spoke to the Abyss Handlers who pledged loyalty to it.

A quarter of an hour later, Abyss Manipulator· White Spots routinely uploaded these shattered materials into the shared Dreamland of the Abyss Handlers.

Fragmented data mixed with fragmented data, just like all the other unfinished scraps, with no value for distinction.

Five minutes after that, an alarm was triggered, and an invitation for a temporary meeting was sent to all Abyss Handlers within sixteen depths.

Someone used their own authority to convene an emergency court council.

In the hall projected by Dreamland, silhouettes emerged one after another as Abyss Handlers from the various depths descended here.

They looked at their companions in puzzlement.

"What’s going on, He Di?" someone asked. "Is there some emergency decree from the Withered King that needs to be relayed to us?"

"It has nothing to do with my employer."

The Alchemist named He Di said indifferently, "Something’s happened!"

Laid out before everyone was that broken piece of Source Substance memory.

And the name marked in glaring red within it.

"Huai Shi?" White Spot asked. "That Sword of Disaster?"

Someone said, "I heard the Workshop Owners put out a massive bounty on him."

Dozens of Abyss Handlers exchanged glances. Among all the Handlers, the one ranked foremost, ’Tiancheng’, spoke up: "I’ve heard of him. You seem to have suffered a loss at his hands?"

"I’m not the only one who’s suffered."

He Di said coldly, filled with wariness, like a cat with its fur blown up. "You haven’t dealt with him, so you don’t understand—he’s a threat, a calamity, an ant hole in the dam. The key point is: he’s coming to Hell!"

He said flatly, "I can guarantee something big is going to happen—something very bad for us!"

The Handlers were stunned for a moment, then dubious: "Is it really that exaggerated?"

"It really is that exaggerated!"

He Di declared, "I recommend we raise our security level in the near future, and reinforce monitoring on all Hell Entrances, tightly searching for any trace.

Prepare response strategies on the level of The Crowned One. Once we find his trail, spare no cost in completely erasing them!"

Tiancheng pondered for a moment: "And your reasoning?"

"There is no reasoning."

He Di said, "I have nothing that can convince you to raise your guard. I don’t know what he wants to do, and I don’t know whether he’ll actually come.

Even this single piece of data is far from reliable.

It’s all subjective judgment, personal narrowness, conjecture, speculation, psychological shadows, and... intuition."

Tiancheng shook his head, "That doesn’t convince anyone."

"But I can guarantee it," He Di replied.

Someone raised a hand curiously: "Is he that strong?"

"..." He Di was silent for a long while. "A person like him can’t be measured in terms of strong or weak. All I can say is: once he appears, no matter how minor the problem, it will end up becoming a major one."

"Sounds a bit like that damned Golden Dawn bunch," someone concluded.

"More or less. Even more absurd than Golden Dawn."

He Di sighed. "Trust me this once. I’ve suffered through this kind of hell, and I really don’t want to suffer it a second time."

After a brief consideration, the Handlers exchanged looks and reached a unanimous conclusion: "Contract, then."

"Then we contract."

He Di raised his hand and swore to the Element of Destructive· Piper: "Witnessed by all Mysteries, we will be candid with each other, work together closely, and harbor no malicious intent.

I guarantee that everything I say comes from rational judgment. I need your aid, and when necessary, I will certainly pay an equivalent price in return."

At the instant the contract was sealed, everyone felt the gaze cast from the deepest part of the Abyss.

It was recognition from the Piper.

And perhaps... even a trace of approval hidden within?

In any case, within a court council where all members must guarantee equality and honesty, He Di had made his promises and guarantees, and everyone was now obliged to take this matter seriously.

The Abyss Handlers were often renowned for their cunning and schemes, yet in contrast to that they also revered contracts, and esteemed talent and Ability.

Even if they regarded everything else as dust, anyone who could step into this hall would necessarily be a being of the same level, deserving respect and attention.

Even if this concern had no reason or evidence at all.

After a brief meeting and discussion, the Handlers loyal to various Rulers placed their own bets. More than sixteen depths of Hell began to stir and turn because of the name Huai Shi.

Just for a piece of incomplete, rumor-like data, they threw down such an enormous stake—it was downright insane.

But in Hell, is there any shortage of insane things?

It’s calm that’s the real abnormality.

Perhaps He Di was just neurotic, yet many colleagues still showed an unusually high level of agreement and approval for this cautious approach.

Everyone gets jumpy from time to time, but who dares to place a bet this huge on a random, inexplicable hunch?

At the very least, for now, they had successfully reached a consensus.

Though they still had no idea what exactly had happened...

—But whatever the cost, kill Huai Shi first!

.

.

Amid deafening thunder, Huai Shi slammed into the ground.

Struggling, he tore open the hardened foam inside the airship, crawled out covered in dust, and immediately ran into another explosion.

"Pfft, pfft, pfft..." He spat out the ashes in his mouth and looked around. "Everyone still in one piece?"

The survivors raised their hands to indicate they were fine.

Old Scholar Anton, personally shielded by Mr. Foster, hadn’t lost so much as a single hair; only the coffee cup in his hand now had nothing left but the handle.

"I was just thinking I’d grab a nap later. Looking at it now, that nap’s probably not happening." Anton shrugged regretfully.

Without Huai Shi giving any orders, the others consciously began checking and reporting losses.

Fortunately all the critical supplies had been stored separately in Raymond’s Wheel of Fate for safekeeping. Even though the dragon insisted he’d twisted his pinky when he hit the ground, in reality nothing had been lost.

Only Ms. Caogene’s airship, which she’d stayed up late to repair, was gone.

After reading through the reports, Huai Shi let out a sigh. "Good news is, we still have a truck."

"And the bad news?" Gregory had already spat a carpet of melon-seed shells all over the ground.

Huai Shi shrugged and looked up at the dark clouds overhead. "If we don’t floor it right now, we’re about to be down one truck too."

Waves of lethal danger came rolling in.

In that instant, over the wasteland of this unknown Hell, the Sky Dome suddenly shattered. Endless storm clouds broke apart with a crash, splintering like steel.

Taking their place were countless black dots rapidly swelling larger.

They swallowed the sky, shadows blanketing the land like a pitch-black rug dropping toward the ground.

It was a Hell Swarm beyond counting!

"The hell is that?"

Raymond poked his head out of the cab to look. When the radar in his eye sockets finished reporting the projected numbers, he instantly ducked back behind the window and sucked down several lungfuls of air-conditioned chill.

He stomped the accelerator to the floor.

The heavy truck shuddered with a boom, six tail-flame thrusters flipped out, and it shot forward like mad!

We are out, we are out!

Right then, a shrill screech rang out from the sky, like the dying scream of some bizarre creature, and then a shadow appeared out of nowhere on the ground, expanding in an instant.

It blanketed a hundred miles around!

Next, the ground cracked, fissures spreading. In those boiling shadows, one eyeball after another rose slowly with the viscous darkness.

Huge pupils several meters across, blood-red irises locked onto the roaring truck. The countless eyeballs were linked by sluggish shadow, rising together, forming a wall that reached all the way up to the Sky Dome.

They sealed everything within that hundred-mile radius.

Turning it into a cage of confinement!

"The Gate of Ten Thousand Eyes?!"

Gregory swore.

This kind of freakish lockdown was actually a form transformation achieved by an entire Hell Swarm merging together. Once deployed, they could be treated as one body of myriad parts—a complete nightmare to deal with.

Each eyeball was a separate entity, its individual defensive power not that high, but no matter how over-the-top your output was, the Swarm would compress that damage onto some single unit, sacrificing that one’s collapse to keep the seal going.

Tens of thousands of eyes, all expendable.

If you wanted to crack this thing, your peak burst didn’t matter nearly as much as your rate of fire.

The crucial detail being: this thing is totally one-off!

Once the form transformation is triggered, there’s no way to reverse it. When the Swarm’s Source Substance is completely drained, the Gate of Ten Thousand Eyes will crumble into Ashes.

Gone without a trace.

Not to mention small skirmishes—even on the Border defensive lines, at critical moments, something like this could have terrifying strategic significance!

And someone actually blew one here?

Just to pin them down in this spot?

For what?

"Yeah, for what exactly!"

Huai Shi slapped the dash, pissed: They were supposed to sneak quietly into town, no shooting, right? So how come the second they tiptoed in, the villagers were already waiting there with torches blazing, everyone dual-wielding Gatlings?! And smiling and waving like, "Hey kiddo, we’ve been waiting for you sooo long!"

He suddenly had this subtle feeling of being specifically targeted...

A thunderous crash.

The seal that had shot up out of the ground warped under the truck’s impact, then forcibly bounced the whole vehicle back.

As the world spun, he didn’t know how many eyeballs burst into paste, but the Gate of Ten Thousand Eyes’ seal remained as solid as ever!

After that brief moment of restraint, those bizarre swarm creatures in the sky finally descended to the earth. Like thick slurry, they splattered to pieces on impact—but quickly squirmed back into shape, surging toward the truck, tangling around the tires and chassis, trying to seep into every crack they could find...

Beneath the shredded clouds, the silhouette of a colossal bone whale appeared. The rotting whale soared through the sky, and upon its back stood a hunched figure draped in gray-black Ma Yi, blowing a deep horn.

And then, endless white dust fell. As it sank into that writhing sludge, it sprouted, grew, and spread in a flash.

Pale bony thorns pushed up out of the muck. In no time at all, white bones stood like a forest across the land, blood-red fruits dropping from the branches and turning into one twisted Mutant Species after another, hurling themselves at the truck without hesitation.

Plague Whale Monks and Undead spawn!

First they get called out by the Nagirpha Fleet of the Withered King, and now it’s the signature Swarm of the Thunder Sea!

Gregory was completely stunned.

But none of that was the core issue. They couldn’t even break through the truck’s own defensive power; at most they were creating some interference and hassle.

The real threat was the vortex above the Sky Dome, growing larger and larger.

Whichever way you looked at it, it screamed "portal," didn’t it?