Battle Frenzy

Wang Zhong maintained his calm as he continued to preempt the movements of the small Evil Demon. With a sway, his body started to flutter about like a specter, before evading to the left. As the tip of his feet touched the ground, he rapidly retreated back towards where Gong Yi and the others had laid the ambush.

“Crack crack!”

Strange noises rang out from the small Evil Demon’s throat as black fluids appeared in its mouth. With a violent shout, it shot forwards, increasing its speed once again. Clearly, it was afraid of its prey escaping, and was even more scared of having its food stolen!

Bang!

A small round shield appeared before Wang Zhong’s body, smashing the completely food-drunk small Evil Demon away before it could even react!

“Go!” Gong Yi shouted out softly.

A silvery brilliance shot out from the bushes on the left. In an instant, the unstoppable silver snake hook wrapped around the completely unprepared small Evil Demon. The reverse hook at the tip of the whip pierced out, hooking right into the small Evil Demon’s withered skin. Despite looking weak and fragile, its skin was extremely tough. Although the Heroic Soul Stage Soul Power-filled hook was incomparably sharp, and could easily pierce through metal, it was unexpectedly unable to tear through its skin, only managing to stretch it out.

“Ga!”

A terrifying shriek rang out from the small Evil Demon as it gave a subconscious tug on the whip. Unimaginable power was unleashed through its skinny arm, as it forcibly dragged Sister Hong right out from the bushes.

Whoosh!

As Sister Hong was dragged out, the other 2 immediately took action, shooting out simultaneously from the bushes. Gong Yi moved in a rather strange manner, moving with average stride lengths and average frequency. Despite that, he was still able to move at an extremely fast speed, appearing as though he was able to miraculously shrink the ground that his feet moved over, resulting in him moving faster than the small Evil Demon. Upon moving out, he had already arrived before it in a split second. A silvery dagger sparkled in his hands, before piercing right into its eyes.

Bang!

Appearing to have suffered a heavy blow, the hellish flames within the small Evil Demon exploded out, Unexpectedly, it blocked the dagger, stopping it in its tracks, while simultaneously unleashing a terrifying attack.

Having unleashed all of his strength into his attack, Gong Yi was already angled parallel to the ground as he channeled all of his Soul Power into his dagger, increasing the brilliance of the silver light. Nevertheless, it was still unable to break through the defence created by the hellish flames, creating a deadlock between the two sides.

However, at this instant.

Whoosh~~~~~~

A figure descended from the skies, condensing a gigantic blade arc spanning over 3 metres long that carried an incomparable might as it cleaved downwards.

At this instant, the small Evil Demon was being tied down by the hook and dagger. With all of its power being used to defend against the 2 weapons, it was trapped and unable to evade. Therefore, it could only open its eyes in helplessness as the majestic blade arc cleaved down. In fact, it wasn’t even able to erect any defences!

A furious roar rang out mournfully from its mouth.

“Ga!”

“Bang!”

The deadlock was broken as the blade glow cleaved down, splitting the entire small Evil Demon into 2 halves!

No blood flowed from the wound, as all of its blood essences had already been sucked dry by the environment. Its dry, withered limbs and body made this evident. Only deep into the small Evil Demon’s heart was there a little bit of blood essence present.

Gong Yi’s dagger rapidly dug right into the cleaved body halves. Having lost its life, the small Evil Demon’s body wasn’t as tough and resilient as before. Without any energy defences, the withered heart was easily sliced through by the dagger. Soul power surged out the dagger, wrapping around the little drop of blood until sit entered a small bottle.

In the beginning, all of them had been really naive; having seen the large dimensional life forms, all of them thought that a few small bottles would be instantly filled to the brim. However, reality had definitely shattered those thoughts in a cruel and vicious manner. Wanting to fill an entire bottle up would require tens of thousands of these little freaks! Those assholes from the Federation had forced them to fight against such high ranking dimensional life forms! The risk and dangers they had to go through…

After completing the extraction, Gong Yi exchanged a look with everyone. Without a single word, all of them turned around and retreated with utmost urgency from this area.

No longer than 3 to 4 seconds after them leaving, the nearest Evil Demon had already arrived at their previous location, being attracted here by the mournful shrieks from the dead small Evil Demon. However, upon arriving, the only thing that remained was the corpse of its counterpart.

Roaring with anger, its voice reverberated across the plains, causing more and more small Evil Demons to rapidly gather. Within this fringe area, this was already the 4th time a small Evil Demon had been murdered, causing the entire small Evil Demon herd staying here to feel shocked and angry. Although they were the lowest ranking members of the darkness element, they were still members of the Evil Demon legion, causing them to feel pride towards their noble background! At the very least, they should be the rulers of this area, yet they were now being hunted like prey!

“Ga!” Some of the small Evil Demons shouting out, causing countless bushes to shake as hundreds of small Evil Demons poured out from within.

“Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga!”

The entire plains were instantly filled with countless replies, sounding just like cicadas that would appear during autumn, while those ear-piercing sounds continued to reverberate throughout the entire hellish fire plains.

At this moment, at a distant location from the small Evil Demons, the panting Gong Yi, Reynolds and Sister Hong were already drenched with sweat. Hunting those small Evil Demons, which lived in herds on those plains, was truly not a feat ordinary people could accomplish. Their summoning call was too quick, and so were their reinforcements! With the combined strength of their group, it wasn’t a big problem to deal with 7 to 8 small Evil Demons at a time. However, the critical factor was the window of time.

During their first attempt, they had taken action simultaneously against 2 small Evil Demons. However, due to them being unable to instantly kill both of them, it took only a short span of 10 seconds for the 2 enemies to summon massive numbers of compatriots over as reinforcement, almost preventing Gong Yi and the others from safely extricating themselves. Even hunting a sole Evil Demon posed a certain risk. It was only due to the trio having collaborated countless times after and formed a tacit understanding, that they were able to achieve a clean kill in today’s harvest.

Finally, they had managed to leave the territory of that Evil Demon clan. Despite having massive numbers, the hellish fire plains were exceedingly large, and were split into different territories. Herds would not easily cross over to the territory of another herd, as these life forms were extremely territorial and cannibalistic, and would show no mercy even to fellow members of the same race. Therefore, Gong Yi and the group would always survey their hunting ground before every attack, to prepare an escape route after the hunt. However, the small Evil Demons must have had some method of communication, as the hunting for the past few days had been getting increasingly difficult to accomplish.

Stopping in their tracks, they proceeded to search around for a small mound that served as their secret landmark. At this moment, little Xin, who was tasked as a forward scout, popped her head out, before shouting out in a whisper. “Over here, over here!”

Everyone drew close to her.

Filled with unbearable exhaustion, Sister Hong couldn’t care less about anything else. Tossing her backpack into the corner, she plopped down on the ground as she gasped heavily for air.

Looking into the distance, Gong Yi could finally see changes to the angle of the ground, something that wasn’t detectable a month ago. Looking into the distance, he could see light fading away from the sky, a result of even denser radiation levels present within the air.

After surveying the surroundings, Gong Yi said, “Looks like we’re already near the fringes of the second layer.”

Hearing his words, scarface Reynolds, Wang Zhong, little Xin, and even the gasping Sister Hong could not help but look into the distance. Although the slight tilt to the land wasn’t easy to notice, it was evident after a closer look.

A faint happiness appeared on everyone’s faces as they clenched their fist subconsciously, mirroring the silent cheers springing out from their hearts. The past few days of killing small Evil Demons had caused everyone to sink completely into the pits of despair, as all of them finally realized what Gong Yi said was true: harvesting sufficient Evil Demon Blood was a complete pipe dream after all. The little bit of Evil Demon Blood they had harvested would be used for their primary endeavors upon reaching the empire, as well as fulfilling the more important goal of understanding the special traits of the life forms present here. This was something that Gong Yi had suggested. Originally, everyone else wasn’t on board with the plan, although there was no way they were ever going to escape from fighting in this place. In the end, Gong Yi’s suggestion had its benefits. Over the past few weeks, they had already killed over 50 small Evil Demons. Although Wang Zhong was still in the Casted Soul Stage, his fundamentals were extremely solid and robust, and he had established a pretty good method to lure those freaks into their ambush.

“Let’s go immediately!” Reynolds’s words were short and powerful, laced with a strong urgency. In the beginning, he did not seem to care about money, with him joining in the hunt just to fulfil his promise to Gong Yi. If it was possible, this fellow might have already rushed to the 4th layer from the very start, instead of sticking around within this hellish fire plains.

Sister Hong immediately hooted back, “Go go go! This old lady’s burnt and cracked! Screw that 2nd layer! Anything’s better than that evil sun!”

“Don’t we still need to hunt small Evil Demons? Is that amount enough?” Little Xin opened her eyes wide as she asked. She had been training over the past few days. With her Heroic Soul as a base, a few movement arts taught to her by Gong Yi, as well as her innate deftness, her ability to lure the Evil Demons had reached a pretty good level.

“It’s enough. We just need a bit to use as an entry price.” Gong Yi replied with a smile.

At this moment, Wang Zhong was carefully observing everyone’s reactions and responses. Other than following the plan everyone had agreed to, which was to lure those small Evil Demons into the ambush, Wang Zhong had been getting extremely interested in the so-called Evil Demon Blood over these past few days. The more he came to understand those life forms, the more he was able to get closer to the origin of darkness.

Darkness energies, or darkness essence, was extremely unique, as it was able to devour anything upon it came into contact with. Take those small Evil Demons as an example; their whole body’s blood essences had been devoured by the dense darkness energies present here. Any other ordinary life form would have long been dead when such a thing happened. Nevertheless, the small Evil Demons were still able to continue living on! Furthermore, they seemed to have formed a strange equilibrium within their bodies, allowing the devouring attribute darkness energies to support its body after reaching a limit, while nourishing the blood in its heart, which in turn formed the basis of its strength.

This was the reason why Evil Demon Blood was so precious. It was the condensation of darkness energy essence. Not only would it benefit one’s darkness attribute special ability, it was even more useful in research. The main goal of the research was to gain a better understanding of the dimensional worlds, especially towards the critical goal of understanding the meaning behind the projections of dimensional life forms.

“We’ve finally managed to fill up one small bottle. This can be exchanged for many things. Also, this is more than sufficient to grant us access to the black market. Let me tell you about the differences in this 2nd layer!”

Upon stepping into this “2nd layer”, a massive pressure would be exerted. Perhaps due to the proximity to the center, the density of darkness energies was also higher. Furthermore, the radiation coming from the dimensional energies in the air would grow more violent. Many dimensional regions would possess many different types of unique effects due to the radiation coming from the dimensional energies. This was still something that mankind had not achieved an understanding of, and was greater than the power from the 5 Elements.

With a casual grab, one would be able to feel a moisture in the air, as though the humidity level was extremely high. However, that definitely wasn’t moisture; it was large amounts of high-density darkness energies and dimensional radiation that was sticking to one’s flesh. Upon coming into contact with skin, they would go all out to drill into the body.

Similar to being infected by foreign bodies, cold and fever were mild symptoms, with cellular, Soul Power, and Soul Sea damage being the heavier ones. Furthermore, the gravity was even stronger than in the 1st layer, at approximately 8x Earth’s gravity. This 1x increase wasn’t something negligible, and even an extra gram of weight would result in unendurable exhaustion under prolonged exposure to this gravity.