Chapter 112: One Against Millions

Still watching the footage on the screens, Mo Fan saw demonic followers suddenly appear in frame, a group of fifty. Seeing this, he tensed slightly, already sensing what was coming.

'What?' At a certain point, he watched Ru Meng burst out of the forest, straight onto a clearing where a strange disciple stood waiting. 'Who's that? He's clearly from my sect. And he... it's like I know him from somewhere.'

Watching further, he finally got a good look at the face of the person now standing beside Ru Meng. Mo Fan's eyes widened. 'Wait, is that the alchemist? What's he even doing there?'

Reaching the point where the two split apart and ran in different directions, he gave a command without hesitation. "Keep tracking Ru Meng. I mean, the original target."

As they scattered, he kept the camera locked on her. "Who are you? What kind of demonic filth would dare?!" Watching the disciple leading the group taunt her, Mo Fan could barely hold himself together.

'Hm? What's happening?' Suddenly, the alchemist he recognized appeared in frame and started killing everyone around him without the slightest difficulty. 'Wait... how? How does that alchemist have this kind of strength?!'

Watching the demonic group's leader fall under the alchemist's attacks, watching him slowly walk toward Ru Meng, Mo Fan clenched his fists so hard his nails broke skin, blood pooling and dripping onto the floor. "No. No! Help! Help her! No!"

Turning away slightly the moment Ru Meng's life ended, the instant her body went gray and still, Mo Fan couldn't hold himself together any longer.

BOOOM!

Releasing all his Qi at once, thick killing intent pouring off him, he stared at the screen, at the alchemist's face. 'You're finished! I'll tear you apart with my own hands! I'll find you, wherever you are!'

Even though he understood, deep down, that Ru Meng's death had nothing to do with the alchemist, the simple fact that the man had been the only one left alive, and hadn't helped her, was enough for Mo Fan to pin the entire blame on him.

"True Hair. Analyzing recorded data. Analysis confirms the cultivator who killed the tracking target is at Foundation Establishment realm." A flat mechanical voice reported after a beep.

"What?! F-Foundation Establishment? How?! That's impossible! He's the same year as me, and no one can outpace my cultivation speed! Not even Lin Xue, with her first-rank spiritual roots!" Black lines forming across his forehead, Mo Fan shook his head, refusing to believe the report for even a second.

"He must be a fraud! Yes, he must've used some artifact, or a pill! There's no way he broke through to a new realm this fast! He doesn't deserve this, no one does-" For the first time, Mo Fan found himself in a situation where clear thinking simply wouldn't come. From the moment he'd arrived in this world, thanks to his system, his entire path had unfolded effortlessly in front of him. He'd never struggled with techniques, never struggled with cultivation. Thanks to his talent, his luck, he'd always been the center of attention, always got along easily with everyone, always stayed ahead of the pack.

But right now, being shown, being told, that a disciple his own age, younger, even, with nothing and no one behind him, had left him so far behind there was almost no catching up. He couldn't handle it. Unable to accept or believe it, he sank completely into denial.

"Now! Run the scan again! And prep Procedure SV-387!" Pulling his thoughts together as best he could, he gave the command, running through a few commands he'd already sorted through in his mind.

"Re-scan complete. Target of scan is radiating Foundation Establishment energy." A few seconds later, the mechanical voice answered.

"I don't believe it! Lies! It has to be an artifact, or some technique!" Still shaking his head, he slammed a hand down on the table, sending flecks of already-dried blood scattering.

"Procedure SV-387 ready. Please designate the target."

"The cultivator on screen! Find his current location, and I authorize the procedure!" Raising a hand and pointing at the frozen frame on screen, a close-up of the alchemist, the killing intent and hatred in Mo Fan's eyes only intensified.

"Target located. Target acquired. Procedure SV-387 in progress."

The moment he heard that mechanical voice, Mo Fan felt the floor beneath his feet start to tremble.

Strange, muffled sounds, like something striking an underwater bell, began echoing from somewhere in the distance.

"Alert! Alert! Unauthorized entry into the core-area! Unauthorized entry! Alert!" The entire room suddenly flooded red, every screen flashing warnings.

Startled, caught off guard, Mo Fan shouted, "P-pull up the cameras on the intruder! N-now!"

Accepting his command, the cameras switched to a pure white room, a black metal structure at its center, a massive sphere of red energy glowing inside it, and standing right beside that sphere, someone he recognized.

'Wu Xin? What is she doing there?' Eyes wide with surprise, Mo Fan watched her pull something out of her sleeve and start pressing at it. 'That artifact... it looks like some kind of electronic device, exactly like the ones back on my Blue Planet!'

"Teleport me to the core-area! Now!" Without a second's hesitation, Mo Fan's priorities shifted instantly, latching onto this intrusion like a lifeline, if only to shove every ugly thought about the alchemist out of his head.

Shouting the command, he vanished from the control room.

….

"Ah! What's happening?"

"An earthquake?"

"Quick, get your flight artifacts out!"

"But what about our Qi? We can't waste it on artifacts! If the demonic-"

"What matters more to you?! Your life, or-"

Everywhere, cultivators felt the ground suddenly start shaking. Many took off at once, hovering in the air on their artifacts. Most of the righteous cultivators who took flight completely ignored the fact that burning through their Qi without replenishing it with pills risked contaminating their bodies with demonic energy.

"ROOOAAR!"

The unexpected screams of millions of creatures shook everything around them.

"Ah!"

"My ears! AAAH!"

"Wh-what is that?! Where's it coming from?!"

Deafened by the sheer noise, disciples from both the righteous and demonic paths alike began dropping to the ground, completely disoriented, some even losing consciousness from the horrific roar.

Struggling to land and shaking his head to clear it, a disciple suddenly remembered his companion and, looking around, spotted a girl with blood on her head, clutching an open wound she'd gotten from the fall.

Struggling to his feet, he ran over to her. "Junior sister! Are you alright?" Dropping to his knees beside her, he started examining the wound.

Once he'd confirmed it wasn't too serious, he started digging through his spatial pouch. "Hang in there! Just hang in there! I'll find some healing ointment and you'll be fine! Can you hear me?"

Finding the ointment and pulling it out, he'd just started opening the tube when everything around them grew even darker. At the same moment, his junior sister let out a squeak and grabbed his arm in a death grip, shaking him in a panic.

"Wh-what's wrong?" Pulling his attention away from the tube, he saw his junior sister staring up at the sky, pale-faced, trembling all over.

Looking up, he immediately dropped the tube. "Wh-what is that? What the hell-!"

An enormous white cloud, blotting out everything, everywhere. The whole cloud shimmered like an anthill, made up of tens of millions of tiny creatures.

Gathering together, freezing in place mid-air, their eyes searched everywhere at once.

Suddenly, he saw one of the creatures fix its attention on him and his junior sister.

"ROOAAAR!"

Wooosh!

A massive swarm, several thousand strong, broke off from the main group after that roar and shot straight toward them like a loosed arrow.

"G-get up!! Now!!" Grabbing his sister's arm, he tore off through the forest with everything he had, completely ignoring her screams of pain as he dragged her along behind him.

….

Scenes like this played out everywhere this massive living cloud moved. The instant any group spotted something below resembling their target, meaning any human, smaller swarms broke off and attacked without mercy.

Carving a tunnel upward, toward the surface, An suddenly stopped, watching walls of energy forming all around him. 'Is this a formation taking shape? What the hell?!'

Finding the nearest point where the formation's wall would pass through, An accelerated, trying to reach it before it sealed him inside.

'It's pulling me toward the surface... What does that even mean? Why me, again?!' Noticing that the section directly beneath him, where the formation had already started closing, was rapidly shrinking, racing toward the surface,

'Damn it!' Realizing he wouldn't make it out in time, he started analyzing the formation's key points around him, even the ones already linked together, hunting for a weak one, one without enough energy to withstand his attack.

'Found two... I'll take you!' He suddenly changed direction, activated and concentrated all his Qi into his fist, and struck the formation's weak point with everything he had.

The energy left his fist, hit the formation, and immediately ricocheted, losing its path and shooting straight back into his fist.

"AGH!" Not expecting that reaction, watching his own fist crack apart, chunks of flesh flying in every direction, he channeled more energy to redirect the ricocheted burst and force it quickly out of his body.

Thrown backward from the clash between the two bursts of energy, both technically his own, but the ricocheted one now chaotic and corrupted in structure.

Collapsing his own tunnel, burying himself under falling slabs of stone, An wrapped himself in Qi, stopped himself sharply, and focused entirely on his surroundings, ignoring the pain in his arm completely. 'Huh! Who would've guessed... even though my strike didn't break the formation's wall, it gave me enough information.'

At the moment of impact, a large portion of the formation's own Qi had burst outward. Reading that Qi, he realized there was no point attacking it again.

From the information carried in those flows, he now had a rough idea what this formation was actually for. Judging by how it resisted physical force, its original purpose was probably trapping and corralling spirit beasts, the kind known for raw physical strength.

Which meant his strikes wouldn't do anything to the formation itself. The only real weak point was its core. But that core usually sat on the wall farthest from the capture zone, precisely so a trapped creature couldn't stumble onto it by luck and destroy it by accident.

Looking around and spotting his next target, he shot straight up out of the ground and broke through to the surface.

The moment he emerged and glanced up at the sky, An went pale.

Millions of white bats hung frozen directly above him, every single one staring right at him.

'The formation cut me off completely from everything happening outside!' He finally understood why he'd never sensed it, not through the Qi flows, not through his usually useless spirit sense, that tens of millions of eyes had been watching him from directly overhead this whole time.

"ROOOAAR!"

Finally locking onto their original target, every creature screamed at once and, eyes wild, dropped straight out of the sky like stones, hurtling toward him.

"F-FUCK!" Barely in time, An covered himself with the outer membrane of QiArmor, activating the technique at full strength, though he still suffered a mild concussion from the sheer force of their combined shriek.

Feeling everything around him spin, he channeled a massive portion of his Qi into the layered scale-like defensive membrane beneath his skin, and into the membranes protecting his bones and dantian.

Closer and closer, the darkness spreading wider, their tiny bodies and staggering numbers blotting out every last ray of light falling on the clearing.

'Faster!' Watching the creatures close to arm's reach, An pressed his hands together in front of his chest and began concentrating a sphere built from FireQi and DeathQi.

"GraaAA!"

Fully focused, pouring energy into that clump, he forced himself, mentally, to ignore the first wave of creatures already slamming into him at incredible speed, like a runaway train, shattering every bone in their bodies against him.

"GraAA! HraAAa!"

Once the number of impacts against his body climbed past a few thousand, and he realized this was truly the limit of both his defense and his mind, he felt their sheer numbers and momentum finally starting to overwhelm him. He threw his hands open, releasing the clump, firing it straight upward, right through the crowd above him.

At that same instant, he stopped resisting entirely and let the massive swarm crush him into the ground, only managing to curl into a ball, arms wrapped over his head, when he felt a wave of intense heat, followed by a blast loud enough to rival the roar of the millions-strong swarm itself.

The clump detonated, unleashing raging energy from both elements at once, devouring everything in its path.

"ShraAAA! ShraAAA!"

Hundreds of thousands of the flying creatures burst into flame instantly, turning into black rot before they could even squeak. Those outside the blast radius felt their own bodies crack and stiffen from the intense heat alone, their thin whiskers and fur melting and dripping to the ground in droplets.

Like rain, black clumps and small charred, half-melted bodies began falling from the sky.

"Ugh!" Climbing out from beneath the mound of corpses, part of his body, the part that had been on top when he curled up, where the fire had reached him, badly burned, An squeezed his eyes shut, tensed his whole body, and in one sharp motion tore the burned skin and flesh away, letting his regeneration heal faster underneath. 'Ouch! OUCH! I need to do something about these self-inflicted wounds from my own Qi going chaotic like that... I'm going to end up killing myself at this rate!'

Finally free, half-naked, his clothes burned and torn apart, An looked up at the sky with a pale face, where a second wave of the attack was already gathering momentum.

The second wave, no smaller in number than the first, wasted no time falling from the sky, aimed straight at him.

'This is going to cost me!' Pushing his mind to its absolute limit, he snapped about a hundred thousand Qi Blades into existence with a single thought, no elemental conversion at all, just his base Qi, straight from the Cycle Symbol.

Standing surrounded by tens of thousands of blades, face pale, sweat beading on his forehead, he waited for the right moment.

Watching closely the very first, nearest creature, he waited, and the instant it opened its mouth to scream: "GraAA!"

The blades around An tore loose at a speed so extreme the temperature around him spiked several dozen degrees in an instant.

"Gra! Kra!"

Fwip!

Slicing through them like butter, the blades ran one creature through after another, obliterating and tearing apart every target in their path.

Standing atop a pile of scorched, rotting corpses, An suddenly dropped to one knee, his head bowed slightly. The strain on his mind, the constant control needed to track twenty separate movement patterns at once, correcting each direction on the fly, had taken a heavy toll.

"GRAAA! KRAA!"

The large number of creatures that had avoided being skewered finally reached him, eyes burning, and started biting and tearing him apart.

Every bite ripped away a small piece of skin and flesh. Every strike from their tiny claws split his skin further, opening the way for the next bite.

'H-hang on! Hang on!' Closing his eyes and mouth, afraid they might force their way inside, he waited once more for the right moment.

'I-I can't take much more...' Buried beneath the raging swarm, some of them already dying under the weight of their own kind, still pressing, biting, tearing at him, showing no mercy to themselves at all.

'N-now!' Feeling out every blade still raging outside the massive pile of tens of thousands of bodies trying to crush him, he gathered them at specific points, wherever the creatures had bunched up thickest, and detonated them, unleashing a fresh wave of raw energy.

The scale and force of the released energy shook the ground itself, and even the formation that trapped him.

Massive waves of energy rippled outward across the whole area, tearing every creature caught in the blast radius to pieces, raining entrails down inside the formation.

Since his neutral Qi always carried both the Sharpness and Rot aspects, the shredded pieces of the creatures' bodies had already begun rotting mid-fall, before they even hit the ground.

Everything around turned shades of red and black.

'GhA!' Wasting no time, ignoring the agonizing pain in his head threatening to boil his brain, An activated his Qi and unleashed it outward in wave after wave.

Striking the creatures, his energy, thanks to its aspects, sliced and melted everything around him, carving out a safe radius no creature could enter, or rather, could only enter briefly, before turning into black tofu.

'C-come on! W-work!!' Raising his right hand, screaming inside his own head, An began forming a Qi Spear. With shaking hands, he managed to finish constructing the technique within a few seconds.

'I d-don't have enough Qi left to throw it... Th-then only-' Gripping the spear in his gnawed, trembling right hand.

An struggled to his feet on his bare legs, planting them into the black rot now soaking the entire ground, forcing every last bit of his strength into standing steady. He drew back, and with whatever physical strength he had left, screaming, energy veins tearing inside him-

"HAAA!" He threw the spear, timing it so his release path had as few creatures in the way as possible.

Whoosh!

Tearing out of his hands at a speed so high the air around it crackled and groaned, like metal grinding against metal.

Smashing through everything and everyone in its path, the spear tore across the horizon, straight toward the formation's far wall.

"Gkm!" Pouring what Qi he had left into his outer defensive membrane, An collapsed to the ground again, activated thousands of vibration points across his body at varying frequencies, and shot through the layer of corpses and rot beneath him, deep into the earth, straight toward the lower wall of the formation, the same one that had forced him to the surface earlier.

Crack! CRACK!

After a deafening explosion, the formation around him began cracking and shattering.

Realizing this was his moment, he slammed into the barrier and started pounding at the cracking formation with his fist, driving in clumps of his Qi along with several different vibration frequencies, trying to break through the wall faster.

Continuing to strike, until the gap grew wide enough for his head to fit through, An threw himself through it like something possessed, tearing and shredding his own body along the way, breaking several bones in the process, just to squeeze through as fast as possible, because he could feel the entire cloud behind him, the one that had been waiting above, now falling all at once, straight after him.

Face pale, barely visible beneath layers of dried and fresh blood, both his own and the creatures', he dragged himself along, carving a tunnel and collapsing it right behind him, descending lower and lower, straight down at a sharp angle.

"Haa! Haa! Ha!" He found himself unconsciously drawing in huge amounts of Qi from his surroundings with every breath, trying to recover. Every breath only added to the strain on his mind, since he was funneling an enormous amount of Qi into his inner world, into the CycleSymbol, for accelerated filtering before sending it on to his dantian.

.

.

'E-every single time! I end up hurting myself!' Finally coming to a stop, An started examining himself, watching his flesh and skin knit back together, healing.

'And why does this always happen to me? Over and over, I keep ending up in situations like this... Ugh, my head...' Through the layers of stone and mud, he watched the swarm of creatures, unable to find him, start flying erratically, attacking anything they could see. He finally relaxed, realizing he was safe.

'This time... that was clearly someone's attack. Aimed directly at me.' Calming himself, he started recovering while keeping an eye on the creatures outside.

'Creatures from the incubator laboratory, and control over the formations inside this whole space. Sounds like the heir... and it's definitely Mo Fan, no one else. Which means his attack, aimed specifically at me...' An's eyes suddenly went cold, and activating his Qi, he started moving as far away from this spot as he could.

'Why, though? Is this about Ru Meng? Hm... that's the only explanation. There shouldn't be any other reason for this.'

Suddenly grasping what this actually meant for him, An tensed hard. 'This is bad! Very bad! I've just become the enemy of the damn protagonist... This is really bad!'

Continuing to move in a random direction, he suddenly stopped and, collapsing the tunnel behind him, started analyzing everything around him. 'What do I do now? How am I supposed to go back to the sect, once I've become the enemy of the Sect Leader's own personal disciple?'

Falling onto his back against the rocks, he pulled a bottle of red wine out of his ring.

Opening it and taking a few long swigs, he finally relaxed. 'Oh, Kauomo wine, aged with Shermond and Plotitsa fruit, a great calming effect, with a light sweetness that carries a fresh hint of mint. Sigh...' Taking another long swig. 'I'm going to end up a wine connoisseur at this rate... or an alcoholic.'

Lying on the rocks, recovering and ‘warming’ himself with the wine, he spent several hours like that, never once stopping his watch over the surface and everything happening up there.

'Just within the radius where I can still make out the Qi flows, at least a few hundred creatures have died... and most of them were cultivators. Heh.' He suddenly smirked. 'He never stops surprising me. Killing more and more of his own allies every single time...' Shaking his head, An stayed put, sitting deep underground, right where he was.