Chapter 141: One Shot to the Head

For the first time since they had met him, the perfect smile on Mr. Tingyun’s face visibly stiffened.

He felt that this eccentric young man’s words were laced with a meaning that was far from innocent.

However, before he could process it further, the battle raging before them had already reached its conclusion.

Under the combined pressure of Fu Xuan’s containment field and Ms. Welt’s silent, crushing gravity wells, Dan Shu’s resistance—fueled by volatile elixirs and the twisted power of Abundance—was swiftly dismantled.

Dan Shu let out a choked groan and stumbled back. The ominous green light enveloping him flickered and died as he finally collapsed to one knee, a trickle of dark blood spilling from the corner of his mouth. He gasped for air, his chest heaving, but then his head snapped up. His gaze wasn’t on Fu Xuan, the woman who had just defeated him.

Instead, it shot past everyone, bypassing the entire battlefield to lock onto the figure of Tingyun at the very back of the group.

A final, desperate burst of fanaticism erupted in his eyes as he hissed, his voice cracking with urgency.

“The Ambrosial Arbor… The Ambrosial Arbor has descended! It will grant us truly immortal bodies! Our agreement… the agreement has been fulfilled! Lord Ravager! Quickly, fulfill your promise! Quickly… right now!”

In an instant, every head swiveled in unison, their gazes shifting from the defeated Dan Shu to the elegant figure of Tingyun.

They watched as the person wearing Tingyun’s face—the one with that flawless, gentle smile—let that smile slowly, painstakingly fade away. Bit by bit, it was replaced by an expression of deep helplessness and weary disappointment.

She sighed, a soft, delicate sound, as if she were chiding a child who had just failed a simple test.

“Tsk, tsk…”

She shook her head, a gesture of mock pity.

“Dan Shu, oh, Dan Shu… Why must you be in such a hurry? And why… why did you have to force my hand? To make me act personally?” Her voice was a silken whisper, laced with cold amusement. “This messy outcome goes against my aesthetics of destruction, you little pawn.”

Before her voice had even finished echoing, she stopped looking at the dying alchemist on the ground. Instead, she began to walk, her steps calm and measured, moving toward Dan Shu—and toward the very center of the battlefield. Her pristine, elegant robes seemed utterly out of place amidst the drifting dust and spatters of blood, yet they carried an aura that was unsettling beyond measure.

Fu Xuan’s pupils contracted. “Tingyun! What is the meaning of this?!” she barked.

Ms. Welt’s cane was already held horizontally before her, a silent declaration that she was ready for battle.

March 7th’s mouth hung open, his face a mask of pure, uncomprehending disbelief.

In a flash, Caelus moved, planting himself firmly in front of Chen, his bat held at the ready.

The woman in Tingyun’s form, however, acted as if she hadn’t heard a thing. She walked gracefully to Dan Shu’s side and looked down at her former collaborator, her voice now devoid of all warmth.

“Fine. It seems my plan to erode the Xianzhou from within will require a different approach. This particular game of chess… shall end here for now.”

With that, she turned, once again facing the Astral Express crew and the assembled Cloud Knights. That chilling, bone-deep smile reappeared on her face as her gaze swept over the shocked crowd, finally landing on Chen with a look of genuine interest, as if she were savoring the stunned expressions on their faces.

However, at the very instant her smile began to widen, a new voice cut through the tension.

“I’ll give you something to smile about, you bastard!”

The shout was impossibly arrogant, and it was accompanied by a beam of light that tore through the air faster than anyone could possibly imagine!

It was a beam of pure, absolute, blinding white light.

The source of the beam was Chen’s hand, which he had raised at some unknown point, now clutching an oddly shaped and somewhat dilapidated… pistol? It looked like it was barely held together by a network of countless tiny gears and pipes.

The body of the gun even emitted a tinny, electronic voice.

“[Geo-Map charging complete. Charge at 420%! Overload strike, firing!]”

The beam was too fast. Too sudden. And its target was too terrifyingly clear.

The woman wearing Tingyun’s face, who had just turned around with that enigmatic smile still gracing her lips, had absolutely no time to mount any effective defense. The playful curiosity in her eyes was instantly vaporized, replaced by sheer shock and a flash of genuine, incandescent rage.

A soft pfft.

The beam of light pierced her forehead with unerring precision. It then burst out from the back of her head, its momentum undiminished, and carved a bottomless, scorching trench into the ground behind her.

The expression on her face froze. Her body swayed.

Immediately after, her entire form—starting from the head—began to fracture. Like smashed porcelain, like a pencil drawing being furiously erased, she rapidly disintegrated into a cloud of flying debris that scattered and vanished into the air.

In her place, only emptiness remained, along with a shimmering dust of light particles that had not yet dissipated.

Before the alchemy furnace, there was dead silence.

The wind itself seemed to have stopped.

Fu Xuan’s raised hand was frozen mid-air. Behind her, the Cloud Knights were all gaping, their minds completely blank.

Ms. Welt stared intently at the dilapidated pistol in Chen’s hand, which was now smoking and looked as if it might fall apart at any second. She then looked at the spot where Tingyun had vanished, her usually steady expression unable to conceal her utter astonishment.

March 7th’s mouth was wide open as he stared at the empty patch of ground. He then looked at Chen, who was casually holding the gun and blowing on the nonexistent smoke from its muzzle. His brain had completely stalled.

Behind his mask, Caelus’s eyes were wide, his grip on his bat tightening and loosening as he completely failed to process what had just happened.

Dan Shu was even more stunned, slumped on the ground in a heap. He stared at the spot where his “Lord Ravager” had disappeared, the last trace of color draining from his face, leaving only boundless, soul-crushing fear and confusion.

From Dan Shu shouting “Lord Ravager,” to Tingyun revealing her true nature, and then to Chen suddenly blowing her head off and annihilating her… the entire sequence had unfolded in the space of a few breaths.

The amount of information was too great, the reversals too shocking. No one’s brain could keep up.

Chen, however, acted as if he had done something completely trivial. He gave the pistol in his hand a little shake as it began to grow uncomfortably hot.

“Tsk, the overload was a bit much. I’ll have to give you an upgrade next time…” he muttered to himself.

Then, he looked up at the stunned crowd, his gaze lingering on March 7th and Fu Xuan, who still hadn’t recovered from the shock of watching a person vanish into thin air.

He grinned, revealing a bright, sunny smile that somehow made everyone present feel a strange sense of unease.

“So… shall I introduce her again?”

He pointed his thumb at the empty space where the woman had disappeared.

“That person just now—if I’m not mistaken—wasn’t your Xianzhou civil servant, Mr. Tingyun.”

He paused for effect.

“She’s most likely an entity that enjoys possessing people and sowing deception. Her name is probably Phantylia… a Lord Ravager of the Annihilation Gang.”

He added, as if sharing a fun fact: “Yeah, you know, the kind that serves under Nanook, the Aeon of Destruction. The ones who are especially good at causing trouble.”

Dead silence.

It was followed by a series of sharp, ragged gasps.

But just as Chen’s words about the Lord Ravager fell, before anyone could even begin to digest the shocking information, another change occurred.

Right where the body had turned into light particles and vanished, a speck of emerald-green spirit fire, radiating an aura of pure destruction, ignited out of thin air. It hung there, flickering unsteadily.

From within the spirit fire, a voice emerged—a voice utterly different from Tingyun’s gentle tone, now seething with cosmic fury.

“You… bastard…! A mere ant… how dare you destroy my avatar…?!”

It was indeed Phantylia.

The core will of a Lord Ravager, even if it was just a wisp of a distracted mind formed into a spirit flame, was enough. The pressure it exuded instantly made the surrounding air thick and heavy, and everyone felt as if a giant boulder had been dropped onto their chests.

However…

“What are you blathering about?! You trying to charge up an Ultimate Skill or something?!”

Chen’s reaction was faster than anyone else’s.

He seemed to have been waiting for this. Almost at the exact same moment the spirit fire appeared and the voice echoed, he once again raised the smoking, dilapidated pistol that looked like it would fall apart at any moment. There wasn’t a hint of fear on his face, only the predatory excitement of a player who had found a boss in a vulnerable state.

“Pew! Pew! Pew—!”

He didn’t wait for the spirit fire to condense or for Phantylia to unleash some powerful move. He just started pulling the trigger.

The muzzle once again erupted with blinding white light. This time it wasn’t a single charged shot, but a rapid-fire volley of smaller, though still razor-sharp, beams that shot toward the ball of emerald fire like a torrential downpour.

“What are you all standing there for?! Hit it!” Chen shouted at the top of his lungs to the stunned onlookers.

“I don’t care what kind of ‘Lord’ it is! A phoenix without its feathers is just a chicken! Kick it while it’s down, people!”

[Elysian’s Note:

Having a good time with the story?

Every single bit helps immensely:

Thanks a ton for making this journey possible!]