Chapter 601: The Might of the Five-Qi Heavenly Sovereign

Zhang Huainan watched Lu Yibei in the distance with a peculiar expression. After a long moment, he burst out laughing.

All the false identities Lu Yibei had so painstakingly constructed had already fallen apart before his eyes.

She had been laid as bare as a burly man in a public bathhouse—right down to the number of curls in his leg hair.

“No wonder I thought there was something off about her oath. I figured that if anything went wrong, I could always track down Gu Qianqian…”

“Heh. If I’d actually gone looking for Gu Qianqian, I would’ve played right into that little bastard’s hands, wouldn’t I?”

Although he now realized that the oath he had established with Lu Yibei was practically worthless, Zhang Huainan felt more reassured than ever.

“What do young people call this sort of thing nowadays?” Zhang Huainan thought for a moment, then nodded. “Ah, right. Social death!”

A relationship built on mutually assured social destruction was second in strength only to blood ties and marriage!

“Heh heh. Interesting…”

Zhang Huainan smiled as he imagined facing Lu Yibei later, knowing everything while she continued putting on her act with all her might.

He respected Qing Ji greatly, but whenever something like this happened, he could not help refuting Qing Ji’s claim that living too long eventually became boring.

He could watch this kind of drama for another thousand years and never tire of it!

————

Suffocating wind pressure erupted, and the explosive crack of air stabbed at the eardrums.

Ravaged by the pain of her Spirit Pattern slipping out of control, Huá Sāng jerked her head up. All she could see was the enormous fist rapidly swelling in her vision until it filled her entire world.

For that instant, it was as if nothing remained between heaven and earth except her and the bizarre creature’s fist.

Then she suddenly felt Lu Yibei move behind her, clutching at her clothes as she climbed onto her shoulder.

Huá Sāng’s shoulder dipped—and Lu Yibei launched herself from it, flying straight at the hulking body ahead.

Seeing brilliant white light gather between Lu Yibei’s slender fingers and sensing the terrifying power contained within that spell formation, one thought flashed through Huá Sāng’s mind: This woman really had been holding back!

But immediately afterward, through the Qi-sighting Art, she noticed that the night erosion leaking from her Spirit Pattern on the verge of collapse was pouring into Lu Yibei like rivers flowing into the sea. Combined with what had happened during the psychic attack at Hua City Airport, realization seemed to strike her, and her pupils contracted slightly.

Lu Yibei can absorb the night erosion inside me and convert it into psychic energy?

If this ability of hers doesn’t place any burden on her body…

As Huá Sāng stared at Lu Yibei’s back, even the half of her body untouched by the fierce blaze of the explosion seemed to turn hot. Her blood surged, and her heart pounded wildly.

It was like someone diagnosed with a terminal illness, someone who had already accepted death and booked a flight to see the places they had always wanted to visit, suddenly learning that a miracle drug for their disease existed after all.

The excitement was beyond words.

————

Lu Yibei herself had no idea why her depleted psychic energy had suddenly recovered.

It felt as though someone had hit her with a high-efficiency recharge skill, instantly filling every skill bar and making all her abilities ready to use.

There was no time to think. After predicting the bizarre creature’s trajectory, she sprang from Huá Sāng’s back.

The Four Beasts Bright Sky Cannon roared, and the alchemical dirty bomb erupted in brilliant light inside the hole bored through the hulking body.

Amid a roar pitched too high for human ears to catch, the destruction of that massive body sent its uncontrolled psychic energy exploding outward, together with shattered metal, pale plasma, broken bones, and chunks of flesh. A wave of flame swept through the narrow street.

The violent blast of wind instantly hurled Huá Sāng and Lu Yibei away like kites with severed strings. They crashed to the ground.

The two of them rolled through the dust, feeling as though every bone in their bodies had come loose.

At that moment, several members of the Esoteric Society used the smoke as cover to close in rapidly. They brandished weapons fused with their own bodies, the psychic energy fluctuations radiating from the blades raising layer after layer of ripples in the air.

Lu Yibei’s premonitory thoughts caught their trajectories. Her heart tightened, and she instinctively tried to dodge, only to discover that the violent impact had left her body briefly sluggish.

Her limbs felt filled with lead, too heavy to obey her.

In the instant she froze, swords, spell formations, and alchemical bullets descended on her all at once.

In desperation, Lu Yibei grabbed Huá Sāng beside her and hauled her in front as a shield.

Huá Sāng: “???”

“…”

Lu Yibei could have assumed the same defensive posture with the Pure Lotus Sword, but she had just witnessed the Pure Lotus Sword fragment in Huá Sāng’s hand betray its owner. She really did not feel safe trusting it.

What if the Broken Sword betrayed her too?

Surely Pink Fluffy Bunny couldn’t control Huá Sāng’s body as well, right? Lu Yibei thought.

The next moment, more than ten attacks of Precision grade or higher poured onto Huá Sāng. Several different weapons struck various parts of her body with a metallic clatter, scattering trails of sparks.

Huá Sāng might have been able to take those blows without injury, but injury-free did not mean pain-free!

Her pretty face instantly turned deathly pale, her features twisting together. Her lips parted as if she wanted to speak, but before she could, she heard Lu Yibei whisper, “Forgive me!”

Huá Sāng assumed Lu Yibei was addressing the Esoteric Society members.

After all, what Lu Yibei had just done was already offensive enough. Surely she couldn’t be planning something even worse?

Only when Huá Sāng’s world began spinning did she realize how naive she had been.

Gripping Huá Sāng by the right ankle, Lu Yibei swung her like a hammer through an arc with a radius of precisely 165.3 plus 52.6 centimeters, sending the weapon-wielding Esoteric Society members around them flying.

Fighting with a human weapon came naturally to her. It was one of the first skills she had mastered upon entering this world full of hauntings!

“You villains—taste my hammer!”

Huá Sāng: “…”

She fell silent for several seconds, her feelings complicated. Then, with remarkable cooperation, she straightened her body and found time to cast two high-tier defensive spell formations with damage-reflection effects on herself…

————

In the distance.

Zhang Huainan’s mouth twitched violently at everything he had witnessed. This was a kind of “cooperation” he had never imagined.

Then, just as Lu Yibei was mowing down everything in sight with Huá Sāng, countless objects carrying psychic energy fluctuations rapidly converged on the remains of the bizarre creature destroyed by the Four Beasts Bright Sky Cannon and the explosion triggered by the alchemical dirty bomb.

Repairing objects was unlike healing a living creature. There was no need for a relatively slow recovery process. Usually, replacing the damaged components was enough to restore normal operation immediately.

Countless objects surged from the shadows and from streets and alleys in every direction toward the heap of wreckage, fitting and welding themselves together with extraordinary efficiency.

Soon, an enormous construct rose from the ground and began to operate. It bore no resemblance whatsoever to the previous bizarre creature, yet the pressure it radiated had not diminished in the slightest. If anything, it was even stronger.

Machinery churned and engines roared like a savage beast, shaking the earth beneath it.

Faced with a new enemy, Lu Yibei—having built up plenty of confidence against the Esoteric Society members and smaller bizarre creatures—charged straight at it while swinging Huá Sāng.

“!!!”

Zhang Huainan, who had watched from the sidelines for long enough, could no longer remain seated. At last, he made his move.

Lu Yibei and Huá Sāng appeared far from their limits, but he suspected that if he kept standing by, that boy would play his grand-disciple to death.

In the most literal, physical sense!

He swiftly formed several hand seals, and a vast, imposing phantasm immediately appeared around him.

A dark jade crown. Black feathered robes. A dark banner. A writhing black dragon… And soldiers clad in black-iron armor, packed together more than ten thousand strong, almost filling the sky above the lockdown zone. They were distant phantoms symbolizing the power of the Five-Qi Heavenly Sovereign.

In an instant, the entire lockdown zone was engulfed by a murderous stillness, like the moment before a torrential storm. The air filled with suffocating moisture.

“…Following the divine Ren and Gui, channeling from above the flowing qi of the Five Emperors, bringing salvation and harmony to all living beings below, safeguarding the Two Principles from collapse and preserving all lives in eternal peace—he is the Northern Dark Emperor, the Five-Qi Heavenly Sovereign!”

As though tens of thousands were chanting in low voices at once, the description of Zhang Huainan’s Spirit Pattern power rolled across the sky like the pounding of war drums.

The elderly man seemed to stand high upon a command platform, gazing down below as dark cyan light, almost tangible, blazed from his eyes.

At that instant, dense fog materialized around the enormous construct, the Esoteric Society members, and the rampaging bizarre creatures on the ground, enveloping them layer by layer.

Then…

Zhang Huainan frowned. Holding a hand seal with his left hand, he extended his right and closed it toward the distant ground.

“BOOM—!”

Deafening thunder tore through the air. Lightning turned the entire lockdown zone stark white, and heaven and earth seemed to freeze.

Beneath that pale radiance, the dense fog became countless enormous hands, clenching tight around every body it surrounded.

Bolts of lightning crashed down one after another. In an instant, the entire lockdown zone became a world of water and thunder, swallowing every completely twisted and deformed figure.

The sounds of objects and bones shattering mingled with anguished screams from every direction.