Mystical Journey

The flames turned into what looked like countless pieces of confetti, floating about everywhere.

Garen avoided the embers and looked at the huge blaze that just would not die down, frowning deeply.

The Soul Energy Aura was just in there, but he could not go in and deal with it. These flames burned at several thousand degrees, at least, and as he was right now, it was not quite possible for him to walk into the fire head-on to look for something.

“How troublesome.”

He turned around and glanced at the distant sky, the helicopter Kong Xinxue rode on was flying toward him slowly. Clearly, it was here to pick him up.

“Well, the Soul Energy is so miniscule, so I bet nothing much will remain.” Garen turned around and left quickly.

Soon, the helicopter left this little island once more.

Sitting in the helicopter, Garen lowered his head, looking at the island beneath him.

“How many more such islands are there?” he asked the black person.

“I only know how to navigate to one more,” replied the black pilot in a panic. He was terrified of ticking Garen off, after all, he had watched Garen massacre so many members of the White Crab Army with his own eyes. Right now, he both admired and feared Garen to the extreme, and was treating him just like he would the Commander.

“Take me there,” said Garen nonchalantly, narrowing his eyes. “I might as well get it all done at once. You’ve refueled the tank?”

“Yes, sir!”

“Then let’s go!”

Beside him, Kong Xinxue looked at Garen as though he was a monster.

“You– Since when have you become so overpowered…” She could not hide the shock in her heart at all, this guy went head-to-head against so many elites and killed them all! In her perspective, Nine-Tailed Fox was the strongest, but even she could not do that…

Garen smiled but did not say anything. He just sat in his seat, closing his eyes and resting his mind. The military saber leaned on the side of his seat, and he placed his hands on his knees, falling into a deep sleep.

Kong Xinxue sat right beside him, but she felt an ice-cold aura, the kind that warned all living creatures to stay away. It was as though she could sense a slight chill coming from Garen. She thought she knew this guy very well, but right now the image of him in her eyes was beginning to seem more unfocused and mysterious.

“What kind of a person was he in the past! How could he have possibly reached such heights in such a short time!?” In spite of herself, she was slowly growing curious about Garen.

**********************

Smack.

The large blaze was slowly dying down, and a piece of charcoal exploded in it, splitting in half. Immediately, a black leather boot trampled down hard on it, shattering it.

The man in the black windbreaker slowly walked up to the place where the woman Garen had killed was.

He bent down and slowly reached around the ground, finally retrieving a transparent crystal-like hexagonal gem from the ashes.

“Soul Crystal… number two.”

He murmured in a deep and low voice. Keeping the Soul Crystal into his coat.

“How lucky, I just need to gather three of these, then I’d be able to condense a Soul Seed, and if I absorb it then… Even the Slayer wouldn’t be able to stop me!! Hmph hmph hmph…” He began to chuckle coldly and deeply.

“I just have to be a bit more careful, and no one will know that I was the one who took away the Forged Sacred Sigil… All the blame will be pinned on Garen. Not bad.”

The figure retreated slowly, taking the Soul Crystal with him, and got onto a submarine at the beach. Soon enough, he had vanished into the depths of the ocean.

*******************

Garen strode forth slowly, picking up speed as he went, going faster and faster.

All of a sudden, he did a forward flip. Psst psst psst!!

There were three consecutive hisses, and three robots on the island beneath him, each three meters tall, simply fell sideways, rendered completely useless. A large burst of sparks rose from each of them.

Boom boom boom!!

Three explosions.

Garen landed and continue to walk forward, military saber in hand.

There were corpses and remains all around him, shards and debris from tanks or even fighter jets littering the landscape. Flames, black smoke, and all sorts of vitrified craters had turned this new island into an utter and complete mess.

“White Crab Army. Don’t you have any stronger opponents for me to face?!” Dissatisfied, Garen yanked up the last remaining bald man. The latter was the leader here and also the person in charge of the entire island. He was dressed in a white suit, and his bald head was almost shiny, so all in all, he would have usually looked like quite the strongman. Now that Garen was holding him up by the collar, however, he just looked weak and small, like a newborn chick.

“D-Don’t kill me!!” the baldy pleaded, his face covered with tears and snot. The terror in his eyes spread uncontrollably to the rest of his face, leaving a strange and distorted impression on any onlookers.

“You’re too weak…” Garen tossed him aside. When it came to people like this, he could not even be bothered to kill them.

Barroom!!!

To his surprise, however, the baldy only managed to fly several meters away before he abruptly exploded.

Horrifying green flames, accompanied with some spots of white light, exploded from that spot, instantly covering everything within a dozen meters of the center.

Garen’s reaction was instant, and he immediately retreated, but it was still too late. The impact hit him head-on.

Pff!

He could not help but spit out a mouthful of blood and was sent flying backward.

“Damn, what is this!!” It never occurred to him that these self-destruct explosions were not controlled by the agents themselves, and in fact appeared to have nothing at all to do with their own intentions. They just exploded randomly, completely out of the blue.

He was hit head-on by this blast and was thrown back, flipping head over heels until he finally landed on the ground more than ten meters away. He rubbed the blood from the corner of his mouth angrily. After sustaining several injuries like that, even his powerful Vitality could not save him from vomiting blood.

“Why is it that the weaker guys have the stronger bombs!?”

Getting up from the ground, Garen looked around him. There was not a single thing left alive on the entire island, everything else had either escaped or died.

“Consider this a lesson for you all.”

He turned around and left, walking toward the helicopter in the distance that was slowly landing from its low flight altitude.

Although Kong Xinxue did not have any particularly strong powers, she was still perfectly capable of threatening a black pilot by pointing a gun at him.

Not long after he left, the figure in the black windbreaker appeared beside the flames once more.

This time, the person had a fire extinguisher in his hand, and he sprayed it at the flames fiercely.

The fire died down immediately, and the black figure walked into it, his leather boots sizzling on the black ashes, emanating the foul odor of burning leather.

He bent over, using a piece of metal to rummage around the soil for a while before he once again found a crystal-clear hexagonal gem from amidst the ashes.

“The third one…”

He took a cell phone out of his pocket, and lightly dialed a number.

“What are your orders, Your Excellency?” A crisp and cold voice spoke from within the phone.

“There are five more bases on the White Crab Arny’s side, settle them all at once,” said the windbreaker-man softly.

“Understood, everything is prepared and ready, awaiting your orders.”

“Yeah, settle everything within half an hour.”

“As you wish.”

The call was disconnected, and the windbreaker-man chuckled softly.

“This is quite a decent haul…”

He turned around and walked toward the beach.

*******************

In a certain submarine at the bottom of the ocean.

“This is the ninth base to be destroyed.” Two black silhouettes stood side by side in front of a white screen, as they looked upon the sorry state of the battle-ravaged island.

“Garen annihilated three armies all by himself. This is unbelievable. He’s just one man!” said another man in a low voice. “Also, we couldn’t find the crystals, so Garen must have taken them. The attackers on the other islands must be his collaborators, working together with him in this operation. If I’m not mistaken, I think they’re collecting all of the crystals and handing them over to Garen.”

“We must get them back, the Soul Crystals are the foundation to our deal with Slayer. Since Garen has the guts to take the Soul Crystals from us, that must mean he is fully prepared to declare open war against us.”

“This time, are you going or should I?” asked the other person.

“I’ll go. As the Head Commander, you have too many things on your plate, and I might as well go out for a warm-up. I haven’t moved these bones for a long time, wonder how much of my old power is left.”

“As long as the people from Vulture don’t interfere, everything will go smoothly on my side. After you finish off Garen, came back immediately and rendezvous with me.”

“Got it.”

“Let’s show him that there are some things he should never have touched…”

******************

Aboard the helicopter, Garen sat in his seat, quietly waiting for Kong Xinxue to react.

“How’s it going?”

“I found it.” Kong Xinxue widened her eyes. “Don’t doubt my abilities, even if I’m not as strong as you guys, this field is my specialty!” she said in frustration.

“Approximate location.”

“It’s in the sea right beneath you!”

Garen picked up his military saber, opened the cabin door, and just jumped down.

Splash!

He sank straight into the sea beneath them.

In the ocean, everything was a dim, dark blue, but he could very clearly see the pitch-black roe-shaped submarine appearing right in front of him.

The fish roe submarine was somehow transparent, and a person, wrapped from head to toe in a windbreaker, raised his head suddenly.

He was holding in his hand what looked like an oval-shaped crystal-clear gem, and then he popped it into his mouth. Seeing Garen rush at him, he instantly sped up. A hint of a smile played on his lips.

“You’re too late, you.” He projected this message to Garen from a distance.

Garen had long since sensed that something was amiss, it was not just about how the Soul Energy behind him kept disappearing, but it was more about how someone seemed to have helped by loosening the security measures of the White Crab Army. It appeared as though word of him destroying the bases never reached the other areas, and he managed to take the White Crab Army by surprise three times in a row. There was obviously someone helping him to keep the information secret, only an idiot would think otherwise.

This was not like ancient times, where they required flaming torches to relay messages. Now, they just needed a number to pass their call and information to a very distant place. There was only one reason something like this could happen in such a technologically-advanced era– someone must be secretly helping him suppress the information. Garen was no greenhorn either, and his several hundred years of experience came in handy. If he could not even smell such an obvious rat, he would have wasted so many years’ worth of effort.

“Too late?” Garen’s lips curved, and suddenly the saber in his hand gave a jolt. It began to burn all over with white flames, as his powerful Soul Energy Forces were triggered and burst forth from his body.

The Soul Energy penetrated the submarine, and landed hard onto that gem.

With a buzz, the gem actually paused for a while, suspended beside the windbreaker-man’s lips, as though it was controlled by some invisible power for an instant there.

“Forewind.” Garen swung his military saber gently.

The blade burned with white flames and cut a strange path through the air before it landed mercilessly.

Clang!

The submarine was instantly slashed in half, and the seawater began to surge in frenziedly. The submarine gave a heavy jolt, and its movements slowed down considerably.