Chapter 593: Encirclement (Two in One)

Rows of cold, pitch-black cannon muzzles aimed at the panicked crowd in the center, a chilling light glinting off their curved rims.

A second later, as an emotionless mechanical voice faded, terrifying serpents of fire spewed from the muzzles.

Countless brilliant lasers erupted from the barrels, sweeping across the earth and weaving into a deadly grid.

Deafening roars echoed across the land. Fissures spiderwebbed outward from the center, tearing the earth apart as thousands of boulders plummeted into the depths. Within mere seconds, tens of thousands of degrees of heat melted the rocky surface completely, turning it into a rolling, fiery-orange ocean where boiling red bubbles constantly churned.

The lasers and fire raged for a full minute before gradually dying away.

When the smoke and dust cleared, the vast ground had sunk by several meters. What lay before them was not a deep crater, but an even broader, pitch-black plain.

Flanking it were two rows of towering peaks, endless and impossibly steep.

Having fulfilled their purpose, the steel monsters died as well. Unable to withstand such a massive energy discharge, they turned to ash and scattered in the wind.

"Cough, cough, cough."

Chen Hong struggled out of the woman's embrace, retching up the soot and ash in her mouth.

"Where is everyone?"

She opened her eyes in a daze, looking around.

Of the hundreds of people they originally had, only a few in the Ninth Tier remained.

Below the Ninth Tier, not a single trace was left.

And even those in the Ninth Tier...

"Uncle Zong..."

Ignoring the woman pulling at her, she stumbled over to the heavily injured man lying on the ground.

"Are you okay?"

Like the woman, the man before her was an elder who had watched her grow up. Yet now, only a small fraction of his body remained, leaning against a pile of gray-black ash.

His entire face was ruined.

One of the lasers had carried a terrifying aura of death, corroding away most of his body upon contact. His facial skin was pitted with holes, packed densely together like inverted nodules of flesh.

"Miss..."

The man opened his mouth, but he could only gasp inward, unable to breathe out. His voice was as faint as a breeze.

He reached out with his only remaining hand, but lost his strength before he could even touch Chen Hong. The arm flopped uselessly to the ground, and he breathed his last. He had been too close to the giant steel cannons, the first Ninth Tier to bear the brunt of their concentrated fire. In just a few moments, he had lost all ability to resist.

"Uncle Zong, Uncle Zong... Mmph!"

Chen Hong cried out hysterically, but the woman behind her immediately clamped a hand over her mouth.

The enemy was hidden in the dark while they were exposed in the light. If they carelessly gave away their position now, what awaited Chen Hong would likely be death.

The woman had initially thought this operation was practically guaranteed to succeed. For things to turn out like this pushed her nerves to their absolute limit. Every rustle of the wind and twitch of the grass terrified her.

She mentally replayed the entire process of the artillery strike.

First came a beam of light.

It wasn't a laser, but more like a preliminary charging action for the giant steel machines. She had initially thought it gave her enough time to react, but when the beam fell, an intensely violent surge of hunger erupted in her stomach.

Under that overwhelming hunger, the ability she had prepared was instantly interrupted.

Next came the lasers. They carried the power to destroy everything: death... arrogance... rules... In a fleeting moment, she had identified several of these properties. Each one boasted immensely destructive power. Combined, they instantly annihilated anyone at the Summit and below. It wasn't that the survivors hadn't fought back.

Specifically, right after the lasers ended and before the heavy artillery rained down, she had targeted those steel monsters and unleashed her ability. A murky yellow sandstorm had instantly engulfed the cannons, seeking to disintegrate the seemingly fragile steel constructs. But things quickly deviated from her expectations.

The metal barrels and densely packed electronic circuits were indeed obliterated in an instant.

Since this was a common weakness of the Mechanization path, she thought she had seized the perfect opening to counterattack.

To her shock, however, the destroyed circuits and barrels regenerated the very next second.

The artillery fire, which had been halfway through charging, wasn't affected in the slightest and continued to bombard them.

She was mostly fine herself. As a Tenth Tier, she only needed to focus on protecting Chen Hong in her arms; even taking the other attacks head-on didn't cause her much harm.

But... it was a massive problem for the other Ninth Tiers.

Fighting back just then meant abandoning their defenses.

When the lasers and artillery struck, they had no time to deploy defensive measures and were forced to take the second wave of attacks with their bare bodies.

Immediately after, the most lethal aspect of the bombardment revealed itself.

For some inexplicable reason, while she was defending, the urge to drop her guard and embrace the fire flared up in her mind several times.

It was as if the flames were sacred, while she was inherently wicked and tainted by filth, compelling her to willingly accept the fire. My comrades have all died, how can I go on living like a coward?

Such thoughts constantly flashed through her mind. Fortunately, she never forgot about Chen Hong in her arms, which kept her from giving up the resistance.

The fate of the others, however, was now plain to see.

"We fell into a trap," the woman said, hugging Chen Hong tightly.

"Their target was us from the very beginning."

At these words, Chen Hong went quiet in her arms.

It was an incredibly easy thing to figure out.

When they first appeared in the Stone Realm, although the scene had been gruesome, the ground beneath them hadn't collapsed, nor were there any surrounding peaks, and they could still see the corpses of many clansmen.

It wasn't like this, where the vast majority of the clansmen had turned to ash, leaving not even a shadow behind.

"The enemy ambushed the Seventh Young Master's group first, but they had too many people. The enemy either lacked the means to finish them off or would have suffered catastrophic losses to do so," the woman whispered into Chen Hong's ear, vigilantly scanning their surroundings.

"From start to finish, their true target was us, the group with fewer troops and hands."

"The Seventh Young Master is definitely still alive. Let's retreat for now."

To the woman, retreating was their best option right now.

They hadn't even figured out where the enemy was, yet they had already lost more than half their forces. Even if they managed to defeat the enemy in the end, they might still have to deal with the Seventh Young Master turning on them.

You could say this battle was already over before it had even begun.

Who would have thought, however, that Chen Hong would violently shake her head in the woman's arms.

She bit her lip, tears rolling down her cheeks as hatred flared in her eyes.

"Ninth Aunt, we fight."

"..." The woman wanted to dissuade her, but seeing Chen Hong's expression, her gaze finally softened.

"Alright, we fight."

"If you can grow from this incident, Young Miss, then their sacrifices will have been worth it."

To the woman, Chen Hong's life was more important than everyone else's combined.

This was the first time she had seen Chen Hong take the initiative and show such fierce resolve.

She didn't want to extinguish this newfound conviction forged in a life-or-death crisis, and besides, she had a plan in mind.

"We'll fight a guerrilla war."

She flicked her hands, and pitch-black weird energy erupted from her palms. Countless grains of windblown sand wrapped around her and the surrounding people. Starting from their fingertips, everyone's bodies gradually turned into distinct, orange-yellow grains of sand.

Carried by the wind howling in the air, they slowly scattered.

If Yan Jing were here, he would instantly recognize this ability.

[Sandification]. This was the same ability Sha Like had used, but its application here was far more profound.

Not only could she turn herself into sand, she could even convert the people around her into fine grains as well.

In this state, the vast majority of damage types would be drastically weakened, and they could slip into the enemy's blind spots at any time.

The woman's plan was actually quite simple.

Since the enemy liked to play dirty, they just had to be even dirtier.

As long as they could sneak into the enemy's base, it would definitely be the enemy who suffered in this battle.

"Water!"

However, just as the woman thought victory was firmly in her grasp, a voice rang out in the air.

The figures of Zhou Mian, Bai Chen, and Bai Yue appeared in the sky simultaneously.

An azure rune surged at Zhou Mian's fingertips, and a torrential downpour instantly filled the air.

No, calling it a downpour was an understatement. It was more like several waterfalls cascading from cracked rifts, instantly drenching the newly sandified group. The woman's pupils violently contracted.

The enemy clearly knew about her abilities.

And they came prepared.

The Ocean pathway was virtually the natural enemy of her pathway.

"Sandstorm."

She flicked her palm, and the falling water droplets instantly turned to silt.

This was another one of her terrifying signature moves, granting the sand she summoned contagious properties.

Anything it touched would be converted into sand under her control.

Her years of vigilance allowed her to instantly pinpoint the enemy's weakness—

Their Tier was too low.

The power the enemy displayed far exceeded that of an ordinary Ninth Tier, but compared to a veteran Tenth Tier like her, there was still a fundamental gap. Just like that, a scene akin to a miracle unfolded before everyone's eyes.

The waterfalls crashing through the air actually began turning back into sand from their roots, reversing course and flowing upward.

A surging, torrential river—half silt, half water—materialized in the sky, flowing against gravity.

Having resolved the immediate crisis, the woman led her group and floated off into the distance.

As long as they vanished from the enemy's line of sight, they would hold the initiative the next time they clashed.

But Zhou Mian clearly had no intention of letting them go.

Seeing the sand crisscrossing the sky, he bit down hard on the tip of his tongue and spat a mouthful of blood onto the rune at his fingertips.

Rumble!

The heavy rain poured down once more. Amidst the torrential droplets, much of the sand inevitably became damp.

This moisture barely affected the woman, but...

In her sand form, it was impossible for her to keep Chen Hong sheltered in her arms.

Among the scattered sand, one specific portion was clearly suffering a severe impact.

It was Chen Hong, whose Tier was merely at the Summit. Facing the onslaught of Zhou Mian—a Ninth Tier who had also drunk Yan Jing's blood—she trembled violently. The woman's eyes grew profoundly dark.

"Since you have a death wish, I'll grant it!"

Killing a Ninth Tier was completely effortless for her.

Since the enemy refused to let them go, she simply stopped holding back, determined to eliminate the source of this trouble once and for all.

With a gentle lift of her hand...

A massive hand made of sand materialized beneath Zhou Mian.

Smack!

An area of several hundred meters was ruthlessly crushed in its palm.

The air was violently compressed until it exploded, sending spatial rifts spiderwebbing outward.

Yet the woman's face darkened. She smelled blood, but it was faint.

In the past, a Ninth Tier like him would have been annihilated in a single blow.

The enemy wasn't dead yet.

She instantly made her judgment, and the weird energy around her surged to its absolute limit.

Countless giant hands, identical to the first, materialized on the ground below and clawed viciously at the sky.

Terrifying booms echoed into the distance, turning the sky pitch-dark as the earth trembled.

Pfft!

Bai Chen and Bai Yue stood guard beside Zhou Mian, their wings shifting into swirling blades as they desperately parried the wind and sand.

The might of a Tenth Tier was simply too terrifying.

So terrifying that even after drinking Yan Jing's blood, they could still feel the fundamental disparity between themselves and the enemy.

"Are you done yet?!"

Zhou Mian's eyes were bloodshot as he pushed himself to manipulate the rain and stall the enemy's advance.

He screamed at the top of his lungs toward a specific direction.

They weren't the only three who had come out this time.

There was one more person hiding in the shadows.

"Done, I'm done!"

Weng Lingxiao's voice drifted over from a distance.

He was under immense pressure as well. He could already sense that the Tenth Tier had discovered him.

Very soon, the enemy's attacks would be gunning for him.

Right now, he could only force himself to focus.

He scanned the airborne sand that had been dampened by the rain.

Among them, the slowest-moving and most violently trembling patch of sand should be his target.

"Fuck you!"

He locked onto his target. The book in his hands fluttered open without any wind, stopping on a specific page. Aiming at that patch of sand, he viciously clenched his fist.

Countless chains flew out of the pages, phasing right through the tangible sand and droplets to strike that damp cluster.

It worked?!

Weng Lingxiao's heart leapt.

But a split second later, a man's agonized scream rang out, telling him he had hit the wrong target.

"Fuck! Aim better, damn it!" Zhou Mian nearly coughed up blood.

Mao Si had made it clear: if they botched this job, they would be punished when they returned.

The four of them were Ninth Tiers who had drunk Yan Jing's blood, supplemented by Chen Nian's assistance. If they couldn't even kill a Summit, there would be absolutely no excusing it.

"I know, I know! Shut up!"

Cold sweat poured down Weng Lingxiao's forehead.

Countless grains of sand lashed his face, instantly drawing blood from his eyes, ears, nose, and mouth.

Yet he forced his eyes open, searching for Chen Hong's location.

Not the slowest.

The enemy might be injured.

Or maybe she had guessed his intentions.

Then it's the fastest...

He looked into the distance.

It didn't look like it either.

The enemy could probably guess that too.

What do I do, what do I do...

With half his face already gone, Weng Lingxiao was frantic, his nerves stretched to the breaking point.

If... if it were him, trying to protect Ning Wei back then, what would he do?

What would he do...

Soon, he made up his mind, aiming at the cluster of sand right in the dead center.

"It's you!"

Bang!

The chains shot out, piercing through the storm of sand.

A frail, agonized shriek echoed out.

Blood splattered.