Driven by his overwhelming anger, Ai Hui expelled from his body the “spiritual force” that bloated him into the ground. His entire body felt an indescribable relief at once.
Boom!
The earth shook and the mountains trembled.
The ground directly beneath him was immediately reduced to a fine powder. The surrounding soil arced into the air, blasting in all directions. Everywhere else around him was in complete chaos.
More fatal was the mass of gray smoke that exploded without warning.
Accompanied by a terrifying hiss, the gray cloud burst through the area like a hurricane.
The gusts of air was a sickle of the grim reaper, withering and killing all that it passed.
The mastiff broke into a run. The gray cloud behind it was a monstrous tsunami, crushing everything in its way.
One after another, rattan balls flew across the mastiff’s field of vision. Already possessing a trace of self-awareness, the mastiff knew that each rattan ball contained a blood fiend like itself.
A gray tint diffused like an ugly and dreadful mold over the rattan balls. The breathing inside them became increasingly weaker until they disappeared altogether.
One of the blood fiends inside a rattan ball seemed to sense the danger and attempted to break out. But as the gray cloud swept past, its body suddenly froze as the ash-gray spread over its body. When the last vestiges of red were overtaken—bang!—the blood fiend exploded into a cloud of gray dust that scattered through the air.
The fear in the mastiff’s eyes grew deeper. As the blood traces on its body began to crack and a red glow appeared underfoot, its running speed inexplicably increased.
From overhead, the circular, gray cloud could be seen spreading outward in ripples of death that expanded without end in the sea of blood.
Not a single area of the red valley was spared from the immense and terrifying circle of death that was now more than ten kilometers in radius.
In the center of the gray circle of death was a pillar of gray smoke that reached into the skies. It was congealed without sign of dissipating and resembled an enormous gray dragon that bared its fangs and brandished its claws.
The mastiff had escaped all the way to the mountain peak, its body drenched in blood. Fresh blood continued to ooze from its skin, making it look like a bloody wolf. It panted heavily and stared firmly at the figure that climbed its way out of the soil from the middle of the gray valley.
Fear, there was only fear in its eyes.
The pillar of smoke that resembled a gray dragon rose straight into the sky, becoming the backdrop of that figure’s frail back. At that moment, from the mastiff’s perspective, that figure was a grim reaper who had just climbed out of a hellish swamp to arrive in this world.
Ai Hui felt dizzy and weak as he picked himself up from the ground. The soil beneath his feet had become a powder, with texture smoother than flour’s.
He surveyed his surroundings with a blank look on his face.
The dense, blood-colored vegetation had disappeared, replacing his surroundings with the gray wilderness. All plants had been reduced to thick piles of gray residue, as if burned and reduced to ashes.
Only now did Ai Hui realize that he stood in a valley.
Were all these caused by him?
He could not believe his eyes. After a second-long daze, he jumped up and broke into a run.
Why wouldn’t he flee now while One Thousand Yuan was away? Should he wait for her to come back before starting his escape?
The fighting capabilities of One Thousand Yuan were enigmatic and unpredictable. He definitely did not want to encounter her again.
Ai Hui began to notice some changes in his body, the most obvious being his running speed which was much faster than it had been in the past. The forest was deathly silent, sending a shiver down Ai Hui’s spine.
He did not want to stay an extra second in this godforsaken place.
Once he oriented himself in the right direction, he ran with all his might. He was pleased to encounter not a single blood fiend on his sprint through the forest. When he thought of how One Thousand Yuan was able to amass the power of blood fiends, however, he trembled in fear and sped up.
In the skies above Central Pine City, the mayor and the dean were observing the distant pillar of smoke with ashen faces. Not only them, but the faces of the elementalists behind them had similarly drained of all color. Central Pine City was in a state of hysteria.
The explosion just now resembled thunderclaps that rattled the earth and shook the mountains. The entirety of Central Pine City had felt it.
“I wonder which expert did that?” The dean gulped his saliva anxiously, a hopeful look flickering in his eyes.
If there was an expert that took action, they were saved. There was one in Central Pine City, but he was an embroidery expert, not a fighting one.
Given that there were a few youths of nobility in the city, it was not surprising for an expert to show up and save them.
Wang Zhen appeared calm, but the fear in his eyes revealed the uneasiness within. “If there’s an expert passing by that area, then he will definitely come here as well. We’ll find out soon enough.”
He was not as optimistic as the dean.
His mind was filled with images brought back by the scouts who had been in the forest beyond city limits. So far, only three scouts had returned, and only one managed to successfully deliver the images. The elementalists who had signed up for this mission numbered forty-six.
Of the forty-six people, only three survived. Wait, four people survived.
Wang Zhen spotted a figure, vaguely familiar, running out from the forest. Soon enough, Wang Zhen identified him as Ai Hui, the young fellow with remarkable swordsmanship.
He noticed that Ai Hui was covered in grime and dirt, appearing extremely pathetic. He seemed to have suffered a lot, but since he was able to survive and return, his luck was rather good.
When Ai Hui dashed out of the forest and saw the city gate of Central Pine City, he almost cried tears of joy.
Soon, an elementalist came from the city to receive him. “Did you manage to succeed? Where’s the movie bean?”
“Movie bean?” Ai Hui laughed bitterly. “I wasn’t able to record anything; I was busy running for my life.”
The goddamned One Thousand Yuan!
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