Chapter 417: Yun Qing Zi |
Yun Qing Zi.
The instant Yu Sheng saw that uncanny agglomeration settle into a rough human form, the name split his mind like thunder. The voice that followed, coupled with the faces blooming across the crystal, confirmed it. At the same time, a surge of profound bewilderment rose from his heart.
How could Yun Qing Zi be here? This was only a battlefield ruin. Shouldn’t his hideout be a secret realm, a place forever drenched in rain like Sentinel Silence? Shouldn’t he be skulking behind the Black-robed Cultivators and the Hermitage cultists? Why was he on Garrison-3, and why like this?
A flood of questions did not slow his body in the least. As that gigantic crystalline mass took shape, Yu Sheng’s hand swept out. A door opened, and he pulled free his Tetanus Staff, even though he had no idea how effective it would be against Yun Qing Zi. At the same time he primed himself to summon the mass-produced Irene legion at a moment’s notice.
Beside him, Foxy in her colossal demon fox form had already summoned a sky-filling blaze of ghostly blue fire and crouched, rumbling a warning. Luna dropped into a fighting stance, her figure growing indistinct in shadow mode. Irene half raised her arms as threads of spider silk shimmered into being around her.
Everyone tensed, hunting in a flash for weaknesses, flaws, or a “power source” in that crystalline mass. Yu Sheng’s crew had fought all manner of strange beings. They were used to foes who did not even look human. But even among their rogues’ gallery of monstrosities, this crystal heap only barely resembling “Yun Qing Zi” was on the far side of eerie.
To Yu Sheng’s surprise, “Yun Qing Zi” did not attack at once.
The vast conglomeration still seethed over the gash in the earth, its surface in constant flux as if it were a “crystal fluid” that never ceased changing form. The elder’s figure, congealed from crystal, was perpetually disassembling and reassembling. Across countless facets, the images of “Yun Qing Zi” glanced about. He seemed dazed, the “whole” composed of many parts swaying unsteadily. Many voices overlapped, muttering as if to himself:
“I am alive? I am dead? I have returned? I am not here…
“How bizarre… demons and heretics… babbling nonsense at me. Bored to death…
“The Celestial Sovereign’s relic… such power, yes, that much power is needed… no, no, that is not my thought, not right! Not right! Do not go there!”
He kept mumbling, seeming to forget the group standing within arm’s reach. His voice grew chaotic and strident, as if he had suddenly sunk into anxiety and anger. The whole “person” became even more unstable. Crystals boiled at his surface, a surf of friction, shattering, and recombination. All across the crater, the scattered clusters began to undergo the same change. Collapse and reassembly bloomed everywhere.
Even without understanding the cause, Yu Sheng could tell the thing teetered on the edge of losing control. He raised a hand at once to signal the others to fall back, careful not to further provoke the raving, deranged “Yun Qing Zi,” and he called with caution: “Elder Yun Qing Zi, can you hear me?”
“Yun Qing Zi” jerked to a halt as if his derailed thoughts had snagged on something. Slowly he turned his head. The entire Integration, and every face upon it, stared fixedly at Yu Sheng.
Yu Sheng suddenly felt he should not have spoken.
As that thought rose, a low tremor came from deep within the crystal: “…a threat.”
The next second, alarm flared in his heart. Crystals erupted on every side. A strange keening ripped the air.
From the earth’s cracks around them, clusters surged like a forest leaping to life. In a blink they grew into towering shapes like giant trees. The figure of “Yun Qing Zi” swelled to nearly twice its height, then swung a massive fist toward Yu Sheng. Crystal fragments, like blades, slammed down in sheets. Pale-violet arcs crackled between the shards and swept over Yu Sheng’s group.
The entire crater became an ocean of crystal. From the depths of that sea came a synchronized tremor: “Eliminate the threat.”
“Crap!” Yu Sheng’s scalp prickled. He bolted without a second word, his body smearing into an afterimage as he slipped the storm of crystal blades. His hand rose and snapped:
Hundreds of twisted rifts flowered around him. From each, a figure “flipped” into being.
They were Irenes, by the hundreds.
At nearly the same moment, a shrill tearing of the sky came from Foxy’s direction.
Eight Fox Carrot Missiles streaked upward in succession, blazing as they slammed into the vast crystalline body of “Yun Qing Zi.” The blasts shattered broad swathes of his surface. The colossus reeled, tilting back.
Then hundreds of searing beams swept the unbalanced figure without hesitation.
Mass-produced dolls formed a ring around Yu Sheng. The thunder of explosions and the ongoing wild growth of crystals did nothing to fluster those small beings, newborns in truth. The “combat knowledge” inherited from the host told them how to wield their power. After just a few seconds of cooldown, they raised their right hands again, forefingers leveled at the enemy.
Hundreds of beams lanced out as one. Layered over one another, their firing hums merged into a low, terrifying drone. With a thrum, light swallowed Yu Sheng’s view.
“Yun Qing Zi” exploded. Two volleys concentrated on one spot built to a critical mass, and the energy detonated within the crystalline mass. The falling giant split into quarters with a boom. Shards flew skyward and then rained down like a storm.
Yet Yu Sheng’s face held only bafflement and caution.
[Just like that?]
The huge, intimidating foe was taken out by one salvo of missiles and two waves of heat rays? [Could it really be that simple?]
As if to mirror his unease, the sound of rampant growth rose again almost immediately.
He snapped his head up.
The entire impact zone had become a jungle of crystals. Pale clusters veined with black-gray grew wantonly from the earth and branched in midair like giant trees. The countless crystalline “trees” formed a dense forest, and within its wild heart one “tree” was swiftly assuming the shape of Yun Qing Zi.
“Eliminate the threat.”
Crystals vibrated in resonance, then attacked again.
It quickly turned into a slog.
“What even is this mess?” Irene cried as she directed her legion’s beams to rake the Yun Qing Zi-shapes forming out of the crystal trees, “There is no way this is the ‘Yun Qing Zi’ Xuan Che and the others talked about. With this much human content, it wouldn’t even count as a person on our team!”
“Impressive that you can still come up with trash talk now,” Yu Sheng said as he fought and fell back, “This is certainly not Yun Qing Zi. Something is wrong. This is likely worse than anyone imagined.”
Another shriek cut the air.
Several crystalline lances punched through the dolls’ firing grid and Foxy’s intercepting barrage, arrowing straight for Yu Sheng.
He reacted fast, smashing the unavoidable ones with his spiked club, but one shard’s momentum carried through after it fragmented and ripped a ghastly wound across his shoulder.
Before that, many broken fragments had already scored his arms and thighs with cuts of various sizes.
A droning rose in his skull. He saw his blood soaking into the crystal forest, and the link formed through blood felt different this time. He could extract almost nothing rational from it, only blurred hums, meaningless whispers, and that constant pointing across the stars toward Sentinel Silence.
A blur swept through the edge of his vision. Luna flashed by like the wind, intercepting a chain of incoming crystal lances. Her fingertip blades shattered the shards. The fine fragments pattered against her alloy hull and left no mark on that battleship-grade body.
The noise in Yu Sheng’s head grew more chaotic. He shook it off. In his peripheral vision several dolls were being buried in the rain of falling shards. The small dolls could not dodge every bombardment, yet before the fragments could wreck their bodies, each would twist inward like a folding rift and vanish from the field.
By now nearly a third of the mass-produced dolls had withdrawn to the valley.
The remaining two thirds were rapidly running out of energy, although in truth their endurance had already exceeded Yu Sheng’s expectations.
It was simply that “Yun Qing Zi,” or rather this entire “crystal forest,” was far more troublesome than anyone anticipated.
What, exactly, was this vast swarm of crystals that merely looked like Yun Qing Zi?
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