Chapter 425: Sending Home
Nearing fifty years of age, he had never before felt such an intense, unyielding obsession with pure survival.
Many things are only truly cherished when one faces their loss—family ties are so, and so is life itself.
"Please... please... spare me..." Ke Mu muttered incessantly in his heart, simultaneously praying to every deity he could recall, even though he usually only believed in money and power and had never once dropped a coin into a church collection plate.
Perhaps some great god truly answered his wish, for the colossal beast, its body covered in tentacles, did not swallow Ke Mu like a tiny insect. Instead, it paused, sinking into contemplation.
"Thank the Lord, thank all the gods..." Casually drawing a cross on his chest and muttering a few words, Ke Mu tiptoed backward, hoping to put as much distance between himself and the beast as possible while it was lost in thought.
Facing this colossal creature, he was utterly flustered, not even considering whether his actions made any sense. He was simply following his body's instinct to distance himself from it.
"Little shrimp?"
Ke Mu had barely moved a few steps when a terrifying claw, over ten meters in radius, smacked down towards him with unexpected speed.
"How is this possible! How can a body of this size move with such speed!"
"I won't die, I can't die, I will definitely block this claw!"
Between life and death, there is great terror, but also great opportunity.
In that moment, Ke Mu suddenly felt an unprecedented calmness. His brain spun rapidly, and the unique sorcerous brain of his wizarding system calculated ceaselessly. One cultivation problem after another suddenly resolved itself, and he even happened to deduce a new optimized sorcery.
Yet, despite all his calculations, Ke Mu could not foresee the outcome, for he knew too little. A severe lack of information was not something enlightenment could solve.
The claw passed directly through his body, like a celestial's strike from beyond the heavens, as if an attack launched from another world, with no force at all acting upon Ke Mu, the bystander...
From a third-person perspective, after the giant claw struck, Ke Mu was entirely embedded within the claw, no different from an insect trapped in amber.
"Is this thing real or illusory?!!!" The moment his eyes registered the claw touching his sorcerous shield, he hadn't felt any pressure.
But now, Ke Mu found that he had actually merged directly into the interior of the giant claw. All around him, encompassing his entire body, were incredibly solid substances, rendering him completely immobile!
"It's a pity that one's mastery of illusory-real conversion is even higher than mine, otherwise why would I need to listen to him?" The monster styling itself as Xuanwu, Fulaistan, thought after imprisoning Ke Mu in its right claw.
Possessing such a terrifying ability as illusory-real conversion, it not only rendered nearly all physical attacks ineffective, but it also allowed its body to continuously grow without affecting any of its surroundings.
Thus, even with a body larger than a football field, it could still move silently and swiftly through the forest, without knocking down a single tree.
Normally, Fulaistan would maintain an illusory state, only briefly solidifying the relevant parts when launching an attack.
This time, to avoid killing Ke Mu, it directly imprisoned him within its own body.
Otherwise, with that one claw strike, he would have been at least severely wounded if not dead.
According to the mission requirements, it was not allowed to kill anyone during the expulsion... To achieve this goal, Fulaistan found it quite challenging; it had to be extremely careful, striking as lightly as possible.
To drive away an ant without crushing it was quite a test of control.
Half a day prior, the scene of Bai Mo effortlessly pulling it out of its illusory state was still vivid in Fulaistan's memory, so it accorded absolute respect to the system that represented his will.
"If you rolled away just because I told you to, wouldn't I lose a lot of face?" Speaking a line it had no idea where it learned, Fulaistan raised its right claw at a forty-five-degree angle towards the sky, shooting Ke Mu out of the secret realm's range like a human cannonball.
It knew very well that although this little shrimp before it seemed utterly weak, its Fourth Tier power was enough for it to survive in such a situation.
The mission only required that it not kill; being paralyzed from the neck down was perfectly acceptable.
"I..." Ke Mu hadn't even had time to utter a second word before his voice became completely inaudible.
To launch him hundreds of kilometers away, the human cannonball's initial velocity even surpassed the speed of sound.
"The forest is my home, protecting it relies on everyone. Whoever chops it down without care, will be sent home—naked." Reciting a clumsy, tonally-flat poem, Fulaistan was in a good mood.
It had no fondness for these guys who over-exploited the secret realm's resources. When it shot him away, it conveniently confiscated all his clothes, shoes, hats, gold necklaces, rings, and the backpack full of spirit materials he carried, leaving him truly stripped bare.
...
"I am the Vermilion Bird of Nanming! All you wastes, get out of my sight!"
All Four Holy Beasts had received commands from the system, each clearing their mission targets in different ways.
Since killing was forbidden, every adventurer who appeared before Phoenix had their clothes humiliatingly burned off, and all their gains plundered.
Unlike Xuanwu, who was obsessed with dialogue and role-playing, Phoenix preferred to constantly add new titles for itself—Phoenix, Vermilion Bird, Golden Crow... any of these could be its codename.
Its subordinates previously also had to constantly memorize their leader's ever-growing list of titles, to avoid being eaten should it become displeased.
Deeply influenced by human culture yet without receiving systematic education, they all possessed, to varying degrees, eccentric hobbies.
These hobbies, to some extent, also reflected the mutated creatures' views on human society.
...
The grand sweeping operation quickly drew the attention of the Latin Alliance's true power players. Atop the Red Wizard Tower, a slender boy looked towards the secret realm, a sudden premonition stirring within him.
Though he appeared to be nothing more than a victim of school bullying, within that small frame, a surging power like an active volcano lay hidden.
He was the Red Wizard King Drag, the foremost body-refining wizard, and one of only two Six Tiers wizards in the Latin Alliance.
After realizing that the alarm device placed on an important subordinate had been silently destroyed, Drag involuntarily looked in the direction where the alarm had been annihilated.
The alarm devices hidden within his subordinates' wizard robes were meant both to protect their safety and to guard against any disloyal individuals.
Although the Latin Alliance was a nation where the strong dominated everything, the weak overthrowing the strong was nothing new, and Drag certainly didn't want to be the world's first Six Tiers assassinated.
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