“Wait a moment.”
Xie Zhouxing suddenly raised his hand.
Cen Yao stopped in her tracks and subconsciously looked over at him.
The casual expression on Xie Zhouxing's face had already vanished.
He tilted his head slightly, his golden curls draping over the side of his neck, as his unfocused, light-colored eyes quietly gazed down the depths of the corridor.
His ears twitched slightly. “Something is approaching.”
Cen Yao immediately grew alert. “From which direction?”
“Ahead.”
Xie Zhouxing paused for a moment, then frowned again.
“No, wait. There's also something on the left.”
“And on the right as well.”
Cen Yao: “...”
Before long, chaotic noises echoed from both ends of the corridor.
There were heavy, dragging footsteps, and the sound of claws scraping against the floor.
And as some wet, squishy thing wriggled forward, there was a squelching sound of mucus pressing against the floorboards.
Cen Yao clenched her fingers. The magic power flowing through her meridians, combined with the lingering sensation of power from mastering silent, wandless casting, made her feel unprecedentedly calm.
She chin-gestured toward Xie Zhouxing. “Stand behind me.”
Xie Zhouxing blanked for a moment.
“Even though this young master is blind during the day, I'm not so pathetic that I need to hide behind a girl.”
Cen Yao didn't argue with him. She simply waved her hand.
At once, an invisible force swept Xie Zhouxing behind Cen Yao, and a translucent isolation barrier enveloped him.
Xie Zhouxing: “?”
“This is to prevent corrosion. Don't move around, and don't cause trouble for me.”
Xie Zhouxing opened his mouth to speak.
But in the end, he obediently took a step back.
Fine.
You're the powerhouse here, so I'll listen to you.
He cleared his throat and stood behind Cen Yao with complete justification.
“Then this young master will leave his life in your hands for now.”
Cen Yao ignored him, because the first monster had already crawled out from the end of the corridor.
The thing looked very human-like.
At least from a distance, it had a head, hands, and feet, and was barely standing upright.
But when it finally stepped into the light, Cen Yao discovered that its entire body was covered in pustules.
The large ones were the size of fists, while the smaller ones were packed densely together like clusters of swollen fish eggs.
These pustules were a sickening purplish-blue, their surfaces so thin they were almost transparent, with the turbid fluid inside sloshing back and forth with its movements.
Its face was also deformed, warped by the pustules.
Its eyes were pushed up to its forehead by swollen lumps of flesh, its nose was reduced to two dark holes constantly oozing pus, and its mouth split open to reveal crooked, jagged fangs.
The moment it saw Cen Yao, it opened its mouth and let out a strange, wheezing rattle from its throat.
In the next second, even more monsters squeezed out from behind.
Some had bellies swollen like they were ten months pregnant, with skin so thin that writhing dark shadows could be seen inside.
Others had necks stretched incredibly long, their heads dangling crookedly over their chests, swaying back and forth as they walked as if they might snap off at any moment.
Still others had limbs stitched with organs that did not belong to them—eyeballs growing on their palms, mouths split open at their knees, chewing the air continuously as they walked.
A heavy, pungent stench washed over them, turning Cen Yao's face green with disgust.
“What on earth is this laboratory researching?”
Behind her, Xie Zhouxing's nose twitched, and his expression was equally unpleasant.
“Who knows. It's probably just one of those classic experiments—either researching immortality or trying to create Super Saiyans or something.”
“In short, none of their mental states are normal.”
Cen Yao agreed with this. No normal person could ever create such things.
“You seem to know quite a lot.”
“Eh, just average. You get used to it after seeing it enough times.”
The pustule monster at the very front suddenly lunged forward.
As it ran, the pustules on its body shook violently. Finally, several pustules that had already been swollen to their limits could no longer hold, bursting one after another.
Splat!
Turbid green liquid sprayed everywhere.
Cen Yao's reflexes were extremely fast, and she raised her hand to deploy a barrier.
The corrosive fluid slammed into the barrier, letting out a sharp, sizzling sound as a patch of black mist rapidly rose from the surface of the transparent barrier.
By this time, the pustule monster had already rushed right in front of her.
Cen Yao's fingertips twitched slightly, and an invisible wind blade swept past her.
Before the monster could even let out a full shriek, its head rolled away, and a large spray of foul-smelling liquid erupted from its severed neck.
Cen Yao stepped aside to avoid it and raised her hand once more.
A second wind blade sliced horizontally, and the three monsters rushing at the very front froze in unison.
Half a second later, their bodies slowly split apart at the waist. Their upper torsos slid off and crashed to the floor, spilling organs and black slime everywhere.
Hearing the continuous sounds of things hitting the ground, Xie Zhouxing's eyebrows twitched.
Though he couldn't see the scene, he could deduce how clean and decisive Cen Yao's strikes were just from the sound of slicing wind and collapsing monsters.
With just a casual wave of her hand, the monsters that most players would desperately avoid fell in droves like rotten meat sliced by an invisible blade.
Xie Zhouxing couldn't help but sigh in admiration. “Lady Witch.”
“Are you always this fierce when you fight?”
Cen Yao raised her hand to decapitate a monster crawling in from the side, not even looking back.
“It's just because they're too ugly.”
Xie Zhouxing, who hadn't seen the monsters with his own eyes: “...” He didn't dare say another word.
Cen Yao had originally thought that once this wave of monsters was dealt with, she would get some peace and quiet.
However, the activity in the depths of the corridor did not weaken; instead, it became increasingly dense.
Wave after wave of monsters poured out from different rooms, corners, and broken iron doors.
It was as if the entire laboratory had suddenly come alive.
Or perhaps something had realized they were moving toward the exit, and was controlling these test subjects in a desperate attempt to keep them here.
For every monster Cen Yao killed, three more took its place.
She sliced through three, and even more surged from behind.
The blood and corrosive slime of the monsters splattered everywhere. Even with the barrier blocking it, the rancid stench in the air grew thicker and thicker.
She was starting to get annoyed.
“The orb.”
“Here, Host.”
“How many monsters are still here?”
The orb scanned for a moment and answered cautiously, “There are at least forty-seven active targets in the passage ahead. Thirty-one are approaching from behind, and in the room on the left, there are...”
“Enough,” Cen Yao interrupted it.
She didn't want to hear any more. If she kept listening, she was afraid she would dream of a crowd of pustule monsters marching toward her in a line tonight.
“Since they want to die so badly.”
Cen Yao watched the herd of monsters lunging at her once again and slowly raised her hand.
“Then I will fulfill their wish.”
A spark of orange-red fire floated up from her fingertips.
At first, it was just a tiny cluster, like a candle flame.
But as the magic power inside Cen Yao constantly surged out, that tiny spark rapidly expanded, elongated, and spun, turning into a fireball the size of a basketball.
The surface of the fireball was wrapped in fine golden runes.
Inside, the flames churned like magma compressed to its absolute limit.
The temperature nearby suddenly spiked. The monsters seemed to sense the danger, and their steps froze in unison.
But Cen Yao had no intention of giving them a chance to retreat.
The fireball flew out from her palm.
It sliced through the dark corridor, dragging a dazzling reddish-gold tail of flame, and landed squarely in the middle of the densest pack of monsters.
In the next second—
“Boom!”
A deafening explosion swept through the entire corridor.
Flames violently erupted.
The searing shockwave blew all the surrounding monsters away. The ones closest didn't even have time to struggle before they were reduced to charred skeletons in the blaze.
Before the pus, flesh, and corrosive fluids could even splatter, they were completely evaporated by the high temperature.
The fire swept forward along the corridor.
The blackened stains on the walls peeled away from the heat, and the bloodstains on the floor, dried for years, turned to ashes in the raging flames.
Even the iron doors on both sides were baked red and deformed.
Rate on N.U.
