At the same moment the hooded pair struck, J and Margaret completed their first round of direct confrontation.
When J lunged forward, shrouded in his black armor-membrane, Margaret didn't even flinch. She stood her ground, the pale blue water film condensed on her right arm now extending to cover her entire limb, its density so high it was nearly solid.
J’s black short blade hacked at her shoulder, and the two liquids collided violently at the point of impact.
Then, J’s expression changed.
In the instant of the collision, more than half of the black armor-membrane surrounding him was siphoned away.
Moisture was torn directly from within the black water; the armor-membrane rapidly shriveled and cracked, and even the shape of the short blade began to collapse and deform.
Close quarters hadn't stopped her siphoning; instead, it had brought him closer, causing the efficiency of the extraction to double and surge.
A look of extreme frenzy appeared on Margaret’s face, making her look like a completely different person from the weary, quiet woman who had been organizing manifests at the branch.
“You’re so weak. You’re so weak!”
J’s first instinct was to pull back and create distance. With his armor-membrane shriveling, his blade collapsing, and his standard techniques rendered useless before this woman, his intuition told him to escape.
But he didn't have time to retreat.
Margaret’s left hand had already clamped onto his forearm. The moment the pale blue water film touched his skin, the remaining black liquid was siphoned from the contact point at a visible speed, surging along her palm toward her arm.
J’s forearm dried out in an instant.
The black liquid did not vanish after its moisture was siphoned away.
The residue left on the surface of his skin changed texture. The once-flowing liquid dehydrated and condensed into a pitch-black hard shell that clung tightly to J’s forearm, its density far exceeding any of its previous forms.
The surface of the hard shell was rough and dry, with a concentrated black paste seeping from the cracks. The rot-sweet scent had intensified several times over after dehydration, becoming so pungent it was choking.
Margaret’s hand, which was gripping his forearm, paused slightly.
When the pale blue water film touched that hard shell, the siphoning speed slowed abruptly. There was simply not much moisture left to draw; what remained was the concentrated essence of the liquid after dehydration.
J glanced down at his dried forearm, the corner of his mouth twitching slightly.
He knew his own pathway all too well.
A diluted state was his optimal solution for dealing with most opponents—it could spread out and control—but water was never his true essence; it was merely a medium.
This woman had done something for him that he wouldn't normally do: she had stripped away the medium entirely, leaving only the purest core.
J didn't try to break free from Margaret’s grip. Instead, he proactively stepped half a pace closer.
He counter-grabbed Margaret’s wrist. The pitch-black hard shell on his dried forearm cracked upon contact, and the concentrated paste squeezed from the fissures seeped into the edges of Margaret’s water film.
The moment the paste touched the pale blue water film, parts of the film turned black and stagnated, and the rhythm of her siphoning missed a beat.
Margaret’s smile faltered slightly.
On J’s other arm, the black liquid was actively dehydrating. Residual moisture evaporated from the surface as the liquid collapsed and solidified, and within seconds, his entire arm was encased in the same pitch-black hard shell as his forearm. He clenched his fist, the shell creaking over his knuckles, its density levels above that of his previous liquid short blade.
J’s expression flattened.
“You’ve done me a huge favor.”
His voice was very low, his tone carrying a touch of cruel composure.
Hearing this, Margaret’s faltering smile widened again, becoming even broader than before.
She shook off J’s wrist, stepped back half a pace, and flexed the fingers of her left hand, which had been stained by the paste. The pale blue water film surged around her fingertips, pushing out the blackened, stagnant portions and flinging them to the ground. The water film regained its flow.
“The stronger, the better.”
She tilted her head and looked at J, her tone filled with unabashed excitement.
“Fighting like that... someone who didn't know better would think you were only rank 3.”
The two of them moved simultaneously.
Margaret’s close-combat style bore no resemblance to her image at the branch.
Her fist, shrouded in the pale blue water film, smashed toward J’s chest. At the moment of the strike, the water film condensed on her arm was compressed to the extreme, forming a thin, dense water shell in front of her knuckles.
J blocked with his shell-covered forearm. The collision of the two substances produced a dull thud, and J’s heels dragged two deep furrows into the ground.
Her strength was immense; this woman’s physical techniques were top-tier even among rank 4s.
J counterattacked, his shell-covered fist striking at Margaret. A few drops of the concentrated paste were flung from his knuckles with the swing, hitting her shoulder armor and sending up plumes of white smoke.
Margaret tilted her head to avoid the fist. Her left elbow drove toward J’s ribs, while the water film in her right palm exploded. She instantly controlled the condensed moisture into a water blade that shot from her palm, grazing J’s cheek and cutting a finger-wide groove into the wall behind him.
She fought primarily with close-quarters combat, supplemented by water control.
She constantly used her body to block J’s retreat, refusing to let him create distance while continuously siphoning and using intermittent water blades to disrupt his rhythm.
In the dense, close-quarters exchange, J’s hard shell proved far more effective than his liquid form.
Every punch he threw carried concentrated paste, leaving a blackened, stagnant zone of contamination whenever it hit Margaret’s water film armor. He wasn't as fast as Margaret, but each of his punches was heavier, and the density of his shell was enough to withstand her water blades.
The two of them fought tooth and nail amidst the ruins, pale blue and pitch-black flashes alternating in the night.
But Margaret’s siphoning never stopped for a single moment.
She had already siphoned all the available moisture from the surroundings; the air was so dry that every breath felt like a sting.
The ground, the walls, the insect bodies—everything containing moisture was being continuously stripped, and even the carpet formed by the Swarming Worms on the ground began to shrivel and wither.
Then, the range of her siphoning shifted.
After a clash of fists, J suddenly felt something was wrong.
His fingertips began to go numb, but the numbness was entirely different from the previous dehydration.
Before, moisture was being drawn from the black water—things on the outside were decreasing. Now, something from inside his body was being dragged out.
It was blood.
She was siphoning his blood.
J’s expression finally changed.
The skin beneath the pitch-black hard shell began to turn pale, and the red color under his fingernails faded at a visible speed.
He suddenly pulled back his fist and jumped away, but Margaret followed him closely, her palm pressing against his chest.
A force dragging from the inside out erupted from the point of contact.
J let out a muffled groan as red seeped from the cracks in his shell.
Water vapor, liquid, blood—she could siphon anything that contained water. J’s concentrated hard shell blocked external moisture loss, but it couldn't stop her from pulling the blood directly from his body.
J slapped Margaret’s arm, his paste seeping into her water film and breaking her siphoning rhythm for an instant. Using that gap, he forcibly pulled back three paces.
His breathing grew ragged, and a thin trail of blood leaked from the corner of his mouth.
At that moment, a change occurred in another corner of the battlefield.
Lake moved.
The Swarming Worms covered the entire workshop ruins, a writhing grey mass from the outer walls to the ground. He had been waiting for an opening since the battle began. He remembered what Lu Yuan had instructed him before they left.
The wooden constructs.
At the start of the battle, J had used black water to wrap the seeds and wooden constructs together, dragging them behind him. As the fight intensified, that glob of black water had been flung into a corner of the workshop.
J’s attention was entirely on Margaret, and his maintenance of the wrapping layer had thinned considerably. After Margaret’s massive siphoning, the layer of black water wrapping the wooden men had also shriveled and shrunk.
Lake seized this opening.
A massive number of Swarming Worms surged from the ground and walls toward that shriveled glob of black water, gnawing into it with brute force.
The insect bodies still dissolved upon contact with the black water, but the volume of the shriveled liquid was no longer enough. As one layer of bugs dissolved, another took its place, and within seconds, they gnawed a hole in the wrapping layer.
A thick insect tentacle reached through the opening, coiled around one of the kneeling wooden constructs, and ripped it out. It then began passing it outward through the swarm at top speed.
The insects worked in a relay; the wooden construct was passed from one to another through the swarm, moving toward the periphery of the battlefield.
At the same moment he created distance, J sensed the disturbance behind him. He whipped his head around and saw the hole torn in the wrapping layer and the wooden construct being passed along by the insects.
His expression changed drastically.
Q noticed as well, but he couldn't break free.
The pale white figure’s claws were clamped firmly onto his shoulders and waist, the tips already embedded deep within his torso of black liquid. Any attempt to liquefy and escape would be tracked by the claws to his core and locked down again.
The other Nightwatcher’s bladed-teeth arms were wrapped around his upper body, the teeth grinding into his liquid surface and carving away a layer of black liquid with every rotation.
Q’s form had shrunk to a fraction of its original size since he was caught, his body riddled with holes.
But he saw the wooden man being carried away.
A flash of ruthlessness crossed Q’s pale white face.
He stopped trying to liquefy and escape. Instead, he did the opposite: the remaining black liquid inside him suddenly surged outward, exploding in a dense black wave centered on himself.
The explosive impact was immense. The pale white figure’s claws were forced open by a few inches, and the bladed-teeth arms were pushed back half a step by the black wave.
At the cost of having more than half of his torso torn apart, Q squeezed through the momentary gap.
The price of escape was heavy.
His form had shrunk to less than half its original size, and he swayed unsteadily, the black liquid on his surface churning frantically as it tried to repair his mangled body.
But he didn't care.
The remaining black liquid erupted from him, forming a liquid whip that lashed out directly at the insect swarm channel passing the wooden man.
The liquid whip smashed through the middle of the swarm channel, cutting off the relay.
However, one wooden construct had already been delivered to the very edge of the swarm.
The hooded pair didn't pursue Q.
Fragments of black liquid torn from Q’s body still clung to the pale white figure’s claws, slowly writhing as they were retracted into its chest cavity.
The bladed-teeth arms were covered in black debris, the teeth still vibrating slightly.
The two looked at each other again and then moved silently toward Q.
J’s pitch-black hard shell extended from his arms across his body. The remaining paste was stripped from him and reconsolidated into a thin layer of black water that surged toward the torn opening, resealing the wrapping layer.
One sealed the opening, and the other cut off the path. There was no need for discussion; their coordination was perfectly synchronized.
The wooden men could not be taken.
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