Chapter 266: Reinforcements

Yu Sheng did not know how many eerie, terrifying figures had emerged from the mist in that instant—he only knew they were everywhere, swaying, their human-shaped outlines sketched by abstract, colorful lines as if they had risen directly from the air, filling his vision in the blink of an eye, and continuing to multiply rapidly with time, finally converging into a tide surging through the entire block!

Cluster-type entities—now Yu Sheng knew what the word "cluster" meant when applied to entities.

Moreover, he strongly suspected he had just encountered the maximum cluster number of the entity known as "Carnival Crowd"... the swaying figures on the street absolutely numbered in the tens of thousands!

The crowd surged forward; phantom, continuous cheers, cannon salutes, balloon bursts, and a off-key celebratory tune as if coming from both sky and earth echoed throughout the entire block. Those ridiculous yet more terrifying figures extended their hands toward the group, their chaotic heads blooming with disordered fissures. The fissures laughed wildly, welcoming guests to join them in that formless and endless carnival.

"Awooo—"

The howl of wolves tore through the noise in the mist. Countless shadow wolves charged at the constantly surging, disordered line entities, tearing them into even more chaotic wreckage. Immediately followed was a sky-full of fox-fire barrage. Hu Li maintained the form of a Nine-Tailed Fox, her silver-white tails behind her spreading out like blooming flowers. Waves of scorching, dense fireballs struck the cluster entities like whips.

But their numbers were too great. Even as the wolf pack and fox-fire barrage assaulted that tide of people, entities constantly broke through the blockade, arriving before the group.

Yu Sheng wielded his "Battle Staff," smashing each laughing reveler that charged at him into fragments, while trying his best to avoid direct contact with these eerie things—even accidentally touching the "colors" that exploded after their death was something to be avoided at all costs.

A single "Reveler" was actually not very threatening and could be eliminated easily. Yu Sheng even felt the feedback when the Battle Staff struck these guys was less than that of the evil wolves in the Black Forest back then, but the endless numbers and the strange noise that nearly tore his eardrums quickly became a huge pressure.

Every time a Reveler was eliminated, its body would burst open, turning into countless colorful paper scraps that flew into the air like confetti shot from a cannon, and within a few minutes, these colored paper fragments covered the entire street surface.

Revelers continued to surge out; tens of thousands of cluster-type entities were still rapidly generating from the mist.

"This thing is more deadly than that 'Ink Trace' just now!" Irene screamed. "Isn't there any weakness?!"

"Theoretically, if we were in the Otherworld 'Nameless Carnival,' we would just need to find a plaster clown with a balloon hat tied to his head, drink the sweet wine he offers, and the crowd would leave!" Little Red Riding Hood shouted angrily while struggling to maintain the encirclement formed by the wolf pack, "But this place... this place is not the Nameless Carnival! Where would we find a clown?!"

"If it really doesn't work, let's just retreat..." Irene grabbed Yu Sheng's hair. "This truly has no end... the restriction conditions for these entities are within their original Otherworlds. Now that they have appeared here, it is as if they have broken free. They have no weaknesses!"

Yu Sheng gritted his teeth. He certainly did not want to retreat, after all, they had come to save people, but now they hadn't even seen a shadow of a person. However, continuing to tangle seemed to have lost its meaning—the generation speed of the Revelers was abnormally fast, and the most critical thing was that they were all mechanism monsters. The non-contact trait made most breakthrough methods full of risk. In this situation, it seemed there was truly only one option left: open a door and run.

However, just then, he suddenly heard a strange humming sound coming through the air.

It was like some high-frequency interference signal, disturbing the already chaotic noise here.

"Ahhh!" Irene immediately started shouting. "What is this now? Will it ever end..."

She had only shouted halfway when a beam of light suddenly slashed through the air. That light fell into the middle of the carnival crowd, creating a tremendous explosion.

Immediately followed by more beams of light—some unknown source of fire support covered the block, tearing open one huge gap after another in the carnival crowd.

Yu Sheng instinctively looked up at the sky.

One after another, huge figures wearing black power armor, standing two or three meters tall, emerged directly from the air ten-plus meters high, then smashed down onto the ground like cannonballs, striking the entity clusters gathered on the street.

Dozens of such heavily armored warriors suddenly descended from the sky. Before landing, they first swept away a wave of enemies with jetpacks and impact nozzles on their waists. Then, in the blink of an eye, they formed seven or eight fire support points with dazzlingly skilled coordination on this chaotic battlefield, beginning to cover each other while furiously pouring fire onto every moving object on the entire street that did not resemble friendly forces.

The firearms in their hands were huge and heavy. The light spheres they fired were clearly not bullets; that thing would explode directly into a scorching sphere over a meter in diameter upon contact with anything, instantly incinerating and vaporizing everything within the sphere's range. Another dozen soldiers wearing light power armor darted through the battlefield, constantly clearing the entities that broke through the defense lines with beam sabers in their hands.

Moreover, they were completely unconcerned about contacting the assimilating colorful line outlines of those "Revelers"—because not only were their entire bodies wrapped in power armor, but that armor was even covered with heavy energy shields.

Irene sat on Yu Sheng's shoulders, staring wide-eyed at the scene on the street. Only after a long time did she let out a sound: "Wow—"

"The Special Operations Bureau has finally sent people," Little Red Riding Hood sighed deeply, but at the same time, her eyes were filled with deep shock. "But why so many... there must be seventy or eighty Deep Divers... this is the first time I've seen such a scale."

Yu Sheng said nothing. He just watched the group of two-to-three-meter-tall power armor warriors chopping melons and cutting vegetables on the street with a look of surprise and curiosity, finding the equipment increasingly familiar. Then he saw one of the two-meter-plus "Black Cans" walk out of the formation, followed by two slightly smaller power armor warriors. Upon arriving before the Nine-Tailed Fox form of Hu Li, this "Black Can" raised his hand and nodded his helmet.

The heavy facial armor opened accordingly, revealing Xu Jiali's goofy smiling face inside.

Xu Jiali tilted her head back, looking at the majestic Nine-Tailed Fox before her, then at the thick layer of colored paper scraps already covering the ground around Yu Sheng and his group. After a long moment, she blurted out: "... You guys really can fight. When I saw ten thousand cluster entities surrounding you halfway through my dive, my blood went cold. I even thought about where the Director would bury me when I got back..."

"Stop praising us. If you had arrived two minutes later, we would have planned to run," Little Red Riding Hood said on the side, looking exhausted. "Luckily you brought so many people."

"Everyone on standby at headquarters came. After all, we heard the situation was eerie, and the 'Deep Echo' transmitted by the locator sounded very wrong," Xu Jiali said, then without turning her head, raised her hand and fired a shot, shattering several "Revelers" that were swaying out of the mist. That gun looked heavier than Little Red Riding Hood, yet this brute held it in one hand as if lifting a feather. "If time hadn't been tight, we were prepared to bring in the 'Hunt Owl'."

Irene: "What thing?"

Xu Jiali explained cheerfully: "An atmospheric bombardment boat. Because it has a Spirit Soul, it can perform 'Deep Dive' missions just like us, but the preparation time is a bit longer."

At this moment, Yu Sheng, who had been silent, suddenly blinked. He finally reacted, and the memories in his mind clicked into place—

"Ah! I recognize it!" He raised his hand and pointed at Xu Jiali's power armor. "I saw two people fighting on an alien planet when I opened the door before. One of them was wearing this kind..."

The expression on Xu Jiali's face froze instantly.

!

He had almost forgotten about this matter...

Yu Sheng immediately noticed the change in the other person's expression. Originally, he was just surprised that Xu Jiali's armor matched his memory, but at this moment, he directly thought of a closer truth: "... Could that person be you?"

Xu Jiali raised her hand to scratch her head, but ended up scratching the helmet, making a clanging sound.

"Yes, it was me." He said somewhat awkwardly.

Yu Sheng: "..."

Xu Jiali: "..."

Then the two of them spoke almost simultaneously:

"Why didn't you say so?"

"You didn't ask either!"

"Mainly because..." After two seconds, Xu Jiali finally spoke with a face full of embarrassment, "At first, I considered the need for secrecy, after all, that was also a secret mission. Then I just couldn't find an opportunity. After all, if you don't say something at the beginning..."

Saying this, he raised his hand and fired another shot (Yu Sheng really couldn't call that thing a "gun"), exploding several "Revelers" that had luckily escaped the fire net of their comrades into a sky full of colored paper scraps. Only then did he continue: "If you don't say it at the beginning, then you just never find an opportunity to speak up."

Yu Sheng thought for a moment and tugged at the corners of his mouth: "Alright, I actually understand your reasoning."

Then he carefully observed Xu Jiali's full gear again.

"So, this is what you look like when fully armed? No wonder you said before that you weren't in a 'combat state'."

"To be truly fully armed, you'd also need to add a Spirit-Power controlled fire support shuttle, two walking tactical robots, several light drones, and a Psionic Attendant," Xu Jiali shrugged. "But that is the configuration for expedition missions outside. Here in the Borderlands, everything has to be downgraded. The situation you saw last time was a bit unexpected—I had a skirmish with a cultist, didn't have time to prepare before engaging, but fortunately, I was slightly more skilled in the end..."

(End of Chapter)