Chapter 164: Familiar

The sudden appearance of dense fog threw the already uneasy capital defense forces into even greater panic. Only after repeated urgings from their superiors did they snap to it and hastily put on their night-vision goggles.

They couldn't see a thing.

That fog was like a beast that devoured everything—massively blocking infrared, severely weakening sound propagation, and even suppressing the electromagnetic waves so vital to modern communications.

"What's happening, damn it, respond!"

Several streets away, an officer hiding in a command vehicle shouted loudly, but all that came through the radio was electromagnetic static. Under these conditions, there was no way to call in artillery strikes.

Thud. Thud. Thud.

A muffled sound rose from the fog—resembling footsteps as much as it did heavy, dull blows.

The bleeding from Jiang Zhihui's wrist stopped. Her hand gripped the white fox shikigami's fur tightly. With a thought, the white fox opened its bloody maw and fired a gravity-energy bomb at the ground ahead.

The cement路面 cracked and split apart. Cars and traffic lights on both sides of the street were pulled in by the gravity, slamming and grinding violently against each other. A massive clump of debris gathered and spun at high speed, kicking up a fierce gale.

The Mist Concealment technique doesn't rely on air, so the effect of the gale dispersing the fog lasted less than a second before the endlessly pouring mist filled the gap back in.

In that brief opening, Jiang Zhihui clearly saw Gray Rain leap down from a tall building on a bat-winged motorcycle, merge both arms into a great axe, and bring it down with everything she had on the white fox's brow.

Hmm—

Black smoke and demonic energy churned around the white fox shikigami, gathering at its head in layer upon layer, like a tank's composite armor.

Gray Rain's eight-hundred-plus-kilogram body weight, combined with the razor-sharp axe, split through most of the demonic-energy barriers like rotten wood, slicing a long, narrow wound into the white fox's brow.

The fox demon acted as if it felt no pain, opening its mouth and brewing a gravity-energy orb, aiming at the tiny figure before its eyes.

Feeling the chaotic gravity around her, Gray Rain hastily changed her move, melting the great axe apart and reshaping it into strands of steel cable.

Snap snap snap snap!

The steel cables wrapped around the white fox's snout again and again, forcibly sealing the shikigami's mouth and stopping it from spitting out the gravity orb.

Meanwhile, on the battlefield ground, Li Cheng activated his Instant Thunder skill and blitzed forward to within ten meters of Jiang Zhihui.

At that distance, for a Transcendent, it's no different from being face-to-face,

In that hairbreadth instant, Jiang Zhihui cradled the baby in her right arm and pressed her left palm with all her might against the white fox's leg. With a crack, she snapped her own wrist clean in two.

Blood gushed out wildly. In the very next instant, the positions of the girl and the fox abruptly swapped.

【Skill Name: Familiar Swap】

【Type: Psychic Energy】

【Effect: King's Move. Swap spatial coordinates with one familiar under your command】

【Cost: At least 70 Psychic Energy points and 70 Stamina points. Exact amount depends on the distance between the two parties and the familiar's vitality】

【Cooldown: 30 seconds】

【Usage Requirement: Master one summoning art】

【Note: The concept of "familiar" includes but is not limited to: summoned beasts, shikigami, Pokémon, guardian spirits, gu worms, etc.】

【Note: Before using this skill, please confirm the familiar's location and condition—otherwise you may end up with the same tragedy as the familiar-summoning master Edward Elsterlin. Desperate to return to Hell as quickly as possible, he swapped positions with his Inferno Steed—only for the steed to be at that very moment enjoying its wedding night with its newlywed mare in a volcanic stable. This act not only caused Edward severe physical and psychological trauma, but also turned him and his familiar into sworn enemies】

Jiang Zhihui suddenly appeared mid-air, while the white fox took her place. The steel cables Gray Rain had shot out wrapped nothing but air, and she herself plummeted downward, slamming into the ground.

Crack—

Li Cheng's rusted straight sword bit deep into the white fox's hind leg, sending up a great spray of dust.

The fox demon paid it no heed, swung its head sideways, and swallowed Jiang Zhihui whole—this was not, however, a mutinous attack on its master. The familiar's body structure is special; Jiang Zhihui actually fell inside the white fox's body and had no need to worry about outside harm.

"Damned Killing Ground, damned isekai players."

Jiang Zhihui ignored the wailing baby, cursing as she pulled out a zip tie and roughly wrapped it twice around the stump of her wrist to stanch the bleeding.

"The only good news is, kill him, and the Killing Ground shouldn't send any more players to this world for a while."

Jiang Zhihui took a deep breath, braced herself, took out a paper-cutting of a snake—purple to the point of almost black, with eight serpent heads—and began to summon the legendary Calamity God.

Yamata no Orochi.

"What do we do now, Jiang Zhihui got eaten."

Gray Rain, who had crashed into the cement road and gouged out a huge crater, dusted herself off, stood up, and asked with a frown: "Why isn't that fox attacking anymore?"

Through the fog one could faintly see the nearly three-story-tall white fox step back several paces. It did not attack Li Cheng and Gray Rain; instead, it opened its mouth wide again and fired a gravity-energy orb at the building on the street corner.

Boom!

Beams and pillars snapped, buildings collapsed. Ordinary people hiding inside had no time at all to flee before they were crushed under the reinforced concrete.

High in the sky, several TV-station news helicopters that had arrived on the scene circled and hovered, not daring to enter the dense fog, only watching building after building collapse.

The dead and wounded were beyond counting. Blood trickled toward the low ground, pooling into a stinking crimson lake.

Glug glug glug—

The blood-pool seethed and churned, as if some unspeakable horror was brewing within.

"She's performing a blood sacrifice."

Li Cheng narrowed his eyes. The grades of paper-cutting shikigami, from low to high, were white, red, and purple.

To use a purple paper-cutting, Jiang Zhihui had cut both her wrists and paid a price of copious blood.

What kind of monster a blood sacrifice of this scale might summon was anyone's guess.

"Use that move."

Li Cheng swung onto the motorcycle, twisted the throttle, and revved in place. Gray Rain caught his meaning instantly, transforming her entire body into a metal sphere like a roadblock ball, her arms turning into thick, long steel cables connected to the motorcycle's rear seat.

The engine roared and bellowed. Li Cheng twisted the motorcycle up to top speed, tearing across the cratered road at full throttle, charging straight at the white fox.

The Gray Rain-brand metal sphere trailing behind also rolled at high speed, building up kinetic energy.

Crack!

Li Cheng picked his moment, slammed the brakes, and drove his rusted cleaver deep into the ground, forcibly halting the charge.

The iron ball kept rolling forward. The steel cables formed from Gray Rain's hands wrapped around the rusted cleaver, and using the hilt as a pivot, swept out a semicircular arc through the air.

The white fox instinctively sensed the deadly danger and hastily twisted its head, the gravity-energy orb still held in its mouth.

Too late, though.

The solid iron ball of over eight hundred kilograms, swung like a hammer-throw, slammed heavily into the side of the white fox's head, smashing it into a building along the street that had not yet collapsed.

The white fox crashed to the ground, exposing its completely unguarded belly.

Li Cheng, straddling the motorcycle, gave his right arm a jolt and took out the Avenger autocannon.

The nearly six-meter-long, one-ton steel monstrosity sat in the middle of the broken road like a car, its seven 30-millimeter caliber rotary barrels spinning at extreme speed driven by an electric motor, spitting out depleted-uranium armor-piercing rounds at a rate of four thousand rounds per minute.

The shikigami's shroud of demonic energy held on with great difficulty for two seconds, but in the end was still pierced through by the relentless barrage.

The white fox slowly crumbled into flying ash, vanishing like smoke, revealing Jiang Zhihui, still in the middle of her summoning ritual, her face full of astonishment.

Li Cheng dropped the autocannon with its smoking muzzle, strode forward, and with a sharp crack seized Jiang Zhihui by the neck, lifting her up.

"Hhk— hhk—"

Jiang Zhihui, on the verge of suffocation, her face flushed red, forced out: "Don't kill me, I can transfer everything to you, all the game coins. If you kill me, Jiang Meixi dies too."

"I know."

Li Cheng lowered his voice, leaned in to Jiang Zhihui's ear, and said, "So, drink plenty of warm water."

【Death Curse Torrent】 temporary skill activated — a black stream of water erupted from his left hand and poured into Jiang Zhihui's mouth.

The effect of Death Curse Torrent is to make one recall their most terrifying memory and fall into extreme panic.

Jiang Zhihui, who had thoroughly drunk down a whole bucket of black water, her pupils trembling violently — from beneath her crown, a white, semi-translucent speck of light darted out and shot backward in frantic flight.

That was Jiang Zhihui's spirit body — or rather, that was the original Jiang Zhihui, who had been reduced to a wandering soul.

Li Cheng stood in place, took the Thunderclap Horn from his backpack slot, sounded it, and then used his ragdoll-assembly ability to detach his right arm, hurling the right hand together with the Thunderclap Horn still gripped in its palm at the wandering soul.

A thunderstorm fifty meters in diameter, though launched later, overtook Jiang Zhihui's spirit body first, blasting her to annihilation in a thunderbolt.