Chapter 766: Ye Ge! (5/10, please subscribe)

In the game.

Chunuan City.

When Fang Yue opened his eyes, like in slow motion, a bloodstained arm just slowly swept across the night sky right before him, splashing fresh blood all over his face.

Roars, howls, pleas for help—every kind of sound jumbled together, pounding his skull with pain.

"Qingchen, I'll cover the rear! You take Ye Ge and go!!"

Fang Yue's whole body felt a tearing, rending pain, as if the meridians inside him, his very physical structure, had just undergone some brutal forced mutation—weak all over, barely able to move.

But he heard a familiar roar—Jing Yan's voice.

Right after that, he saw a dark figure flung from the distance, crashing down in front of him, rolling twice before suddenly lurching back to its feet. Not even noticing Fang Yue on the ground, it bellowed toward the front without looking back: "Jing Yan, we leave together or not at all!!"

It seemed that because he had woken up, the power throughout his body was beginning to awaken and surge forth.

Fang Yue forced himself to sit up. His internal force surged wildly; inside his body it was like a long-parched land finally meeting rain, moistening every part of him, repairing his physical condition.

The only problem was that whenever he circulated his internal force, he still felt stabbing pains, as if his meridians had been injured.

Night's Breath hadn't recovered either?

Fang Yue's brow furrowed slightly. He set aside his current strange state for now and looked in the direction Qingchen had been facing.

He saw a dark figure in the distance, turning its head to roar back at them: "Take Ye Ge and go! I'm not that easy to kill… die… Ye Ge?"

That dark figure—its voice, which had been trembling with fervor a moment ago—froze the instant it saw Fang Yue sitting up. It blanked for a beat, then broke out in goosebumps all over from sheer excitement. It didn't even notice a huge dark shadow behind it swinging a massive wooden club down at the back of its skull. Its expression visibly shifted to wild joy as it roared: "Ye…"

Boom!!

At that moment, the flow of time itself seemed to slow.

All that lingered on Qingchen's retina was a single black line.

The black line began from a point, swept past where Jing Yan stood, and struck the giant wooden club aimed at the back of Jing Yan's skull. With a bang it shattered and burst apart; amid the flying splinters, the huge dark shadow's body was pierced clean through with a great hole, freezing into frost. Black blood gushed out, turned to ice midair, and the thing crashed to the ground.

Following the direction the huge dark shadow's corpse fell, one could see where the black line finally stopped—frost spread all around—and a figure tilting its head at an angle, watching the two stunned men.

All of this happened so swift and fast, yet the flow of time around them was so slow. Only when the lips of that 'black dot' slightly parted did everything suddenly snap back to normal.

"Ye Ge!!"

"Ye Ge!!"

The two came to their senses and shouted in unison at once!

"It's me. What's the situation right now? Aren't we in Chunuan City?"

Fang Yue asked, warily scanning his surroundings.

He could see that everything around was pitch-black, and even… freezing cold!

That meant the core of the city's heating had already been destroyed!

And among the rising and falling dark shadows around them, he could see people screaming, fleeing, begging for help, and further off, sword-light flashing as figures tangled with dark shadows.

Hearing Fang Yue ask about the situation, both Qingchen and Jing Yan's faces twisted with savage fury.

"It's Tian Ruichi! He's the one behind this!"

Tian Ruichi?

Fang Yue's expression froze for a beat, then he remembered.

Tian Ruichi was a man of the Seventh Prince, the Special Envoy who carried the Imperial Edict summoning him to the capital and the Imperial Palace.

How could he…

For a moment Fang Yue's thoughts churned, but watching the people around him being killed in bizarre fashion by the surging dark shadows, screaming as they fell—exactly like a battlefield of asuras—he immediately pushed the thought down.

The matter of Tian Ruichi could be questioned in detail later. The pressing task was to slay the anomalies and save the people of Chunuan City!

"Where is Lin Ling? What about Dou Hongyi? Are there any Wrath-class anomalies in the swarm? Can you find a way to draw them together?"

Fang Yue observed the situation while thinking calmly, posing his questions.

"When Captain Lin saw everyone getting attacked by the anomalies, we couldn't hold her back—she just charged out. Dou Hongyi should be with Captain Lin, fighting over there. As for the anomalies' strength, most of them are between Blood-class and Calamity-class!"

Saying so, Jing Yan pointed in the direction where Fang Yue had earlier seen sword-light flashing.

That was where the dark-shadow anomalies had gathered most thickly and the fighting was fiercest.

The fleeing crowd was only being chased by a portion of the lower-class anomalies.

"Those anomalies…"

"Ye Ge, you noticed it too? Just like you—picking it up that fast. I've observed them: those anomalies act as if someone is commanding them, dividing up and acting in a coordinated way. That means there's a leader among them, similar to that 【Anomaly Sense】 you once mentioned to me!"

Uh… if I said right now that I only thought those anomalies were really good at picking on the soft targets, would that be super embarrassing…

【Embarrassing!!】

Shut up! As long as you don't say anything, no one will know what I was just thinking!

"What! Ye Ge even noticed something like that—such sharp insight, totally not like the usual Ye Ge!"

Jing Yan chimed in with a shout as well, though that last part was a bit unnecessary.

Fang Yue slightly raised an eyebrow, glanced at Qingchen, and gave a small nod.

Low EQ: Those anomalies only know how to pick on the soft targets.

High EQ: The anomalies have a leader!

Can't let Qingchen be the only one with high EQ—I've got to step mine up too!

Having just woken up, his body, which had been parched a moment ago, had now fully recovered.

Power churned around him; silk-like black lines rose and fell about his body… black lines?

Fang Yue's expression froze. He reached up to touch the corner of his eye, brought his hand before him, and saw it was already covered in black blood.

Anomaly Value? How? I didn't use that part of my power!

The black qi was somewhat special—belonging to the power of the Anomaly Spirit Root, troublesome to recover, but immensely powerful.

When Fang Yue normally drew on his body's power, he prioritized his internal force.

Just now, he had also mobilized his internal force, preparing to strike down the surrounding anomalies.

But he clearly hadn't used any anomaly value—so what was with these silk-like black threads?

The silk-like black threads, like plain silk, coiled around Fang Yue's body, drifting behind his back without wind, faintly forming a ring, bearing some resemblance to the black ring above his head.

"Ye Ge, this is…"

"Ye Ge, you weren't offline for two days—how did you suddenly get stronger? Can you get stronger just by sleeping?"

Jing Yan and Qingchen were completely baffled. Fang Yue was also a bit at a loss. He tried to control the plain-silk-like black threads, and the ring behind his back immediately spun rapidly at the direction of his thoughts. He raised his hand and pointed upward.

Whoosh—

Even Fang Yue himself barely had time to react—the silk-like black threads had already pierced through the shadow anomaly several hundred meters ahead, arriving almost in an instant!

"So fast!?" Fang Yue's pupils shrank.

"One-hit kill?!" Qingchen's eyes went wide.

"Ye Ge, what exactly is this…" Jing Yan covered his mouth.

(End of chapter)