Chapter 421: The Twelve Zodiacs

Chapter 421: Chapter 421: The Twelve Zodiacs

"Hey, don’t search for them one by one! Follow the clock!" Simon Keane said urgently.

He’d thought they were all smart people who would get it right away. He hadn’t expected them to resort to a brute-force search.

So simple and unrefined.

Lily Hart stopped in her tracks and called out to Cynthia Whittaker, who was charging ahead with her head down. She turned to Old Man Keaton and said, "Why didn’t you say so sooner?"

"You have to give me a chance to, don’t you?" Simon Keane retorted instinctively.

She then pulled out her Light Brain, opened a group chat, and started a group voice call.

Everyone quickly connected, and Lily Hart repeated what Simon Keane had just said.

The instructions were simple and easy to understand: the twelve zodiac heads were located at the twelve positions on a clock face.

The group quickly discussed their strategy. Cynthia Whittaker volunteered, "I’m a Wind Ability User. I can fly up and tell you all the exact locations."

Owen Warren said lazily, "I’m a Tenth-tier Zombie. I can get up there too, and probably with less effort than you."

Lily Hart cut straight to the point. "Then you two go up together. Stay in constant contact."

"Alright," Owen Warren and Cynthia Whittaker said in unison.

Afterward, Lily Hart and Simon Keane watched as Cynthia Whittaker ascended, a mass of wind nearly solid beneath her feet.

Like she was riding a propitious cloud, she floated up gracefully and with exceptional stability.

Dozens of meters away, Owen Warren tapped the ground with his toes, shifted the energy in his body to make himself as light as possible, and quickly joined Cynthia Whittaker.

After meeting up, they both looked down and agreed they weren’t high enough to see everything.

So they continued to rise until they were just tiny black dots from Lily Hart’s perspective before they finally stopped.

Looking down from above, Cynthia Whittaker discovered that the lake was an irregular oval.

She and Owen Warren then moved to what they judged to be the center of the lake, from where they could finally take in the entire view.

But at such a high altitude, the air was thin and grew increasingly cold.

Cynthia Whittaker first put on another layer of clothing—a long, insulated coat she’d taken from a factory.

She felt much better once she had it on. Then, she pulled a pocket watch from her dimensional space and placed it in her palm.

Owen Warren leaned in for a look. "Well now, you came fully equipped."

The people below quickly followed their instructions, moving toward the vicinity of the zodiac heads.

Knowing the general locations made finding them much easier, and far faster than their previous blind search.

In less than ten minutes, the seven people on the ground had all found their assigned zodiac heads.

Excluding the tiger head that Simon Keane had already pressed, and excluding these seven people, even after counting Owen Warren and Cynthia Whittaker, they were still two short.

Luckily, they didn’t have to be pressed simultaneously, or Lily Hart would have had to call for backup.

After finding a head, they would locate its eyes, press them quickly, and immediately move on to the next.

Their movements were swift and efficient, with no delays.

But just as Lily Hart finished pressing the horse’s eyes and was about to tell Cynthia Whittaker and Owen Warren to come down, a sudden chill ran down her spine.

The system immediately issued a red alert. [DANGER, DANGER, DANGER. EVADE IMMEDIATELY.]

She instinctively dropped into a crouch to dodge the attack, then quickly spun around and lashed out with a leg sweep.

’Damn,’ she thought, ’it’s like kicking a wall.’ Her opponent didn’t budge an inch.

She dropped the pretense, shot to her feet, pulled out her pistol, and opened fire on the newcomer.

"Argh..." A cry of pain rang out as he hastily manipulated energy to form a shield in front of himself.

But he wasn’t a pushover. Despite the pain, he mercilessly sent the ball of light brewing in his hand straight toward Lily Hart.

Not just one, but dozens of them. Lily Hart didn’t even blink, just kept on firing.

She quickly shot the man until he fell to his knees. Looking down on him, she asked, "Who sent you?"

He stared back at her in disbelief. "You... how are you completely unharmed?"

When the balls of light reached Lily Hart, it was as if they’d encountered a demon; they were all devoured without leaving so much as a wisp of smoke.

Lily Hart ignored his question and simply repeated, "Who sent you?"

When he remained silent, she took out a stick and started poking the wounds where the bullets had pierced him.

’Every poke lands right on target. It won’t kill you, but it’ll hurt like hell.’

A flash of hatred crossed the man’s eyes. He clenched his jaw, determined not to speak.

Lily Hart stopped asking. She just poked each wound in turn until he was rolling on the ground in agony, drool pooling beneath him.

Hearing the sound of splashing water behind her, Lily Hart whipped her stick around in a powerful spin, striking the new person square in the mouth.

The blow was so powerful it knocked out two of his front teeth.

The only reason she could be so precise was that she had eyes in the back of her head—no, that the system was watching for her.

"Die!" The soaking-wet man lunged, not even bothering to use his superpower, intending to fight her head-on.

He had clearly seen what just happened—she could devour the balls of light!

’Or maybe,’ he thought, ’she can just ignore superpower attacks?’

’If that’s the case, I’ll attack her up close and see how she defends against that!’

But Lily Hart didn’t even try to dodge. She just stood there, watching him with a smirk that wasn’t quite a smile.

Her gaze was so unnerving that the courage he had just mustered nearly evaporated.

’Screw it!’ He spat out a mouthful of blood, mixed with the fragments of his broken front teeth, and charged forward with everything he had.

He threw a punch so forceful you could hear the air whistling past. He imagined her crying out in pain.

But it felt like hitting cotton—soft and yielding. He looked up, and Lily Hart was still wearing that same smirk.

He couldn’t stand this passive-aggressive crap. ’Hit me if you’re going to! What’s the deal with not talking or fighting back?’

Furious, he tried to pull his hand back but found he couldn’t. His entire fist was stuck about ten centimeters from Lily Hart, unable to move.

His already fragile mental defenses completely crumbled, and he struggled to retract his arm.

A piercing pain shot through his palm and all five of his fingers. The agony was heart-wrenching, and he broke out in a cold sweat.

When he finally yanked his arm back, his hand was gone. Only a stump of a wrist remained.

He stumbled back two steps in terror. "What kind of superpower is that?"

Lily Hart just smiled without a word and summoned her plants, which hadn’t seen the sun in a long time. In an instant, they devoured the two men completely.

Afterward, they surrounded Lily Hart like bodyguards, forming an impenetrable barrier.

Thankfully, she had bought that Protective Clothing. It offered all-around protection; if she wanted, not even a fly could get near her.

While she was "fighting" these two small-fries, the others had already pressed the remaining zodiac heads.

Roman Rowe’s voice came through the Light Brain. "Old man, all twelve are pressed. Now what?"

Simon Keane said, "We wait."

He said to wait, but it wasn’t for long. During that time, the others quickly moved to regroup with Lily Hart.

Soon, everyone was gathered together again. They all saw the bloodstains on the ground.

Lily Hart explained, "A couple of clueless small-fries showed up. What about you guys? Any trouble?"

Frost Shaw raised a hand. "Two for me, too. They’ve been dealt with."

The others reported in one by one; they had all faced two attackers, and all of them had been taken care of.

No one had managed to find out which faction sent them. The most likely possibility was that all four factions had a hand in it.

Simon Keane didn’t join their discussion, his gaze fixed on the still-calm surface of the lake.

He was counting down in his head: ’Five, four, three, two, one...’

The moment he finished the silent countdown, the placid lake suddenly erupted into monstrous waves.