Chapter 386: The Death of Yang Dongqing

Boom! Boom! Boom!!!

Terrifying pressure crushed inward from all directions. The nightmare monsters trembled for a split second before countless invisible hammers seemed to slam into them all at once. Bones snapped and splintered, and their flesh was ruthlessly pulverized like fragile paper.

Their eyes bulged and their jaws stretched wide in silent screams. Paralyzed, they could only watch as the horrifying pressure steadily flattened their bodies until, with a sickening pop, they exploded into lifeless pools of bloody paste.

The stench of blood and rot flooded the air, and the seawater instantly transformed into a squirming carpet of flesh.

With over a thousand Nightmare Creatures dead, Su Mu greedily inhaled the formless baleful energy drifting through the air. The energy surged madly into his soul, gradually staining it a faint black.

"Hmm?"

Su Mu frowned slightly. His Demonic Heart Baleful Soul still hadn't reached perfection. If an ordinary Silver transcendent had slaughtered over a thousand Nightmare Creatures, their Demonic Heart Baleful Soul would have been perfected long ago.

This was the consequence of possessing an overwhelmingly strong soul. An ordinary Silver transcendent's soul was like a small pond—dump a large bucket of ink in, and the water would turn pitch-black. His soul, however, was a vast ocean. Dyeing an ocean black required an astronomical amount of ink.

But this was also a good thing. Once he cultivated the Demonic Heart Baleful Soul to perfection, he would instantly wield baleful energy no weaker than that of Lin Canyang, a Gold-tier Giant Demon.

Su Mu dipped into his dreamscape to fully replenish his mental power before resuming the hunt.

Instantly obliterating over a thousand Nightmare Creatures with a single move might have looked effortless, but it had actually drained his mental power dry.

Fortunately, an abundance of mental power was exactly what he possessed.

As the slaughter continued, his progress with the Demonic Heart Baleful Soul skyrocketed, and his proficiency with Severed Thoughts in Sealed Dust climbed right alongside it.

Naturally, the hunt wasn't entirely smooth sailing. A few Nightmare Creatures bordering on the Gold Tier took notice of Su Mu and rapidly swarmed his position, causing him a bit of trouble.

Whenever he encountered Nightmare Creatures that Severed Thoughts in Sealed Dust couldn't obliterate in one hit, he simply activated his God's Eye and annihilated them another way.

With his current strength, virtually nothing below the Gold Tier could survive a single exchange with him.

After slaughtering for a long time, Su Mu began to wonder: where were all the Gold Nightmare Creatures?

According to the officer from earlier, a Gold Nightmare was lurking somewhere near Haibin City, but it was exceptionally cunning and rarely showed itself.

But even if that specific Gold Nightmare remained in hiding, what about the others?

After a moment of thought, Su Mu guessed that these Gold Nightmares likely possessed some form of territorial instinct, which kept them spread apart.

However, if the Gold Nightmares were nowhere to be seen, where was Yuchi Hong?

He hadn't spotted Yuchi Hong on the front lines either.

A faint smile tugged at the corners of Su Mu's lips. "It seems Lord Yuchi has prepared a surprise for me as well."

...

...

Atop the towering walls of Haibin City.

"Huh... is it just me, or has the Nightmare Creatures' offensive weakened? Am I imagining things?" a blood-drenched Silver transcendent muttered blankly.

"It's not your imagination! It really has weakened! Look, the number of Nightmare Creatures swarming outside the walls has dropped!" someone shouted in pleasant surprise.

As time ticked by, more and more people noticed the change, and wild cheers of joy began to erupt across the defenses.

"Have we almost wiped out all the Nightmare Creatures around Haibin City?"

"Definitely! The Empire has poured so many legions and transcendents into this fight. No matter how many Nightmare Creatures there are, they can't possibly outnumber us!"

"These damn monsters must be scared! They're retreating!"

"Keep killing, brothers! Victory is ours!"

In an instant, the morale of the human defenders soared.

Later that night, Su Mu slipped back into Haibin City unnoticed. He had absorbed far too much baleful energy today and needed time to properly digest it.

Upon returning to base, he summoned the nightmare apostles and asked for a report on the day's battles.

He had dispatched a total of one hundred and twenty-four nightmare apostles, but only ninety-eight returned. Despite the loss of twenty-six people, the results were commendable. They had wiped out the majority of the Nightmare Creatures lurking inside the city, and the rest had gone into hiding, making them difficult to track down in the short term.

Surveying the remaining ninety-eight people, Su Mu noticed that most had only sustained light injuries, and some weren't hurt at all. He suddenly frowned. "Where is Yang Mo (Yang Dongqing)?"

Lin Nanxing's face darkened. "He's dead."

"How?"

The sudden news of Yang Dongqing's death took Su Mu by surprise. Out of everyone present, aside from himself and Lin Lingling, the very last person who should have died was Yang Dongqing.

Even though he was only at the Silver 1 rank, he had undergone mithril activation and fused with the Seven Halls Yama—a Gold Artifact imitating the Royal Power Artifact, Yama of the Ten Halls. This granted him extraordinary adaptability.

Unless a Gold-tier powerhouse personally took action against him, Yang Dongqing should have been incredibly difficult to kill.

"I saw him chasing a dark shadow into a house," Lin Nanxing said, his voice low. "Fighting broke out inside. I was about to go help, but the building suddenly exploded. Once the explosion ended, I found Yang Mo lying on the ground covered in blood, no longer breathing."

Even though he hadn't known Yang Dongqing for long, they were still members of the same squad. Having him die right in front of his eyes had undeniably shaken him.

"Where is the body?"

"The shadow devoured it."

"And the bodies of the others who died?"

"Eaten by the Nightmare Creatures." Lin Nanxing clenched his fists tightly. "I used the Eye of the Sky to scout earlier. The bodies of the fallen were rapidly devoured by Nightmare Creatures that swarmed out of nowhere."

"Alright. I understand." Su Mu adjusted his Tinted Glasses, a flash of crystalline blue light fleeting across his eyes.

Afterward, he picked out the three individuals who had killed the most Nightmare Creatures. Once he rewarded them with his signature hypnosis package, he began compiling the intelligence they had brought back.

The vast majority of the Nightmare Creatures that had breached the city were at the Bronze tier; Silver ones were only a small minority.

Logically speaking, over a hundred Silver-tier nightmare apostles should have had zero trouble wiping out the city's monsters. Anyone capable of advancing to the Silver tier as a nightmare apostle was a deeply experienced veteran.

No one was better at hunting Nightmare Creatures than the nightmare apostles, simply because anyone who wasn't was already dead.

Yet, in just a single day, over twenty nightmare apostles had been killed. What was most bizarre was that those who survived walked away with minor injuries at worst.

If the fighting had truly been that brutal, why were the survivors practically unharmed?

Even accounting for the fact that they had split up to fight in their own designated sectors, were those twenty-odd casualties really just that unlucky? Were they the only ones who stumbled across powerful nightmares?

The missing Gold Nightmare, the completely absent Yuchi Hong, and the bizarre death of Yang Dongqing...

The corners of Su Mu's lips curled up slightly. "Interesting."