Chapter 388: A Grand Gift for the Revolutionary Army

A man's reputation casts a long shadow.

The moment Pride appeared, the Revolutionary Army higher-ups tensed. It didn't matter that they were deep within their own headquarters, surrounded entirely by their own forces.

"Lord Pride." Living up to his title as commander of the Revolutionary Army, Specter was the first to regain his composure, offering a respectful greeting.

"May I ask what brings you here?"

"What do you think?" Su Mu asked coolly.

Specter pondered for a moment. "You arrive just as the Revolutionary Army is about to launch its general offensive. Given that I've had the privilege of working with you in the past, I assume you are here to propose another alliance."

At those words, the mood in the room instantly soared from Hell to Heaven.

Their commander had actually worked with Pride before?

With Pride's help, overthrowing the Chiyan Empire would be a breeze!

However, Su Mu's answer was simply: "Wrong."

That single, simple word plunged the room back into a suffocating stillness.

Specter frowned slightly. "Forgive my ignorance, then," he probed. "May I ask what brings you here?"

Su Mu smiled faintly. "I have come to bring you a grand gift."

"A grand gift? May I ask what it is?"

"Nightmare Creatures, naturally."

"What?!" someone blurted out, his face draining of color.

Specter's expression stiffened. He forced a strained smile. "The Revolutionary Army has never offended the Seven Deadly Sins. In fact, we have collaborated..."

"Humanity never offended me, either."

Specter fell silent. The others remained as taut as drawn bowstrings, not daring to make a sound.

No one suspected Pride of making a joke. Because... a God never joked.

As the atmosphere hit the freezing point, Specter slowly broke the silence. "Lord Pride, I know you stand against the entire world, but the Revolutionary Army is not worth destroying right now. On the contrary, if you spare us, we will tear down the Chiyan Empire for you.

"I imagine infighting among humanity would serve your plans well."

"Heh." A scoff of cold contempt drifted from beneath the Silver-White Mask. "Do you truly think I need one colony of ants to deal with another?"

The forced smile on Specter's face solidified, his expression turning deathly serious.

"Lord Pride, to my knowledge, your true body cannot descend to this world. Moreover, you unleashed hundreds of millions of Nightmare Creatures during the Seven Kings Council. I cannot help but wonder... how many Nightmare Creatures could you possibly have left?"

His deduction was entirely reasonable. He wasn't the only one who thought so; the leaders of the Seven Great Empires had reached the exact same conclusion.

The world believed Pride had emptied his reserves of Nightmare Creatures during the Seven Kings Council. If he had more, why hadn't he released them all at once and simply destroyed the world right then and there?

Besides, how could there possibly be that many Nightmare Creatures? The human population hovered near ten billion. There couldn't be more nightmares than people, could there?

"Just watch," Su Mu replied coolly.

He waved his hand with the light, elegant grace of a symphony conductor, effortlessly slicing open the void.

A bottomless spatial rift tore open before them. Everyone in the room paled, immediately falling into defensive stances.

"Stop him!" Specter roared. Invisible Psychokinesis erupted outward. He didn't bother attacking Su Mu—knowing this form was merely a phantom—and instead directed his assault squarely at the spatial rift.

Unfortunately, it was completely useless. The Seven Kings Barrier was not something a figure of his level could ever hope to shake.

At that moment, pairs of glowing scarlet eyes opened within the rift, spilling a suffocating, terrifying aura into the room.

Before the Nightmare Creatures could even crawl out, Specter and the others unleashed their barrage. Countless devastating attacks bombarded the rift, drawing inhuman shrieks from the monsters inside.

But it was a futile effort. There were simply too many Nightmare Creatures.

Swish!

A frigid flash of a blade carved a gaping hole through their barrage. Immediately after, a woman with blades for limbs stepped through the tear.

Her figure was curvaceous and elegant, yet she radiated an aura that froze the blood. Her original hands and feet had been severed long ago; razor-sharp blades were thrust deep into the stumps to replace them.

The cold glint of metal reflected off her exquisite face, making her look like an envoy of slaughter sent straight from the dark Abyss.

"A Gold Nightmare!!" someone screamed.

The bladed woman took in her surroundings before lunging viciously at the crowd, her four limbs carving freezing arcs of steel through the air.

"Freeze!" Specter, hailed as the number one figure under the Kings, struck in an instant. A terrifying wave of Psychokinesis engulfed the bladed woman, locking her suspended in midair.

But the moment Specter pinned her down, a second Gold Nightmare slithered out of the rift. It was a ghastly bone snake, its massive frame stretching over a hundred meters long.

As the bone snake surged into the confined space, the room was instantly blown apart.

The massive commotion naturally drew the attention of the Revolutionary Army soldiers stationed outside, who immediately rushed over.

Amid the ensuing chaos, more and more Nightmare Creatures poured out, transforming into a torrential black tide that blotted out the sky.

Powerless to stop the onslaught, the revolutionaries stumbled back in a blind panic.

Su Mu stood silently amid the roaring flood of nightmares, looking like a solitary God detached from the mortal world.

"Damn it! How does he still have so many Nightmare Creatures?!" one of the higher-ups screamed. But no one was destined to answer his question.

"Enjoy your grand gift, Specter."

Su Mu slowly drifted into the air. The crisp moonlight spilled over his Silver-White Mask, reflecting a blinding, icy glare.

Under Specter's horrified and furious gaze, Su Mu's figure slowly faded until he became completely transparent.

He vanished into thin air, just as abruptly as he had arrived.

In the scant few minutes he had been there, the Revolutionary Army's grand plan to overthrow the Chiyan Empire was utterly destroyed.

He didn't care if the Chiyan Empire changed hands, but it wasn't allowed to happen now.

The world was brimming with ambitious schemers and conspirators, but none of that mattered. In Su Mu's era, everyone would march to the beat of his will alone.

Soon after, Su Mu returned to the base in Haibin City.

Seeing the base brightly lit and bustling with people, he frowned.

It was the dead of night. Before he left, everyone had already turned off the lights to sleep. After a grueling day of clearing out the city, the Nightmare Apostles had been exhausted.

"What happened?"

Lin Nanxing jumped in fright. He whipped his head around, and upon seeing Su Mu, his face instantly lit up with relief.

"Captain! Where did you go? Something happened! Of the remaining ninety-eight Nightmare Apostles, twelve more just died!"

"Take me to them."

"This way, Captain."

With Lin Nanxing leading the way, Su Mu approached the gathered crowd.

The Nightmare Apostles were huddled around twelve corpses with grim expressions, actively inspecting them.

"Make way! The Captain is here!" Lin Nanxing bellowed, shoving people aside to carve out a path.

Su Mu stepped through the opening and studied the bodies laid out on the ground, his eyes sweeping over them carefully.

All twelve of the dead wore expressions of profound terror. Their faces were horribly contorted, as though they had witnessed something unimaginably terrifying right before they died.

Strangely, their causes of death were all completely different. Some bodies were charred black, as if burned alive. Others were riddled with blade wounds. A few had entirely rotted, while others looked as if they had been viciously gnawed on.

"Captain, this is way too bizarre," Lin Nanxing said, shivering with unease. "Everyone was sleeping two to a room tonight, and we even had people taking turns on night watch. But when someone got up in the middle of the night to use the restroom, they suddenly realized their roommate was dead!

"He freaked out and started screaming for help. That woke everyone up. Once we turned on the lights, we found even more dead bodies!

"But the creepiest part is... these people clearly died horrible, agonizing deaths, yet not a single one of them made a sound."