Chapter 135: Big BOSS

Chapter 135: The Big Boss

"Yuanshi Tianzun?"

Li Xianzong halted his steps, recognizing at a glance the young man leading the Lawful camp—precisely the quarry he had come to hunt.

On the other side, Zhang Yuanqing blurted out, "Li Xianzong?!"

It was actually Li Xianzong! Matched into the same instance?

Talk about enemies meeting on a narrow path.

"Yuanshi Tianzun..." The gaunt middle-aged man's voice suddenly pitched higher. "The Yuanshi Tianzun from the Songhai branch? The one ranked fifth on the underground black market's bounty list?"

The other three companions wore expressions of shock.

"Exactly, it's him!" Li Xianzong grinned, baring his teeth. "Interesting. You're in Yin-Yang Town too. I was planning to finish this instance and then go butcher you for the bounty. This saves me the trouble."

"Oh right, I heard this kid nearly got killed by Li Xianzong not long ago. Talk about enemies meeting on a narrow path." The gaunt man chuckled darkly.

"Enemies on a narrow path?" The man in the tailored suit rolled his eyes, deliberately raising his voice. "This brat qualifies as Li Xianzong's rival? That would require being evenly matched. This whelp is only fit to kneel before Li Xianzong and beg for mercy. You brats on the Lawful side—you're dead meat."

The gaunt man instantly grasped his comrade's intent. From a street brawl to a clash of armies, psychological warfare was paramount.

He shouted Li Xianzong's name at the top of his lungs, bellowing, "The Five Elements Alliance has truly fallen into decline. The rookie they hold in such high esteem is nothing but your prey, Captain. Kid, do your legs go weak at the sight of Li Xianzong? Kneel and call us Grandpa a few times, and we'll leave you a whole corpse."

The evil professionals let out sinister, sneering laughs.

Li Xianzong... The faces of the Lawful camp didn't look too good.

Even knowing the enemy was deliberately crushing their morale, facing such a terrifying foe made it impossible for their mindset to remain unaffected.

To actually match with Li Xianzong—a vicious criminal ranked high on the official bounty list, someone even Yuanshi Tianzun couldn't defeat... The Queen's complexion shifted slightly; she instinctively turned her head to glance at the captain beside her.

Back when Li Xianzong perpetrated that terrorist attack in Songhai, nearly killing Yuanshi Tianzun, she had participated in the discussions afterward.

The consensus had been that Yuanshi Tianzun fell far short of Li Xianzong.

She never expected he still couldn't escape this "destiny." No, not just him—she couldn't even protect herself...

Li Li Yuan Shang Cao was a loose cultivator, not particularly sensitive to outside news, but upon hearing the name Li Xianzong, she suddenly recalled what the Queen had said when introducing Yuanshi Tianzun.

This Li Xianzong was the captain's nemesis? And the captain was his defeated subordinate?

The Wood Demon youth's heart clenched.

Aside from Huode Xingjun, whose rage flared at hearing the enemy mock their captain, everyone's mood grew heavy.

At that moment, the mage standing at the center of both groups swept his gaze left and right, letting out a cold snort.

"Running dogs of the imperial court. You've finally tracked us down."

Before anyone could respond, he—having already condemned both sides as lackeys of the throne—threw back his head and spewed stream after stream of verdant gas, which diffused rapidly like thick smoke.

Urged on by the wind, the emerald vapor surged toward both flanks.

“Fall back!”

The gaunt middle-aged man roared, opening his inventory and snatching out a white jade toad, thrusting it high.

Verdant gas swarmed into the toad’s mouth; in the blink of an eye, the white jade toad turned a deep green.

On the other side, the Queen stood before her teammates, palms raised in a lifting motion. With a crashing roar, the river water transformed into a raging dragon, soaring and dancing, swallowing the dense, verdant mist into its belly.

The water dragon’s hue instantly shifted to a pale green.

“Bang! Bang! Bang!”

Gunshots rang out from afar. The instant the verdant fog dissipated, the Lawful camp’s sharpshooters ambushed the Evil camp.

The Evil camp Walkers, vigilant in all directions, had long been prepared. They reacted calmly, unhurried—some rolling, some tilting their heads, others lunging sideways.

The instant the gaunt man threw himself down, he heard a dull thud from the earthen wall behind him; a deep bullet crater appeared, wafting gunpowder smoke.

“Hey, from this far away, you want to ambush me?”

A sneer just curled his lip when another shot rang out—but this time the target wasn't him, but the deep-green toad fallen to the side.

The jade toad instantly shattered, fragments scattering; the verdant gas sealed within surged out in a breath, blanketing the area.

The one who fired just now wasn't Guan Ya, but Li Chunfeng. His shot was merely a feint, cover for Guan Ya’s attack.

Seeing this, the Queen immediately abandoned the thought of dispersing the water dragon. She shifted her palms from lifting to pushing, letting the water dragon dissolve into a rain curtain falling upon the Evil camp shrouded in poison gas.

At this moment, the black-robed mage reached into the cloth bag at his waist and drew out a three-foot staff. The shaft was black as ink, its crown set with an egg-sized black jade stone.

He raised the staff high, his voice a low, majestic proclamation:

“Everyone must die!”

The black jade atop the staff flared suddenly, emitting a dim, gloomy radiance.

Guan Ya, aiming from the alley entrance, felt a sudden sharp pain in her heart; it stopped beating. She clutched her chest, slowly crouching down, gasping heavily in agony.

Li Chunfeng was the same.

On the square, Zhang Yuanqing, the Queen, Li Li Yuan Shang Cao, Li Xianzong, and the others all clutched their hearts simultaneously, faces deathly pale.

A curse. A powerful curse.

“Th-this is impossible…” the youth with the missing left ear groaned in pain. “A 4th-rank Saint’s curse shouldn't be this strong.”

A 4th-rank Saint could curse-kill anyone present, but that was one-on-one. A wide-area curse shouldn't possess such power.

A round of blazing golden light erupted. The half-crouching Zhang Yuanqing purged the curse’s influence and hurled the Demon-Subduing Pestle in his hand, simultaneously activating Night Roam to charge the mage.

The gold-glowing Demon-Subduing Pestle shot forth. The mage swung his staff. *Clang.* He knocked the pestle aside.

The dim halo radiating from the black gem instantly dissipated. The curse vanished.

The Demon-Subduing Pestle’s magic-breaking function had taken effect.

Zhang Yuanqing lunged, catching the spinning pestle steadily as it flew toward the distance.

Gan Ya leaned back against the earthen wall, shifting from a crouch to a sit. She raised the long barrel, aimed at the mage, and squeezed the trigger.

She decisively abandoned the attempt to focus-fire the evil class, for the Mage was far too powerful; a single misstep would spell a total party wipe. At this moment, priorities had to be distinguished.

"Bang!"

The bullet struck the Mage's skull, but it pierced only a phantom image.

The staff-wielding Mage materialized several meters away, his robes torn at some unknown moment. His height had swollen to two meters, his frame encased in hardened carapace. His legs were knotted with muscle, not bulky, but jointed like the hind legs of a locust.

His face had twisted into something grotesque and insectile, mandibles vicious, two antennae probing from his brow.

Guan Ya worked the bolt, ejecting the spent casing, and fired again.

The bullet struck another afterimage. The Mage appeared on the far side of the plaza, his locust-like legs and antennae granting him reaction speed and velocity beyond imagination.

The Mage finally noticed her, eyes like black obsidian turning her way.

Guan Ya's heart sank. Just then, she saw Zhang Yuanqing lunge forward with reckless abandon, throwing himself at the Mage for her sake.

The Mage shifted his gaze to Zhang Yuanqing, but the enemy before him suddenly vanished.

The antennae on the Mage's brow twitched faintly—whether sensing air currents or emitting some signal, unknown—he suddenly dropped his knee, snapping a vicious whip-kick to the right.

*Crack!*

A figure was knocked into the open, arms crossed over his chest—precisely Zhang Yuanqing.

He was flung high, tumbling across the ground, a sweet, metallic taste rising in his throat.

The Mage dipped his knees, readying pursuit, when he suddenly lowered his head. Cold eyes fixed on his lower leg, where a deep gash wept thick, verdant ichor.

He raised his head, staff leveling at Zhang Yuanqing, the black gem flaring with dark radiance.

Zhang Yuanqing felt only a sharp pain in his calf; flesh split soundlessly, the wound widening relentlessly. Without hesitation, he drove the Subduing Pestle deep into his own thigh.

Golden light bathed his body, and the rupturing flesh of his leg halted instantly.

"Careful, he can use his own wounds as a medium to cast curses." The words had barely left Zhang Yuanqing's mouth when, in his vision, the transmuted Mage dragged a trail of afterimages straight toward him.

His visual perception peaked in that instant, piercing the enemy's intent.

Without thought, he rolled to the right.

*Boom!*

The staff slammed into the ground, shattering the flagstones.

The Mage had just lifted his staff when, not far off, the Fire Virtue Star General leaned back, swinging his arm to hurl a fireball compressed to its absolute limit.

"Boom!"

The fireball detonated on impact, gouging an exaggerated crater, and the Mage's form dispersed within the shockwave.

Zhang Yuanqing looked up and shouted, "He's coming!"

The Fire Virtue Star General retreated while lobbing fireballs, blanketing the space ahead.

But the Mage's figure flickered left, then right, dodging each sphere of flame with sheer speed, closing on the Fire Virtue Star General and driving a fist into the burly man's abdomen.

The Fire Virtue Star General's body folded violently, pupils dilating into emptiness.

Fierce flames engulfed the Fire Virtue Star General, while a dozen meters behind the mage, a tongue of fire suddenly swelled, transfiguring into the Fire Master, clutching his abdomen, kneeling and gasping for breath.

In a mere two rounds, the two mainstays of the Lawful camp already teetered on the brink of disaster.

"Big Boss is a tough nut to crack. Should we pull back first?"

The Evil camp, having just escaped the shroud of poison gas, witnessed the scene and clicked their tongues in secret awe.

"No. With the Lawful camp holding the line right now, we have a chance to kill him. Once the mage finishes off these brats, we're likely done for too." The youth with the missing left ear gave his reasoning:

"The Gu worm fused with the mage is of an exceedingly high tier, possessing perception, agility, strength, and self-healing. It defies imagination how he cultivated such a worm.

"In terms of close-quarters combat, none of you Bewitching Yaos are his match."

Li Xianzong nodded slowly, his expression grave.

"Running dogs of the Imperial Court, today is the day you meet your burial."

The mage's hideous mouthparts opened and closed, spitting out human speech.

Suddenly, crimson light surged within his pupils, a mass of black qi enveloping his head.

The mage clutched his head in agony, letting out a bestial roar; his reason rapidly dissipated beneath the shroud of that black qi.

At the alley entrance, Li Chunfeng turned his head to look beside him, and saw the Skinny Man eating lotus root. He held a straw effigy in his hand, its brows and features startlingly those of the worm-transformed mage.

An opportunity!

The Walkers of both camps saw their eyes light up.