Chapter 264: Chapter 263: Catching Them All in One Net

"Dead?!"

"The second and third-in-command... they’re dead, just like that!"

"They died without surviving a single blow!"

As their hearts were torn out, the flesh armor attached to the three cultist leaders’ hands immediately disintegrated, and their bodies were rapidly drained of all Qi Power.

Their legs gave out, and they collapsed limply to the ground.

This scene was a tremendous shock to the hundred or so cultists gathered around.

Everyone stared, stunned, at the corpses of their leaders twitching occasionally on the ground.

They had assumed that with these three taking action, they could at least hold out for a few moments.

And with the Blood Envoy—who had cultivated his Blood and Flesh Cast Armor Body to the Perfection stage—backing them up, they believed that if they couldn’t kill the man, they could at least wound him and force a retreat. That shouldn’t have been a problem.

Who could have imagined that before this man, there was no difference between the Perfection stage of the Blood Coagulation Realm and the Perfection stage of the Organ Refining Realm!

No matter who they were, he could tear out their heart and shatter their body in a single move!

’Could this man shatter even the Blood Envoy, with his Blood and Flesh Cast Armor Body at the Perfection stage, with a single punch?’

Although the young man had been constantly evading the Blood Envoy’s attacks, the power he’d displayed planted an irrepressible thought in the minds of the cultists.

At this thought, they instinctively took a step back together, their expressions turning to terror as they watched the tall, slender figure in the center of the field, the one whose arm was like a dragon’s claw. The ferocity they’d shown before had vanished.

Panic, unnoticed at first, began to surface in their eyes.

After all, there was no point in stubbornly charging forward against an enemy they couldn’t defeat.

"No retreat!"

Seeing that his men had lost their will to fight, the Blood Envoy’s roar boomed like thunder in their ears, temporarily stabilizing the situation.

Then, his eyes burning with rage, he glared at the young man who was as slippery as an eel.

His own repeated slashes had all been dodged by the young man, and his interpretation of this was different from his subordinates’.

In his view, the fact that his opponent didn’t dare to clash with him directly and repeatedly avoided his attacks was proof enough. It showed the man’s strength was inferior to his own. That was why he lacked the courage for a real fight and only dared to go after these useless subordinates!

’Even if I were to concede that his base strength is higher than mine,’ he thought.

’He’s still no match for me once I’ve activated my Blood and Flesh Cast Armor Body at the Perfection stage!’

’Otherwise, why does he keep dodging?’

’It makes no sense!’

He looked at his hesitant subordinates and roared in a thunderous voice, "Anyone who disrupts the morale of the troops shall be shown no mercy!"

"Cowards shall be shown no mercy!"

"Deserters shall be shown no mercy!"

The three consecutive cries of "no mercy" stopped the cultists, who had been on the verge of retreating, in their tracks.

They were suddenly reminded that they bore the mark of the Blood Palace; there was no way out!

"Kill!"

"Cut him down!"

With no way to retreat, the bloodlust of a final, desperate battle erupted from the Blood Palace cultists once more. A hundred men let out a roar like a tsunami and charged toward the solitary figure in the center of the carnage.

However, what met them was the dazzling brilliance of the Blood Evil True Gang!

SPLAT! SPLAT! SPLAT!—

A series of explosions rang out as a thick, red mist rose once more. The surrounding crimson became stickier, and the air grew so thick with it that breathing left a sweet taste in the back of one’s throat.

[Blood and Flesh Cast Armor Body (Minor Achievement) Proficiency +80]

[Blood and Flesh Cast Armor Body (Minor Achievement) Proficiency +80]

[...]

Wu Chen had no time to pay attention to the proficiency gains, each of which was nearing the one-hundred mark.

He glanced at the surrounding cultists, noting that only about half of them remained. His patience was wearing thin.

’Only about a hundred left,’ he thought. ’I need to hurry up, kill them, get the reward, and leave!’

With that thought, he raised his hand again.

The Blood Evil True Gang coalesced around him once more and, in the span of a breath, smashed into the densest part of the crowd.

Another explosion of blood mist erupted, blindingly crimson!

"You fiend, how dare you!"

The red-robed Blood Envoy, who had been waiting at the periphery for the perfect chance to land a killing blow, could no longer hold back and leaped forward.

He had assumed that a hundred-odd men charging in would be enough to bog his opponent down.

But the man was completely unfazed, simply raising a hand to unleash that vast power, leaving them all helpless.

The Blood Envoy strode forward, swinging the great blade in his hands down on the young man’s figure.

Unfortunately for him, Wu Chen simply dodged again, giving him no opportunity to engage.

"You bastard! Stop running!"

"You animal!"

"Coward!"

The Blood Envoy stomped his feet in frustration as the young man instantly created more distance between them, but there was nothing he could do.

’You can live a little longer...’

Wu Chen glanced at the cursing, frantic Blood Envoy, feeling completely unmoved.

He knew perfectly well that now was not the time to kill the Blood Envoy.

He had already discerned this from the man’s earlier shouts to the cultists.

As long as this Blood Envoy remained alive, this group of cultists, who would normally have broken and fled after he had killed half their number, would hold out. He could kill seventy, eighty, even ninety percent of them before the survivors would finally rout.

So, as long as the Blood Envoy lived, the cultists would be pressured to stand their ground and fight him.

Even knowing they were no match, they would have to grit their teeth and fight on.

Only when just a dozen or so remained, when they finally knew they were absolutely no match for him, would their spirits completely break. At that point, they would no longer care about any mark from the Blood Palace and would finally start to run.

Everything went exactly as Wu Chen had planned. Under the Blood Envoy’s coercion, the cultists could only grit their teeth and continue the fight.

Even without a shred of hope, they could only numbly raise their blades and slash.

To give them a glimmer of hope, Wu Chen—who could have used the Blood Evil True Gang three or four more times—refrained from using the Martial Arts technique. Instead, he began to feign exhaustion.

Sure enough, as soon as the cultists saw this, they started roaring again:

"He looks exhausted! Brothers, kill him!"

"He can’t hold out much longer! Everyone, push harder!"

After the rallying cries, a glimmer appeared in the cultists’ eyes, as if hope was right before them.

Their courage surged, their auras flared, and one by one they charged the figure in the center of the field.

Facing the impenetrable wall of bodies and flashing blades, Wu Chen’s movements were like the wind, as graceful as a roaming dragon. He weaved through the dense crowd as if taking a leisurely stroll through a garden.

He always managed to dodge the incoming blades by a hair’s breadth.

This gave the cultists the distinct impression that if they just tried a little harder, they would be able to land a hit.

Of course, this was just an illusion Wu Chen was creating.

It looked like they were close, but in reality, they would never land a blow.

The vast gap in their cultivation realms allowed Wu Chen to easily find a path through the dense storm of blades, dodging effortlessly.

And each time he drifted past a cultist, his dragon-claw-like hand would be holding a few more pulsating lumps of flesh.

This was the true nature of the massacre!

"Kill! Kill! Kill!"

The cultists were numb again, just shouting mechanically as they charged forward to their deaths.

They no longer had the capacity to care about their comrades falling around them; their eyes were glued to the teetering figure in the center of the field.

The figure swayed violently, looking as if he would collapse at any moment, but he never did.

The cultists no longer had the capacity to distinguish reality from illusion.

Advancing meant death, and retreating meant death. Faced with such a powerful enemy, their only choice was in how they would die, not in how they might live.

Wu Chen, in contrast, seemed to grow more and more proficient with his kills, even as he swayed.

With every pass he made, another heart would fall into his hand, which would then be converted into a massive amount of proficiency points.

On his status panel, the proficiency for his ’Blood and Flesh Cast Armor Body’ was getting ever closer to the Minor Achievement stage.

「Ten minutes later.」

The ground was carpeted with corpses. Fewer than twenty cultists remained standing.

They stood scattered and looked utterly wretched.

’Run!’

’Run!’

At this point, only a single thought occupied the minds of the remaining cultists.

’The Blood Palace mark? To hell with it!’

’And as for the Blood Envoy punishing us? Let’s see him survive this first!’

CLANG!

Finally, one of the cultists could take no more. His weapon slipped from his grasp, and he turned and ran as if he’d gone mad.

It was clear that in this massacre, not only had their spirits been broken by Wu Chen’s overwhelming power, but their very will to practice the Martial Arts had been utterly shattered.

"Do not flee! Deserters shall be shown no mercy!"

The Blood Envoy roared in fury at the scattering figures.

But this time, his words had no effect. The flight of one man triggered a chain reaction.

CLANG! CLATTER!

Blades fell to the ground one after another as men turned and fled without looking back.

The Blood Envoy was about to shout another threat, but he stopped when he saw the young man in the center of the field—in a rare change of pace—slowly turn to look at him.

"This is all your fault! You’re the reason I’ve ended up like this!"

"I’m going to butcher you!"

Glancing at the field littered with the bodies of his men, and then back at the young man, the Blood Envoy was overcome with rage. He charged, stomping through the muck of flesh and gore.

With his own men out of the way, his massive body could finally move without restraint. He was certain that this time, he could rely on his own strength to take down the young man.

He raised his massive blade of flesh and blood and lumbered forward to attack the young man.

But in the next moment, his vision blurred.

When it cleared, the young man’s face was before him, like a phantom.

"You—"

RRRIP!—

The Blood Envoy was about to say something, but the sound of tearing flesh echoed in his ears. His throat felt as if it were blocked by something, and he couldn’t get another word out.

The coppery taste of blood quickly filled his throat, accompanied by an excruciating pain in his chest.

Then, the Blood Envoy felt a sudden emptiness in his chest, as if he had lost something vital.

"How... is this possible!"

The Blood Envoy looked down and saw the lump of flesh held in the young man’s terrifying, claw-like hand. His eyes filled with utter disbelief.

He didn’t understand.

How could his flesh armor, which had reached the Perfection stage, be torn asunder in a single clash?

As his heart was crushed, his armor of flesh and blood silently disintegrated.

His body collapsed limply to the ground, his eyes taking in the sight of his comrades’ countless corpses.

’So that’s how it was!’

In the moment before his eyes closed for the last time, the Blood Envoy finally seemed to understand.

’The man could have easily defeated me from the very beginning.’

’The only reason he didn’t, the reason he dragged this out to the very end, was to wipe every last one of us out in one fell swoop!’

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