Chapter 18: Capturing Phantylia (Patreon)

Ji Wuji was hot-tempered, and he was the first to lose patience. "This godforsaken place is nothing but fog and ash — there's not even a blade of grass. What ultimate secret could possibly be out here? We're wasting our time for nothing."

"Another hundred miles ahead is the core boundary of Beyond the Circle," Wangquan Baye said gravely. "Push on a little further, and we're bound to find something."

Just then, Yang Yitan spoke up, his tone flat but laced with a deliberate, chilling edge. "Deep in the fog ahead, something intensely malicious is lying in wait. It's no ordinary scrap from Beyond the Circle — most likely some high-tier Yao King-class abomination. Our formation is too scattered. We could easily be picked off one by one."

Everyone tensed at once, gripping their weapons and instinctively drawing closer together.

Wisps of fine black mist drifted out on the wind, coiling around the other prodigies in the group, subtly working on everyone's emotions.

The hot-tempered grew more short-fused, the suspicious grew more paranoid, the arrogant grew more conceited.

In barely half an hour, the ten-man team that had once worked in perfect harmony was thick with tension, on the edge of violence.

Mu Shenqi, blunt and straightforward by nature, nearly came to blows with Ji Wuji over a single disagreement. Li Quzhuo needled Wangquan Baye for being too stubborn. The cracks between them kept widening.

Yang Yitan watched it all coldly from the sidelines, dropping in the occasional provocation — every word aimed with precision at the exact spot where tempers were rawest.

Even Wangquan Baye, steady as he was, began to feel irritation creeping in amid the oppressive, eerie surroundings, his brow furrowing tighter and tighter.

As emotions ran high, the black fox slipped into the rest of them, silent and unseen.

Then a brutal fight broke out — under the black fox's influence, they turned on each other and began to slaughter one another.

Ji Wuji was the first to fall victim.

He was the fastest among them, and to keep him from fleeing and causing complications, "Yang Yitan" struck him down with the Nine Heavens Divine Thunder.

Li Zizai was next.

His movement technique had no equal in the world, and he carried both an innate spirit treasure, the Chaos Purple-Gold Gourd, and an Unfixed Flying Dagger — which was precisely why the others ganged up on him.

The Chaos Purple-Gold Gourd shattered, the Unfixed Flying Dagger snapped in two, and he himself was hacked to pieces.

Among them, Wangquan Zui of the Wangquan family was the first to break free of the control.

She was a rare mental-type prodigy among the human race, wielding a self-created technique called the Illusory Dream Space, which could pull others into her own spiritual world — a world where she alone held complete control.

Once free of the black fox's control, Wangquan Zui tried to pull Wangquan Baye into her spiritual world to wake him.

Not only was he her own brother — he was also the strongest among the group.

If he woke up, he'd have the power to defeat everyone else and strip them of any chance to resist.

After that, she could find a way to wake the rest of them one by one.

Unfortunately, Wangquan Zui had overestimated herself and underestimated Wangquan Baye.

She did succeed in dragging Wangquan Baye into her spiritual world, but the black fox still controlled his body from the outside, and it swung a blade at her.

The blow's force sliced clean through her waist, cutting her in two — turning her, in effect, from Wangquan Zui, "the Drunk," into Wangquan Zui, "the Shattered."

Even so, Wangquan Zui gritted her teeth and held on, keeping the spiritual world stable, ready to use her own death to purge Wangquan Baye completely clean.

Then the second strike came, aimed straight at Wangquan Zui's neck.

If it landed, Wangquan Zui would be nothing but a corpse.

Fortunately, tragedy never came.

A second before Wangquan Zui closed her eyes, she was still fighting with everything she had to keep the spiritual world from collapsing.

The next instant, a hand scooped her straight up off the ground.

It was a hand with sharply defined knuckles, warmer than an ordinary person's, and it held her the way one might hold a rain-soaked cat.

Wangquan Zui blinked her eyes open in a daze and found herself tucked under someone's arm in a thoroughly undignified position. Everything below her severed waist had gone completely numb, but the bleeding had stopped.

With effort, she tilted her head back and saw a face that looked far too young, yet somehow carried an indefinable weariness, as if it had seen far more years than it showed.

She'd seen this face before — painted on Way of Great Peace propaganda posters for over a decade, printed on textbook covers for over a decade, stuck up over her brother's bed for over a decade (though her brother would rather die than admit it).

The Daoist of Great Peace.

In the flesh.

"Don't move." Gusttave glanced down at her.

"You're cut clean in half and you're still squirming? Sick of living, are you?"

Wangquan Zui opened her mouth, then found she had no idea what to say.

After all, she was currently dangling under the arm of a man who looked barely a few years older than her, swaying like a ragdoll.

Around them, every fight had stopped.

Not because anyone had come to their senses, but because none of them could move at all.

Gusttave hadn't made a sound when he landed.

The hem of his Daoist robe bore a few flecks of gray mist, his sleeves hanging still. Within three feet of his body, the all-pervading black mist of Beyond the Circle scattered wildly, as if it had seen a ghost — yet it could never quite escape.

Some color finally returned to Wangquan Zui's pale face. Her voice was weak, but that didn't stop her from talking back. "You... you're really the Daoist of Great Peace? You don't look much older than you do in the posters."

"Well, I do take good care of myself," Gusttave said offhandedly, brushing off the question while he set about rejoining Wangquan Zui with her severed lower half.

Once he'd used his power to stitch Wangquan Zui back together into Wangquan Zui, Gusttave finally turned his gaze to the others still frozen in place...

...and to the avatar of Huanlong, which had failed to escape and reformed itself.

The "black fox clan" was called a clan, but in truth those black foxes were nothing more than avatars of Huanlong, each simply possessing a somewhat independent consciousness.

Now, with no chance of escape, the black foxes had merged back into one.

It still wasn't the true body, but its combat strength had risen considerably.

[March 7th: Whoa! Talk about a last-second save! We almost had a full wipe!]

[Yixuan: This Huanlong is genuinely vicious — parasitizing minds in secret and using others to do the killing. Such underhanded methods.]

[Raiden Shogun: Stirring inner demons, controlling the spirit through black mist — this kind of mind-manipulating technique is the height of treachery.]

"Your methods are as disgusting as ever," Gusttave said bluntly, once he'd recognized the figure as Huanlong.

Layer upon layer of pitch-black mist coiled and gathered, sketching out Huanlong's slender, faintly sinister figure. A long dress with dark patterns hid within the haze, and her expression carried the cold amusement of something looking down on ants.

"I didn't expect you'd actually be able to tear through my mist-domain binding. How interesting."

Huanlong's red lips parted lazily, her voice languid and cloying, black mist churning and coiling at her fingertips, faintly carrying a poison potent enough to corrode the very soul. "These little ones are shallow of heart and bound by their own desires — perfect pieces for my game. It's such a shame you had to go and ruin it."

"Bold little devil, daring to cause trouble right in front of me — you must be tired of living!" Gusttave roared.

A moment later, a giant golden palm descended from the sky, crashing down toward Huanlong's avatar.

Seeing him move to attack without a word of warning, Huanlong's avatar struck back at once — to no effect whatsoever.

Though Gusttave's cultivation level was only that of a Great Demon Emperor, his actual combat strength was a hundred times beyond it.

After all, the title of "the other races' strictest father figure" was simply too useful to waste.

Seeing there was no way to win, Huanlong's avatar gave up and calmly accepted its own death.

After all, it was just an avatar — dying was no great loss.

But to the avatar's surprise, Gusttave didn't destroy it — he sealed it away instead.

Gusttave didn't spare her out of kindness.

Though she was only an avatar, Gusttave might well be able to use her to trace back to her true body — and once he did, he could simply capture and destroy it directly.

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