"This absolutely won't do."
The middle-aged man's body chilled. Everything he had done was for the immortality of the Nether Capital as a whole. The moment the Nether Capital was destroyed, it would be pointless even if he became unequaled under the heavens. Without the Nether Capital and his daughter, what was the point of everything he had done?
"Ah ah ah ah—" he yelled.
The radiance around his body intensified, and under his forceful control, the golden dragon, whose trajectory had already changed toward the Nether Capital, deviated from its path and was aimed toward a nearby mountain range instead.
Bang!
At that instant, the effect of the Space-Diminishing Slash vanished as well. That perfectly straight golden dragon was finally pulled out of the crack in the air. However, due to the efforts of the deputy captain and the middle-aged man, its only destination was that nearby mountain range that had existed for an unknown period of time.
Bang!
The whole sky turned gold.
Everyone raised their heads. They could vaguely see that, the moment that golden dragon had escaped the crack in the air, it had transformed into a boundless golden radiance before shooting toward the nearby mountain range.
Bang!
Bang!
Gold radiance bloomed.
The world was enveloped in gold.
After a long time, when the gold radiance disappeared and everyone could see clearly once again, they couldn't help but inhale mouthfuls of cold air at what they saw. The entirety of that mountain range was completely gone.
The whole mountain range had been destroyed by the gold radiance. Only now did they realize the horror of that golden dragon. Just the thought of such power caused one to shiver.
Alarming everyone was also the fact that beside the middle-aged man was a clumped up red and blue ball of light that contained a bizarre power and was flickering without stop in the air. From within that ball, a familiar power could be felt.
Shen Yi widened her eyes. "This is… Life force!"
"How is that possible?"
Everyone's expression changed greatly.
Roaring through the Nine Prefectures had obviously failed, as it had been led toward the mountain range instead of its original destination. How was it possible for this guy to still have harvested life force?
Unless…
They all realized something.
"That's right." The middle-aged man had a gloomy expression on his face. "This is the life force of the 100,000 mutated beasts residing within that mountain range. Do you believe that only humans possess life force? Hehehehe."
The sinister laugh alarmed everyone.
Chen Feng was able to calm himself down quickly, though. "A mutated beast has a longer life span. As such, its life force should be stronger as well. With 100,000 mutated beasts, the total available life force should be much higher than what's available at Sealed City, right? However…it doesn't seem like you have actually absorbed any of them all these years? I suppose there are a lot of limitations when it comes to absorbing the life force of mutated beasts, right?" Chen Feng guessed.
"…" Only at this did the middle-aged man raise his head. "You are very intelligent. That's right. Hehe…"
"It would be so much better if I had absorbed the life force of humans instead. Although the life forces of mutated beasts is vigorous, the amount of impurities is much higher as well. As such, they are very difficult to absorb. When absorbing a human's life force, I will gain 100% of their life force. As for mutated beasts, only 1% would be truly absorbed. The difference is too big. However, 100,000 mutated beasts…" The middle-aged man inhaled deeply and continued, "is still better than nothing."
Hum—
The radiance of the red and blue ball of light in front of the middle-aged man intensified. Red was the color signifying life force, and blue was the color signifying the impurities of the mutated beasts. Both colors interweaved constantly as they went out of control in the ball. To absorb a small amount of life force, a huge amount of impurities needed to be cleared. That was the reason absorbing the life force of mutated beasts was such an inefficient task.
Shua!
The middle-aged man stepped into the red and blue ball of light.
Absorption began!
"Go!" Chen Feng shouted abruptly.
"The power of that thing he is absorbing is too terrifying," The squad from the Mysterious Association said in horror.
Chen Feng's gaze was sharp. "Don't worry. He just unleashed Roaring through the Nine Prefectures a little while ago before subsequently altering the course of his secret art with force. The amount of power he has left presently is quite low. That is the reason he is being so impatient in absorbing the power contained in that ball despite the amount of impurities. Presently, he is at his weakest state. The moment he completes his absorption…" Chen Feng said coldly.
Everyone was enlightened.
"So that's the case."
Shua!
Shua!
The squad made their move immediately.
The middle-aged man coldly shouted, "You are all courting death!"
Even if the power he had now was quite low in amount, his natural rate of regeneration was recovering it without stop. With the strength of these opponents he was facing, it was simply impossible for them to be able to interrupt his absorption.
To be accurate, even the speed at which they could damage him was slower than the speed at which he could regenerate his power.
Hehe… Soon, you will all know what true horror is. The middle-aged man proceeded to defend against their attacks while absorbing the power from that ball of light in a casual manner. However, he did not notice that, presently, a sneer had appeared on Chen Feng's face.
Luck Aura, activate!
Calmly, Chen Feng pointed at the red and blue ball of light.
"Yi?"
The middle-aged man that was absorbing the power without stop had a weird feeling. He had only absorbed 1/1000 of the power in the ball, yet he no longer felt any of the power within the ball. As he paid more attention, he noticed that everything he attempted to absorb had turned into impurities.
How is this possible?
The middle-aged man widened his eyes. The power of that ball of light was something uncontrollable. This was something similar in theory to the evolution of genes, something one couldn't control. If not for that, he would have peeled the blue impurities away from the ball before proceeding to absorb all the life force in it. Within that ball of light, two different powers of red and blue were interweaving and operating at an extremely high speed, resulting in him not having any sort of control over them despite his strength.
But now…
The middle-aged man's lip went dry from the shock. "How is this possible?"
Absorb!
Absorb!
He attempted to absorb without stop, yet only the impurities were absorbed.
Bang!
Bang!
The squad started attacking furiously as they saw this.
"Damn it!" The middle-aged man had an unsightly expression. He knew that this had to be some secret art of his enemy. However, he couldn't do anything against this.
The middle-aged man's eyes gleamed coldly. "Since that's the case, I will first clear all the impurities before continuing…"
This wasn't necessarily a bad thing.
Since someone else was helping him separate the impurities from the life force, he only needed to focus on purely dealing with the impurities; what remained would be pure life force. That was the pure life force of 100,000 mutated beasts, an amount much higher than what he would obtain if he were to slay an entire human city. If he was able to clean all the impurities before starting to absorb the life force, it was possible for him to directly advance to a new level.
He was overjoyed. This was potentially a good thing for him.
"Come!" he howled, and the power around him intensified as he started clearing the impurities furiously. Initially, both the red and blue power had been interwoven together, forcing him to slowly control his act of absorbing the life force and dealing with the impurities that resulted in his overall slow absorption speed. Now, though, since he was only absorbing impurities, he did not even need to bother controlling what he was doing. The only thing he needed to do was focus on eliminating the impurities, dealing with all the impurities in one go.
The amount of blue in the ball was reducing rapidly. However... the middle-aged man's remaining power was also reducing as well, since he needed to exhaust his power to deal with the blue impurities. He was clear that he only needed to survive this and he would be stronger than before. However, how would Chen Feng allow him this?
"Go!"
The squad started attacking furiously.
Under his normal condition, nobody here was the middle-aged man's opponent, but after that disaster earlier, he no longer had much power remaining in him. Regardless of how weak that squad from the Mysterious Organization was, they still had two class warriors in their ranks, after all. On top of that, there were also a bunch of B-class warriors assisting the two class warriors.
The battle erupted. As for Chen Feng's group, they merely watched on silently.
This battle was something triggered by Chen Feng anyway. Now that both sides were killing each other, it would be the best if they ended up killing each other. Even if that did not happen, they would at least damage each other greatly.
Or perhaps… one side would be killed completely while the other was crippled. With this, Chen Feng's group would stand a chance against the survivor.
The best result would be the death of that middle-aged man and the squad severely damaged. That was what Chen Feng was looking forward to. The scenario where the villains strayed from their original intention due to mere words and started fighting each other for him to reap the final reward had finally happened.
"Hu—" Chen Feng inhaled deeply. His Luck Aura noiselessly activated and started operating, with both sides suffering extreme damage as the aim. Luck Aura started working toward this final goal, causing something to happen every now and then. The reduction of luck value was rather slow, as only one point would be reduced after a long interval of time.
Since the combatants of this battle were too powerful, there was no chance that Chen Feng could actually participate in it.
As the battle progressed, without anyone realizing, the bald Xu Fei who had always seemed useless disappeared from everyone's line of sight noiselessly.