The air in the ravine was no longer cold; it was suffocating.
The ambient temperature within the narrow canyon walls had spiked by five degrees in seconds. The snow beneath our feet wasn't melting; it was sublimating, turning instantly into a thick, choking fog of superheated vapor that smelled of wet fur and ozone.
Through the mist, Hei Ziyu came.
She was not a warrior. A warrior moves with rhythm, with breath, with the intent to conserve energy. She was a locomotive of flesh and iron, a catastrophe wrapped in black armor. She didn't use technique. She didn't use finesse. She simply ran straight at me, her feet pulverizing the frozen ground, leaving craters where solid rock used to be.
Thud. Thud. Thud.
Every footfall was a seismic event that rattled the teeth in my skull. She was generating so much kinetic force that the air around her was being pushed away, creating a vacuum wake that pulled the smoke and debris along with her.
I gritted my teeth, feeling the sheer, overwhelming pressure of her aura pressing against my mental sphere.
"Pack! Swarm tactics! DO NOT ENGAGE DIRECTLY!" I roared through the soul link.
My 30-man Soul flared, acting as a command override for twelve hundred beasts. I suppressed their terror. I suppressed their instinct to flee from this apex predator. I turned them into numbers, into variables in a physics equation meant to slow down a falling mountain.
"Harass! Bite! Delay! Spend your lives to tire her out!"
My 1,200 wolves moved like a single organism, a black tide trying to drown a volcano.
"Steel-Backs, Unit Alpha, intercept vector!"
A massive Steel-Back Wolf, a Hundred Beast King in its own right, lunged at her flank. It moved with the speed of a striking viper, its jaws gaping to crush her exposed arm.
Hei Ziyu didn't even turn her head. She didn't break stride.
She simply swung her left arm backward, a casual backhand motion, as if swatting a fly.
CRACK.
The sound was wet, final, and nauseatingly loud.
The four-hundred-pound beast, covered in fur as hard as iron, was stopped mid-air. The kinetic transfer was absolute. Its skull collapsed. Its spine shattered in three places. The massive wolf was launched sideways with the velocity of a cannonball, hitting the canyon wall fifty feet away.
It slid down the rock face, a bag of broken bones and jelly, dead before it touched the ground.
"Ineffective," I analyzed coldly, suppressing the wince of my wallet. Enslaving That wolf and buying the gu for it cost three thousand primeval stones. She broke it like a twig.
"She has too much momentum. We need to overload her condition. Lightning Wolves! Discharge!"
Fifty Lightning Frenzy Wolves blurred around her, moving in a chaotic pattern I had drilled into them for months. They didn't aim to bite. They aimed to overload.
They leaped in unison, unleashing arcs of blue electricity from their fur.
Zzzzap!
The ravine lit up with blinding azure light. Fifty bolts of high-voltage lightning struck her armor simultaneously. The current danced across the black iron, searching for a path to the ground, coursing through her body.
For a normal Gu Master, this would cause instant paralysis. The muscles would seize, the heart would turn to coal.
Hei Ziyu stopped running. She stood in the center of the lightning storm, her hair standing on end, sparks flying from her fingertips.
She threw her head back and laughed.
"Are you tickling me?!"
The sound was manic, vibrating in my eardrums. The lightning wasn't hurting her; it was stimulating her. Her physique was so dense, her bio-electricity so potent, that my attacks were merely waking her up.
She reached out with impossible speed and grabbed a Lightning Wolf by the throat mid-leap.
The wolf panicked, discharging everything it had directly into her palm. Smoke rose from her hand, but she didn't flinch. The electricity coursed through her arm, lighting up her skeleton beneath the skin, but her muscles didn't even spasm.
She looked at the wolf, her violet eyes burning with madness.
"Weak."
She squeezed.
Pop.
The sound of the windpipe and neck bones crushing was drowned out by her laughter. She didn't drop the corpse. She used it.
She wielded the limp carcass like a flail, smashing it into another Lightning Wolf that was trying to flank her.
Splat.
Both wolves exploded in a shower of gore and sparks.
"Range!" I commanded, backing my Wolf King away. "She dominates the melee. We need suppression! Wind Blades! Aim for the eyes! Aim for the joints! Bleed her!"
On the high ridges, three hundred Wind Wolves howled in unison.
Whoosh. Whoosh. Whoosh.
The air filled with whistling death. A synchronized volley of three hundred crescent-shaped wind blades rained down on the Titan.
It was a wall of cutting force.
Hei Ziyu didn't dodge. She didn't activate a defensive Gu maybe she doesn't have one or doesn't see any need for one. She simply crossed her arms over her face in a defensive guard and braced her legs.
Clink. Clink. Shatter.
The wind blades struck her exposed skin and iron armor.
It sounded like hail hitting a tin roof.
The blades, capable of slicing through tree trunks, shattered like glass against her skin. They didn't cut deep; they barely scratched the surface. Small, shallow cuts appeared on her forearms, bleeding drops of blood that were so hot they sizzled when they hit the snow.
But she ignored them. She didn't even flinch.
She lowered her arms. Her face was untouched. Her smile was wider, wilder.
"Is that it?" she screamed, her voice distorting. "Is that all the son of Wolf King ju xiong has?!"
She was unstoppable.
Infinite strength. Infinite stamina. Infinite essence recovery.
I watched her through the Unlucky Gambling Eye.
Her aura was a towering cyclone although ivisible i could be sure they were the color of flames mayby like hellfire purple. But as she exerted herself, as she laughed and killed, the Black Lightning cracks in her aura were widening.
The steam rising from her body was turning dark. The blood dripping from her shallow cuts wasn't clotting; it was boiling away.
"She is going to win the battle," I whispered to myself, analyzing the data. "But she is losing the war against her own physique."
She was unstoppable. But she was like a candle burning out.
The ravine had become a slaughterhouse.
I had hoped to tire her out. I had hoped to drown the Great Strength True Martial Physique in a sea of fur and claws to worsen her condition using her weakness against herself.
I was wrong. You cannot drown a tidal wave.and that's what an extreme physique means.
Hei Ziyu didn't slow down. If anything, the violence fed her. As her body temperature rose, her movements became faster, sharper, more catastrophic.
"Die! Die! DIE!"
She spun like a top, her arms extended. It was a simple move, but with her density, she became a human meat grinder.
Rank 2 Killer Move: Iron Whirlwind.
Splat. Crunch. Splat.
My Steel-Back Wolves—the pride of my heavy infantry—were obliterated. Their iron-hard spines snapped like dry twigs. Bodies flew through the air, hitting the canyon walls with enough force to turn them into paste.
"Unit Alpha! Destroyed!" the Battle Disk information showed in my mind as their lights went out completely.
"Lightning Wolves! Flank!" I commanded, desperation creeping into my voice.
Fifty Lightning Frenzy Wolves lunged, turning into streaks of blue light.
Hei Ziyu stopped spinning. She stomped the ground.
Rank 2 Killer Move: Earth Tremor.
The ground trembeled. The Lightning Wolves lost their footing, stumbling mid-charge. Before they could recover, she was upon them. She didn't use technique; she just stomped. One stomp per wolf.
Crack. Crack. Crack.
In ten seconds, my entire special ops unit was reduced to a carpet of blue gore.
"Wind Wolves! Covering fire!"
The Wind Wolves on the ridge rained down death. Hei Ziyu ignored them. She grabbed the corpse of a Steel-Back Wolf by the tail and hurled it at the ridge.
The carcass hit the ledge with the force of a trebuchet shot, collapsing the rock shelf. Fifty Wind Wolves fell screaming to their deaths.
I watched the dots on my Battle Disk vanish.
1,000 Wolves.
800 Wolves.
400 Wolves.
"She is liquidating my entire fortune," I whispered, my heart aching. "Every punch costs me a thousand primeval stones."
It took her fifteen minutes.
Fifteen minutes to dismantle an army that had taken me a month to build with alot of fortune even when i was controllingthem to make their deathsthe most efficient.
When the dust settled, silence returned to the ravine.
The snow was red. The walls were painted with blood. Piles of broken wolf bodies lay everywhere, steaming in the cold air.
Only two beasts remained alive.
My Steel-Back Wolf King, trembling beneath me.
And the Night Wolf hiding in the shadows, carrying a ready for action Yue Yin.i told her I wanted to handle the situation myself but it seems it's too soon for me to have that power .
Hei Ziyu stood in the center of the carnage. She was drenched in wolf blood, her black armor glowing cherry-red from the heat of her body.
She turned to me.
"All gone," she wheezed, her smile distorted by the steam rising from her face. "Just... you... now.after that we will win this war"
She took a step toward me.
CRACK.
It wasn't the ice breaking. It was the sound of her own femur fracturing under the internal pressure.
The Great Strength True Martial Physique had reached its critical limit. She had killed the wolves, but the effort had spiked her internal pressure beyond the containment of a Rank 2 aperture and body not to mention it seemed her gu wormswere extremely lacking and unsuitable as in the futurehei lou lan didn't have this kind of problem.
"Hot..."
She stumbled. Her aura, which had been a towering tornado of Purple and Red, suddenly inverted. The Black Lightning cracks merged, forming a cage around her heart.
She fell to her knees.
"Why..." she gasped, clawing at her throat. "Why won't it stop?"
Her skin turned a bruised, hypoxic purple. Veins bulged on her forehead. She wasn't venting Qi anymore; she was cooking.
I dismounted my Wolf King.
"It won't stop because you are an engine without an exhaust," I said, walking toward her over the corpses of my pack.
I didn't mourn the wolves. They were the price of this trade. I had traded 1,200 beasts to push a Ten Extreme Physique to the brink of death, creating the only window where she could be operated on.
My dog shit luck gu was buzzing like crazy ,telling me this opportunity should not be lost or it will never happen again.