When People Are Killed, They Die

The scholar was still the quickest to react. Thanks to the perception-enhancing genes engraved by his profession, his danger instincts were superior to those of other professions.

But this time, he did not even have the thought of warning the others.

The sense of danger nearly scared him into pissing himself!

Had he truly been a scholar who kept his head down in the city, researching and mixing potions, he would probably have been left flustered and helpless by the fear brought on by that danger.

But lacking any talent for research and having chosen the scholar path purely for its life-preserving abilities, he had experienced more than a few bloody battles.

Faced with this sudden danger, he immediately suppressed his fear. Dual-wielding short blades, he leaped toward the tree beside him for cover while instinctively slashing toward the incoming attack.

That sudden burst at the limit of his ability created a sonic boom in midair!

His brain raced, choosing the weakest direction of attack and the safest possible area in the shortest time.

Guided by his sense of danger, the short blades in his hands instinctively found the direction from which to intercept.

If they had merely been bullets, then with the kinetic impact of the bullets alone, a Transformation Tier physique could indeed have blocked them with such a move.

But this was the Star Crossbow X-6. When his short blade met the first scattered bolt, he immediately knew things were bad.

Although he successfully blocked it, the tremendous impact distorted his jump. His center of gravity, already shifting as he dodged, instantly became unstable.

After barely knocking aside another bolt with the short blade in his other hand, he was still shot through the leg before reaching the shelter of the tree trunk. The tremendous tearing force severed his leg in a single hit!

It was as though it had been forcibly torn off.

A Transformation Tier physique gave him astonishing muscle and bone density, but precisely because of that, the violent damage after being hit was even more gruesome.

The gunner on the other side was even less fortunate. Before dying, he frantically swept his machine gun around in useless rage, blasting one suspended Star Crossbow into pieces.

But he himself was instantly blown into chunks of flesh by that terrifying attack, which was powerful enough to take out a high-level Transformation Tier. Nothing remained of his body, and even the machine gun was torn apart by the immense impact.

The Protective Suit on him, which was even better than Su Shijie's, had not worked at all.

The same fate befell Little Black, the man wearing goggles.

The harder he had talked earlier, the more miserable his end was now.

Compared to the gunner, who had at least managed to destroy a Star Crossbow with return fire, all he could do was leap backward before being blasted into meat paste midair, splattering across the ground.

"You're a Weapon Controller?! Impossible! There's no way such important information would be missing! If you really were a Weapon Controller, you couldn't possibly have ended up so miserably back then! And if your bloodline awakened later, you couldn't still be crippled!"

The bald scholar who had luckily hidden behind the tree seemed utterly unable to accept the fact that they had collapsed at a single touch.

After suddenly being subjected to such terrifying firepower, he naturally knew what kind of dreadful situation they had encountered.

A Weapon Controller!

Even a Weapon Controller who had fallen to Awakened Rank Level Nine, without the genetic enhancements engraved by a profession, could still achieve this result through a telekinetic bloodline alone.

The large proportion of crossbows showed that the power he could control was indeed limited.

Yet if the other party had truly been a Weapon Controller before, given how powerful and rare Weapon Controllers were, there was no way there would not have been any news. Nor could he have suffered such treatment!

If his bloodline had awakened later, then he would definitely have regenerated his severed limbs during his transformation!

He could not still be crippled!

"Is it your son?"

Once all impossibilities were ruled out, the remaining answer, no matter how unbelievable, had to be the truth!

What level of bloodline was that? Did his ancestors possess an Emperor Tier Bloodline?!

But just then, the bald man's expression changed.

"Poison! You bastard!"

With a Transformation Tier scholar's control over his body, he should have discovered it long ago.

But the shock of the sudden ambush and the severe injury from having his leg blown apart had prevented him from realizing it until the poison began to take effect.

The wound where his leg had been severed seemed to be dissolving, slowly spreading upward without stop.

Just as he raised his blade to cut away the rotten flesh—

Several ordinary handguns and an M-7 had already moved above him.

At a time like this, with a severed leg and poison flaring up, even though he sensed the danger, he no longer had the strength to evade.

While cutting away flesh, he roared and hopped on one leg.

Even hopping on one leg, he was terrifyingly fast. Like a wounded beast, he forcibly dodged the continuous fire from several guns.

But he did not have a prosthetic limb like Su Ren's father, and the poison was still eating away at him.

Even with a Transformation Tier constitution, that combination of blows caused his condition to decline rapidly.

After several desperate, last-ditch evasions, his remaining foot was finally hit several times by ordinary Electromagnetic Handguns in armor-piercing mode, while his Protective Suit took a shot from the M-7. He immediately lost his balance and fell to the ground.

Then came a barrage aimed at his head. Though he still managed to crawl with bizarre speed using both arms and dodge briefly, he was ultimately powerless to turn things around.

Bang bang bang—bang— Even a Transformation Tier head was smashed into a broken watermelon.

You learned the secret and still wanted to run?

While the secret of his bloodline level was not exactly core information, it was not something just anyone could be allowed to know.

After dealing with him, Su Shijie controlled the guns and surrounded the final survivor—the woman whose arm Su Ren had broken at the start.

"Don't kill me! I surrender! I'll do anything you want, please don't kill me!"

The woman had never expected that she would merely hide and inject herself with a dose of medicine, only for their powerful team to suddenly be wiped out!

Two Transformation Tiers and an Awakened Rank Level Nine!

That was already an extremely luxurious lineup!

Yet in an instant, they had been crushed like dead wood into fragments—actual fragments!

Just as Su Shijie prepared to fire and silence her—

Su Ren moved first. He circled behind her and, with several sharp cracks, swiftly broke her remaining limbs.

"Question her first. Keep watch on the surroundings and clean up the battlefield while you're at it. Set the boundary at five hundred meters. If anyone approaches, fire warning shots to drive them off. If they keep coming, kill them all."

There was a trace of cruelty in Su Ren's calm voice. Su Shijie paused for a moment, then nodded and used the drones to monitor the surrounding activity.

Su Shijie also wanted to avoid harming innocent people as much as possible, but if someone still could not be driven off by warning shots, then there was nothing to be done.

Fortunately, there were no other teams nearby to begin with. The previous two teams had nearly left the drones' monitoring range, and in this jungle environment, they would not notice the commotion here.

Besides, even if passersby did notice something, in the wilderness, most people would rather avoid trouble. Su Ren had only said it out of caution, since this involved Evil God Cultists.

As for Su Ren's interrogation, it finally made Su Shijie understand why Su Ren said people found it difficult to keep secrets.

In theory, this captive had cultivated all the way to Awakened Rank Level Seven on her own. The pain from every breakthrough must have forged tremendous willpower. Her current behavior was only because she feared death and wanted a chance to survive.

If she truly realized they did not intend to leave anyone alive, she definitely would not let the father and son have an easy time either.

Ordinary torture was completely insignificant.

As long as someone did not want to talk, it was difficult to get results through severe torture.

But there were drugs in this world!

As the woman continued babbling madly and begging for mercy, Su Ren did not hesitate to inject something into her neck.

It appeared to be a drug that could break down willpower and amplify pain to the extreme.

As Su Shijie extracted the souls of several people, he could also sense the woman's thoughts spiraling out of control. After losing the restraints of her will, she instinctively dredged up memories from the ocean of her subconscious.

Combined with his father's questioning, she revealed everything in broken fragments. The interrogation was also extremely accurate. From what he could sense, she was not lying.

There were drawbacks, however. She could not form complete or lengthy phrases, and some of her logic was unclear, requiring them to sort through and piece things together again.

"Take this chance to guide the psionic energy. I'll clean up the scene."

After finishing the interrogation and snapping the woman's neck, Su Ren spoke to Su Shijie, who had already absorbed the souls.

With two Transformation Tiers and two high-level Awakened Ranks dead, the psionic energy spilling across the area was exceptionally dense.

Su Shijie did not hesitate before entering a guided state. If he had not needed to monitor the surroundings while his father interrogated her, he would not have wanted to waste any time after extracting the souls.

The dense psionic energy this time was the most Su Shijie had ever encountered.

It was far denser than that Contaminated Beast from before. His improvement was faster, and the energy lingered longer.

The only slight regret was that all four were ordinary people. They were neither Evil God Cultists nor contaminated.

Though by his rough calculations, the Soul Power provided by humans seemed to be twice that of Spirit Beasts of the same rank, it was still far inferior to things related to evil gods, such as Contaminated Beasts and Contamination Sources.

The four people had provided roughly as much Soul Power as six evil spirits. Adding the six he already had, he had now accumulated the reserves of twelve evil spirits.

But for his next Bloodline Transformation, he estimated that he still needed around twenty more.

With a team of this caliber, he would need to wipe them out another three or four times at minimum...

A wave of soreness and numbness spread through his body. Su Shijie also felt the psionic energy spilling around them gradually calm down. However, because the gap between him and his opponents had been so great this time, his psionic saturation had increased by nearly 2%.

Since he had not broken from the beginner stage into the intermediate stage, his body's cells had not undergone transformation yet, and there was none of the pain of a breakthrough.

He was almost at his current limit. If he worked a little harder and ate a few more pieces of Spirit Beast meat, it would only take a few days.

Through today's ambush, Su Shijie also realized that all of his current strength lay in external tools. The power his own body had gained through improvement was completely useless in a battle like the earlier one.

Even the woman whose arm his father had broken at the start could have crushed him with one hand if she got close. He could only gamble on whether his soul tentacles could strike her in time.

Human Soul Power was stronger than that of Spirit Beasts. Based on the tests he had conducted with Spirit Beasts before, against the soul of an Awakened Rank Level Seven opponent, even if he hit her, they would likely both be severely injured. He might even be hurt worse...

If his father had not made arrangements so decisively this time, and if he had not drawn their attention by opening fire and led them into the optimal ambush site, they would never have dealt with them so easily.

The bald scholar's final struggle despite being crippled and poisoned had actually revealed the power of the Transformation Tier.

This brief battle, where they had collapsed at a single touch, made Su Shijie understand the iron law of "when people are killed, they die" once again.

What was the use of being strong or having more people? An ambush could still wipe them all out in one go.

Uh, although his own situation might have been a little unexpected, it still showed how dangerous this world was!

He had not had time to think about it during the battle because of his nerves, but now that he replayed it afterward, Su Shijie grew more frightened the more he thought about it.

If the ambush had failed and they had reached him, would he have died?

Just like how his father had casually come out afterward and broken the woman's limbs, Su Shijie, with an even wider gap between them, would have had no ability to resist at all!

He was still far too weak!