Come See an Immortal (Happy New Year!)

Come See an Immortal (Happy New Year!)

Yi Nanping and the others did not have time to wonder for long before a gray figure leaped out of the rectangular moon gate. The tentacles chasing after it split apart like a rain of threads filling the sky.

"It's here! Prepare to receive them!" Yi Nanping issued the order over the squad channel.

This was the person they had been ordered to wait for here today.

The tentacles that subsequently surged out of the rectangular moon gate were dense and terrifying, relentlessly pursuing the gray figure.

Yi Nanping gave another order. "Aim! Fire!"

Under his command, his team members exhausted all their mental strength, breaking through the viscous resistance and raising the portable miniature laser cannons in their hands to aim.

Their movements were slow, but astonishingly synchronized.

They aimed at the tentacles pursuing their target across the sky and pulled the triggers with a Pitter-Patter.

Brilliant beams of light illuminated the dense black night, like the fireworks that bloomed every New Year's Eve in the Beichen Empire, even more dazzling and intense than the blaze Xia Chujian had caused when she destroyed the spindle-shaped flying vehicle earlier.

But the next second, when those arrow-like laser weapons struck the tentacles extending from the rectangular moon gate, they did not harm them at all. Instead, every beam returned along its original path as though reflected by a mirror, striking the people firing from the ground.

Their bodies were riddled with holes by the reflected laser energy. Nearly all of them died instantly, collapsing onto the pitch-black streets of the South District.

Xia Chujian silently watched everything, her fingers unconsciously tightening around the trigger again.

In less than a second, hundreds had died on the ground. Only one person remained barely alive.

That person was Yi Nanping.

As the commander, he had not fired alongside his subordinates at the first opportunity.

Looking at his team members' gruesome deaths, Yi Nanping's eyes turned red. His gaze split with fury, and his teeth ground together with cracking sounds.

He looked up at the night sky. The gray figure that had jumped from the rectangular moon gate was still falling.

Affected by the thick black mist, the person seemed to have leaped into a swamp, moving at an unbelievably slow speed.

And the tentacles chasing after him were already very close to his back! Yi Nanping's heart pounded harder and harder as his mind raced.

What could he do to receive the person who had jumped down?!

This thick mist not only hindered their movements, but also reflected their attacks!

What else could he do? The dense, heavy black fog made even opening his mouth to speak require him to withstand enormous pressure.

The pressure felt like what he had experienced during deep-sea diving training.

Yi Nanping hesitated for only an instant before making his choice.

Fixing his eyes on the tentacles rapidly pursuing their target through the dark night sky, he used every last bit of his mental strength to condense a Black Gold Dagger at the center of his brow. With a sharp hiss, it shot outward!

Unlike the miniature standard laser cannons, this dagger formed from his mental strength seemed to ignore the obstruction of the thick black mist. In an instant, it arrived before the longest, thickest, fastest-moving tentacle and stabbed down viciously!

The tentacle was struck. It stalled for a moment, then twisted once. Then, as though propelled by some unknown force, the Black Gold Dagger returned along its original path with lightning speed, stabbing toward Yi Nanping's brow! Xia Chujian, who had been silently watching with her sniper rifle in hand, could no longer hold herself back.

Bang! The sniper rifle fired. A sniper bullet actually ignored the viscous nature of the thick black mist and shot out like lightning, knocking away the reflected Black Gold Dagger!

At the instant of impact, the Black Gold Dagger burst apart like a shadow, leaving only specks of dark golden light drifting through the night sky like fireflies.

Having managed to condense a Black Gold Dagger with his mental strength for the first time, Yi Nanping was already at the end of his strength.

The sniper bullet seemed to have struck empty air as it howled past him. A wave of low pressure slammed into his face, as though someone had smashed him squarely in the face with a sledgehammer, sweeping away every bit of air before him.

He hit the ground with a thud, his severely oxygen-deprived brain completely losing consciousness.

At the same time, in the night sky beyond the South District, several supersonic Armed Helicopters produced sonic booms over Mulan City as they sped over from the military base outside the city.

But before reaching their destination, the people in the Armed Helicopters saw the strange sight ahead.

A descending mass of dense black mist completely enveloped their destination.

It resembled a triangular pyramid-shaped cage formed from black mist.

Its narrow tip originated from the rectangular moon gate in the night sky, while the pyramid below wrapped around Nothing Lane in South 404 District, the filthiest and darkest part of Mulan City.

Immediately afterward, the coordinate position of Nothing Lane in South 404 District vanished from the Armed Helicopters' active Phased Array Radar, as though it had never existed.

"Reporting! Reporting! The target ahead has disappeared! The target ahead has disappeared!"

"Laser scan."

The Armed Helicopters immediately fired lasers at the dense black mist.

But when a laser struck it, the thick black fog behaved like a mirror, reflecting the beam directly back.

With a loud whoosh, the Armed Helicopter that had fired the probing laser was instantly hit in the engine by the reflected beam.

That Armed Helicopter immediately spun as it plunged downward. The pilot hurriedly parachuted out, barely saving his life.

"The dense mist ahead blocks laser scanning. The dense mist ahead blocks laser scanning."

Over the next Three Minutes, they tried every kind of weapon and detection tool available, eventually reaching a conclusion.

"The black mist ahead is triangular-pyramidal in shape, three thousand meters high with a base diameter of five hundred meters. It cannot be physically penetrated, cannot be observed by existing technological means, and reflects all attacks."

"No electromagnetic or biological signals can escape from within the black mist pyramid or enter it from outside. Its nature resembles... a cosmic black hole, but it does not actively attract external objects."

If it truly were a black hole, it would actively absorb everything within a certain distance around it.

But this dense black mist only reflected; it did not absorb anything outside its range.

That meant outside rescue forces could not get in, and the people inside apparently could not get out either.

"Then what do we do?! I heard a Special Security Bureau operations team is inside!"

"Report to higher command and raise the emergency level to the highest level!"

At this moment, in the night sky, the gray figure that had jumped from the rectangular moon gate had reached midair and was very close to Xia Chujian's flying vehicle.

The tentacles pursuing him were also drawing closer and closer.

Since Xia Chujian's flying vehicle was currently in Stealth Mode, the person could not see her. Yet he seemed to sense something and turned his head for a glance, meeting the gaze of Xia Chujian, fully armed and helmeted inside the vehicle, through the air.

The man could not actually see what was inside the flying vehicle.

But through her helmet's specially made eyepiece and the double mirror protection of her sniper rifle's scope, Xia Chujian could see outside.

He was a man who should have been very tall, with long black hair draped over his shoulders, pale skin, and black eyes with threads of crazed red light in their depths.

His nose was high and straight, with a slightly hooked tip—a standard hooked nose.

Just judging by his face, he looked somewhat familiar at first glance.

Xia Chujian had no time to think about why he looked familiar.

The tentacles pursuing him suddenly accelerated, lashing viciously toward the falling figure's back! Xia Chujian reflexively pulled the trigger. The bullet whistled out and blasted the tentacle about to strike the falling figure into nothingness.

But there were simply too many tentacles in the night sky. She only had one Judicator No. 7 Sniper Rifle and could not deal with all of them.

After she fired all her sniper bullets, the tentacles rolling across the sky finally found an opening. They caught up behind the gray figure and pierced through his chest with a wet Pfft, going straight for his heart! Then they hung him from the tip of a tentacle and shook him before Xia Chujian's flying vehicle in a display of triumph, as though provoking her.

Xia Chujian gripped her sniper rifle in despair.

If those tentacles attacked her flying vehicle again through the hole overhead, Xia Chujian would have no way to fight back, because she did not have a single bullet left! But she was not someone who surrendered so easily.

If she had no bullets, she still had a blade!

The latest Judicator No. 7 Sniper Rifle actually had a bayonet at its tip that could automatically spring out!

When Xia Chujian had first received this new-model sniper rifle, she had complained about this insane design.

Who the hell would make a sniper go fight people with a bayonet!

But now, she suddenly understood the point of the design.

Xia Chujian's eyes gradually turned cold. Her finger pressed a button on the sniper rifle, and a bayonet gleaming blood-red sprang out from beneath its barrel.

If the tentacles outside dared to attack her through the hole overhead again, she would show them no mercy! What she did not know was that although the tentacles filled the entire night sky, they had tacitly avoided the area around her flying vehicle, leaving a flying-vehicle-shaped hollow amid the rain of tentacles.

Just then, outside the area covered by the dense black mist, a silent Bat-type Air Fighter raced in. It quietly revealed itself in the night sky, appearing before the local garrison's Armed Helicopters.

The cabin door opened, and a tall man wearing a Standard Military Uniform with a black base and silver trim stepped out, followed by two others in matching Standard Military Uniforms.

The three took a step forward, as though walking through the air, and stepped into the thick black mist that no one else had been able to enter.

The local garrison soldiers inside the Armed Helicopters stared with their mouths wide open, as though they were seeing immortals.

"Who is that person up ahead?!"

"...No idea, but that's a highest-grade Bat-type Air Fighter! It can perform Space Warp! Only someone at the marshal level can be equipped with one..."

"Could it be...?"

"Don't guess wildly. We just received word that it's a high-ranking official from the Imperial Special Security Bureau and his two adjutants, who just performed a Space Warp from the Beichen Star Region near the Imperial Capital."

Inside the thick black mist, Xia Chujian, despairing that she had ultimately failed to save that man, regretted using up all one hundred thousand bullets back at the six-story small building.

She gripped the sniper rifle with its extended bayonet, preparing to "fight bayonets" with those tentacles.

At the same time, three men in Standard Military Uniforms with black bases and silver trim appeared like ghosts in the Cross-shaped Scope of her sight.

The man in front was the tallest. His tightly fastened Standard Military Uniform outlined his powerful broad shoulders, lean narrow waist, and impossibly long legs.

The brim of his military cap was pulled low, almost covering half his face. Only his sculpted, straight nose bridge, perfect lips, and resolute jawline could be seen.

His back was ramrod straight, and every inch of him seemed to proclaim the words "born noble."

He stood suspended in the black mist, seemingly surrounded by a faint silver glow that enveloped him and the people beside him. The thick tentacles drifting all over the sky could not touch them at all.

The two men behind him stood guard around him, only watching their surroundings vigilantly without looking up at the moon that had become rectangular.

The man at the front was Huo Yushen, the youngest marshal of the Beichen Empire.

The two behind him were his adjutants, Kang Shanxing and Meng Guanghui.

Seeing the thick tentacles rolling across the sky, Kang Shanxing and Meng Guanghui were both shocked.

"Marshal Huo! Are these Remnants?! Why are there so many?!"

But the next moment, they came to their senses. "No! These aren't physical entities! They're all illusions!"

Huo Yushen, standing at the front, said nothing. With a turn of one hand, a silver longbow appeared out of thin air in his palm.

The next second, a golden arrow silently manifested and settled upon the silver longbow.

Huo Yushen's expression was icy. He raised his hand, drew the bow, and shot toward the pitch-black rectangular moon gate.

Twang! Xia Chujian heard only a sharp, resounding blast that echoed between heaven and earth.

She watched with her own eyes as the golden arrow, rather than being reflected directly back like Yi Nanping's Black Gold Dagger or the laser weapons, became a streak of golden lightning. It pierced through the tentacles filling the sky, traced an arcing path, and flew directly into the rectangular moon gate!

The next moment, the thick tentacles throughout the sky disintegrated inch by inch, vanishing into the night like smoke.

Just like the tentacle that had pierced through the roof of the flying vehicle's cabin earlier and had been blasted away by her shot, as though it had never existed.

A heart-rending roar immediately came from behind the rectangular moon gate, like the howl of some unknown ancient alien beast, yet also like the agonized scream of a human.

It seemed to come from a distant wilderness, yet also as though it had crossed countless star rivers, traversing the boundaries of time and space to crash into them. It was filled with the resentment and fury accumulated over endless years, along with an overflowing, indescribable brutality and madness.

At the same time, everyone within the area shrouded in dense black mist heard the roar.

Just like the residents near that small building in the West District, the residents of the South District woke from their sleep and rolled around in bed, as though someone inside their heads was using a blade to split their skulls open from within. Every one of them was in excruciating pain.

The mental strength pressure they suffered was countless times greater than what the people in the West District had endured.

Many frail elderly people and children died the instant they heard the roar.

Even the stronger residents were now merely struggling at the edge of life and death.

Just then, a clear, soaring voice rang out from afar, like a phoenix's cry and a dragon's roar, perfectly canceling out the brutal howl that seemed to come from an endless abyss, or perhaps from a cosmic black hole.

Happy New Year, happy New Year! Thank you to reader "enigmayanxi" for becoming this book's third alliance leader!

A reminder for everyone's Recommendation Tickets, Monthly Tickets, and Xiaoxiang Tickets! As mentioned earlier, during the New Book Period, one chapter will be updated daily at 12:05 a.m. After it goes premium, there will be two updates a day. The timing for those two daily updates has not yet been decided. (^▽^)