Qin Hong'an wore a grave expression as he sat in the command room with many other commanders.
The large screen showed footage transmitted from battlefields everywhere. For better coordination, he had asked Li Shi to activate visual sharing.
The changes in the Bohai Sea had been unexpected. The threat posed by the Kui Niu was clearly on an entirely different level from the other monsters. If they failed to take it seriously, the losses could be enormous.
"Li Shi, make sure the warships at the scene keep their distance from the monster. Don't act rashly yet. Observe its movements first."
The Bohai Sea's combat strength was insufficient at the moment. Provoking the monster would be unwise.
"Who is that Ability User? Tell him to retreat to the ship first."
Before Li Shi could reply, he saw Gu Yan dive toward the Kui Niu.
"Get him back here! Who authorized him to act on his own?"
Qin Hong'an was shocked. Through the shared vision, he saw someone launch an attack against the monster.
"That man is called Gu Yan. Senior Xu said that the Bohai Sea's combat units should cooperate with him, so he could be considered to have command authority as well. Brother Gu gave the order for the warships to withdraw, which was why our losses were reduced."
"Even so, he can't be so reckless. That Xu... Senior Xu? Gu Yan?" Qin Hong'an's voice grew quieter and quieter, and most of his initial shock and anger faded away.
So this had been Senior Xu's decision!
Who was Gu Yan? Was he that S-rank support? If so, there was indeed hope that he could deal with this monster.
Qin Hong'an said no more and simply watched the battle through the shared vision.
Elsewhere.
Gu Yan clenched his right fist and charged at the Kui Niu.
Why are you yelling so loudly? I'll punch you to death!
Human-like fury surfaced in the Kui Niu's eyes. Its tail lengthened and lashed toward Gu Yan like a long whip.
You woke me up, you damn fly!
The bull's tail tore through the air with a sharp howl. Gu Yan halted his advance. His physique was powerful, but that did not mean he was invulnerable. Even a warship would be severed in half by this whip.
But he had no intention of dodging. His right hand turned from a fist into a hand blade. Empowered by Honkai Energy, its cutting power was terrifying. Using his momentum, he spun halfway around, positioning his body directly in front of the slender tail swinging toward him—though it was actually as thick as a poplar tree.
His hand blade came down, and purple light traced a semicircle, especially conspicuous between the sea and sky.
Clang!
With a single strike from Gu Yan's hand blade, the bull's tail was severed. The Kui Niu let out a pained roar.
"Beautiful!"
Qin Hong'an's eyes lit up. Seeing Gu Yan take the blow and injure the monster in return made him feel that victory was even more within reach.
"Tsk, you're still yelling? Were you reborn as a screaming chicken?"
After landing his blow, Gu Yan did not stop. He stepped onto the Kui Niu's upper jaw, then followed with a heavy kick that knocked several teeth out of its enormous mouth.
Clenching his right fist, Gu Yan drove his left knee into the side of the Kui Niu's face. The massive bull's head was knocked backward by the forceful blow, exposing its unprotected neck. Gu Yan seized the opportunity and punched with all his might.
"Keep yelling!"
Bang!
Gu Yan had put some anger into that strike. After all, this damned bull kept opening its mouth at every turn. Its physical damage was not much, but its psychological damage was maxed out.
Gu Yan: "What are you mooing about?"
The Kui Niu's weapon of offense was dented by the punch. Its body writhed and twisted incessantly from the pain, churning the seawater into turbulent waves. The Kui Niu itself was temporarily unable to make its irritating cries, with only low moans of pain coming from its nostrils. Its dark bull eyes glared viciously at Gu Yan, filled with poisonous hatred.
Yet Gu Yan caught a trace of fear in them.
After all, Gu Yan was completely unharmed, while it had been brutally beaten.
However, if it had a health bar, the Kui Niu's health would have fallen by only 10% at this point. It was also constantly recovering. The regenerative ability of an Emperor-class creature was beyond that of ordinary organisms.
Gu Yan knew this as well. The spot he had attacked was the Kui Niu's largest core. Apart from that, its body contained more than eighty other cores, both large and small!
As long as those cores were not all destroyed within a short period, the Kui Niu's damaged body and destroyed cores would completely regenerate!
Fortunately, Gu Yan could clearly sense the locations of the Honkai Energy cores without needing to deliberately search for them.
But Qin Hong'an and the others did not know this. Seeing the Kui Niu "heavily wounded," they thought the battle was about to end.
"Good!"
Although Senior Xu had mentioned Gu Yan's formidable combat strength before, Qin Hong'an had assumed at the time that she had been merely praising him out of modesty and courtesy. Now it seemed that Gu Yan was genuinely top-tier combat power.
"Li Shi, the monster has lost its ability to roar. Prepare to go and support him!"
At the same time, Gu Yan found himself in a difficult situation.
Taking advantage of his agility, he moved constantly across the Kui Niu's body, occasionally striking it with a hand blade. His attacks seemed random, but only he knew that every spot he attacked was the location of a core.
Oh, right—the bull knew that too.
However, the cores were regenerating faster than he had imagined. The largest core he had destroyed first was about to fully recover, and he still had more than thirty cores left to destroy.
Even abilities such as Ice Cones had difficulty breaking through the Kui Niu's defenses, despite being enhanced by Honkai Energy. He could only butcher the bull by hand.
Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed that those ships had actually drawn closer!
"Retreat now! The mons—The monster is about to regain its ability to attack!"
The Kui Niu opened its mouth, and a blue-green light began to glow. It was about to roar, but Gu Yan was on its back and had no time to attack its throat.
Gu Yan's expression hardened. He raised his right foot and stomped down with all his strength!
Still trying to yell?
"Moo—gurgle, gurgle..."
After enduring agony akin to being slowly sliced apart, the hill-sized Kui Niu was stomped off balance and fell into the seawater.
In the brief instant when the Kui Niu lost its balance, Gu Yan moved so quickly that even Li Shi's eyes could not follow him. Blade after blade stabbed into its enormous body, while Honkai Energy ravaged it with brutal force. In the blink of an eye, almost all of its cores had been destroyed.
But a few cores were still buried too deeply. These acupuncture-like wounds could not threaten them at all.
In that case, he would split the bull open!
Leaping away from the Kui Niu's body, Gu Yan brought two fingers together. He recalled the strike Xu Muchi had used to open up a temporary airfield. As long as he could replicate it, concentrating the destructive power into a line and using Honkai Energy to increase its penetrating force, splitting the Kui Niu in half with a single slash would not be difficult!
If he had used it earlier, too many of the cores would still have been intact, and Gu Yan feared that the Honkai beast might split into two. After all, its abnormal regenerative ability was plain to see. But now, with only a few cores remaining, there was nothing left to fear.
A faint purple halo gathered around his two fingers. Energy so dense that it was almost tangible clung to them, making everyone's hearts tremble. The Kui Niu, in particular, tried to dive beneath the water.
With the boost from his ultra-high-level Ancient Martial Arts Mastery, Gu Yan's mastery of cold weapons had reached the level of perfection. Even with nothing but his fists and feet, he could wield them as lethal weapons!
Li Shi and everyone else focused their eyes on this spot, then witnessed the birth of history.
Gu Yan moved. Although he paused for no more than an instant, the intensely oppressive atmosphere made it seem to last for several hours.
His two fingers slashed downward from above. A purple sword light cleaved through the air, tearing open the water when it reached the sea's surface, then struck the Kui Niu's body with unstoppable force.
The enormous body, as massive as a mountain, was severed as if a mountain itself had collapsed!
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