Abnormality

Bang!

The bright, crimson Blood Bullet—the final one Ye Chen had forged tonight—traversed the distance of less than ten meters and struck Xiaowaluwen's left leg with pinpoint accuracy, just before he could fully vanish.

Boom!

Blood exploded as the bullet tore through Xiaowaluwen's left thigh, blasting the portion below the knee into pieces.

In an instant, flesh sprayed across the night sky and bone fragments scattered across the ground.

"Aaaaaaaah------!"

Xiaowaluwen collapsed to the ground, his features twisted into a knot as he let out a scream that seemed to rend the heavens and shatter the earth.

His upper body, which had been rapidly fading into Invisibility, began to slowly materialize back into human form as the excruciating pain made it impossible for him to focus his mind.

"Haa..."

The boy panted, lowered his revolver, and slowly climbed up from the ground.

He stripped off his Elite Guard coat, revealing a shirt almost entirely incinerated by the heat waves, then clutched his bleeding waist and abdomen, staggering toward Xiaowaluwen. He looked down at his fallen prey with weary eyes, the final target of his night.

Now, Xiaowaluwen could no longer manifest his Invisibility, nor could he escape from Ye Chen's grasp.

Clearly, he was a turtle trapped in a jar.

Xiaowaluwen had been cautious for the entire night, yet he had slipped up at the very last moment.

That blind relaxation and carelessness had ultimately turned the tide once more, leaving him sprawled on the ground, crawling at Ye Chen's feet.

Xiaowaluwen clutched his left leg, howling in agony with a ferocious expression, before lifting his blood-red eyes to hiss insults at Ye Chen:

"You despicable bastard, resorting to such shameless tricks, aaaaaah------!"

Yet, in the face of his insults, Ye Chen remained expressionless and unmoved, not even blinking an eye.

After all, Ye Chen knew very well that he was a Hunter, not a Knight.

For a Hunter, the goal was precisely to be cunning and despicable; as long as the target could be hunted, any means were acceptable. That was the true Hunter as described by Lyle.

Therefore, Xiaowaluwen's slander was painless and itchy to Ye Chen; from another perspective, it might even be considered a compliment.

"Abyss... Abyss, for the sake of the devotion my brother and I have shown you, please help me reverse this desperate situation, please help me... eliminate this wretch------!"

Xiaowaluwen, his face drenched in cold sweat from the agonizing pain, began to bow his head and plead desperately.

Immediately, the pitch-black sludge clinging to his skin surged toward his severed left leg, coiling and swirling in an attempt to repair and reconstruct it.

However, Ye Chen's blood-stained short sword flashed like an afterimage, plunging directly into the center of the Abyss Matter.

The next second, the viscous sludge was scorched and seared by the blood on the blade, emitting a chorus of ghostly wails before turning into countless specks of fly ash, dissipating into the night breeze.

"Ughaaaaaaah--------!"

Ye Chen's strike not only eradicated a large portion of the Abyss Matter on Xiaowaluwen's body but also tore open the wound on his thigh once more, causing his miserable, hoarse screams to echo through the silent Xiaowalu Manor again.

"Haa..."

Ye Chen took a few more breaths, forcing himself to endure the pain piercing through his entire body. He circled to Xiaowaluwen's upper body, raised his blood-stained short sword, and prepared to pierce the prey's skull.

Yet, even under the terror of such excruciating pain, Xiaowaluwen's survival instinct drove him to desperately raise his hands, grabbing Ye Chen's wrist with all his might to prevent the blade from descending.

"Ugh------!"

The two tangled together, locked in a stalemate. One had his strength greatly diminished by pain, while the other was exhausted and drained of stamina, making it difficult to determine an outcome for a long time.

After a few rounds of struggling, Ye Chen felt his condition was truly dire, his spirit willing but his body failing. He simply raised his revolver and fired a shot directly into Xiaowaluwen's eye.

The bronze-colored bullet collided with the fragile eyeball, triggering another round of Xiaowaluwen's agonizing, extreme wails.

Seizing the opening created by Xiaowaluwen's loss of control, Ye Chen mercilessly drove his sword through his forehead.

Shua.

The blade pierced the brain, and Xiaowaluwen's hands finally fell limply to the ground.

Even so, Ye Chen's expression remained grave.

Because he understood that any creature involved with the Abyss would not die so easily.

There were at least two things he had to do now: confirm that both brothers, Xiaowaluwen and Xiaowalus, and the Abyss Matter within them, were thoroughly dead and completely destroyed.

With this thought, Ye Chen pulled out his short sword and slashed again, directly separating Xiaowaluwen's head from his body. Sure enough, inside his trachea, he discovered a pitch-black stone similar to the one from the Alpha Ape earlier.

It was the Abyss Core, wrapped and encased in the sludge-like substance.

Click!

The boy raised his sword and brought it down, shattering the Abyss Core into pieces.

After he delivered this strike, the pitch-black sludge on Xiaowaluwen's body began to wail as it turned into dry ash, eventually dissipating away.

"Hoo! Hoo! Hoo!"

Seeing that Xiaowaluwen had completely ceased to breathe, Ye Chen stumbled back a few steps and couldn't help but look up at the sky, gasping for air.

The boy was truly exhausted. Not only was he covered in wounds and his consciousness blurring, but even the Spirit Art of Self-Healing was becoming difficult to maintain, causing his previously sealed wounds to bleed once again.

However, even so, Ye Chen's mission was not yet fully complete.

He still had to confirm that Xiaowalus was dead beyond a doubt to bring this night of hunting to a perfect conclusion.

Where could the corpse of Xiaowalus be? Never mind, he would just have to search slowly.

Ye Chen thought to himself, slowly lifting his head to look ahead.

Then, at the other end of the fountain courtyard, the youth spotted a black shadow crawling on all fours, staring back at him from across the fountain.

At first, the youth could not clearly see the true form of the shadow.

But as the thick clouds in the night sky dispersed and the radiance of the full moon once again blanketed the earth, he realized that it was a humanoid creature crawling on the ground like a lizard, with its belly turned upward and its limbs folded inward.

It was dressed in a blood-stained noble's outfit, yet from the chin upward, it possessed a cone-shaped mass of pitch-black flesh.

A long slit split the middle of the flesh, and dozens of tentacles extended from within, whipping and retracting in the air, occasionally emitting a chilling, low moan.

At this very moment, the corpse of Xiaowalus had come to him of its own accord, and it had returned to Ye Chen's field of vision in the most hair-raising manner possible.

"Hiss."

Ye Chen could not help but gasp, a signal of danger instantly piercing through his entire body, causing every muscle to tense and contract.

The mutated Xiaowalus, after staring silently at Ye Chen for several seconds, suddenly opened its split maw, twitched its slender tentacles, and swung its thick limbs, ringing the golden bell for the final round of Ye Chen's hunting night.

"Eee-hoo-hoo-hoo—!"

The monster cheered, the monster rejoiced, the monster twisted its bizarre form, and the monster stomped out with rapid strides.

The resurrected Xiaowalus came crawling madly toward Ye Chen.