The King Descends from the Heavens

Jiang Ran was not entirely sure just how strong his Dragon-Tiger Fist was at this moment.

He only felt that with a full-force punch, he could shatter even a creature of the Mother Spider's size.

This was his own perception of his strength.

However, reality often deviates somewhat from one's own perception.

For instance, right now...

The scene he had envisioned—flesh and blood flying, carapace exploding—did not occur.

Instead, a surge of recoil force shot back up his arm, instantly numbing Jiang Ran's right arm and making his bones creak.

Screech!!!

At the same time, a shrill shriek erupted from the twisted human face on the Mother Spider.

The sound wave, carrying a foul-smelling gust of air, nearly blew Jiang Ran's hood off.

Fortunately, Jiang Ran adjusted quickly.

Upon realizing that his opponent hadn't died from that punch, he activated Eight-Step Cicada Chase the moment his feet touched the ground.

He rapidly put distance between himself and the monster.

In the blink of an eye, he had shifted over a dozen meters away.

Jiang Ran looked up, his brows furrowed tightly.

There was indeed a clear fist-shaped indentation on the Mother Spider's abdominal carapace where he had struck.

The surrounding plates even showed fine cracks.

But that was all.

There was no penetration, no tearing, let alone an explosion.

And the arrow he had fired mid-air hadn't even managed to break its defense.

"This is troublesome..."

Jiang Ran's heart sank.

However, the power of the Dragon-Tiger Fist was not entirely useless.

The Mother Spider was currently sprawled on the five-colored spider web, its eight long legs paddling restlessly, its entire body twitching slightly, while that distorted human face displayed a clear expression of pain and fury.

Seeing this, Jiang Ran didn't hesitate. He flicked his left hand to nimbly discard his compound bow and quiver, while his right hand simultaneously unslung the sheathed Tang Dao from his back.

Strike while the iron is hot.

The next second, the concrete floor beneath his feet exploded into a small crater.

He pushed Eight-Step Cicada Chase to its limit, his blood and qi roaring through the meridians in his legs.

The dozen-meter gap was bridged in an instant.

Jiang Ran lunged in front of the Mother Spider once more.

Regardless of the creature, the head is almost always a relatively vulnerable part.

Jiang Ran twisted his waist and hips, his spine undulating like a great dragon, and he threw his right fist out from under his ribs again. The sound of a dragon's roar and a tiger's howl exploded across the rooftop for the second time, aimed directly at that grotesque face.

However, the Mother Spider's reaction was shockingly fast.

It seemed to have anticipated this; perhaps from the very beginning, the majority of its compound eyes had been locked onto Jiang Ran.

Just as his fist was about to make contact with the human face...

The Mother Spider's body tilted sharply at an uncanny angle, and the spider legs curled beneath it suddenly sprang up and closed together.

At the very last second, they blocked the front of the Mother Spider's head.

Clang!!!

Fist and limb-shield collided violently.

Golden Bell Shield triggered automatically.

The invisible qi on the surface of Jiang Ran's fist and the hard shell of the spider leg simultaneously erupted in a visible ripple.

As the recoil force hit, both Jiang Ran and the Mother Spider were sent flying.

But after landing on the web, the Mother Spider's dozen long legs were still moving freely; clearly, it had not been severely injured.

Jiang Ran shook his still-numb right fist and watched the Mother Spider across from him, which was rapidly adjusting its posture and hissing softly. His brows locked even tighter.

His lethality was insufficient.

He had thrown two punches in total; the first was a sneak attack that landed on its body but failed to kill it.

The second, powered by the burst of Eight-Step Cicada Chase, had struck its spider leg almost instantly, yet still failed to cause any real damage.

The hardness of this monster far exceeded that of any creature he had encountered before.

More importantly, it clearly possessed a certain level of combat intelligence and was not relying solely on instinct.

Moreover...

This battle was meant to be a blitzkrieg from the start.

The goal was to take advantage of the small Human-Faced Spiders being away from the Spider Matriarch to quickly finish her off.

If this turned into a war of attrition, even if Jiang Ran managed to slay the Mother Spider, he would eventually be surrounded by the overwhelming swarm of monsters, creating a certain-death scenario.

And just now, when his first punch landed on her.

The shrill screech she emitted was very likely a signal to summon the other monsters back.

He had to end this quickly.

Just as Jiang Ran's mind was rapidly calculating the risks and odds of victory, or whether to temporarily retreat and seek another opportunity...

The Mother Spider opposite him moved first.

The human face suddenly opened its bloody maw, its throat convulsing violently.

The next instant...

Dozens of viscous white liquid globs shot out from its mouth.

These globs expanded rapidly in mid-air, transforming in the blink of an eye into massive webs over three meters in diameter, blanketing the sky and covering almost every possible avenue of evasion for Jiang Ran.

Jiang Ran had no time to think; his combat instincts were screaming a frantic warning.

He let out a low shout, his entire body's blood energy erupting with a roar, the muscles in his legs bulging as he pushed Eight-Step Cicada Chase to its absolute limit.

He forced himself to leave a faint afterimage in his original spot.

His true form had already darted out toward the front left.

Several webs brushed past his clothes and back.

However, just as Jiang Ran landed...

The light above his head suddenly dimmed.

Jiang Ran looked up sharply.

He saw the five-colored spider web that covered the entire rooftop slowly descending.

It wasn't trying to trap Jiang Ran directly with the web, but rather to compress his range of movement and force him into a dead end.

Then, it would use its home-field advantage to slowly torture him to death.

Looking at the web less than a few meters above him, Jiang Ran knew he couldn't dodge it.

Unless he could fly.

And unless he had been fighting the opponent on top of the web from the very beginning.

But the web was undoubtedly the opponent's main battlefield; Jiang Ran could never have chosen to fight her on the web from the start.

It could be said that once he landed on this rooftop.

Unless he killed the Spider Matriarch instantly.

This situation was inevitable.

Therefore, before leaping over, Jiang Ran had already anticipated this outcome.

Since that was the case...

Then it was time to begin the true life-or-death struggle.

Jiang Ran watched calmly as the web slowly descended.

At the very moment it was about to touch him, he slowly raised his right hand, pressed his index and middle fingers together, and tapped them lightly against the center of his brow.

His lips parted slightly.

"Buddha's..."

"Rise."

HUM!!!

Centered on Jiang Ran, a scorching aura erupted with a roar.

From every pore on Jiang Ran's body, a visible, crimson-red smoke of blood energy surged forth.

Like a raging inferno, it enveloped his entire being.

The blood energy smoke churned and rose, manifesting behind him as a three-meter-tall, indistinct, and majestic phantom.

The phantom's eyes were wide with fury, posed in the stance of a Buddha's Wrathful Vajra subduing demons.

Jiang Ran's eyes were now stained with pure blood, the whites completely gone.

All that remained were two boiling pools of blood.

The skin exposed to the air took on a dark red hue, and the veins beneath his skin bulged like coiling dragons.

Buddha's Wrathful Vajra...

Activate!

The next second, Jiang Ran slightly bent his knees.

The concrete ground beneath his feet instantly collapsed.

He vanished from his original spot, soaring upwards, shattering the spiderwebs in an instant.

In the blink of an eye, he was in front of the monster, crashing into its embrace...

The mother spider seemed momentarily stunned by Jiang Ran's sudden move, a flicker of human-like astonishment in its compound eyes.

That was the moment!

Jiang Ran extended his left hand, wrapped in bloody energy, and fiercely plunged it into the crack on the mother spider's abdominal carapace, a crack created by the Dragon-Tiger Fist.

At the same time, his right fist pulled back...

All his strength, all his boiling blood, the wrath of the Vajra Phantom behind him, converged here.

Then, facing the monstrous face inches away, he unleashed the first Dragon-Tiger Fist in the Buddha's Wrathful Vajra state!

Before the punch even landed, the violent fist pressure had already flattened the stiff hairs on the mother spider's head.

The features on its monstrous face were contorted by the pressure.

The mother spider let out an unprecedented, terrified shriek, its numerous long legs frantically stabbing towards Jiang Ran, who was pressed tightly against its abdomen.

The sharp tips of the spider legs pierced Jiang Ran's lower back and sides, but they were firmly blocked by the incredibly solid bloody energy around his body, emitting dense explosive sounds.

But these attacks couldn't penetrate the Golden Bell Shield in the Buddha's Wrathful Vajra state.

At most, they left white marks on his skin.

The physical defense and pain reduction in the Buddha's Wrathful Vajra state.

Both reached astonishing levels.

Meanwhile, Jiang Ran ignored all the attacks from behind him.

His eyes were fixed only on that ugly head.

The fist finally descended.

At the same moment, several streets away.

"Open fire! Cover each other! Retreat to the western intersection!"

Xia Xuan roared, his assault rifle spitting fire, blasting a Human-Faced Young Spider that broke through a shop window from the side, splattering its ichor.

But more young spiders swarmed out from buildings on all sides.

Their numbers were despairingly large.

Zou Yue and three other team members in Special Combat Uniforms, armed with weapons, formed a defensive circle back-to-back, protecting Zhou Ming in the center, firing desperately.

"Captain Xia! There are too many! We can't clear them all!"

A team member emptied his magazine, shouting urgently as he reloaded.

Xia Xuan naturally knew the current situation.

They had received orders to come to the High-Tech District to search for and escort a qualified student.

Unexpectedly, shortly after picking up the person.

They were surrounded by these seemingly endless monsters.

"Hold on..."

Before Xia Xuan could finish speaking, his peripheral vision caught sight of the middle-aged man, Uncle Wang, who had been following Zhou Ming and claimed to be a survivor. He suddenly let out a terrified yell.

"Ah! They... they're coming from over there! We can't stop them! You guys hold the line! I'll go find a way out first!!"

Uncle Wang's voice was sharp, and before anyone could react, he suddenly turned and charged towards the south.

"Come back! Don't run around!" Xia Xuan was instantly furious.

But Uncle Wang ignored him, disappearing into the darkness of the street in the blink of an eye.

"Again... it's happening again..."

Zhou Ming, protected in the center, stared in the direction Uncle Wang had disappeared, his eyes vacant, his lips trembling as he muttered, "Why him..."

Zou Yue, beside him, vaguely heard his whisper. In the midst of battle, she quickly glanced at him and asked urgently, "What did you say? What's happening again?"

Zhou Ming seemed to snap back to reality, incoherently recounting what had happened before.

"beast!" Zou Yue gritted her teeth and cursed, her eyes blazing with anger.

The other team members also looked grim upon hearing this.

However, less than ten seconds after Uncle Wang ran off.

A bizarre scene unfolded.

The monsters that had been swarming towards them frantically suddenly paused their attacks.

Then, as if receiving some command, they simultaneously abandoned their assault on Xia Xuan's team.

They all turned and charged towards the south, in the direction Uncle Wang had fled.

In just two or three seconds, the once-impenetrable encirclement had become completely empty, leaving behind nothing but a mess of monster corpses and spent shell casings.

Xia Xuan and the others stood guard with their guns raised, frozen in place.

For a moment, none of them could process what had just happened.

"What... what just happened?" one team member gasped, looking around in a daze.

However, before they could even react.

From the north side behind them, a dense, rustling sound emerged.

Xia Xuan whipped his head around.

He saw even more monsters pouring out from the exterior walls of the buildings on the north side of the street.

The sheer number of them covered almost every surface of the buildings within their field of vision.

And their direction of travel was also toward the south.

Xia Xuan's squad happened to be directly in the path of this monster tide.

"Run!!! Head south! Move!"

Xia Xuan's eyes were bloodshot as he grabbed the arm of the still-stunned Zhou Ming, forcing him to flee along the route Uncle Wang had taken.

However, they hadn't even run two blocks.

The group realized something was wrong.

Those monsters pouring in from the north weren't attacking them at all.

Every single spider, regardless of which direction it came from, was now frantically swarming toward an office building ahead.

Xia Xuan and the others involuntarily slowed their pace.

They watched this bizarre, extreme scene with shock and uncertainty.

"What... are they doing?" Zou Yue panted, gripping her gun tightly.

"It looks like they're rushing to reinforce something?"

One team member said uncertainly.

Just then...

"Above! There's movement!" Zou Yue, whose hearing was the sharpest, was the first to look up and point toward the upper floors of the building.

Everyone tilted their heads in unison.

The sky was at its darkest moment.

Yet, the top floor of that building was illuminated from time to time by a crimson light.

Furthermore, a sound like a tolling bell echoed continuously.

Immediately after...

BOOM!!!!

A deafening roar erupted from the upper levels of the building.

Before their eyes, a section of the glass curtain wall near the top shattered, and countless shards fell like raindrops.

The next moment, a streak of light as fiery as blood and a mottled, hideous shadow, tightly entangled, burst out of the building through the shattered opening.

They appeared briefly in the high altitude, dozens of stories up, and then...

Crashed toward the ground with a thunderous impact!