A mountain-heavy, scorching pressure of qi and blood swept through the entire villa like an invisible tidal wave.
Chen Yan, who had been meditating with his eyes closed in his crib, jolted as the overbearing force wrenched him out of his trance.
Chen Yan: "???"
What was that?
This aura... fierce and scorching.
It brimmed with pure masculine energy.
It was the complete opposite of the Spirit Race member's icy aura from last night.
But he could sense that although the aura was overbearing, it bore no malice,
feeling more like an undisguised warning and declaration.
He immediately sent a wisp of his spiritual sense out of his body, sweeping through the entire house like quicksilver.
In the master bedroom next door, his mother, Du Qionghua, was sleeping soundly and seemed completely unaffected.
Downstairs, Aunt Liu Xin and Yu Qingmeng were the same, breathing evenly and safe and sound.
It seemed this pressure of qi and blood targeted only specific individuals, leaving ordinary people completely unharmed.
Chen Yan relaxed.
Then, intense curiosity welled up inside him.
He had to find out what was happening outside!
There was no way he could go out in his baby's body.
That went against Chen Yan's way of keeping a low profile!
Chen Yan's gaze fell on the sheet of paper in front of him.
Got it!
He immediately focused a wisp of his mind and activated [Image Projection Scroll]!
His tiny fingers picked up a paintbrush, dipped it in paint, and quickly sketched on the white paper.
With just a few strokes, the outline of a sparrow appeared on the page.
Then he carefully infused the drawing with a wisp of pure spiritual power.
Bzz—
The ink on the paper seemed to come alive.
It began to writhe, intertwine, and reshape itself.
The two-dimensional lines quickly became three-dimensional, and the faint ink took on the sheen of real feathers.
In the blink of an eye, a lifelike sparrow shook its wings and "stood" up from the paper.
It tilted its little head, its beady black eyes sparkling with life.
Even the finest patterns on its feathers were clearly visible, making it indistinguishable from a real sparrow.
No one could have guessed that this bird was made of ink and spiritual power!
Chen Yan focused his mind and sent an even finer wisp of spiritual sense into the sparrow, as if connecting to a remote-control terminal.
"Off you go!"
The paper bird flapped its wings and flew lightly out the window, blending into the morning light.
As it flew, Chen Yan guided his spiritual sense toward the source of the pressure of qi and blood to investigate.
It took almost no effort to pinpoint the target.
It was the very apartment building he had marked with Peppa Pig in the early hours of the morning!
The paper bird landed soundlessly on a leafy tree, giving him a perfect view of everything below.
He saw that a long cordon had been set up around the building.
Several people in logistics uniforms stood together, talking quietly, their faces bright with the excitement of having survived a close call.
Chen Yan pricked up his "ears" and heard every word of their conversation.
"My God, that just now was terrifying! I thought my heart was going to jump out of my chest!"
"Tell me about it! But the Special Investigation Team sure is impressive!"
"Speaking of which, we really have Old Zhang in the monitoring room to thank this time."
"If he hadn't spotted that creepy Peppa Pig in the middle of the night, who would've guessed something like that was lurking right beside us?"
A younger logistics worker lowered his voice and spoke mysteriously.
"Peppa Pig? What's that?"
"You don't know? That cartoon character... Anyway, it was something like a toy, wandering around the roads in our neighborhood in the middle of the night. The surveillance footage caught it crystal clear. Creepy as hell!"
As Chen Yan listened to them from the tree, his little bird face grew impossibly strange.
So...
Had he reported the Spirit Race member himself?
And brought the Special Investigation Team here?
Chen Yan felt a little pained.
After all that effort scouting the place, Dad had swooped in and stolen the kill?!
Just as he was brooding, the overbearing pressure of qi and blood erupted again below!
Then he witnessed a scene that shook him to the core.
A long, twisted shadow shot out of a third-floor window, accompanied by an invisible shriek of spiritual force.
The tall man in a black trench coat slowly drew a long sword.
The sword rang clear as a dragon's roar!
It was his dad, Chen Kefa!
Chen Kefa shouted, his voice cracking like thunder on a clear day!
"Spring Thunder!"
Blinding lightning burst forth, and its destructive force instantly blasted the Spirit Race life-form to dust!
The whole thing was swift and decisive, utterly overwhelming!
Chen Yan stared in stunned disbelief.
Good heavens!
So this was how strong Dad was?
The power of that strike was beyond anything he could have imagined!
If a mere Special Investigation Team captain had such power,
then what kind of earth-shaking presence must the legendary Martial Saint be?
For a moment, Chen Yan's heart stirred.
Before long, he saw the Special Investigation Team members downstairs begin to wrap things up.
Chen Kefa issued new orders, apparently to conduct a much wider search.
The evacuated residents were also being escorted away and weren't allowed to return home yet.
The area soon grew quiet and empty.
Chen Yan seized the opportunity and carefully guided the paper bird toward the place where the Spirit Race member had vanished.
As soon as it drew near, he keenly picked up an extremely faint yet familiar fluctuation of spiritual power.
Chen Yan's heart stirred.
Th-this residual energy... wasn't it from the same Spirit Race member I'd partially devoured last night?
So it was the same one!
He understood at once.
It seemed the Spirit Race life-form had been gravely wounded last night by his phantom of spiritual sense, which had devoured part of its spiritual essence.
Its vitality had been badly depleted, forcing it to hide in its lair and slowly recover.
Then, before it could regain its strength, the Special Investigation Team he had inadvertently summoned had cornered it.
What a miserable fate!
However, Chen Yan soon noticed something was wrong.
He could clearly sense that the spiritual energy dispersed by that strike of Spring Thunder,
though scattered and feeble, had not vanished completely from the world.
On the contrary.
Those particles of spiritual energy, finer than dust,
were slowly but unmistakably drifting toward a single point,
showing faint signs of gathering together again!
Chen Yan's bird eyes flew wide open.
"Could it be... destroying their bodies isn't enough to kill them?"
"The Spirit Race... can actually revive right where they died?!"
This discovery made Chen Yan's heart sink.
If that was true, the Spirit Race would be far more troublesome than anyone had expected!
It meant that ordinary physical attacks were almost useless against them!
They either needed a special method like his own, one that could directly attack and devour their spiritual essence,
or they had to find a way to capture them alive!
But the Spirit Race's bodies were so fragile that a lightning-fast strike with no restraint, like Chen Kefa's, couldn't possibly capture one alive. It would only obliterate it in an instant.
And that was exactly what the Spirit Race wanted.
Their bodies could be destroyed while their spiritual essence escaped and lay dormant, waiting for the day they could gather and revive.
They couldn't be killed, and they couldn't be captured.
One slight mistake, and they could be struck by the Spirit Race's spiritual attacks, ending up dead or insane!
"So... I'll have to handle it after all."
Chen Yan's thoughts raced, and he didn't hesitate.
The wisp of spiritual sense inside the sparrow suddenly surged, turning into an invisible vortex that generated a powerful suction force!
In the air, the thin wisps of spiritual energy that had been drifting slowly, trying to gather again, were forcibly drawn in by this power!
Like a hundred rivers flowing into the sea, they rushed into the sparrow,
where Chen Yan's wisp of spiritual sense devoured them completely!
"Mmm... That feels good."
Even through the sparrow avatar, Chen Yan's real body shuddered slightly.
Compared with the Spirit Race member he had encountered in the early hours,
the residual spiritual energy he devoured this time was far purer and more abundant!
Nearly three times as much as before!
This power continuously nourished the wisp of spiritual sense he had sent out.
His spiritual sense grew denser and stronger at an astonishing rate!
Its strength surged until, in the blink of an eye, it was almost half as powerful as the spiritual sense in his real body!
An unprecedented sense of fullness and acuity traveled back along the connection between that wisp of spiritual sense and his real body.
Through the sparrow's eyes, he felt as if he could "see" even the faintest flows of energy in the air and sense the strength of everyone's qi and blood and the state of their minds more clearly.
The boost from devouring it was incredible!
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