The smoke from the abandoned factory had yet to disperse, and the thick stench of blood and scorched flesh mingled with the cold air.
Fang Gang stood where he was, feeling the unprecedentedly violent power surging through his body.
His tendons and bones roared! His muscle fibers hummed deeply like steel wires forged through countless hammer blows!
His blood flowed like a river of magma, bringing a scorching sense of power!
The fifty-thousand-pound strength of a barbaric elephant lifting the heavens surged and roared through his fully connected, perfectly integrated fascial network at the late stage of the Tendon Transformation Realm!
Dragon and elephant first emerged!
He casually rolled his shoulders, and his joints cracked like popping beans.
His gaze swept across the battlefield's wreckage. Charred corpses and twisted metal fragments carpeted the ground.
"Let's test it..." Fang Gang muttered, his eyes falling on a rust-covered I-beam nearby, half-buried in the ground and as thick as a bucket.
It had been one of the main beams supporting the factory roof, caught in the previous battle and broken, twisted out of shape.
He strode over and extended a hand covered in a faint golden-red glow. His five fingers, like dragon claws cast from steel and iron, fiercely clamped down on the cold metal!
"Up!"
He used no martial skill, only the explosive force of fifty thousand pounds from his physical body!
Creak—crack!!!
The piercing groan and snap of metal rang out at once!
The I-beam, embedded deep within its concrete foundation and weighing several tons, was forcibly ripped from the ground with one arm! Chunks of concrete came up with its shattered base!
Fang Gang weighed the several-ton steel pillar in his hand as if he were wielding a light wooden stick! The muscles in his arm coiled like dragons, containing explosive power!
He casually swung it!
Whoosh—!
The muffled pressure of the wind howled like ghosts! The massive I-beam tore through the air with destructive force and smashed viciously into a nearby hill of steel scrap piled from discarded machine tools!
Boom—!!!!
A deafening blast!
That heavy steel wreckage was like it had been struck by a meteor! It instantly shattered into pieces!
Broken parts, twisted steel plates, and flying gears shot in every direction like cannonballs! Dust surged into the sky!
Within the dust, Fang Gang carried the slightly deformed I-beam on his shoulder, his dark-golden bald head reflecting a hard, cold gleam through the haze.
He casually tossed aside the I-beam as if throwing away trash. The heavy steel hit the ground with a dull boom, making the earth tremble.
"Not bad." He twisted his neck, feeling the unceasing torrent of power rushing through him.
Just as he was adapting to his explosive increase in strength, the Resentful Eye Mark on his left arm suddenly sent a faint but piercing stab of pain!
At the same time, a cold feeling of scrutiny licked across his senses like a venomous snake's tongue!
Fang Gang abruptly raised his head. His sharp, hawk-like gaze pierced the lingering dust and shot toward the top of a huge chimney deep within the factory, one that had not completely collapsed and was covered in rusted pipes!
A gaunt, bedraggled figure clung desperately to the cold metal outer wall of the chimney. It was the fleeing Blood Sacrifice Priest!
Only charred strips of cloth remained of his dark-red cloak. His exposed, shriveled skin was covered in burn marks, and one arm hung limply at his side.
His only remaining hand tightly clutched a palm-sized bone talisman pieced together from ghastly white finger bones and black crystals!
A dim glow flickered over the bone talisman, aimed directly at Fang Gang below!
"Found... found the target! Coordinates... confirmed!"
The Blood Sacrifice Priest growled hoarsely into the bone talisman, his voice broken with extreme fear and resentment. "Physical body... strength... abnormal increase! Far beyond the intelligence! Requesting... requesting... argh!"
He had not even finished speaking!
Fang Gang's eyes turned fierce! The ground beneath his feet exploded! His speed erupted! His entire body became a golden-red bolt of lightning tearing through the dust! Only a deep footprint remained where he had stood!
Fast! So fast that the Blood Sacrifice Priest's clouded eye caught only a blurred afterimage!
He tried in terror to crush the bone talisman!
But he was too late!
A large hand covered in golden-red radiance, like it had been cast from refined steel, appeared before him in an instant like a demonic claw piercing through space!
Ignoring the dozen-meter height difference and the maze of pipes between them! Its fingers spread wide, carrying terrifying force capable of imprisoning everything as it fiercely grabbed for the wrist clutching the bone talisman!
Crack!
A crisp sound of breaking bone rang out!
The Blood Sacrifice Priest let out a shriek distorted by agony! His withered wrist, along with the flickering bone talisman, was crushed alive in that massive hand!
Bone fragments and shattered black crystals mixed with thick black blood, spraying from between the fingers!
"Ah—!!!" Overwhelmed by the pain, the Blood Sacrifice Priest lost his balance and fell screaming from the chimney wall dozens of meters above!
Fang Gang did not even glance at the falling wreck of a body. His gaze dropped to his palm.
Besides shattered bones and filthy blood, several of the largest black crystal fragments remained there. Weak yet exceptionally pure sinister energy fluctuations lingered upon them, along with a trace of... cold data-stream aura?
This bone talisman was not merely a communication device. It seemed to contain some kind of... higher-level power imprint?
Just then, the largest black crystal fragments suddenly lit up with blinding ghostly light! The fragments left Fang Gang's palm and floated in midair!
Buzz—!
The ghostly light projected by the fragments twisted and intertwined wildly in the air, instantly forming a vague humanoid outline made of pure dark data streams!
The outline had no facial features. In place of a face was a constantly shifting vortex seemingly composed of countless zeroes and ones!
A terrifying will—cold, indifferent, as though it stood above all living beings, scrutinizing with the precision of a scanner—instantly locked onto Fang Gang!
The strength of that will vastly surpassed the Blood Sacrifice Priest's, and even exceeded the Phantom Nightmare Priest's by more than tenfold! It carried a cold, oppressive sensation as if it could see through all things and analyze everything!
The Faceless Cult Master! A projection of an SS-Class being!
"Bzzzt..."
The Blood Sacrifice Priest, whose wrist had been crushed and who was still falling from the sky, suddenly began convulsing violently!
Extreme terror and disbelief erupted in his remaining eye, while a wheezing gurgle escaped his throat! It was as if something inside him were being forcibly pulled out!
"No... Cult Master... spare... my life..."
His plea abruptly stopped!
Pop!
The Blood Sacrifice Priest's ruined body burst apart in midair like a punctured balloon!
He became a cloud of viscous blood mist! Rather than dispersing, it was completely devoured by the dark data-stream projection like a giant whale drawing in water!
Having consumed all the Blood Sacrifice Priest's essence, the projection seemed to become slightly more solid.
The vortex face made of zeroes and ones slowly "turned," coldly "watching" the figure below amid the dust, carrying the Bronze Battle Halberd with his dark-golden bald head reflecting the faint glow of data.
There was no anger and no killing intent—only pure scrutiny, as if examining a research specimen, along with a trace of... indescribable greed.
A cold voice devoid of emotional fluctuation, like an electronic synthesis, rang directly in Fang Gang's mind:
"Physical body... data... abnormal... transition... specimen... locked..."
"Bald head... coordinates... anchored..."
"Fear... livestream... activate..."
Before the words had faded, the projection made of dark data streams flickered several times like an unstable signal, then instantly collapsed and vanished!
Only several black crystal fragments remained, their glow completely gone and transformed into ordinary stones. They fell with a patter onto the oil-stained ground.
The cold scrutiny and the oppressive feeling of the data stream disappeared with them.
The factory ruins fell into dead silence once more, with only the night wind whimpering through the holes.
Fang Gang stood still, his brow slightly furrowed. That cold will just now... was the Faceless Cult Master of the Nightmare Holy Cult? SS-Class? That sensation... did not feel like a purely evil entity. It was more like... some sort of cold machine? A digitized evil thing?
"Fear livestream?" He turned over the final words he had heard, his eyes cold.
It seemed that killing two priests had thoroughly enraged those rats. Greater trouble was coming.
He lowered his head and looked at his left arm.
The Resentful Eye Mark had not conveyed fear when the faceless projection appeared, but an extremely concealed... trembling excitement? As if it had encountered an entity of the same origin, but of a higher order.
"Hmph." Fang Gang snorted coldly, and his powerful mental barrier ruthlessly suppressed the mark's fluctuations. He bent down to pick up the crystal fragments that had become stone, finding them cold and rough to the touch, with nothing unusual left.
He carried the battle halberd and turned to stride away from this bloody steel graveyard. Beneath the bleak moonlight, his dark-golden bald head flowed with a metallic cold gleam.
The excitement brought by his explosive increase in power had been diluted by the cold pressure brought by the Faceless Cult Master's projection. Yet the fighting spirit blazing in his eyes only grew fiercer!
"Come, then." He whispered to the city's darkness. "Let's see whether your livestream can broadcast my fists!"
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