Victory Suppression Method and Blood Puppet

Inside the surveillance room on the ground floor of Brightlight Building.

Three Mythic Walkers watched the surveillance monitors. The screens had originally displayed the third basement level, but now they had become nothing but static-like white noise.

The explosion had destroyed every surveillance device, severing the signal completely.

At the very front stood a young man in his twenties, tall and slender, with refined features.

Yet the most eye-catching thing was the strange markings on his face. Dark-red lines stretched from his forehead to his cheeks, writhing beneath his skin like blood vessels.

He held a Straw Man in his hand, with a bright-yellow talisman nailed to its head.

The underground ruler of Yin Mountain City, Night Owl of the Night Banquet Gang, and Blood Hound looked respectfully at the young man with the markings on his face, their smiles brimming with fawning servility.

"Lord Blood Puppet truly sees all! Xie An must be dead beyond recovery by now!"

Yet Blood Puppet merely looked at the Straw Man in his hand. The bright-yellow talisman nailed to its head was blank; Xie An's name, which should have appeared on it, was nowhere to be seen.

"With an explosion that terrifying, even a Scavenger Fifth Rank would be severely injured." Blood Puppet spoke slowly, his voice calm to a frightening degree. "Yet Xie An managed to escape. As expected of a former prodigious student of the Five Great Academies."

A chilling smile appeared on Blood Puppet's face. Meanwhile, Night Owl and Blood Hound, who had just been smiling obsequiously, had gone pale as sheets.

"He still didn't die?"

"Is he really only Scavenger Second Rank?"

They understood perfectly well that if Xie An had not died, then the ones who would die later could only be them.

Blood Puppet glanced at them. "What are you panicking for? Even if he isn't dead, he must be badly injured. Catch up to him and slaughter him."

As he spoke, the Mythic Factors within Blood Puppet began to circulate, and the Straw Man raised its right hand to point out a direction.

"Chase!"

In a secluded alley only two streets away from Brightlight Building, the Ghost Domain that had spread into the outside world collapsed with a thunderous crash.

Xie An fell out of the void and slammed heavily onto the ground.

Large swathes of Xie An's flesh had been seared by the intense heat. His skin had charred black, and white bone could even be seen in places.

His face had become savage and twisted from the burns, utterly unrecognizable from its original appearance, like a vicious ghost crawling out of Hell.

Xie An lay sprawled on the ground, his chest heaving violently. Every breath tugged at his wounds and brought piercing agony. He gritted his teeth and forced himself to try to rise.

But after lifting himself less than ten centimeters, his arms went limp, and he collapsed face-down once more.

A mouthful of scorching blood sprayed from his mouth and landed on the ground with a sizzling sound.

The blood was an unnatural dark red, mixed with charred black fragments that were likely pieces of internal organs burned by the high heat.

Looking inward, the Mythic Factors of his Scavenger Second Rank had been squeezed dry the instant he opened the Ghost Domain. At this moment, he was weaker than even an ordinary person.

"It was actually a Blood Curse Straw Figure from the Curse Suppression Codex!"

Xie An forced out a few words, his voice so hoarse it was nearly inaudible.

"The Blood Curse Straw Figure secretly replaced Blood Hound, and its Victory Suppression Method muddled my mind, preventing me from noticing anything amiss.

"This is absolutely not something a mere underground gang could possess. Did the Yinshan Investigation Branch intervene?"

At that thought, a bitter smile appeared on Xie An's face.

"I thought the years without hope of advancement had tempered my character. Yet the moment I gained another chance to advance, I still couldn't shake my old faults of arrogance and conceit. I looked down on the figures in this little corner of Yin Mountain City, only to have my boat capsize in the gutter."

Looking toward Brightlight Building, Xie An could clearly sense three powerful Mythic Walker auras rapidly closing in.

Blood Puppet, Night Owl, and Blood Hound had already locked onto his location and were on their way.

Xie An's vision darkened. That dim shadow-side space seemed to reappear before his eyes, and the boundary between yin and yang gradually blurred at this moment.

Though his life hung by a thread, Xie An was unexpectedly calm. He even had the leisure to sigh.

"What a pity. Even though I regained the opportunity to advance, I ultimately failed to uncover the potential for Traversing Yin and Yang. I have truly let Master Wu down.

"And that Yellow Wind Little Sage—I promised to help him organize the materials for the Ascension Ritual. It seems I won't be able to deliver them on time. I hope he won't be implicated by me. The Investigation Bureau probably doesn't know about the connection between us..."

"At least you've got a conscience." A voice rang out in the alley.

Xie An, hovering on the brink of death, froze. He barely propped up his head and looked toward the corner.

A twisted mass of light and shadow dispersed, revealing Yellow Wind Little Sage standing before him with a steel fork strapped across his back.

"Little Sage... sir?"

Xie An's mind crashed. Never in his wildest dreams had he expected Yellow Wind Little Sage to appear here.

Yellow Wind Little Sage walked up to Xie An, glanced toward Brightlight Building at the three rapidly approaching figures, and said:

"You might get a little dizzy. Take a deep breath and bear with it. If you dare puke in my mouth, just wait to die!"

That small mouth suddenly opened enormously wide, utterly defying biological common sense. Two buck teeth were exposed within, along with a bottomless, pitch-black space.

The next second, Yellow Wind Little Sage bit down toward the badly wounded Xie An.

That small mouth instantly expanded enough to swallow a full-grown adult. The dark Greedy Space, like a black hole, swallowed Xie An's entire body in an instant.

The entire process lasted less than a second.

The dark Greedy Space swallowed Xie An in an instant. Yellow Wind Little Sage's cheeks puffed out, and the urge to vomit surged in his mouth.

The Greedy Space could not store living creatures or worthless objects, but prior experiments had shown that it could keep something from the moment it was swallowed to the moment it was spat out for several dozen seconds. For Yellow Wind Little Sage, that was already enough.

At the same time, Blood Puppet had arrived at the entrance to the alley, and the Blood Curse Straw Figure in his hand suddenly lost its target.

Its previously raised right arm drooped limply, and the Straw Man's head also bowed, as though it had lost all life.

The connection with the target had been severed completely in an instant.

Blood Puppet's expression changed drastically. His gaze abruptly locked onto a blurry figure deep within the alley.

It was a twisted mass of light and shadow, resembling some small animal. It was running toward the other end of the alley, nimble and swift.

Blood Puppet immediately shouted sharply:

"Stay!"

Yet the only answer he received was a spell!

A fierce gale erupted within the alley. Wind and sand filled the sky, sweeping frost along as they roared forth like a vast azure dragon.

The moment Yellow Wind Little Sage realized Blood Puppet was a Scavenger Fourth Rank Mythic Walker, he stopped holding anything back. A storm containing True Samadhi Resonance devoured everything.

Blood Puppet looked alarmed and immediately hurled out the Blood Curse Straw Figure in his hand. The talisman on its head flashed with bloody light, attempting to block the storm.

But it was utterly useless. The raging wind and sand tore the Blood Curse Straw Figure apart in an instant, while Blood Puppet himself was hurled like a meteor into the building opposite.

Night Owl and Blood Hound arrived belatedly, hearing only one cold shout lingering in the empty alley.

"Get lost!"