Uh-oh, things were getting strange

Ye Buyu's expression instantly turned grave. [Tempest Fiend]? Wasn't that the level-nine Calamity that had been destroyed?

[Tempest Fiend] embodied the power of storms and had been broken apart and dispersed centuries ago. Calamities were difficult to destroy completely. Could it still come back together?

And this area held a portion of [Tempest Fiend]'s power?

Ye Buyu pressed her lips tightly together. Things seemed rather serious. She wondered whether the University Alliance knew about this, or whether this, too, was part of the assessment.

She ducked a little lower, opened her terminal, and typed what she had seen into the public chat.

Ye Buyu: Everyone, I've found something new. There's a black-robed figure in the middle of the forest who seems to be trying to activate [Tempest Fiend]'s remaining power.

The black-robed figure's raised arm was shredded by the raging wind. Strangely, the arm turned into fluttering scraps of paper that swirled around the gale, gradually forming a peculiar pattern.

She could vaguely make out a longsword, its blade entwined with thorns and its tip pointing at the wind core.

The black-robed man gave a low, sinister chuckle. "Submit to the power of the void. Since you've already lost the glory of a Calamity and have nowhere to go, why not return to the void? We'll take revenge for you!"

The void... holy shit, don't tell me he's from the Void Order. The corner of Ye Buyu's mouth twitched as she recalled a passage from her textbook.

The Void Order had once been a brilliant star in human history, but every star would eventually fall. Back then, the Void Order had taken a different, extremist path, adhering to the law of the jungle and nurturing talent by pitting its members against one another in a deadly struggle for survival.

They had attempted to produce a talent who would define an era and put an end to all of this.

Unfortunately, resources had ended up excessively concentrated, and greed had run rampant among their members. The enormous organization had begun rotting from within. The Void Order's first leader had outright betrayed the order, slaughtering its members until rivers of blood flowed.

The surviving members of the Void Order had joined forces to kill their first leader. The entire order had then severed itself from humanity's Present World and fallen into the abyss at the border. Corrupted by the aura of disasters, it had turned against the Present World, becoming the greatest [Man-Made Calamity] the Present World had ever created.

On the verge of tears, she typed another line into the public chat. Even her hands had begun to shake.

Ye Buyu: New discovery. The black-robed man appears to be a member of the [Void Order]. Is the current situation still within the scope of the assessment?

Messages popped up one after another.

"Holy shit?! Are you serious? Then hurry up and run!"

"Stop playing frontline war correspondent. I admit your exploration score is high, but everyone in the [Void Order] is an extremist. If you're not lying, get out of there."

"There's a [Tempest Fiend], too! You're not joking, are you?"

"Didn't you just land in a whole nest of disasters? And you can still send messages? Whose valiant warrior is this?"

"Who's currently closest to the depths of the forest? Be careful. You should retreat first. Something's wrong."

Mu Bingge: "Stay hidden. Wait for me."

Amid the flood of messages, Mu Bingge's message stood out. Those few simple words nearly moved Ye Buyu to tears.

Who could understand what she was going through? She couldn't run at all right now. All she could do was crouch miserably in the bushes.

She was like Schrödinger's cat, caught somewhere between life and death. As long as she stayed still in the bushes, the forest's disaster aura would conceal her, leaving her relatively safe.

But the moment she moved, all bets were off.

The black-robed man's attention was focused on the wind core and the thunder pool. The Thunder Monster submerged in the thunder pool had already dissolved into residue, while the manifested Wind Scythe had been crushed into fragments and absorbed by the wind core.

He lowered his head to glance at the boiling thunder pool and couldn't help sneering.

After spending who knew how long secretly recovering a portion of the power lost in this land, it was already impatient to devour another source of power.

"Do you still think you're the level-nine Calamity [Tempest Fiend] you once were? Even if you gathered all the power in this area, you wouldn't have a hundredth of what you used to. Still..."

He glanced at the wind core, which had also begun to run wild.

"You're just right for causing a little havoc."

He took a box from inside his robes, faced the increasingly frenzied storm, and raised his hand to pour out the liquid metal inside.

"Let's begin."

The black-robed man murmured, "Devour every eyesore in this area."

The instant the liquid metal from the box fell into the thunder pool, it reacted like water splashing into boiling oil. The thunder pool churned and swelled, and the Thunder Monster Remains slumbering at the bottom of the lake gradually gathered, breaking apart and being forged anew.

The wind core, which had been focused solely on devouring energy, also sensed the threat. It let out a piercing shriek, and fierce winds surged, writhing like dragons and serpents as they wantonly destroyed everything around them.

The dense forest swayed in the gale, the snapping and crashing of branches filling the air. As that power continued to spread, the trees around Ye Buyu were uprooted. The savage storm snapped their thick trunks and hurled them into the sky.

Ye Buyu, on the verge of a breakdown, was swept mercilessly into the sky as well. She clung to an enormous tree, not daring to let go, like a white cat gripping a lifesaving branch in a typhoon. It was misery beyond belief.

There was no way she could withstand a force that ripped trees out by the roots.

The black-robed man casually glanced up, his tone mocking. "Found so quickly? How unfortunate."

Ye Buyu couldn't spare a thought for anything else. All she wanted was to escape this storm and get far away from this damned place.

The wind core plunged into the thunder pool with a shriek. A mechanical arm emerged from the swelling pool, and raging storms rose from its fingertips, sweeping in every direction and destroying everything in sight.

The greedy storm began violently harvesting energy, dragging in and draining everything around it. Its reach was still expanding, its target the entire assessment zone.

Already covered in cuts from the gale and feeling as though she was about to be sliced to death, Ye Buyu shouted, "Think of something, you damn whale!"

Unlike Ye Buyu, who was dancing on the brink of death, Little Whale remained perfectly composed. "There's nothing one bullet can't solve. Shoot it."

"And then let the disaster remains crush me to death?!"

Little Whale sighed. "Just don't collect the remains. It's a mandatory price. If you don't collect the remains, it has to grant you one small request. Asking it to throw you out of here is perfectly doable."

Ye Buyu instantly felt she might survive after all.

Her body tumbled wildly, hanging upside down in the sky, her silver-white hair whipping in the gale. She gripped the Flower Edict with both hands, her red eyes fixed on the gigantic disaster below.

The silver-white gun gleamed coldly. As the Otherworldly Flower engraved on it lit up, a bullet tore through the gale toward the disaster whose form was gradually emerging.

The black-robed man scoffed. "A dying struggle."

As the bullet struck the disaster, Ye Buyu screamed herself hoarse, "Throw me out!"

The enormous creature rising from the thunder pool paused briefly. The raging wind abruptly changed direction and, like an invisible hand, unceremoniously hurled Ye Buyu out of the storm's center, sending her hurtling into the distance.

The black-robed man froze, then roared in disbelief, "What are you doing?!"