Counterattack

Deep within the cavity, the Blood Taisui also sensed it.

The pulsation of the lump of flesh suddenly paused eerily. It saw the power flowing within Lu Heng's body—unfamiliar, cold, and with the sharpness unique to stars. It was something it had never encountered in all its years of existence, something it could not understand, much less parasitize or erode.

The mushroom web trembled violently.

It wasn't fear. It was hunger.

Lu Heng's pupils contracted almost imperceptibly. He caught that emotion— the Blood Taisui's desire for the Greedy Wolf Star Power, so intense it was almost tangible.

interesting.

A faint blue light flickered in his eyes, and the fire wall's output stabilized even further.

The vibrations deep within the rock strata have changed.

It was no longer the fine, nutrient-draining tremor of before, but a dull, slow rumble, as if some enormous creature was turning over underground. The temperature of the cavity suddenly dropped, and Lu Heng's breath condensed into a wisp of white mist at the edge of the heat wave, only to evaporate in an instant.

The Blood Taisui is using its true reserves.

Lu Heng remained vigilant, slowing the advance of the firewall and tightening the heatwave. He was waiting, waiting for his opponent to reveal all their cards.

The rock wall cracked.

It wasn't Mycelium hyphae breaking through the soil; the entire rock wall was cracked open from the inside. Dark brown rock peeled away, revealing something Lu Heng had never seen before—

It was a corpse.

Or rather, it was once a corpse.

Sealed deep within the rock strata for countless years, its entire body was permeated and transformed by deep red Mycelium, swelling to nearly three meters in size. The proportions of its limbs were distorted, its arms hanging below its knees, and its fingertips forming five jet-black bone blades. Its chest remained still, but embedded within its ribcage was a fist-sized tumor pulsating at an extremely slow frequency; with each pulsation, the surrounding Mycelium glowed a little brighter.

The true form of the Blood Taisui is a nest.

And this thing is a "soldier" it nurtured using all its stored nutrients.

The Deep Red Corpse Puppet opened its eyes.

It had no pupils; its eye sockets contained two clumps of cloudy, grayish-white Mycelium, like two clumps of rotting cotton. It turned its head, "looking" at Lu Heng, and a smile that was not human-like spread across its lips.

The blue light in Lu Heng's eyes suddenly sharpened.

They've arrived.

The Deep Red Corpse Puppet moved.

Without a running start or any warning, the rock beneath his feet exploded, creating a spiderweb-like network of cracks. His massive three-meter frame unleashed a speed completely disproportionate to his size, and five bone blades tore through the air with sharp whistling sounds, heading straight for Lu Heng's face.

quick.

It was faster than any previous Mycelium attack.

Lu Heng turned to the side, and the heat wave condensed into an arc-shaped wall of fire in front of him as he rotated. The bone blade cut into the wall of fire, and the surface of the deep red Mycelium instantly carbonized, but the corpse puppet did not stop. It didn't even turn its wrist, and the bone blade continued to push forward as it burned through, exposing the finger bones when it burned through them, and the arm bones when it burned through them—it didn't care about the damage at all.

Five bone blades grazed Lu Heng's neck, catching a strand of broken hair.

Lu Heng took a half step back, and the wall of fire slid horizontally, slicing into the corpse puppet's waist and abdomen. A stench of burning flesh exploded, chunks of meat rolled over, and juices splattered. Nearly half of the corpse puppet's body was burned through, but its forward momentum only swayed slightly, and its grayish-white eyes didn't even blink.

It swung its claw back.

Lu Heng raised his arm to block, the heat wave condensing into a solid heat insulation layer on the outside of his arm. The bone blade struck the heat insulation layer, and the enormous force still made his forearm go numb, while his feet plowed two shallow marks on the rock surface.

The power was too great.

This was not the kind of power an ordinary corpse could unleash. The tumor embedded in the chest was throbbing wildly, pouring its stored nutrients into the body as if they were free, forcing it to move.

The corpse puppet's attacks were completely haphazard, driven solely by pure violence. Each strike—slashing, smashing, tearing, ripping—carried the intent of mutual destruction. Lu Heng moved between the walls of fire, the heat waves constantly leaving charred wounds on the puppet's body, but those wounds did not hinder its movements for even a moment.

It won't burn.

Or rather, the rate at which it burns out cannot keep up with the rate at which it replenishes itself with nutrients.

During a brief moment of sidestepping, Lu Heng glanced in the direction of the nest. The Blood Taisui's main body had shrunk even further, its surface flesh walls collapsing into deep folds, its pulse as weak as a candle flickering in the wind. It was sacrificing its own life to feed this soldier.

The logic of a war of attrition remains unchanged.

However, the Blood Taisui pushed all his last chips onto the table at once.

The corpse puppets' attacks grew increasingly ferocious.

The charred wounds on its body covered most of its torso, and the exposed bone blades were burned shorter and shorter, yet its movements became faster and faster. The throbbing frequency of the lumps on its chest was soaring, and grayish-white Mycelium overflowed from its eye sockets, like two wriggling maggots.

Lu Heng's breathing finally became erratic.

It's not about physical strength, it's about mental strength.

Maintaining this level of heat output, while constantly repairing the fire wall shattered by the corpse puppets, was causing his mental strain to accumulate exponentially. The support from the Greedy Wolf Star Power was not an unlimited source of energy; he could feel the blood vessel behind his temple throbbing, and a fine tingling sensation spreading across the edge of his consciousness.

The corpse puppet seized the opportunity during that brief moment.

It abandoned all defense, letting Lu Heng's heatwave burn through its left shoulder, and lunged forward, its five remaining bone blades converging into a single black blade tip, piercing straight into Lu Heng's heart.

The distance was too close; there wasn't enough time to dodge.

Lu Heng's eyes turned cold.

Instead of retreating, he took half a step forward, raised his left hand, spread his fingers, and pressed it directly onto the corpse puppet's chest—on that throbbing mass of flesh.

A heat wave broke out.

It wasn't the outward burning of a fire wall, but a compressed heat stream that erupted right against the palm of his hand. The fleshy tumor on the corpse puppet's chest didn't even last half a second before its surface burst open, spraying deep red fluid onto half of Lu Heng's arm.

The corpse puppet froze.

The grayish-white Mycelium in its eye sockets twitched wildly, and its open mouth emitted discordant hissing. That mass of flesh was the supply node between it and the Blood Taisui; with the node destroyed, the flow of nutrients into its body instantly stopped.

Lu Heng did not let go.

The temperature in his palm was still rising, but the next second, he himself was stunned.

The Greedy Wolf Star Power has been activated.

It wasn't that he actively activated it; the power awakened on its own. The pale blue light in his eyes suddenly brightened, and a cold suction force surged from his palm, flowing into the corpse puppet's body along the contact surface pressed against the tumor.

It is plundering.

The deep red reserves of nutrients that hadn't yet been burned were forcibly extracted from the corpse puppet's body by the Greedy Wolf Star Power and poured into Lu Heng's meridians through his palm. Cold, sweet and pungent, carrying a strong life force, they were crushed, devoured, and transformed into his Greedy Wolf Star Power power the moment they entered his body.

The fine numbness in my mind faded away at a visible speed.

A flash of understanding crossed Lu Heng's eyes.

Greedy Wolf.

The Star of Plunder. It doesn't devour nutrients, but rather the energy accumulated by its opponent.

The tumor beneath his palm quickly shrank, and the corpse puppet's massive body collapsed as if its skeleton had been removed, crashing onto the rock surface and scattering a cloud of grayish-white fungal powder. The deep red Mycelium lost its luster at a visible speed, shattering inch by inch.

Lu Heng withdrew his hand, a slight coolness still lingering in his palm. He looked down at his palm; a pale blue light flowed slowly beneath his skin, brighter than before.

He raised his head and looked at the nest.

The Blood Taisui stopped moving.

The massive mass of flesh lay limp deep within the cavity, its surface walls collapsed beyond recognition, its pulse so weak it was almost imperceptible. Its last reserves, the army it had nurtured for countless years, had been completely drained in that single moment.

The cavity fell silent.

The mushroom powder was still scattering everywhere, like a gray-white snowfall.

Lu Heng stood still, slowly clenching his left hand that had just delivered that palm strike. His mental sea was swollen and almost painful, Greedy Wolf Star Power flowed through his meridians more than twice as fast as before. That cold, predatory power was stirring in the shadows, like a beast that had tasted blood.

He suppressed his agitation, and the blue light in his eyes gradually faded.

He had obtained the power, but he knew this was just the beginning. The predatory nature of the Greedy Wolf Star Power had manifested for the first time today, and he had no idea how to control it or to what extent. Just a moment ago, he even had a fleeting impulse—not to drain the corpse puppet dry and stop, but to follow the connection of the fungal network, draining it all the way through, swallowing the entire cavity and all the energy of the Blood Taisui's body into his own body.

That thought only lasted for a moment before he extinguished it.

But it really did happen.

The Blood Taisui is no longer a threat. After this war of attrition, it no longer has the strength to even condense another Mycelium.

The pale blue in his eyes flickered briefly in the darkness before receding back into the depths.

The savagery of plunder has already tasted blood.

Next time, it won't quiet down so easily.