Breaking Out of the Encirclement

The watermelon knife in Chen Fan's hand gradually changed shape amid a glow.

It transformed into an ancient-looking, eight-sided Han sword.

Its scabbard was dark brown, with golden fittings adorning both ends.

Chen Fan raised his hand and drew the Han sword.

Faint cloud patterns formed during forging showed through on the plain blade.

Holding the long sword, Chen Fan gained a rough understanding of what made this artifact special.

The Spirit Refining Sword's main effect lay in the word "refining."

It allowed the sword master who wielded it to gradually master formidable swordsmanship.

As the time spent wielding it grew, and the number of enemies killed with it increased.

The sword master could perform increasingly powerful sword techniques.

The moment Chen Fan took the sword, his understanding of swordsmanship reached a transcendent level.

He was already a "swordsmanship master."

The instant he grasped the sword, he gained a complete understanding of every mortal sword art and technique.

Any move he performed could be as flawless and natural as an antelope hanging by its horns.

And from what he could sense, once he had achieved a high enough level as a "swordsmanship master," the next sword art he would master was the "Sword Control Technique"!

Holding the Spirit Refining Sword, Chen Fan casually swung it at an ingenious, unpredictable angle. The blade left afterimages as it cut down several giant insects swarming toward him.

With a sharp weapon in hand and the yin souls in the Ten Thousand Souls Banner lending their strength, Chen Fan felt much less pressure.

He had recalled the yin soul Old Zhao long ago.

He had sent him out to scout ahead and lead them away from danger.

Now that danger surrounded them, there was no longer any point in scouting.

At this moment, all three transcendent yin souls were together.

Old Zhao's snake hands kept darting out, sweeping up giant insects.

Lao Mo formed axes in his hands from time to time, chopping the insects to death. Those struck by a yin soul axe suffered no physical damage, but their souls were shattered and absorbed by the Ten Thousand Souls Banner as nourishment.

Sister Liangzi's yin soul was enormous, and a single charge could kill a whole group of giant insects.

After large numbers of insects died, their yin souls also entered the Ten Thousand Souls Banner, which then controlled them and sent them to intercept the other insects.

Having absorbed many insect yin souls, the Ten Thousand Souls Banner's yin energy grew denser, and its power increased.

Nearby, Sun Hong had to remain on high alert at the wheel and couldn't move, but Yan Kuan and Qian Lei also picked up weapons and helped kill the giant insects.

Yan Kuan wielded a folding stool, smacking insects with it again and again.

He was only an ordinary person, and his strength was hardly enough to kill the insects, but he could still knock them back.

As a first-tier transcendent, Qian Lei was stronger. He swung an iron rod repeatedly, sometimes managing to smash a few insects to death, though more often he crippled them or knocked them back.

Protected by Chen Fan's Ten Thousand Souls Banner, they didn't have to worry about being hurt by the insects and could focus on dealing damage.

The group worked together: Chen Fan did the slaughtering, and they supplied the laughter. For the moment, they managed to hold their ground.

All they wanted was to break out of the fog as soon as possible and escape their current peril.

By now, theirs was the only bus still moving through the fog.

The survivors in the vehicles that had followed them had long since ended up in the insects' bellies.

Just then, the bus swayed violently. Qian Lei and Yan Kuan were nearly knocked over, and even Chen Fan staggered.

"Watch your driving!"

Chen Fan snapped at Sun Hong.

Sun Hong wiped the cold sweat from his face.

"Someone on a dirt bike suddenly came out of the fog. We almost hit each other."

Chen Fan's gaze sharpened. "You mean he was driving in the opposite direction? Damn it, can he sense the way out? Are we going the wrong way?"

At that, Qian Lei, Yan Kuan, and Sun Hong were all a little dumbfounded.

Just as they were hesitating over whether to turn around, the roar of a motorcycle reached them.

A figure on a motorcycle drew level with the driver's seat.

The rider shouted to them, "Do you know the way out? My convoy's gone. Can I come with you?"

Chen Fan and the others: "..."

They had been overthinking it.

Chen Fan shouted down to the rider, "Help us kill the monsters, and you can come aboard!"

"No problem!"

The rider agreed, then rose straight off the motorcycle into the air. With an elusive movement and a flash, the rider entered the bus through a window.

Only then did Chen Fan get a clear look. She was a young woman in a black martial arts training outfit, with a high ponytail, fair skin, and a pretty face.

The woman had first boarded the bus with impressive agility, and once aboard, she displayed considerable martial skill.

Every move she made followed a precise method, and her strikes were swift, accurate, and ruthless.

Moreover, invisible, transparent currents of air seemed to surge around her fists and palms.

Often, before her palm even touched an insect, she could smash it apart with a palm strike from a distance.

She was clearly a transcendent too; otherwise, she couldn't have traveled alone through the fog.

Whether the woman had gotten into the swing of fighting or for some other reason, she suddenly thrust out both palms and shouted.

"Eighteen Dragon-Subduing Palms!"

Then faint dragon-shaped currents of air really did rise around her. With a resounding dragon's roar, a whole area of the insects surrounding her was instantly cleared.

Qian Lei cried out in surprise.

"Holy crap! A martial arts expert!"

With the woman joining them, Chen Fan and the others were under even less pressure.

The only thing they could do now was work together and do everything they could to keep Sun Hong driving.

They couldn't worry about direction anymore. Their only chance of survival was to keep driving forward and break out of the fog.

Finally, more than twenty minutes later, they made it out of the fog without mishap despite the danger.

They saw daylight again.

Although the sky was still gray, and the sun looked little different from a light bulb.

It still counted as seeing sunlight again.

The bus had long since been battered to pieces, and a large number of insect corpses had piled up on it.

After they broke out of the fog, some giant insects still followed them out and attacked.

But compared with the nearly endless insects in the fog, those that followed them out were nothing.

Chen Fan and the others easily killed them all.

In this battle, Chen Fan's convoy had been almost entirely wiped out.

Presumably, the woman's convoy had met the same fate.

That alone showed how terrifying the fog was.

Standing in the damaged bus, they looked through the long-shattered windows at the desolate road ahead.

The scenery they had grown tired of seeing now felt somewhat familiar after their escape from the fog.

Everyone on the bus was catching their breath and calming themselves.

Sun Hong also emerged from his state of extreme tension, looking utterly drained. He had even slumped back in his seat as he drove.

The bus gradually slowed down.

At that moment, Chen Fan looked at the insect corpses on the floor.

They were everywhere in the bus.

Toward the end of the fight, they had even opened the door and sent insect corpses flying out through the windows and door.

Otherwise, there wouldn't have been only one layer on the floor as there was now.

There would have been enough to bury them, leaving them nowhere to stand.

Chen Fan sheathed the Spirit Refining Sword and fastened it at his waist.

Pointing at the insect corpses on the floor, he asked, "Do you want these? If you do, we can divide them according to how much work each person did."

Everyone else shook their heads, including the woman who had joined them later. She looked at Chen Fan curiously, wondering why he had asked.

Since the apocalypse, monsters and anomalies had appeared one after another, but in the vast majority of cases, what they left behind after death was useless.

At least, the woman had never encountered anyone who could make use of such things.

Chen Fan didn't explain. He simply summoned the Artifact Refining Furnace and put one giant insect corpse in to test it.

[Refined giant insect corpse. Obtained 10 points of Origin Artifact Materials.]

A single giant insect corpse was worth only 10 points.

But there were plenty of them.

Chen Fan felt a little regret over the insect corpses they had sent flying out of the bus.

But there had been no helping it. At a life-or-death moment like that, no one could have paid attention to so much.

Chen Fan refined half the insect corpses into Origin Artifact Materials and stored the rest in a black coffin.

He didn't plan to refine these insect corpses into zombies; they probably wouldn't be very useful. He intended to turn them all into blood beads.

After refining a large number of insect corpses, his Origin Artifact Materials had reached 2,300 points.

Beside him, the woman in the training outfit watched Chen Fan conjure one thing after another.

First a banner, then a furnace, then a coffin.

She had long since been dumbfounded.

She couldn't understand it at all.

Was this a transcendent ability too?

This transcendent ability was far too absurd.

She waited until Chen Fan had finished and looked her way before she couldn't resist asking, "Are all those your transcendent abilities?"

Chen Fan had seen her fight earlier and knew she was quite capable. He also guessed that her team had been wiped out and she had nowhere to go, so he wanted to recruit her into his convoy.

He nodded and said, "That's right. My transcendent ability is [Immortal Master of the Artifact Dao]. I'm Chen Fan. What should I call you? You must be a transcendent too, right?"

The woman smiled politely and said, "Li Yuanyuan. My transcendent ability is [Wuxia Master]. Nice to meet you all."