The Mist Lord Breaks Out of Its Cocoon, the Hospital's New Toys

The air in the Eye of the Abyss basin had grown thick as a pot of boiling asphalt.

Blood Wolf's mangled Half-Step Fourth Tier corpse had been completely devoured and digested by the Thirteen Steps. At the center of the altar, the black ball of flesh that had absorbed the blood of countless students and the energy of the formation was emitting a tremendous rumbling like a beating heart.

Thump! Thump! Thump!

With every beat, the surrounding mist spread outward in a wave like a tsunami. The nauseating stench and the corrupting radiation that stabbed straight into the soul left Lin Que and Shen Yueli, standing in the distance, deathly pale, their legs buckling beneath them.

"B-Brother Bai..." Lin Que gripped his iron shield tightly, his teeth chattering wildly. "That thing's coming out! It's a Half-Step Fourth Tier companion Anomaly! Are we really not running?"

Shen Yueli also clutched her staff, her forehead covered in a fine sheen of cold sweat. Though she had witnessed Su Bai's terrifying methods, a Half-Step Fourth Tier being was a disaster-class existence capable of strutting unchallenged through Linhai City. Even if Su Bai had those anomalous rules, could he really withstand such overwhelming power?

"Why run? We're already here, so we might as well see what's inside this big gift pack." Not only did Su Bai stay put, he took two steps forward.

His hands were tucked into his school uniform pockets. There wasn't a trace of fear in his eyes, only the fervor of someone who had spotted a limited-edition figurine.

Crack!

A crisp tearing sound rang out in the center of the basin.

A fissure more than ten meters long suddenly split the surface of the enormous black ball of flesh. Two massive tentacles covered in black scales and countless barbs immediately thrust out of the opening and clamped tightly onto the edge of the altar.

"Screech!!!"

With a piercing shriek powerful enough to rupture eardrums, the ball of flesh burst apart.

Black slime splattered everywhere, instantly corroding the stones it landed on into puddles of white foam.

A terrifying monster over twenty meters tall finally revealed its true form.

It had no fixed torso. Its entire body was a mountain of flesh woven together from countless thick black tentacles. At the very top of the tentacles sat an enormous human skull. Two ghostly purple soul flames burned in its eye sockets.

The Half-Step Fourth Tier companion Anomaly—the Mist Lord!

The moment it fully awakened, the contamination level throughout Mist Canyon shot up to a critical point. The gray clouds in the sky began to spin wildly, forming an enormous vortex, as if heaven and earth themselves were trembling at the monster's birth.

"Hungry... so hungry..."

The Mist Lord's two ghostly purple soul flames locked onto Su Bai and his two companions, who stood a short distance below the altar.

Its voice did not travel through the air. Instead, it exploded directly inside their minds, carrying intense mental contamination. Lin Que grunted as blood streamed from his nose and ears. Shen Yueli dropped to one knee and desperately activated Moonlight Shield, barely managing to block the mental assault.

Only Su Bai remained standing where he was, as though nothing had happened.

Mental contamination?

What a joke. Su Bai dealt with Hongdou and evil spirits every day in the Wasteland Divine Kingdom, where the purity was 99.5%. His mental resistance had long since been tempered thicker than a city wall. To him, the Mist Lord's little mental assault was like a breeze brushing his face.

"Hungry, are you? Perfect. I'm a very hospitable person."

Su Bai grinned and snapped his fingers.

"Forbidden Hospital, send out our interns and orderlies. Give this big guy a physical."

Rumble!

The void behind Su Bai tore open in an instant, and the enormous rift leading to the Wasteland Divine Kingdom opened once more.

This time, what poured out of the rift was neither a school bus nor a staircase, but an overpowering stench of formalin and blood.

"Hehehe..."

To the sound of eerie laughter that made one's scalp crawl, dozens of mutant monsters in bloodstained orderly uniforms staggered out of the black mist, their bodies stitched together in a haphazard mess.

Leading them were none other than the five Blood Wolf mercenaries Su Bai had just killed in the valley!

They had, however, changed beyond recognition. The bald captain's head had been sewn onto the body of a berserk black bear, and he carried a huge rusty chainsaw. The other four mercenaries had become deformed orderlies with three heads and six arms, carrying hemostatic forceps and syringes thicker than a thigh.

These were the latest masterpieces off the Forbidden Hospital's Flesh Reorganization assembly line!

"Go draw some blood for testing," Su Bai said casually, pointing at the Mist Lord, which loomed like a small mountain.

"Roar!"

The dozens of mutant orderlies and doctors let out mindless roars and charged straight at the twenty-meter-tall Mist Lord like a horde of crazed zombies.

The soul flames in the Mist Lord's skull flickered violently. Though it was not particularly intelligent, it could sense that the little bugs rushing at it carried the aura of their own kind, one that made it extremely uncomfortable.

"Die..."

The Mist Lord let out an enraged roar. More than a dozen thick black tentacles lashed viciously at the mutant orderlies like frenzied whips, shrieking as they tore through the air.

Bang! Bang! Bang!

The immense force instantly smashed the orderlies at the front into a shower of shredded flesh.

But the monsters produced by the Forbidden Hospital had two defining traits: they felt no pain and were extremely hard to deal with.

The scraps of flesh that fell to the ground wriggled rapidly back together as though alive. The black bear stitched monster bearing the bald captain's head even took a tentacle strike head-on and leaped into the air, its rusty chainsaw spinning wildly as it sawed viciously into one of the Mist Lord's tentacles!

Bzzzt! Bzzzt!

Black, tainted blood sprayed wildly, and dazzling sparks flew as the chainsaw ground against the tentacle.

"Aaah!!!" The Mist Lord cried out in pain. It had never imagined that these things, which looked like cannon fodder, could injure its Half-Step Fourth Tier body!

It swung another tentacle and sent the black bear stitched monster flying. But immediately afterward, more mutant orderlies climbed onto its body like ants, wildly stabbing and jabbing it with their forceps and syringes.

Below the cliff, Lin Que and Shen Yueli watched the absurd, bloody scene, completely lost for words.

They had thought Su Bai would use the female ghost in red or that terrifying bus to deal with the Mist Lord. Instead, Su Bai had summoned an entire zombie army and set them against a Half-Step Fourth Tier Anomaly in a melee battle of attrition!

"Brother Bai... where on earth did you get these monsters?" Lin Que swallowed.

"Do it yourself and you'll have plenty. I couldn't just let those mercenaries I killed go to waste, could I?" Su Bai pulled a handful of sunflower seeds from his pocket and began cracking them as he watched the show.

In truth, Su Bai knew perfectly well that the mutant orderlies produced by these basic assembly lines could never kill the Half-Step Fourth Tier Mist Lord on their own.

He was doing this only to wear down the Mist Lord's stamina and divine power, while testing how well the Forbidden Hospital's new toys could withstand the pressures of actual combat.

Sure enough, after the initial chaos, the Mist Lord flew into a rage.

"Ants... turn to ash!"

The Mist Lord's enormous skull threw its mouth open, and an immensely dense purple poison mist erupted from it like a volcano, instantly covering an area more than a hundred meters across.

This was its innate Domain-[Corrosive Poison Mist]!

Within this Domain, all living things would be corroded into puddles of bloody water within seconds.

The instant the mutant orderlies crawling over it came into contact with the purple poison mist, their bodies began to sizzle. Even though they felt no pain, their bodies began to melt rapidly under that overwhelming power. In less than half a minute, every one of the Forbidden Hospital's dozens of orderlies had turned into a puddle of black water.

"Huff... huff..."

The Mist Lord gasped for breath. Though it had cleared away the annoying bugs, it had also expended a great deal of energy.

Its two ghostly purple soul flames locked onto Su Bai once more. It knew that this boy in a school uniform was the mastermind controlling those monsters.

"Your turn... human..."

Waving its remaining dozens of tentacles, the Mist Lord charged straight at Su Bai with the force of mountains toppling and seas overturning.

Faced with this earth-shattering attack, Su Bai did not dodge. Instead, he tossed aside the sunflower seed shells, clapped his hands, and straightened up.

"Warm-up's over."

Su Bai looked at the mountain of flesh bearing down on him, a cold, deranged smile curling his lips.

"Big guy, did you think taking out a few little minions meant you were back in business?"

Su Bai slowly raised his right hand and snapped his fingers.

"Hongdou, you haven't had your first fight since reaching Third Tier."

"Go loosen up this lord's bones for him."