"The weak don't deserve an Ability Lock."
The lion-tribe soldier's sneer mixed with the desert wind as it poured into Huo Linfei's ears. He stared at his trembling hands—blood smeared between his fingers.
Not the enemy's.
His.
It streamed endlessly from the wound in his abdomen.
"A Super Beast warrior?" the voice mocked. "You're nothing but a drop of pus in my venom sac."
When the Scorpion King's stinger tore out from behind him, Huo Linfei saw fragments of his own organs hanging from the barbs. Every breath felt like swallowing a red-hot blade.
"Weaklings don't have the right to choose."
A black hole's gravity pulled him apart into atoms—every particle screaming. In the void, countless voices repeated the same sentence beside his ears, over and over:
"The law of the universe… is that the strong dominate the weak—"
Huo Linfei knelt on the wasteland of memory.
All around him floated shards of every moment he had died.
Every pain signal—every nerve impulse from each killing—revived inside him simultaneously, as if his body were being executed a thousand different ways at once.
Then a new image stabbed into the sequence—
A sword piercing Bai Heng's chest.
The foxian girl reached out toward him, her lips moving as if she were trying to say something—
but whatever it was drowned beneath a distant roar.
"Do the weak deserve to die?!"
He didn't even realize he'd shouted.
The dream froze.
All the jeering faces congealed midair, fixed like masks.
"Do the weak deserve to be ruled?"
He staggered to his feet—
and realized a burning, crimson longsword had appeared in his hand.
"I'm asking you—"
The blade swept once, and the lion soldier's head flew.
"Do the weak deserve to be trampled?!"
A second strike severed the Scorpion King's tail.
A third cleaved off the arm the Whale Shark King used to control the black hole.
Each question landed with a more vicious cut, until every tormentor's mangled limbs broke apart in the air—
and assembled into a single, enormous question mark.
Then, in the darkness, a pair of hands covered his eyes.
Cold fingers—yet carrying a warmth he recognized.
"Idiot…" A familiar voice, gentle and close against his ear. "Getting this angry will only accelerate an Ability Energy runaway."
Huo Linfei tried to turn—
but she pressed him down by the shoulder.
Her breath carried a clean chill, like ice crystals in the air, and somehow it calmed the boiling bloodlust inside him.
"The deaths you saw were all real," she said, her voice drifting farther away. "But you don't have to be afraid…"
The dream began to collapse.
"…Because I'll always stay by your side."
Huo Linfei opened his eyes.
[Host consciousness restored]
[Ability Energy loss: 43%]
The details of the dream evaporated at terrifying speed, leaving only a drowning tightness in his chest—and a faint, unreal aftertaste, like waking from a beautiful lie.
But the heat in his sternum was unmistakable.
The Equilibrium fragment was glowing—orange and blue light pulsing with his heartbeat.
"How long was I out?"
[72 hours]
[Luofu status: primary defensive structures repaired 87%]
Huo Linfei jerked upright. The back of his head struck a metal instrument with a loud clatter.
A Vidyadhara physician in white robes hurried over.
"Vitals stable? Impossible… that makes no sense!" The physician stared at a floating jade-panel device. "Half an hour ago your mental signal was still on the verge of total collapse—"
Huo Linfei lowered his gaze to his palms.
No flames.
No blood.
No crimson sword.
Those ripping death-memories receded like the tide, leaving only a scorched blur at the edges.
"So I got knocked out by a single pill?" he said, forcing levity to cover the unease.
"Did the Alchemy Commission switch careers and start brewing immortals' liquor?"
The physician looked even stranger now. "That pill only induces the brain to release pain signals and drags out the subject's worst memories. In theory it can only cause brief hallucinations…" He leaned in, dropping his voice. "But while you were unconscious, a red armor phantom manifested around you. Several nurses were burned."
Huo Linfei's heart tightened.
Right then, a rally horn sounded outside the tent.
He seized the chance, threw on a Cloud Knight uniform, and slipped out.
The roar of the star skiff engines hammered his eardrums.
He'd only ridden the Astral Express—this kind of interstellar flight was on another level entirely.
Through the viewport, three Cloud Knight warships broke atmosphere in a wedge formation, aimed at the satellite Qingming-III, now occupied by the Wingweavers.
Once a source of jade marrow, its surface was now carpeted in nest-like black structures.
"Remember the tactics!" the squad leader tapped the holographic sand table. "Wingweavers will exploit altitude and dive—so—"
"So we bait them into the canyon zone." Huo Linfei adjusted his arm guard.
It was already his seventh off-world purge this month.
The Cloud Knights were clearly racing to sterilize every outer foothold before Shuhu's main force arrived.
The moment the hatch opened, a wave of rot hit them in the face.
Qingming-III's sky was blotted out by wings—
except those "wings" weren't natural feathers at all, but feather-covered bio-membranes.
One Wingweaver spotted them and shrieked like metal grinding on metal.
At once, hundreds of black shadows plunged from the clouds.
"Spread out!"
Huo Linfei rolled behind a chunk of basalt. The first to strike had a wingspan over five meters, with half a Cloud Knight's limb still dangling from its talons.
"Try this!" He deliberately exposed half his body.
The creature banked and dove—
and a sudden crimson fireball punched into the root of its wing mid-descent.
The burning monster slammed into the ground.
Once the fighting shifted into the canyon, the tide turned.
The Cloud Knights' talisman cannons transformed both cliff walls into conductive surfaces; once Wingweavers approached, high-voltage nets snapped them in place.
Huo Linfei watched the bodies convulse on the grid—
and noticed something that made his stomach twist:
A small bone bell tied at one Wingweaver's waist.
Made from finger bones.
Infant finger bones.
"Exterminate," the order came through the comm jade. "Leave none alive."
Day Seven.
The planet code-named Iron Husk was veined with writhing flesh pipelines—signs of land reanimated by Abundance power.
When they landed at an abandoned starport, Huo Linfei's boots stuck at once in something viscous—
the ground was layered with semi-coagulated blood plasma.
"Living-armor cultivation pool." The squad leader pointed to a distant hill. "A giant reactor built from stacked bones. They throw captives in as feed…"
A chorus of wolf howls rose from every direction.
Borisin cavalry appeared on the horizon—each wolf-headed warrior riding a four-meter-tall Xianzhou centaur-beast.
The half-horse monsters were painted in blood-red runes.
The Borisin wore armor that pulsed and breathed—
living weapons that devoured their hosts and regenerated endlessly.
The front line of Cloud Knights raised shields—
and the mounts suddenly dropped to their knees.
A cavalry leader let out a long, ululating howl.
In an instant, the armor's flesh erupted outward, turning into dozens of barbed tendrils that shot forward.
"Firecloud Art!"
Huo Linfei's right-arm guard manifested independently. A crimson shockwave incinerated the tendrils—
but the charred flesh, once it hit the ground, began to split and multiply.
In seconds, it formed small creatures that lunged at the soldiers.
One Borisin noticed him and grinned, wolf muzzle splitting wide. "A new pet? Perfect—my armor's hungry—"
At the moment they clashed, each time Huo Linfei severed a claw, the wound instantly extruded fresh biomass—shaping itself into blades, flails, and chains based on the flow of combat.
The mount kept chanting a curse, and Cloud Knights' weapons began to sprout teeth—biting back at their owners.
"You… what do you think life is?!" Huo Linfei snarled.
"What is it?" The Borisin laughed. "Who cares if weaklings live or die?"
That expression was the last spark needed.
Ability Energy surged into Huo Linfei's sword—
and with a single strike, he sent both the centaur mount and the Borisin's head flying.
The living armor immediately lost control—
and turned on itself, devouring the corpses of its own host and mount.
Huo Linfei didn't spare the dead a second glance.
He raised his eyes toward the remaining Borisin riders.
When the factory core was finally destroyed, there were still more than three hundred faces at the bottom of the cultivation pool—
not yet dissolved.
Different worlds. Different species.
All frozen in their final expression of agony—
reduced to "emotional batteries" for Borisin armor.
Join here to read ahead.
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Ben Tennyson Wants to Join the Justice League (Chapter 80)
TYPE-MOON: Redemption Beginning with the Holy Grail War (Chapter50)
Yu-Gi-Oh! — Transmigrated into the White Dragon Girl (Chapter50)
"Is this chat group even serious?" (Chapter50)
I, Lord Ravager, Utterly Loyal! (Chapter50)
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