Just then, the situation changed violently.
That grotesque wolf-ship shuddered hard. The flesh and bone armor coating its hull twisted inward like it was collapsing from within, and a massive hole tore open in the ship's center.
In the next breath, a gigantic hand—woven from countless distorted plants—burrowed out and lunged straight for Wei Qing!
The force behind it was far beyond anything an ordinary Pathstrider could muster, and mixed within it was a trace Wei Qing knew all too well: the aura of the Destruction and Abundance Paths.
Wei Qing's gaze sharpened. He didn't dodge.
Azure light from the Hunt compressed in his palm into an extremely unstable sphere, and he shoved it forward into the oncoming hand.
The two powers collided in the void—but there was no thunderous explosion. Instead, their clash was like two poisons corroding each other: silent, annihilating, erasing one another until only a hollow patch of nothingness remained.
Wei Qing hovered beyond that void, eyes piercing through the chaos of battle, locked firmly onto the wolf-ship.
"This kind of power… isn't Borisin."
His voice dropped to ice. "Show your face, you coward. Get out here!"
As if answering his shout, the plant-hand slowly withdrew back into the ruptured ship.
Then—from fissures packed with flesh, metal, and ruin—a figure stepped out at an unhurried pace.
It wasn't the hulking beast-form of the Borisin at all. It was closer to human shape—though too tall, too slim, too wrong—wearing strange armor interlaced from pale bone plates that traced an inhuman silhouette.
"Hehehe…" The voice was gentle, even pleasant, and yet carried a seductive malice that made the skin crawl. "The Hunt's favored child… such a keen sense indeed."
"Allow me to introduce myself. We meet for the first time—I am Shuhu."
Wei Qing's pupils snapped tight.
Shuhu.
An Emanator under the Abundance—sworn nemesis of the Xianzhou Alliance. The name itself was a symbol of disaster, of entire ships ruined, of pain that never truly faded.
Based on the system's earlier "mission," Wei Qing had assumed that if there was an ambush, it would be Phantylia or Zephyro.
Instead, Shuhu had stepped onto the board.
No wonder the Borisin dared gather so brazenly—there was an Emanator backing them.
"Shuhu…" Wei Qing's voice turned colder still. "You've got nerve. To infiltrate this close to the Luofu in person."
"For the universal gift of the Merciful Medicus," Shuhu said with a smile, "distance has never been a barrier."
He lifted a hand and lightly brushed the jagged edge of the wolf-ship's rupture. At once, countless green vines sprouted, knitting the torn hull together at terrifying speed.
"But you, Wei Qing…" Shuhu's gaze settled on him, full of inquiry—and something almost greedy. Like he was admiring a rare treasure.
Or… a perfect medicinal ingredient.
"Your power is peculiar. Beneath the Hunt's sharp edge, there seems to be something else…" Shuhu tilted his head, amused. "Come. Let me see more clearly."
He raised a hand.
In an instant, verdant Abundance power boiled around him. Thick vines erupted from empty space and lashed toward Wei Qing, twisting like living whips.
And what made them truly grotesque was this—
Within that surging vitality ran faint threads of Destruction.
Wei Qing's expression didn't change.
The Hunt's arrows condensed around him and exploded outward as a dense rain of blue meteors, each one intercepting a vine with surgical precision.
Arrows met vines—Hunt tore through life.
Yet the moment a vine was destroyed, its broken end multiplied into frantic new branches, as if feeding on Destruction itself, mutating into something worse.
"Useless," Shuhu sighed, sounding almost delighted. "The Merciful Medicus' miracle is not something 'damage' can uproot. Destruction and rebirth—two sides of the same coin."
"Together they compose…" his tone turned reverent and sickening, "…a hymn of life."
Wei Qing snorted. He stopped trying to cleanse the vines completely.
His body flickered through the void at high speed. The Hunt's power compressed into a single point—then became an impossibly condensed spear of light that shot straight for Shuhu faster than sight could track.
—Skkk!
In a flash, the spear punched through Shuhu's chest, blasting a massive hole through the bone-plate armor.
Shuhu's expression froze for a fraction of a second—
But inside that torn cavity there was no blood, no organs.
Only wildly writhing vegetation, already trying to fill and repair the wound at a monstrous pace.
"Excellent penetration," Shuhu murmured, almost approving. "But… is that all?"
He brought his hands together.
Abundance power erupted from him like a tidal wave.
A corner of the battlefield seemed to be forcibly peeled away, transformed into Shuhu's personal nightmare-garden—a domain of rampant growth and rot that swallowed Wei Qing whole in an instant.
Deadwood surged in with suffocating vitality… and that same ominous thread of Destruction.
At the storm's center, Wei Qing held steady. The Hunt's edge formed a hardened barrier around him, keeping the entire choking garden at bay.
"Useless. Useless." Shuhu's voice echoed everywhere, warm, coaxing, poisonous. "Resisting the Merciful gift is futile. Your Xianzhou people—what are you, if not Abundance folk in essence?"
"Why not accept it?" he crooned. "Let me complete your ascension!"
"Shut up."
Wei Qing's cold shout cut through the pressure, and the Hunt's light flared again—
"The World!"
In that instant, his Stand—The World—activated once more.
Everything froze.
Space. Motion. The writhing garden. Even Shuhu's smug expression—locked in place like a statue.
Wei Qing hovered in the stillness.
"Looks like I really was underestimated."
This was his first meeting with Shuhu, but as an Emanator walking the Path of Destruction, Wei Qing could tell with absolute certainty—
That Destruction aura mixed into Shuhu's Abundance was not Shuhu's own.
It was faint, but within stopped time, it stood out with brutal clarity.
So there was another Destruction Emanator involved.
At that thought, Wei Qing decided he was done holding back.
He stared at the frozen Shuhu, a chill flashing through his eyes. Destruction and Hunt surged together in him, rising to a peak that almost threatened to rupture even this stopped-time domain.
Slowly, he lifted his hand.
Destruction condensed in his palm into a dark-red longbow.
And the Hunt's radiance formed an arrow on the string—pure, lethal, and perfectly aligned.
"If you're carrying Destruction's scent…" Wei Qing murmured, voice low as a verdict, "…then let's see who's hiding behind you."
The bowstring drew back.
The bow thrummed with a deep, hungry vibration. The Hunt's arrow locked onto Shuhu's brow—into that single point where all power would converge into a final end.
"Shuhu."
Wei Qing's gaze was ice.
"I'm drawing the arrow now."
Join here to read ahead.
In Star Rail, Ultra-Beast Armored — Have I Caught "Equilibrium"? l (Chapter 80)
Uma Musume, But I Only Have Five Years Left to Live (Chapter 90)
Zenless Zone Zero: I'm a Doctor, Not a Bangboo (Chapter 95)
Ben Tennyson Wants to Join the Justice League (Chapter 80)
TYPE-MOON: Redemption Beginning with the Holy Grail War (Chapter70)
Yu-Gi-Oh! — Transmigrated into the White Dragon Girl (Chapter70)
"Is this chat group even serious?" (Chapter50)
I, Lord Ravager, Utterly Loyal! (Chapter60)
Can Playing Games Save the World? 30
Crossover Anime Multiverse: The Demon Hunter of an Unnatural World 30
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