Stranger Danger

“She did it!”

On the cliff, Ye Qing’s eyes lit up when he saw the Wildland Suppression Army changing directions and moving straight toward the river valley. At the same time, his eyes grew steely and cold.

It didn’t take long for Wildland Suppression to show up. They rushed right through without any hesitation whatsoever.

The river valley was long and narrow; wide enough to fit several cavalrymen in the same line only. Therefore, they could only alter their formation and pass through the valley like a snake.

As a result, by the time the foremost troops had reached the exit, the rear troops had just entered it.

The great general of the Wildland Suppression Army, Du Nanhai, was riding the center as a matter of course. It was the best position for him to command and organize the troops.

Now was the time to enact his plan. With a thought, Ye Qing contacted the hidden Gen Armor.

Gen meant mountain, which was why the Gen Armor possessed the power to control mountains. With a just thought, the cliffsides of the river valley slowly split open, and giant rocks began raining down on the cavalrymen.

“Watch out!”

As a Half Sage, Du Nanhai naturally noticed the falling rocks at first notice. He launched a devastating palm strike that instantly shattered all falling rocks within tens of meters of him into fine powder.

Unfortunately, his efforts were but a drop in the bucket. The long and winding valley was at least a kilometer long, and the rocks were falling along the entire trail. Du Nanhai might be able to secure one area, but he could not secure all of them.

There were plenty of elites in Wildland Suppression as a matter of course, but the mountains were breaking, and the giant rocks were falling like rain. They could not possibly stop all of them especially since their own lives were at risk.

As for the ordinary soldiers, the terrain prevented them from forming an army formation at all. Naturally, they began taking massive casualties.

“All units, leave the river valley immediately!”

“Quick! Everyone is to leave the river valley immediately!”

Du Nanhai was roaring orders when suddenly, a pair of rumblings occurred at the front and back of the valley. Then, two gigantic boulders fell from above and blocked both the entrance and the exit of the river valley completely, trapping the large majority of the troops inside.

“Dammit!”

Du Nanhai’s eyes turned bloodshot with anger. At this point, he knew that he and his army had fallen into a trap.

The Barbarian Slayer Army’s plight… was a bait!

Despite his anger, Du Nanhai did not lose his cool or rationality. His eyeballs turned left and right for an instant before he suddenly stared at a certain point of the valley. “Found you.”

As soon as he said this, the image of Skanda[1] appeared behind his back, tall and mighty. It was clad in golden armor and wielding a golden vajra scepter.

The image raised the vajra scepter into the air and smashed a spot of the cliff.

Bang!

The tall, jagged cliff bent inward a good ten meters, and thunderous rumblings could be heard erupting inside the cliff. However, the cliffside looked perfectly unharmed on the outside. His force control was truly remarkable.

Boom!

The next moment, a dark green humanoid figure burst out of the cliffside. It was none other than the Gen Armor.

As the Gen Armor appeared, the cliffs began shaking even harder and dropping more rocks on top of the army. They were falling apart even faster than before.

“The Gen Armor…”

Pupils contracting a little, Du Nanhai recognized the armor at first glance.

Before Du Nanhai could react, the Gen Armor sank into the intact cliff closest to it. It was only then the great general realized his mistake and tried to give chase. Unfortunately, it was already too late.

Du Nanhai repeated his previous tactic and tried to force out the Gen Armor again—the avalanche would surely stop once he caught it—but the Gen Armor refused to fight him at all. It just kept ducking behind cover after cover and kept the engagement to a minimum.

All the while, the mountains continued to fall apart, and the avalanche was growing more and more severe by the second. Countless Wildland Suppression soldiers were taking injuries or dying.

A steely glint flickered in Du Nanhai’s eyes then. No longer hesitant, he made a hand seak and caused Skanda’s forehead to split open. What looked like a third eye but was really a pearl slowly floated into the open.

The pearl was about the size of a person’s fist. It was translucent on the outside and pitch black on the inside. It was emitting a rainbow light.

“Calm Mind[2]…”

The rainbow light abruptly shot into the sky and temporarily chased away the darkness of the night. The world looked as bright as daytime for an instant, beautiful and fantastical, everything touched by the light abruptly froze as if spacetime had come to a standstill. Every living being within a radius of three hundred meters came to a complete stop including the Gen Armor hidden within a cliff.

“Annihilation!”

The next moment, the pillar of rainbow light slowly narrowed until it was centered at one spot. Then, the pearl slowly rotated and shone its light at the cliff where the Gen Armor was.

The cliff began losing its color and luster as if it was being eroded by time. Then, it slowly disappeared into nothing as if erased by some sort of invisible power.

It was anomalous, mysterious, and spine-chilling.

The cliff wasn’t the only thing that was being affected. The Gen Armor was being erased as well. When the rainbow light was finally done with its work, over half of the cliff so tall that it reached into the clouds had been wiped out. All that was left was a smooth, perfectly flat surface over hundreds of meters tall.

“Gulp…”

On a different cliff, Ye Qing was watching everything from the shadows. He could not help but gulp when he saw the giant wound.

The pearl Du Nanhai used was none other than the Calm Mind Pearl.

Legend had it that there existed a Stranger as big as a hill in ancient times. It had a bird’s body and a dragon’s head, and its feathers were rainbow-colored. It also had two pupils in its one eye. It was known as the Rainbow Dragon Bird.

All of the Rainbow Dragon Bird’s divine power was contained within his one eye. If one pupil was dilated, it could freeze any living being with rainbow light. If both pupils were dilated, then the rainbow light could annihilate anything and everything.

The Calm Mind Pearl was the single eye the Rainbow Dragon Bird had left behind after its passing. It contained its divine power. Capable of freezing any living being and annihilating everything, the specific Magias were named “Calm” and “Annihilate”.

Although Feng Qingyou had explained in great detail the origin and power of the Calm Mind Pearl on the way, so Ye Qing wasn’t completely unprepared for this, he still could not help but be flabbergasted by what he just saw.

After all, a towering cliff several hundred meters tall was gone in just the blink of an eye, and an armor possessing the power of a Sage disappeared just like that. It was scary to say the least.

The one silver lining was that he was hiding in a different cliff when the attack happened. Had the Gen Armor been on the same cliff as him, it was impossible to say if the rainbow light would erase him from existence as well.

“What a terrible loss!”

Ye Qing’s heart ached at the loss of the Gen Armor. It was an Ancient-Class Strange Artifact, and it was gone just like that. Anyone would be distressed in his shoes.

Sure, it was his plan to bait Du Nanhai into using the Calm Mind Pearl through the Gen Armor, but he never thought that the Ancient-class Strange Artifact would be erased so easily.

To lose the Gen Armor at this point was like losing an arm.

Luckily, it wasn’t all bad news.

For one, Du Nanhai had used the Calm Mind Pearl and so could not use it again in the short term. He did not need to worry about its threat for the duration of this battle.

Second, Du Nanhai’s fluctuating aura made it clear that he was fatigued after using the Calm Mind Pearl.

Thirdly, the Calm Mind Pearl had carved open an exit when it erased the cliffside and the Gen Armor from existence, but the remnants of its power prevented anyone from actually passing through it. As for the gigantic boulders blocking the entrance and the exit of the river valley, it would take the Wildland Suppression Army least some effort to destroy them and break free.

With this, the first step of his plan and objective was basically complete.

It was time to move onto the second step.

With a thought, a powerful gale suddenly swept through the entire river valley. It smelled a little like rotten fish for some reason.

“Watch out for poison!”

Du Nanhai yelled as soon as he caught the stench. Then, he turned around and barked, “Yicheng, Chaoying!”

“I am here!”

“I am here!”

“Calm the troops and be ready to guard against an enemy assault!”

Du Nanhai ordered loudly, “Tijian, Podao, Chenglang, Wufeng, to me!”

As soon as he was finished, Du Nanhai leaped into the air and ran toward the source of the wind.

Four figures fell in behind him. They all boasted powerful auras.

1. Kartikeya (IAST: Kārtikeya), also known as Skanda, Subrahmanya, Shanmukha and Murugan, is the Hindu god of war. He is generally described as the son of the deities Shiva and Parvati and the brother of Ganesha. Kartikeya has been an important deity in the Indian subcontinent since ancient times. ☜

2. Special Attack and Special Defense +1! ☜