62: Chapter 62: The two strange beasts turned to gray instantly, and all the refugees on the bus knelt down and cried out for the God of Fire!

The hem of his black trench coat fluttered slightly in the airflow and thermal radiation, while the cracks in his bronze mask cast ancient shadows in the firelight.

The two Shadow Erosion Beasts sensed the threat.

Black mist surged, and their four backward-jointed legs kicked off the ground violently, sending gravel exploding outward.

They lunged at Su Chen from two directions simultaneously, their speed so fast that they left two blurry black lines in the air.

He did not dodge.

He didn't even move.

Behind the mask, those eyes narrowed slightly, as if a person were inspecting two mosquitoes lunging at him.

He raised his right hand and spread his five fingers.

A flash of fire ignited around his body.

The flame streams twisted, converged, and solidified in the air, transforming into two fire dragons over ten meters long.

From the dragon heads and bodies to the tails, every scale was composed of highly compressed, extreme-temperature flames, burning the air at the limit of 2000°C and emitting a low hum.

The two fire dragons struck almost simultaneously.

One circled from the left, while the other charged from the right, accurately entangling the two charging Shadow Erosion Beasts.

"Sss—"

In the face of 2000°C heat, the black mist evaporated instantly like paper, revealing the main body composed of carapace and muscle tissue underneath.

The carapace cracked, carbonized, and crumbled.

The two Exotic Beasts were tightly entangled by the fire dragons in mid-air, their limbs twitching frantically—then, in the eyes of everyone, they were incinerated inch by inch, turning into ash.

From the moment Su Chen raised his hand until the two Exotic Beasts completely disappeared.

It took no more than five seconds.

Two dark purple crystals fell from the ashes.

Su Chen raised his hand.

As if pulled by an invisible magnetic force, the two crystals traced two arcs and flew precisely into his palm.

He closed his fingers and tucked the crystals into his trench coat's inner pocket.

From beginning to end, he didn't even spare them a second glance.

Inside the vehicle.

Section Chief Han Zheng's hand holding the gun slowly lowered, his finger still resting on the trigger after firing.

The image of the two fire dragons incinerating the Exotic Beasts still lingered on his retinas.

That wasn't a battle at all.

It was an execution.

Two E-Rank Exotic Beasts, beings capable of wiping out a fully armed special forces unit with just one,

didn't even have the qualification to resist in front of him.

Section Chief Han Zheng took a deep breath, his lungs filling with hot air that smelled of burnt material.

In the face of such an existence, modern human military power was as fragile as a sheet of paper.

"Strong... too strong..."

Wang Hao had already stood up from his seat, his entire body pressed against the car window, his eyes wide enough to pop out of their sockets.

The first time was above the ruins of the steel structure factory, where he walked through the air on a staircase of flames.

The second time was the white flames soaring into the sky in the distance of the East Sea.

This time, it was right in front of him; the thermal radiation from the fire dragons baked his face through the window, making every hair on his body tremble.

Each time was stronger than the last.

Did this man's power... actually have a limit?

The survivors inside the vehicle, the refugees who had just been praying, crying, and holding their children while waiting for death, witnessed the entire process.

From the appearance of the staircase of flames to the two monsters turning to ash, it took less than twenty seconds.

Everyone knelt on the bumpy floor of the vehicle.

Their foreheads hit the metal floor, making dull thudding sounds.

Words of praise, awe, and prayer in various languages mixed together, converging into a buzzing, tearful murmur.

An old woman with a tear-stained face pointed with trembling fingers at the figure stepping on flames outside the window, repeating the same word over and over.

The translator beside her, lips trembling, whispered to Section Chief Han Zheng,

"She says... Fire God. She is saying the Fire God has descended."

In another vehicle.

Lin Xiaoman was sprawled against the car window, her pupils beneath dark circles dilated to the maximum, mouth slightly agape, stunned for a full three seconds.

She knew the President was strong.

But "knowing" and "seeing with one's own eyes" were two completely different kinds of impact.

Around her were ruins, corpses, and the real air permeated with the smell of blood.

Yet the President stood on a staircase of flames, raising a hand in an understated manner.

And the two monsters were gone.

She clenched the hem of her hoodie, her knuckles turning white, and her whole body was trembling.

It wasn't fear.

It was something surging from the depths of her chest, something almost scalding.

To be a member of such a person... even if it was just building a communication system for him... she was already standing on the line that would change the world.

In the same vehicle, in the back row.

Professor Henry looked through his intact lens at the figure on the staircase of flames outside the window.

In his hand, he clutched the bronze piece and Isaac's photo.

The two items were stacked together, metal against photo paper, cold against warmth.

The question Liu Yuyan had asked him surfaced again.

"To exchange ten or even twenty years of your lifespan for a pill that can cure any disease—would you be willing?"

That kind of medicine capable of curing terminal cancer was simply not a product of modern medicine.

It wasn't a technological breakthrough, gene editing, or the ultimate extension of immunotherapy.

It was power that transcended the human cognitive system.

It was an authority that only gods could touch!

And the wielder of this power... was standing on the flames thirty meters above his head.

Kindling.

Henry clenched the bronze piece, the metal edge stinging his palm.

He had pursued medicine his whole life.

But today, on this scorched earth torn apart by both artillery fire and weirdness,

his medicine—could not even save a twelve-year-old child.

If the power of Kindling could do what he could not.

Then he was willing.

Kneeling in a pool of blood, looking at Isaac's photo, smelling the mixture of disinfectant and gunpowder smoke, this "willingness" grew from the marrow of his bones.

There was no need to confirm it a second time.

---

On the other side of the battlefield.

The battle between Liu Yuyan and the Mantis Beast had been going on for nearly ten minutes.

Ten minutes.

For a Tier 1 Transcendent, it was approaching the limit of physical strength.

The Mantis Beast's carapace had extremely strong defensive capabilities; ordinary slashes could only leave white marks.

She had to find the joint gaps and cut in precisely to inflict effective damage.

For the first eight minutes, she had been doing exactly that.

Shield blocking the sickle, sword searching for gaps. Every block consumed her Holy Light reserves, and every dodge overdrawn her physical strength.

In the ninth minute, she found an opportunity.

The first set of Cross Slash split open a crack in the breastplate.

In the tenth minute, the second set of Cross Slash poured into the crack, and the Holy Light pierced straight into the core.

The Exotic Beast let out an unwilling shriek, its massive body collapsing to the ground with a boom, turning into a dark green crystal.

Liu Yuyan knelt on one knee.

The holy runes on her silver-white armor had dimmed significantly, and her Holy Light reserves were running low.

Under her helmet, her breathing was so rapid that her chest ached; sweat flowed down her temples into her eyes, blurring her vision for a moment.

But she still braced herself with the Sword of Judgment and forced herself to stand up.

Then—

A wave of pressure descended from the sky.

It was not pressure of the Exotic Beast level. It was not E-Rank. It was not anything she had ever seen before.

It was a pure, formless weight, as if the entire sky were pressing down on her head.

Liu Yuyan's knees buckled again, and the tip of her sword dug into the gravel ground, barely preventing her from falling to her knees completely.

It wasn't exhaustion—the air itself was becoming heavy.

She struggled to look up.

In the deepest part of the sky's rift, something was moving within that pure void.

Everyone felt it.

The survivors in the vehicle fell silent again.

A primitive fear, deeper than any Exotic Beast, surging up from the depths of their genes.

Something was staring at them.

Not with eyes—but with its entire existence.

Section Chief Han Zheng's back was instantly soaked in cold sweat; his intuition was screaming frantically, warning him to flee immediately.

Wang Hao's hand clutching the bronze piece was trembling.

The golden light on the bronze piece had not gone out, but the frequency had changed—from high-frequency resonance to a slow, heavy pulse.

Su Chen stood on the staircase of flames and looked up.

The pupils behind his mask contracted slightly.

Within the void of the sky's rift, a massive, undefinable shape was squeezing its way out.

It was not falling.

It was squeezing.

It was too big; the rift could not contain it.

Under its pressure, space emitted an inaudible screech, and the edges of the rift were torn further open.

The clouds in the dark red sky were distorted by its existence, like a stirred-up oil painting.

Tentacles? Fins? Arthropod limbs?

It was impossible to tell.

The silhouette changed every second.

The only thing certain was—an eye.

Opening from that mass of chaos.

It was huge, with a diameter of at least over thirty meters.

The pupil was not round, but a vertical slit, abyss-like black, surrounded by a ring of scarlet iris.

That eye slowly rotated.

Its gaze swept across the land. Across the ruins. Across the convoy. Across the kneeling refugees.

Across Su Chen, who was stepping on the staircase of flames.

Its gaze had no weight—but everyone it "saw" lost the ability to breathe in that same second.

It wasn't suffocation.

It was a freezing at the level of the soul.

They had been marked by a higher-dimensional existence.

Liu Yuyan braced herself on her sword with one knee, her Holy Light trembling frantically, and her armor emitted a groan of being overwhelmed.

She looked up at that giant eye, her lips turning slightly pale under her helmet.

"Is this... a D-Rank?"

Su Chen's system panel flashed frantically—

"Emergency Warning!"

"Entity Detected—D-Rank Confirmed!"

"Species Analysis in progress... Analysis complete."

"Name: Abyssal Eye."

"Species: Indescribable. Cthulhu Suborder."

"Characteristics: Mental domain coverage, Space Distortion, Rule-level erosion, non-fixed material form."

"Minimum recommended configuration for solo kill: Tier 3: Fire-Bearer!"

Under Su Chen's mask, his expression changed.

He lowered his head and glanced at the two E-Rank crystals he had just harvested.

Then he glanced at the data on the panel again.

Then, from behind the mask, came a very faint murmur that only he could hear.

"D-Rank... Abyssal Eye."

His fingers clenched around the crystals.

"Interesting."