89: Chapter 89 This kid is roasting the alien beasts like candied hawthorns!

Su Chen hovered in mid-air.

A telekinetic field spread outward with him as the center, locking five Exotic Beasts in place.

Three Shadow Erosion Beasts were fixed in place, their reverse-jointed limbs kicking at the void, black mist churning, yet they could not advance a single step.

The six articulated limbs of the two Scythe-Blade Mantis Beasts slashed frantically, their scythes cutting sharp whistling sounds into the air, yet they couldn't hit a thing.

Nailed down.

Five E-Rank Anomaly entities, like five specimens pinned to a wall.

Su Chen did not act immediately.

His original plan was not like this.

The Great Catastrophe three years later would not just send E-Ranks to knock on the door.

D-Ranks, C-Ranks, and even more terrifying things would surge in like a tide.

Relying on Kindling alone was not enough.

Far from enough.

He needed more capable people.

And battle was the best catalyst.

Blood and death would force out the potential deep within human bones.

This was a cold judgment, but it was correct.

Over in Lighthouse Country, they had paid the price for their arrogance.

But here, it was different.

Su Chen looked down.

Beneath the overpass, shell casings covered the entire bridge deck, golden and bright, emitting a crisp metallic clinking sound when stepped on.

He saw Zhao Xiaobei.

The twenty-three-year-old private had shattered knees, yet he was still crawling forward.

His rifle was held horizontally across his chest, the barrel hot enough to fry an egg, and the magazine had long been empty.

But he was still crawling.

Crawling toward the direction of the Exotic Beasts.

He saw the General.

Sixty-one years old, thirty-seven years of military service.

Holding a nine-millimeter pistol, he stood before the E-Rank Exotic Beasts.

The pistol was useless, he knew.

But he stood there, not retreating a single step.

Su Chen's gaze swept across the battlefield.

Overturned armored vehicles.

The charred wreckage of infantry fighting vehicles.

And the half-exposed envelope in the signal soldier's pocket.

Eleven suicide notes.

They had written them before setting out.

Su Chen's fingers moved slightly.

Enough.

The movement was very light, as if shooing away an annoying fly.

The five Exotic Beasts rose into the air simultaneously.

Their multi-ton bodies were uprooted from the ground by an invisible force, floating to a height of fifteen meters.

The telekinetic field began to tighten.

Everyone on the battlefield heard that sound.

Creak.

Creak... Creak...

It was the slow, continuous sound of distortion made by the Exotic Beasts' skeletons under the pressure of the telekinesis.

It was like someone using their hands, bit by bit, slowly tightening a tin can.

The black mist on the surface of the Shadow Erosion Beasts was pressed thinner and thinner, revealing skin beneath that resembled charred tree bark.

On the indestructible carapaces of the Scythe-Blade Mantis Beasts, spiderweb-like cracks appeared.

Dark green bodily fluids seeped out from the gaps, stretching into threads in the air, dripping down, only to be evaporated by the invisible force field halfway through.

Zhao Xiaobei squatted on the ground, neck tilted back, his mouth hanging open unconsciously.

He saw it.

Those five monsters, which had rendered the entire battalion's firepower useless, were now like five grasshoppers gripped in the hands of a brat.

Su Chen opened the fingers of his right hand, aimed at the void, and slashed gently.

Silent and soundless.

Five Space Cut lines swept through simultaneously.

The four reverse-jointed legs of the Shadow Erosion Beasts were severed at the root.

The six articulated limbs and two scythe-like forelimbs of the Scythe-Blade Mantis Beasts were instantly separated.

The cross-sections were as smooth as a mirror, without a single drop of blood.

Space itself had been severed; even bodily fluids didn't have time to flow out.

The severed limbs tumbled through the air and fell, smashing onto the bridge deck and clattering into the pile of shell casings.

The five Exotic Beasts, now left with only their bare torsos and heads, were held in mid-air by telekinesis.

Their screams became sharp, broken, and filled with inhuman terror and pain.

The rifle in Zhao Xiaobei's hands fell to the ground with a "clatter."

He squatted amidst the shell casings, his chin trembling.

These things.

Things that bullets couldn't pierce.

Things that artillery shells couldn't blast apart.

Were torn open just like tearing paper.

The General stood beside the command vehicle, his pistol hanging at his side.

In his sixty-one years of life, he had never seen such unreasonable power.

Su Chen's right palm lit up.

Pure flames unleashed by a Tier 3: Torchbearer.

The air around his palm turned into blue-white plasma, illuminating half of his figure like a glowing statue.

Flames coalesced in the void behind him—one, two, five, ten.

Fifteen blue-white flame spears lined up neatly, their tips all pointing at those five limb-less torsos.

"Go."

A single word.

Fifteen spears shot out simultaneously, three for each Exotic Beast, piercing through from different angles.

The five-thousand-degree high-temperature flames, imbued with the unique energy of an extraordinary, instantly crushed the black mist.

The spear tips pierced through the black mist, through the shells, through the bones, and emerged from the other side.

The Exotic Beasts' torsos were pinned like hedgehogs.

Blue-white flames surged from every puncture wound, spreading across their bodies, and a strange, meaty aroma permeated the air.

But they were not dead.

Su Chen precisely controlled the direction of the piercing to avoid the cores, scorching them but not killing them.

The dark red spots on the faces of the Shadow Erosion Beasts flickered violently, at a frequency so fast it was frantic.

If Exotic Beasts had expressions—that would be the purest form of fear.

Su Chen hovered in mid-air, looking down at them as they twisted and wailed in the flames.

"So, you can feel fear too."

The final step.

Telekinesis carried his body forward.

With one step taken, the new flame spear condensed in his right hand became thicker.

Two steps.

Three steps.

The spear was over a meter in diameter, trailing a five-meter-long blue-white flame tail, like a miniature sun held in his hand.

Su Chen slowly thrust the spear in.

It pierced through the head of the first Shadow Erosion Beast.

He continued forward.

Through the second.

The third.

Then through the two Scythe-Blade Mantis Beasts.

Like skewering a string of candied haws.

The five Exotic Beasts were skewered together by a giant flame spear, their torsos writhing in despair.

Su Chen let go.

The flames exploded from within.

It wasn't an explosion; it was incineration.

Every cell, every fiber, every speck of residue of the Exotic Beasts turned into flying ash.

The ashes were burned up a second time in the air, turning into dust finer than ash, drifting away under the leaden sky.

Five E-Rank crystals fell from the void.

The telekinetic field caught them, and they were tucked into his trench coat.

Su Chen turned around.

The gaze beneath his mask swept across the overpass one last time, across the shell casings, across the overturned armored vehicles, across every upturned face.

It paused on Zhao Xiaobei's face for a second.

It paused on the General's face for a second.

Then, he teleported away.

From arrival to departure, it had taken no more than two minutes.

Beneath the overpass.

Silence.

Zhao Xiaobei squatted in the pile of shell casings, a scorching, uncontrollable tremor rising from the base of his spine.

Tears hit the shell casings with a "ding."

The General stood where he was, his pistol never having been raised.

From beginning to end, he hadn't found a reason to raise his gun.

He clenched his fist, released it, clenched it again, and released it again.

Finally, he looked up toward the north.

The direction of Jingzhou.

"The bottom line of Huaguo has never been something others can defend for us."

He added a sentence in his heart.

"But being able to have someone defend it together—"

The wind poured through the gaps in the overpass, blowing away the last traces of plasma afterglow.

The shell casings rolled a few inches in the wind with a clatter.

The General closed his eyes.

"—is truly good."