311: Chapter 311 The Death of the Beast Tamer

The shockwave from the explosion pushed the body of Perfected Lord Yushou back more than ten meters.

His feet dragged two furrows across the surface of the shattered meteorite, and the shards of skyfall steel beneath his feet were scraped up and flew to both sides.

The wound on his chest was large.

At least three of his ribs were broken, and the jagged bone fragments had pierced through his skin, exposed to the outside.

Charred flesh was turned outwards, and one could see his heart still beating inside.

He was still alive, but he wouldn't live long.

The golden light of his spiritual energy protective barrier had completely dissipated and vanished.

Armor-piercing rounds, high-explosive shells, and missile fragments flew in from all directions, striking his body, the rock beneath his feet, and the shattered meteorite fragments.

His body was enduring dense, concentrated damage.

The physical resilience of a Golden Core Stage cultivator far exceeded the imagination of mortals.

Even if his spiritual energy was exhausted, and even if there wasn't a single piece of intact flesh on his entire body, as long as his Golden Core remained, he would not fall.

He looked up at the edge of the crater.

The flashes of artillery fire reflected on his face, flickering light and dark, light and dark.

His eyes were still bright.

His dark golden pupils flickered in the firelight, like two candle flames about to extinguish.

Su Mingyuan stood beside the command vehicle at the edge of the crater, watching the scene at the bottom of the pit through the drone's camera.

That person was still standing.

Covered in blood, his left arm broken, his right leg crippled, and the wound on his chest was large enough to fit a fist inside.

"Why isn't he dead yet?" Zhang Dabiao said over the communication channel.

Tao Zhe stared at the readings on the spectrum analyzer.

"His Golden Core is still operating."

"Then continue. Shatter his Golden Core," Su Mingyuan said.

He switched to Chen Rong's channel.

"Chen Rong, can you see his abdomen?"

"Yes." Chen Rong's voice was curt.

"The Golden Core is located in his Dantian. Concentrate fire on that spot."

"Understood."

On the north side of the crater, the twenty mechas controlled by Chen Rong simultaneously adjusted the angles of their cannons.

Twenty twin-barreled cannons aimed at the abdomen of the person at the bottom of the crater.

Fire.

Concentrated fire.

Two hundred and forty armor-piercing rounds struck the same spot within 0.3 seconds.

Perfected Lord Yushou's body leaned backward.

The armor-piercing rounds completely shattered his Golden Core.

He could feel the Golden Core that had been with him for five hundred years crack into several pieces within his abdominal cavity, and the dark golden spiritual energy flowed out like water from the gaps between the fragments, seeping into his flesh and blood, seeping into the air.

It dissipated.

It all dissipated.

As the last trace of spiritual energy flowed out of his body, his knees buckled.

He knelt down.

The shattered skyfall steel fragments dug into his kneecaps, which was painful, but this pain was insignificant compared to the injuries elsewhere on his body.

The artillery fire overhead ceased.

Su Mingyuan had ordered a ceasefire.

The spiritual energy reading on the spectrum analyzer returned to zero.

The Golden Core was shattered, the spiritual energy had dissipated, and this person was definitely dead.

The bottom of the crater fell completely silent.

The Sect Leader of the Myriad Spirit Sect, Perfected Lord Yushou.

Died at the hands of a group of ants he had looked down upon from beginning to end.

——

Su Mingyuan waited for five minutes.

During those five minutes, the drone hovered continuously above the corpse, and the spectrum analyzer's reading remained at zero.

"Death confirmed," Tao Zhe said.

Su Mingyuan jumped down from the command vehicle.

"I'm going down to take a look."

"I'll go with you." Tao Zhe picked up the spectrum analyzer and sampling tools.

Zhang Dabiao's mecha was already on standby at the crater's edge. "I'll go down and scout the path first."

The mecha found a relatively gentle slope along the crater wall, stepping on the rock layers, and walked step by step to the bottom of the crater.

The shattered meteorite debris was spread all over the ground.

Zhang Dabiao's mecha stood still next to the corpse. After confirming there was no threat around, it extended its palm against the crater wall, allowing Su Mingyuan and Tao Zhe to step on its palm to descend.

Su Mingyuan walked over to the corpse.

Up close, this person was even thinner than he had appeared on the drone footage.

He was as gaunt as a skeleton wrapped in a layer of skin.

His gray-white hair was scattered on the ground, mixed in with the gravel.

There was a bowl-sized hole in his abdomen, the edges of which were charred, and one could see the shattered remnants of the Golden Core inside—a few dark golden fragments that no longer glowed, looking like pieces of broken amber.

Tao Zhe crouched down and scanned the corpse with the spectrum analyzer.

"Spiritual energy in the body is zero. The Golden Core is completely shattered. Death confirmed."

He scanned the ground around the corpse again.

"Here."

He pointed to the area around the corpse's waist.

Beneath the tattered black robe, something was tied to his belt.

A pouch.

Su Mingyuan crouched down to take a look.

Gray-brown.

Animal hide texture.

Palm-sized.

The opening of the pouch was tied with a thin string, knotted with a slipknot.

It was almost identical to the storage pouch of the Spirit Taming Daoist.

Su Mingyuan reached out and untied the pouch.

The texture felt very familiar.

He did not open it, but instead handed the pouch to Tao Zhe.

"Process it according to the previous procedure."

Tao Zhe took the pouch and carefully placed it into a sealed skyfall steel box.

Su Mingyuan stood up and looked around the bottom of the crater.

The shattered meteorite debris was scattered all over the three-kilometer-wide crater floor.

The originally intact meteorite had been split apart by Perfected Lord Yushou—shattered into hundreds of pieces of various sizes, the largest being tens of meters long, and the smallest only the size of a fist.

But no matter how many pieces it shattered into, the material remained unchanged.

It was still skyfall steel.

He walked a circle along the bottom of the crater, stepping on the skyfall steel fragments as he moved forward; the soles of his boots could feel the hardness and coldness characteristic of the metal.

When he reached the center of the crater floor, he stopped, bent down, and picked up a palm-sized fragment of skyfall steel.

Gray-black, heavy, with a layer of fine patterns on the surface.

He turned the fragment over to look at it, then threw it back on the ground.

"Damage report," he said into the communicator.

Tao Zhe's voice came down from above.

"Total mecha losses are three hundred and three. Among them, two hundred and seventy-one were remotely controlled, and thirty-two were cockpit-controlled."

"Personnel casualties."

"Zero."

Three hundred and three mechas in exchange for the life of one Late Golden Core Stage cultivator.

Su Mingyuan felt this trade was worth it.

He looked up at the three-hundred-meter-high crater wall.

At the edge of the crater, the remaining sixteen hundred-plus mechas looked like a ring of iron-gray teeth embedded in the skyline of the crater's mouth.

He opened the army-wide communication channel.

"Battle over."

Only four words.

A faint cheer came from above the crater.

The sound bounced back and forth between the three-kilometer-wide crater walls a few times, and by the time it reached Su Mingyuan's ears, it had become a blurred echo.

He didn't say anything more, but instead switched the communicator to the command channel.

"Tao Zhe, notify the Forward Base to transport logistics supplies and repair equipment over. Repair the damaged mechas that can be fixed, and salvage parts from those that can't."

"The Engineering Corps' road construction plan remains unchanged; accelerate the progress."

"Process the storage pouch according to the previous procedure—the pulse release device should still be in the laboratory of the Giant World; have it transferred over."

He glanced at the scattered skyfall steel fragments beneath his feet and thought for a moment.

"Have the Engineering Mecha come down first to sort these fragments by size. Load the small pieces directly onto vehicles to be transported away, and wait for the cutting equipment to arrive before processing the large pieces."

After saying this, he found a flat piece of skyfall steel at the bottom of the crater and sat down.

The wind blew upwards from the bottom of the crater, carrying the smell of dust and gunpowder residue.

Tao Zhe walked down from the crater wall and stood next to Su Mingyuan.

"He came out from inside the meteorite," Tao Zhe said, "which means he had been hiding inside the meteorite for a hundred years."

Su Mingyuan grunted in acknowledgment.

"Just like the Spirit Taming Daoist," Tao Zhe continued, "a cultivator who fell from the Upper Realm. But his cultivation is lower, and he followed a different path—the Spirit Taming Daoist controlled puppets, while this person controlled demonic beasts."

He paused.

"Four worlds, and currently two cultivators have been discovered. The Zombie World and the Zerg World—"

"There should be two more."

Su Mingyuan finished his sentence.

The two looked at each other and neither continued speaking.

Su Mingyuan stood up from the fragment and brushed the dust off his pants.

"Let's deal with the matters at hand first."