44: Chapter 44 The Candle Dragon's Divine Thought Manifests Externally, Taking It All to the Extreme!

Chapter 44: External Manifestation of Zhulong Divine Sense, Getting Creative! Provincial Capital Demon Suppression Division, Seventh Underground Floor.

Emergency Command Center.

Seventeen people sat around the long table.

On the large screen was a map of the area surrounding the provincial capital.

Four red light spots were flashing simultaneously, corresponding to four level-four to level-five Ghost Realm outbreak points.

Next to each red dot, the deployed forces were marked.

Team Four, Team Six, Team Eleven, and the temporarily formed 7-9 Joint Team.

Every designation was followed by the exact same note:

Insufficient forces!

Lu Zhanyou's voice was hoarse. "East District No. 3 Ghost Realm is expanding forty percent faster than estimated. Team Eleven can hold out for six hours at most. Team Four has already suffered its first case of resentment infection. We must draw personnel from the reserves to reinforce them."

"There are only two reserve teams left. One is resting, and the other is still en route."

A female staff officer spoke in an exhausted tone. "Besides, both teams consist mostly of two-star newcomers with only three three-stars among them. Sending them in is just sending them to their deaths."

Silence fell for a moment.

Everyone understood that this was not just one person's predicament.

Right now, the Trialists' forces were stretched to their absolute limits, with breaches opening everywhere.

And right at this moment...

Bang!

The door to the conference room was slammed open from the outside!

An intelligence officer rushed in, looking panicked and terrified.

"Director Lu! In the direction of Heqiao Town, Qingzhou! Signs of an Evil God descent have appeared! Current level confirmed as... Demon Seed grade!"

"Investigator Zhao Pingchuan of the Qingzhou frontline reconnaissance team has led his squad inside. The internal situation is currently unknown, and psionic probes have failed."

The conference room instantly erupted.

"What?"

"Demon Seed? How is that possible? The last time a Demon Seed appeared in the Northern Region was four years ago!"

"How could a Demon Seed pop up over in Qingzhou?"

"Is the intelligence wrong, or did someone intentionally..."

"Quiet."

Lu Zhanyou spoke, and the room instantly fell dead silent.

He stood up from his chair, his gaze pinned to the waveform chart in the intelligence officer's hands.

He recognized that curve—the one that shot up from zero to its peak before continuously oscillating.

He had seen it with his own eyes years ago.

On the border of another province.

In that battle, he and other high-rank Trialists mounted a siege, ultimately losing three fingers and half his life just to kill that Demon Seed that had only just completed its first metamorphosis.

He reached out and grabbed his jacket hanging on the back of his chair.

"Director Lu!"

The female staff officer stood up abruptly. "You haven't slept in four days! And... and you know the rules better than anyone: you can't go!"

An older staff officer beside her also stood up. "Yes, Director, you are currently the pillar of the Northern Region's defense line. If something happens to you..."

"Are you finished?"

Lu Zhanyou took a deep breath and turned to look at them.

No one dared to answer.

The older staff officer drew a sharp breath. "Director Lu, especially in times like these, those at the top cannot fall. We aren't just protecting you as an individual; we are protecting the chair you sit in. As long as the system remains intact, the Northern Region won't collapse. But if the system collapses, dozens of cities and millions of people—not a single soul will survive. Those were your own words."

Lu Zhanyou did not refute him.

Every single word the officer said was true.

But right now, that rulebook no longer applied.

"Tell me then, if I don't go, who will? Can the provincial capital spare a single living soul who can fight a Demon Seed right now?"

Everyone exchanged glances in silence.

Lu Zhanyou pushed back his chair and walked past the conference table. "The system won't collapse."

He pushed open the conference room door and walked into the corridor without turning back.

"At least not today."

...

Meanwhile, on the other side at the plaza.

Lin Ye's aura was like that of a deity. Pushing off the ground, he shot forward like a streak of golden light.

Terrified, the Demon Seed's instincts forced its vertical mouth wide open. Its six-fingered talons crossed in front of it, tearing open two intersecting spatial rifts in an attempt to block Lin Ye's path.

Lin Ye swung the zhulong staff. Under the harmonizing power of the kun tu light, the blazing white-gold patterns condensed into a tangible, razor-sharp edge, and he smashed the staff onto the intersection of the spatial rifts!

The spatial rifts exploded; before the fragments could scatter, lightning vaporized them into wisps of smoke.

"ROAR!!!"

The Demon Seed let out a piercing screech, the black mist on its lower body swirling violently as it retreated frantically.

But Lin Ye was faster.

He swept the zhulong staff upward from below, the tip slamming squarely into the Demon Seed's chin.

Its vertical mouth cracked open from the blow!

The Demon Seed's head snapped backward, its entire body losing balance and tumbling back.

Lin Ye gave it no chance to fall.

A second strike landed directly on the Demon Seed's left shoulder.

Scales shattered, exposing torn dark-green flesh and a writhing layer of black tendons underneath.

"AOOOW!"

The Demon Seed let out another deafening roar, its six-fingered talons clawing wildly at Lin Ye's face.

But with a quick dodge, Lin Ye shifted to its right side and swept a third strike across its ribs.

The fight on the plaza became a one-sided slaughter.

Lin Ye's figure flashed continuously around the Demon Seed. Every time the zhulong staff struck, it left a bone-deep wound on the monster's body.

The Demon Seed tore rift after spatial rift, but Lin Ye dodged every single one ahead of time.

The harmonizing power of the kun tu jade essence had heightened his perception to an extraordinary degree.

Swept away by a strike, the Demon Seed crashed through a row of shops at the edge of the plaza.

Brick walls collapsed, rubble flew, and a plume of dust shot into the sky.

It struggled out of the ruins, most of its scales sloughed off to reveal pitted, mutilated flesh beneath.

Even its vertical mouth was battered out of shape.

Yet it was still devouring.

Evil energy, resentment power, and even the blood lingering on the ground surged into its vertical mouth. With every gulp, the wounds on its body healed a fraction.

Though the speed of its healing clearly could no longer keep up with the rate it was taking damage.

"Holy shit..."

Fang Hao watched Lin Ye rain blow after blow down on the Demon Seed, each strike packing more power and landing with even greater precision than the last.

It was violence taken to the absolute extreme!

He couldn't help swallowing hard. "Brother Lin looks pretty refined on the surface... but how come when he fights, he's even scarier than that Demon Seed..."

"Daddy Lin!"

Unable to contain himself, Li Yan yelled at the top of his lungs!

"At this rate..."

Investigator Zhao Pingchuan's voice was full of disbelief. "Maybe he really can..."

But before he could finish his sentence,

the Demon Seed suddenly froze all movement.

Standing in the center of the ruins, it stopped devouring and thrashing, and the black mist on its lower body ceased its churning.

It was as if someone had pressed a pause button.

Its body began to tremble, and oozing from beneath its scales was no longer dark-red liquid, but a black light!

"Not good!"

Investigator Zhao Pingchuan's face paled drastically. He grabbed Fang Hao and Li Yan, dragging them backward. "The Demon Seed is going into its near-death backlash!"

The black light enveloped its entire body into a rapidly expanding cocoon of dark energy.

From within the light cocoon came a series of crisp snaps as bones shattered and reorganized, squelching sounds of flesh tearing and merging, and roars that grew increasingly sharp, unhinged, and unearthly!

"BUZZ BUZZ BUZZ!!"

The light cocoon shattered.

The re-emerged Demon Seed was a full size larger than before, standing nearly ten meters tall!

Its entire body was covered in dark obsidian scales. Three slits had torn open on its back, each sprouting a fist-sized tumor densely covered with eyeball-like patterns.

Most terrifying was its vertical mouth: the fissure that originally ran from head to chin now extended across its entire upper torso!

Spanning all the way from the top of its head down to its waist, two interlocking rows of bone spurs grew along the edges of the split.

Opening and closing, it looked like countess side-by-side teeth chewing simultaneously.

Its body was still battered.

Yet a demonic nature far more violent than before erupted from deep within its body.

This demonic essence was less a form of power and more a manifestation of will.

An extreme, stop-at-nothing madness bent on ripping its enemy to shreds.

"AOOOW!!!"

It roared at the sky, the sound turning into black sonic waves that rippled out in all directions.

Wherever the sonic waves swept,

outer walls of all buildings fractured, glass windows blew out, and even the dark-red clouds swirling in the sky were blasted into a gaping hole.

Within a radius of several kilometers outside Heqiao Town,

people in several towns and over a dozen villages heard this roar at the exact same moment.

Everyone turned to look in this direction, their faces filled with utter terror.

Investigator Zhao Pingchuan staggered up. "Oh no, this monster wants to leave! We have to stop it!"

It wanted to flee to a populated area to devour a wave of living beings before coming back to fight Lin Ye!

Naturally, Lin Ye was not about to let it leave.

Judging from its aura,

in its near-death backlash state, every aspect of this creature had been drastically boosted!

Its six-fingered claws struck first, slicing through the air and dragging out six parallel spatial rifts in their wake.

The three tumors on its back lit up simultaneously, firing three corrosive beams from different angles to cut off Lin Ye's retreat.

Then, its vertical mouth gurgled open to its limit, transforming its entire upper body into a massive maw that came snapping down over Lin Ye's head.

"Quite an appetite. You think you can swallow me whole?"

The moment Lin Ye parried the six spatial rifts with the zhulong staff, he felt his hands go numb.

This claw strike was more than twice as heavy as before.

The three corrosive beams followed immediately. He sidestepped two, while the third grazed his left shoulder; light from the kun tu jade essence surged to heal it at once, but just as the evil energy was neutralized, the Demon Seed's next attack arrived.

Its attack speed was exponentially faster, each hit imbued with wild power that overdrew its own Demon Seed origin.

Wounds began appearing on Lin Ye's body.

His left shoulder was torn open by claws, his right leg scorched by a beam of corrosion, and his back sliced open by a bone spur shot from the vertical mouth.

But...

it was useless.

Because the moment a wound appeared, the kun tu jade essence would heal it instantly.

And every time the Demon Seed managed to injure Lin Ye,

it had to take an even heavier counter-strike itself.

It had to endure almost ten heavy staff blows just to inflict a single injury on Lin Ye.

Although the Demon Seed could self-heal, it paled in comparison to the kun tu jade essence.

Before long, Lin Ye remained completely pristine,

while the monster was blood-soaked, covered in massive, hard-to-heal gashes!

"That thing is overdrawing its demonic essence right now! Once its origin stops burning, all the accumulated injuries Lin Ye inflicted will erupt all at once!"

Investigator Zhao Pingchuan, being combat-experienced, quickly analyzed the situation.

He trembled all over with excitement!

Hiding behind a stone pillar, Fang Hao saw it too.

Lin Ye's shoulder wound went from torn open to bleeding stopped to fresh meat regenerating—all in just a brief moment.

"It's like he turned on god-mode invincibility, holy hell..."

Squatting beside the pillar, Li Yan stared at the fight with the intensity of someone watching the World Cup finals. "Left hook staff! Beautiful! Right sweep! It hit! The Demon Seed's chest cracked again!"

Investigator Zhao Pingchuan lacked their lightheartedness.

He worried that now that the Demon Seed was pushed to this point,

its final desperate counterattack would only be even fiercer!

That was a Demon Seed—an existence dreaded and feared by every nation across the globe!

At that moment...

the Demon Seed's body suddenly froze.

The three tumors on its back burst simultaneously, splattering green liquid all over the ground, but the liquid didn't drain away; as if pulled by an invisible force, it flowed back into its vertical mouth.

Its scales exploded one by one starting from its tail, each detonation sending a wisp of dark light into the depths of its vertical mouth.

"Is this guy planning to burn its own demonic origin?"

Even Fang Hao realized what was happening!

Deep inside its vertical mouth, a sphere of black light was rapidly condensing.

The orb was only fist-sized, but the energy wave it radiated caused the entire plaza floor to sink and fracture.

BUZZ!!

The air was compressed into visible concentric ripples, and space in the center of those ripples twisted, folded, and shattered.

Investigator Zhao Pingchuan's psionic anchor was completely destroyed at this moment. Groaning, he clutched his head and sank to one knee, squeezing out a warning through his fingers: "Oh no, is it coming after all... Watch out, Lin Ye!"

Lin Ye watched as the black orb swelled larger and larger.

The energy contained within far exceeded the Demon Seed's own level.

Tightening his grip on the zhulong staff, the zhulong seal on his wrist radiated the brightest light it had ever produced.

The Zhulong Divine Sense seemed to have awakened.

For the first time, it actively responded to his will.

The Zhulong Divine Sense surged down Lin Ye's arm into the zhulong staff, condensing, reshaping, and solidifying at the front end of the shaft!

A blade extended from the top, and dragon scale patterns surfaced along the shaft. The eyebrows-high staff transformed into an ancient, long-handled dragon saber.

The blade gleamed dark gold, with a relief of a dragon coiled along its spine. The dragon's head was embedded at the guard, eyes tightly shut, yet its mouth breathed a palpitation-inducing power.

"An external manifestation of the Zhulong Divine Sense?"

Lin Ye was surprised.

In truth, there were countless ways to utilize Zhulong Divine Sense—enough to get endlessly creative with it.

But because his mastery was too low before, he couldn't pull them off.

Now, as he continuously developed the zhulong seal, things that were previously impossible had become achievable...

"Enchanted with divine sense, sharpened by dragon majesty."

The moment the saber was formed, the dark-red clouds in the sky parted as if scorched, rolling back in all directions to reveal a rare patch of clear blue sky.

Sunlight poured down through the hole in the clouds, illuminating the zhulong saber, its intricate patterns glowing like molten lava under the sun.

At that exact instant, the Demon Seed's black light orb finished condensing.

Summoning the last sliver of its strength, it spat out the sphere.

The dark light hurtled toward Lin Ye with a long tail of flame!

Space along its path was torn into fleeting voids, and the entire street warped out of shape!

Facing the dark light, Lin Ye swung his blade.

The moment the zhulong saber collided with the black orb,

golden light and black light locked in a stalemate at the point of contact, intertwining and annihilating each other.

The air between them was ripped into two halves—one half golden, the other half black—with a boundary line as thin as a single strand of hair.

Yet the pressure it bore was enough to crush a mountain!

Investigator Zhao Pingchuan, Fang Hao, and Li Yan all held their breath simultaneously.

They saw Lin Ye's feet slowly sliding back along the ground, plowing two inch-deep trenches into the earth.

Their hearts leapt into their throats, blood pounding wildly against their eardrums, and in the next second...

Gold swallowed the black!

The zhulong saber cleaved the black orb, splitting the sphere that carried the Demon Seed's entire origin right down the middle.

The orb exploded, but before the black energy could spread, it was wrapped, compressed, and annihilated by the temporal power attached to the zhulong saber, finally dissipating into a wisp of smoke!

Unstoppable, the slash cleaved through the orb and then sliced straight down the Demon Seed's vertical mouth—from the crown of its head to its waist—along its pre-existing split, cleaving its entire body in half!

The Demon Seed's body froze.

Starting from the line cut by the zhulong saber, its scales, flesh, bones, and tendons crumbled, shattered, and disintegrated into ash layer by layer.

A crystal core fell to the ground.

Lin Ye focused his eyes to look...

It was dark gold!