153: Chapter 153 Suffering Torture

As Li Muzi pressed the start button, the engine emitted a low hum.

The intense airflow sent the surrounding Winged patrol guards reeling.

"What's going on? Why did that human ship suddenly start up?"

"Without the Grand Elder's passage authorization, who gave them permission to take off? Intercept! Stop them quickly!"

Dozens of Winged patrol guards rushed over, brandishing their spears.

However, Zhou An merely glanced coldly out the window, pressed his right hand against the cabin wall again, and light instantly erupted from his body, enveloping the entire spaceship.

"Jump!"

"Boom—!"

Before everyone's eyes, space suffered a violent collapse, and the silver-gray spaceship left behind a distorted afterimage in place, vanishing without a trace in an instant.

In the airspace ten kilometers away, space rippled like water, and the cruiser slid smoothly out of the void.

"Hoo..."

Zhou An released his hand, his face looking slightly pale, with a fine layer of sweat seeping from his forehead.

Performing a large-scale, long-distance space jump while carrying such a heavy vehicle consumed a massive amount of physical strength, even with his Tier 5 Peak physical constitution.

He casually pulled a shimmering stamina recovery potion from his system space and downed it; his originally depleted energy instantly began to recover rapidly.

"Boss, are you alright?" Li Muzi quickly held his shoulder, her eyes filled with worry.

"I'm fine. You go first, head straight back to Cloud Top Fortress."

Zhou An stood up, his gaze turning cold and sharp as a blade once more.

"Ivy is still on the 'Qingfeng Battleship', I have to go back and rescue her. We'll rendezvous then."

"Then be careful!"

Li Muzi knew she couldn't persuade Zhou An, so she could only offer a warning before immediately piloting the ship at full speed towards the fortress.

...

"Grand Elder, it's bad! That human spaceship suddenly disappeared from the radar; it's suspected they used a spatial jump item!"

Diplomat Kent rushed into the command room in a panic.

However, before Cormac could erupt, another guard rushed in, practically crawling, his voice completely distorted by extreme fear:

"Grand... Grand Elder! Young Master Hoffman... he was killed in his room!"

"What?!"

The goblet in Cormac's hand was crushed to pieces with a "pop", and the bright red wine mixed with glass shards pierced his palm.

He rushed frantically to his private residence, and when he saw the headless corpse on the floor—whose head couldn't even be found—a hysterical, violent rage instantly shattered his sanity.

"Zhou An... Shen Xingyue... I will have you die!!"

Cormac trembled with rage, his originally refined face now as hideous as a malevolent ghost.

He turned abruptly and released a thunderous roar over the ship-wide broadcast:

"Pass on my order! The entire ship enters Level 1 combat readiness! Seal off all airspace within a fifty-kilometer radius! Dispatch all reconnaissance planes and hunter squads; even if you have to turn this sky upside down, you must capture those humans and bring them back to me to be sliced to death!"

Just as the White Feather Guild fell into chaotic madness.

Qingfeng Battleship

Inside the bottom hold of this LV4 warship, which appeared bloated due to excessive modifications, a faint, imperceptible ripple appeared in space once again.

Zhou An's figure appeared out of thin air in the dim corridor.

The air here was damp and foul, and every inch of the metal plates exuded a chilling cold.

Zhou An closed his eyes, his powerful mental energy spreading to the surroundings like a tide, his spatial perception peeling away the spatial mist here layer by layer.

"Found it."

Zhou An opened his eyes abruptly, his figure flashing as he passed directly through a heavy energy barrier.

In a cold, damp iron cage, Ivy was suspended in mid-air, her four limbs tightly locked by four thick iron chains.

Her current state was horrifying to behold.

Her originally neat clothes were long since shattered, her entire body covered in dark red bloodstains and filth.

Most shocking of all were the pair of pure white wings on her back that had once symbolized honor—at this moment, the feathers had been almost entirely plucked, the blood-red flesh was turned inside out, and one could even clearly see the white bones.

She hung her head low, her breathing so weak it was barely audible, like a flickering candle in the wind.

Sensing someone had entered, Ivy struggled to lift her heavy eyelids; her gaze was unfocused, yet it still held a stubbornness that would never break.

She thought it was another one of Cormac's lackeys coming to force her to sign that Subordinate Contract.

"Get lost... I, Ivy... would rather die than agree... stop wasting your effort..."

She spat out a mouthful of bloody saliva, her voice as hoarse as sandpaper rubbing together.

Zhou An did not speak, simply stepping forward.

Looking at the broken body before him, he could imagine what kind of inhuman torture this captain, whom Hira loved most, had suffered in these short few days.

He didn't waste a word, a legendary grade healing injection appearing out of thin air in his hand.

The price of this item on the black market remained stubbornly high; one syringe cost a full 500,000 Level 5 material units. This was no longer just using medicine; it was burning money.

"Pfft."

The needle tip pierced accurately into Ivy's neck, and the entire tube of liquid was injected instantly.

The moment the medicine took effect, Ivy's lifeless body gave a violent jolt.

A vast and warm life energy erupted wildly within every single one of her cells!

As long as there was a breath left, this legendary grade medicine could forcibly pull someone back from the hands of the Underworld.

In the dazzling light, the hideous wounds on Ivy's body began to stop bleeding and heal at a speed visible to the naked eye, and even the base of her originally empty wings began to grow fresh, crystalline flesh rapidly.

Ivy's originally blurred consciousness instantly cleared.

She opened her eyes wide, staring fixedly at the man before her, her eyes filled with shock and confusion.

"Is it you...?"

Ivy widened her eyes, feeling the domineering yet warm vitality within her body, and finally managed to connect this low, cold voice in her mind with the human she had once feared so much.

"Are you... Lord Zhou An? How are you here..."

"Hira is very worried about you." Zhou An did not offer much explanation, the dark gold [star-extinguishing blade] in his hand suddenly drawn from its sheath.

"I'm taking you away."

"Swish!"

A sharp, incomparable dark gold blade light flashed.

The four thick iron chains that could lock the spiritual energy of a Tier 5 powerhouse were severed instantly, like fragile ramen noodles, in the face of Zhou An's Tier 5 Peak strength and the sharp star-extinguishing blade.

Losing the suspension force, Ivy fell from mid-air.

Zhou An stepped forward and caught her steadily in his arms.

"Don't move around, the radar outside has already scanned over."

Zhou An whispered a command to stop her instinctive struggle, his gaze piercing through the metal walls of the bottom hold.

In the night sky outside, countless blinding searchlights and radar waves were crisscrossing and scanning like crazy.

Cormac's rage had already turned the entire fleet into a giant meat grinder.

"Hold tight."

Zhou An's Void Star Arm erupted with dazzling starlight once again.

"Boom!"

Space distorted instantly, and the two figures vanished from the cell out of thin air.

The next second, they appeared in the sea of clouds ten kilometers away from the 'Qingfeng Battleship'.

Before Ivy could adapt to the cold wind at high altitude, Zhou An glanced at the overwhelming pursuit firelight behind him, gritted his teeth, and the light on his right arm did not pause for a second.

"Jump! Jump! Jump again!"

"Swish! Swish! Swish!"

In the night sky, Zhou An, carrying Ivy, was like a ghost flickering incessantly.

Every flicker was an extreme leap of ten kilometers.

In just a few minutes, he launched over a dozen spatial jumps in succession, tearing open a gap directly from the White Feather Guild's heavy encirclement and appearing in the absolutely safe airspace a hundred miles away.