345: Chapter 345 The battlefield completely enveloped in ink!

"Rumble!!!"

A deafening explosion echoed through the canyon.

The violent airwaves momentarily dispersed the surrounding black mist, and the ground was forcibly blasted into a massive crater dozens of meters wide, with rocks flying into the air and dust filling the sky.

"Did it hit?"

Helan Que panted heavily, staring fixedly at the dust cloud.

However, as the dust gradually dissipated, the pupils of the four shrank to the size of pinpoints, and a wave of even more desperate chill instantly surged through their entire bodies.

Empty.

Inside the huge crater, there were only a few rocks blasted into fragments.

There wasn't even half a piece of blood-stained clothing.

"How is this possible..." Yan Qinghuan took two steps back in disbelief, his blind eyes staring vacantly in that direction: "My formation clearly locked onto him..."

Just in the brief moment the four were plunged into extreme astonishment and self-doubt, in the darkness, the figure wearing the pale Faceless Man mask displayed a level of spatial trickery that could be called art.

"Zzzzt!"

A faint sound of thunder abruptly exploded in the black mist.

The Faceless Man seemed to step out from the void.

His body was like a weightless phantom, and under the cover of the black clouds, he instantly crossed a distance of dozens of meters, appearing on the far left of the team.

He didn't make a sound, not even looking at the four captains.

As he flipped his palm, a trace of purple lightning danced on his fingertips.

"Ah!!!"

Accompanied by a shrill, short scream.

The two academy members standing on the far left edge of the team hadn't even reacted before their companions beside them did, when the black mist beneath their feet suddenly rolled upwards, like two huge black sacks, instantly wrapping them up entirely.

Subsequently, a black shadow flashed, and those two living people disappeared from the spot without a trace.

"Bastard! Over there! On the left!"

Chu Tiankuo's eyes were splitting with rage, he abruptly turned his heavy sword, and a sharp sword energy shot out from his hand.

However, one second before the sword energy arrived, the Faceless Man's figure, like smoke blown away by the wind, dissolved into the air with extreme smoothness.

Chu Tiankuo's sword energy missed again, only cutting down a dozen towering ancient trees.

"Zzzzt!"

Thunder sounded again!

This time, it was at the right rear of the team.

The Faceless Man emerged from the shadows as if taking a leisurely stroll, and he tapped the zixiao thunder bamboo in his hand casually.

Three more members, who hadn't even had time to scream, were instantly stunned by electricity and directly engulfed by the black clouds surging up from under their feet, without even a bubble rising.

"Kill him! Kill him for me!!!"

Captain Shen Xiuan had completely lost his mind; like a beast that had lost its reason, he brandished his blood-colored long saber, slashing wildly in the black mist like a headless fly.

But every time he slashed, all he hit was a wisp of ethereal black gas.

Disappear.

Appear.

Disappear again.

Appear again.

The Faceless Man was like a ghost nobleman strolling in his own back garden.

Every time he appeared, it was inevitably accompanied by the flashing of purple lightning.

And every time the lightning lit up, three or four people from the team would be precisely removed.

The four captains attacked with all their might, whether it was sword energy, sandstorms, or formations.

Hitting this person was like punching cotton; that deep sense of powerlessness, having strength but nowhere to use it, was enough to make one want to vomit blood from frustration.

They were not facing a flesh-and-blood martial artist at all.

They were facing a spatial ghost completely above the laws of physics!

The mist, originally like ink, became increasingly vast, and the visibility of the battlefield had dropped to less than one meter.

Besides each other's heavy breathing, they couldn't even see the faces of teammates who were close at hand.

Their sense of direction was completely lost.

Panic, despair, and the helplessness in the face of unknown terror.

These three emotions intertwined, bit by bit, cruelly destroying the psychological defenses of these four top prodigies of Great Xia.

"Back to back! Don't scatter!"

Chu Tiankuo roared, his voice sounding unusually dull in this thick, ink-like black mist.

He grabbed the arm of Helan Que beside him and forcefully pulled him behind his back.

Captain Shen Xiuan and Yan Qinghuan also reacted quickly.

The four school leaders, who were usually aloof and didn't even like each other, were now like refugees huddled on a broken wooden plank in rough seas, pressing their backs tightly together.

Four people, four directions.

They gripped their weapons tightly, eyes wide open, trying to pierce through this layer of pitch-black darkness.

However, they couldn't see anything.

Visibility was less than one meter, and the black mist seemed to have substance, like layers of heavy, wet black cotton wool, sticking stickily to their Skin, blocking their mouths and noses.

And around them, those members who had originally been following closely behind seemed to be experiencing a one-sided slaughter with no power to fight back.

"Help! Captain save..."

In the thick fog to the front left, a boy's roar had just sounded halfway when, as if someone had suddenly choked his throat, the voice instantly disappeared.

"Don't pull me! Get away!"

A dozen meters to the right came the sound of weapons slashing frantically through the air, followed immediately by a dull thud of someone falling.

Screams, calls for help, and the clanging of weapons dropping echoed from all directions.

Chu Tiankuo and the other three stood back to back, their muscles tensed to the limit, cold sweat rolling down their foreheads in large drops, hitting the soil at their feet.

They had the formidable strength of a Peak Fourth-Order, but at this moment, they could do nothing.

Rushing out to save people rashly would only lead to losing their way in this sensory-depriving mist, becoming the opponent's prey entirely.

They could only wait.

They could only listen helplessly.

It was a psychological torture that was hard to describe in words.

It was like being blindfolded and tied to an execution ground, listening to the executioner's slaughter blade falling around them again and again.

You don't know when the next blade will fall on your own neck.

As time passed, the screams around them became fewer and fewer.

From the initial chorus, it turned into an occasional short, muffled groan, until finally... dead silence.

All sound disappeared from the surroundings.

The originally mighty alliance of fifty or sixty elites now didn't even have a trace of a living person's breathing to be heard.

Those faint fluctuations of vitality were like stones falling into an abyss, their traces completely erased.

Quiet.

Terribly quiet.

This quiet was far more hair-raising than the previous screams.

Chu Tiankuo only felt the beating of his own Heart amplified countless times in his eardrums, like a war drum being crazily struck by a heavy hammer.

"Gulp."

It was unclear who it was, but someone swallowed hard.

This faint sound spread among the four, seeming exceptionally harsh.

"People... are all gone?"

Helan Que's voice was extremely dry, and the knuckles of his fingers gripping the war saber were white.

His pride and joy, the Desert Sandstorm, could now only barely circulate within half a meter of his body, unable to expand outward by even a fraction.

No one answered him.

The four could only keep maintaining high vigilance, like four stiff statues, guarding strictly against the death-dealing ghost hands that might emerge from the black mist at any time.

Five minutes passed.

There was no movement in the darkness.

That pale Faceless Man mask never appeared again, and the purple lightning had also completely hidden away.

The opponent seemed to have suddenly stopped the hunt, or perhaps, was secretly watching them like a clown, enjoying the fear of the four of them at this moment.

Ten minutes passed.

Long-term sensory deprivation caused the psychological defenses of the three, except for Yan Qinghuan, to begin to crack.

Sweat soaked their backs, and the damp, cold clothes stuck to their Skin, bringing a chill that made them shudder.

Fifteen minutes passed.

This silent standoff consumed more mental energy than fighting hundreds of rounds with real swords and guns.

In a state of extreme quiet and high tension, a person's spirit is extremely prone to collapse.

And among the four, the first one who couldn't hold on was the second team captain of Imperial Capital Martial Arts University, Captain Shen Xiuan.