Hui Tian Ch58

Chapter 58

Brutal beating

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“A-choo!”

In the first-class cabin of the airplane, Yang Xiaodao—who was hunched over his tray table grinding through his physics homework—suddenly let out an unexpected sneeze, rubbing his nose in confusion.

Outside the window lay a vast expanse of blue sky and white clouds. Across the aisle, Chu Yan held a satellite phone, her brow knitted tight. “But Mr. Bai, we’re still several hours away from Purori Island. The range of my ability has its limits. Right now, I can only pinpoint a family of vultures ten kilometers away; there’s no way I can lock onto the exact coordinates of a yacht thousands of kilometers away…”

Staring at an entire page of physics multiple-choice questions, Yang Xiaodao felt utterly dizzy. He stole a timid glance at her, surreptitiously slipping a coin out from his pocket to flip for the answers.

Faster than words could say, as if she had eyes in the back of her head, Chu Yan whipped out her folding ruler and extended it with a sharp snap. Reaching across the aisle—pia!—a resounding smack landed, making Yang Xiaodao nearly jump up while clutching his hand. Left with no choice but to tearfully pocket his coin, he slumped back down to gnaw on his pen in absolute despair.

Brandishing that folding ruler—which was prominently labeled with the words: 【The sciences change in myriad ways to educate; no one achieves a perfect score to repay the sciences: KILL KILL KILL KILL KILL KILL KILL】—Chu Yan pointed it directly at Yang Xiaodao, her eyes flashing with a threatening I am watching you look. Only after witnessing Yang Xiaodao’s cowardly submission did she turn her head back around.

“Can’t we use the phone as a medium?” The thunderous roar of a speedboat engine blared from the other end of the line as Bai Sheng shouted, “There are only a dozen or so minutes left before the one-hour deadline! Can’t the satellite signal serve as a transmission medium for your ability?!”

Across the boundless waters near the St. Carter’s Fort Strait, dozens of speedboats and helicopters had woven an inescapable dragnet, scouring the area for the blue fishing boat foretold in the prophecy.

Even with a precognitive glimpse, one could only perceive a specific future scene without automatically generating precise latitude and longitude coordinates. Consequently, the most detailed information Lady Harpa could provide was a fifteen-nautical-mile radius around the strait. Standing aboard a jet ski, Bai Sheng held the satellite phone, scanning the surrounding waters through a pair of binoculars as he yelled, “There isn’t a single landmark on this water! Can you detect a general direction? Or should I find a way to boost the satellite signal?”

“Forget the satellite signal! Can a satellite signal serve as a medium for causality?!” Chu Yan pressed a hand to her forehead. After a moment of deliberation, she asked, “Are there any birds in the sky?”

Bai Sheng looked up. Across the distant horizon, a few seagulls let out sharp cries as they coasted past. He instantly responded, “Yes! How should I cooperate with you?”

Chu Yan sighed helplessly. “…Turn on the speakerphone!!”

Bai Sheng cut the jet ski’s motor, switched the call to speakerphone, and held the satellite phone high into the air.

In an instant, the gentle breeze, the rolling waves, the cries of the sea birds, and the distant drone of helicopter rotors were all transmitted through the phone, ascending tens of thousands of feet into the sky. Chu Yan closed her eyes. Countless ambient sound waves intersected within her mind before being systematically stripped away layer by layer, until only a single, anomalous vibration remained.

“…Southeast, at the four o’clock position. The seagulls’ cries sound extremely unsettled.” A moment later, Chu Yan’s voice came through, tinged with a slight hesitation. “They seem a bit panicked because they can’t find their usual flight paths.”

—An area where birds could not fly.

The Cage of Logic!

The look in Bai Sheng’s eyes shifted instantly. Twisting the throttle, he swung the speedboat around and roared at breakneck speed toward the southeastern waters, leaving a jagged arrow of white foam in his wake.

Unless one was meticulous to the absolute extreme, no one would have noticed that at this exact moment, the currents directly ahead of the speedboat suddenly fractured into chaos, as if pulled by some external force.

Bai Sheng sharply raised his head, sensing the shift. At the same exact moment, he seemed to hear a deep tremor erupt from beneath the sea—low, subtle, and rapidly expanding, its sonic waves rippling outward across the vast ocean—

Boom.

In the distance, the ocean roared as a colossal wave skyrocketed into the air.

Nielsen ducked and weaves past ten thousand cold blades, only for a blazing long spear to come crashing down right over his head!

The sea billowed in a violent frenzy; the yacht was already half-submerged. Cursing under his breath, Nielsen forced his left hand out to intercept the spear. The black, searing flames along the shaft instantly engulfed his entire arm. Amidst the bone-chilling agony, he used the momentum to hurl himself backward into the sea, quenching the black fire on his left arm. Simultaneously, he thrust his right hand forward, forcing the seawater into a churning vortex that lunged toward the mid-air Shen Zhuo like a tightening noose.

Shen Zhuo’s combat reflexes were thoroughly professional. The black flames exploded along his spear, violently shattering the oncoming rings of the watery noose into a downpour of spray!

Nielsen burst through the surface of the water, planting his foot onto the precarious deck of the sinking yacht. He narrowed his eyes, locking his gaze onto Shen Zhuo, who looked down upon him from mid-air.

The strongest A-class individuals were infinitely close to an S-class in every aspect, differing only in two regards: first, they lacked biological pheromones, meaning they could not naturally suppress their own kind; second, they lacked a Fatal Strike—the unique, definitive ultimate ability. Stripping away these two factors, a powerful A-class and a weaker S-class were practically indistinguishable, their chances of victory hovering at an even fifty-fifty.

Though he had no idea who that youth named Yang Xiaodao actually was, Nielsen could confirm that this specific serum was undeniably a war-god tier variant among A-classes. What made it even more troublesome was that Shen Zhuo, as an adult, was entirely free from the numerous ability constraints imposed by an underage body, allowing him to tap into the absolute zenith of a powerful A-class combat capacity.

He could employ any unscrupulous means necessary to slaughter Shen Zhuo, but it was exceptionally difficult to capture him entirely intact without killing him.

Snap!

Nielsen snapped his fingers once more. The Cage of Logic enveloping the surrounding waters expanded in response to the sound, swelling to over ten times its original size and sealing off nearly the entire sea within their line of sight.

“…Shen Zhuo,” Nielsen spoke in a deep, heavy tone. “Don’t force me to hurt you.”

The reflection of roaring flames danced in the depths of Shen Zhuo’s eyes, yet his gaze remained as icy and pitiless as permafrost. “Why don’t you try?”

Nielsen offered no reply, merely raising his hand from a distance. The seawater beneath his feet surged upward, drawn by his ability, morphing into countless water spheres of various sizes that hovered dangerously throughout the air in a dense grid.

A-class ability: Infinite Water Prison.

Once trapped within these hyper-dense water spheres, escape was impossible until the victim suffocated or the caster dispelled the technique. This ability unconditionally countered any underwater spatial abilities and could last up to six hours.

The blanket of water spheres blotted out the sky, swallowing Shen Zhuo whole in the blink of an eye!

Blub.

Shen Zhuo exhaled a stream of bubbles. He immediately attempted to swim outward, but instantly realized it was completely futile. The individual spheres had already fused into a massive, monolithic water prison. Even his black-flamed spear found it difficult to instantly vaporize water of such immense density.

A continuous string of bubbles erupted from Shen Zhuo’s mouth and nose as the onset of suffocation caused him to involuntarily lean backward. Nielsen lunged into the water prison, his status as the caster allowing him to move completely unimpeded through this specialized seawater. He reached out, his palm clamping onto Shen Zhuo’s jaw.

Right at that fraction of a second, Shen Zhuo snapped his eyes open.

Nielsen wasn’t surprised in the slightest by the feint, backing away from the spear’s ambush range in the blink of an eye. Yet at that exact moment, Shen Zhuo’s reflexes proved to be like lightning—he thrust his palm outward, unleashing a dense, crackling web of bright blue electricity!

High-voltage current instantly saturated the water sphere. Nielsen had never anticipated that his opponent would deploy a kamikaze tactic that harmed himself just as much, and he was instantly blinded by the current as his vision went dark. The mid-air water prison collapsed with a massive splash!

With a resounding crash, Nielsen plunged straight down from the sky, smashing heavily through three decks of the yacht. In the next second, Shen Zhuo cascaded down amidst the torrential waterfall of seawater, his spear transformed into a dazzling meteor that blasted the entire yacht into countless fractured shards!

The explosion was deafening, instantly plunging every evolutionist aboard into the ocean.

Shards of timber and metal rolled and burned across the water’s surface. Nielsen dropped to one knee, propping himself up with his right hand as he used his ability to rapidly solidify and reinforce the sea beneath him. His left hand was locked in a vice grip, desperately holding off the black-flamed spear pressing down upon his head.

“—Is this how far your obstinacy goes?” He looked up at Shen Zhuo, his gray-blue eyes reflecting that pale, incessantly panting face. “Are you truly so confident that your Bai Sheng will find this place in time to save you?”

The high-voltage current released within the Infinite Water Prison exceeded millions of volts; had Shen Zhuo not administered the serum, his entire body would have been reduced to a handful of ash by now. Even so, his heart had flatlined for several seconds just moments ago. He was soaked through and slightly disheveled, yet those eyes burned with a striking, breathtaking brilliance. Letting out a heavy rasp, he sneered coldly:

“I don’t need anyone to save me. I can handle you all on my own.”

“…” Nielsen stared at him, nodding slowly. “I believe you can. But I’m not going to give you that kind of time anymore.”

He paused, then stated, “13 minutes.”

There were exactly thirteen minutes left before Tyrant’s cooldown period ended.

A confidential report from the International Supervisory Headquarters had previously noted that the maximum number of genetic interferons Shen Zhuo had ever carried at one time was three. If he still held another dose in his hands right now, it was highly likely an A-class or even an S-class variant. Once he recklessly injected it, the resulting side effects could easily prove fatal.

“You are the most exceptional human being I have ever encountered—forever lucid, forever resolute, never bowing or compromising for anyone…” Nielsen’s voice was raspy as he said, “I truly like you, Shen Zhuo. I don’t want to see you die from the side effects.”

“I must capture you within the next thirteen minutes. It doesn’t matter how severely I injure you.”

Shen Zhuo offered no reply at all. He brought his spear down in a sudden, brutal arc, only for Nielsen to violently deflect it with a surge of single-handed force. The speed and power of Odin’s Wolf had spiked drastically. Shen Zhuo threw his hand out to summon a bolt of lightning, but Nielsen boomed forward, calling down a blanket of ten thousand thunders that instantly flipped the entire sea upside down!

10 minutes and 11 seconds.

The ocean had completely transformed into a boiling cauldron of chaos. Wild flames, thunderbolts, hurricanes, and tsunamis—countless types of abilities clashed and exploded. The world shuddered as if undergoing a cosmic cataclysm, the sea surface flashing with bizarre, surreal auroras brought on by the violent shifts in magnetic poles.

3 minutes and 6 seconds.

Shen Zhuo was struck head-on by a thunderbolt. He flew backward hundreds of meters before crashing heavily against the invisible wall of the Cage of Logic. His lower ribs fractured with a sickening crack, and he violently spat out a shower of fresh blood!

Before even half a second could pass, Nielsen materialized out of thin air right in front of him, reaching a hand toward Shen Zhuo’s coat to seize that final serum. Yet even at this stage, Shen Zhuo’s reflexes could still be described as miraculous. A heavy slash of his spear parried Nielsen away as he mocked, “A fight is a fight. Keep your hands to yourself—are we really that close?”

“You’ve already hit your limit! Injecting any more serums is completely useless!!”

Shen Zhuo sneered, carelessly tearing loose his blood-soaked tie. With a sharp, whistling rush, the tip of his spear swept past, grazing right against Nielsen’s face. In that split second, even the terrifying black flames were mirrored perfectly within the pupils of Odin’s Wolf.

Their speed was dizzying; within a span of mere seconds, the two had traded over a hundred blows, the sky above almost entirely obscured by the crisscrossing arcs of black fire. With a sharp, lethal tear through the wind, Nielsen nearly had his throat slit by the spear’s tip. Evading the catastrophic impact by a hair’s breadth through a frantic retreat, he finally gritted his teeth and snapped his fingers—

Shen Zhuo had just driven a high-voltage strike straight through Nielsen’s face, yet in the blink of an eye, his opponent vanished without a trace.

Teleportation?

Immediately after, Shen Zhuo realized that the figure pierced by his electricity was an illusion—a temporary Cage of Logic deployed by Nielsen!

Simultaneously, the true scene materialized. Within a ten-thousandth of a second of his opponent’s miss, Nielsen lunged upward from below to seize the spear, while delivering a savage palm strike straight into Shen Zhuo’s abdomen!

If one possessed X-ray vision at this moment, they would have seen that from his ribs to his cardiac cavity, from his stomach to his internal organs, everything had ruptured beneath that mountain-shattering strike.

Blood laced with fragments of internal tissue erupted from between Shen Zhuo’s teeth.

“I told you I wouldn’t give you the chance to take a third shot. You—”

Before Nielsen could finish his sentence, he saw Shen Zhuo offer him a bloody smile, abandoning his spear to leap backward like a flash of lightning!

Nielsen assumed he was attempting to flee and was about to tell him it was futile, but then he realized his opponent wasn’t heading in any cardinal direction—he was ascending in a straight line, shooting upward like a rocket.

Did he think the Cage of Logic had forgotten to seal off the upper airspace?

Without a second thought, Nielsen soared upward in pursuit.

High-tier evolutionists could adjust air currents to achieve incredibly powerful aerial mobility. In the blink of an eye, Nielsen had surged dozens of yards upward, only to see Shen Zhuo pull out his final injection tube from his fluttering coat in the high sky above.

Nielsen bellowed in horror, “—STOP!”

There were only nineteen seconds left before Tyrant could be activated again. What on earth was he thinking?! At this point, even injecting an S-class serum would be a waste—

Shen Zhuo drove the needle straight into his vein.

Moving at such high speeds, Nielsen couldn’t clearly discern the new rank emerging on the back of his hand. He could only watch as Shen Zhuo came to a sudden, screeching halt mid-air, before pivoting without a shred of hesitation into a full-speed dive, slamming face-first right toward him.

Bang!

This was likely the closest Nielsen had ever been to Shen Zhuo in his entire life. The two were pinned face-to-face, plummeting wildly from a height of several hundred meters like a falling artillery shell. Shen Zhuo wrapped his left hand firmly around the back of Nielsen’s neck, letting out a raspy, brief laugh amidst the biting hurricane:

“You really didn’t believe I could kill you, did you?”

Nielsen’s pupils dilated violently. From the corner of his eye, he saw Shen Zhuo’s right palm facing downward, his five fingers splaying wide!

Yang Xiaodao’s ultimate water-tier ability: activated.

The surface of the sea froze instantly, and in the next second, a hundred-meter spike of ice erupted from the ground, piercing straight toward the heavens!

A nautical mile away, as if sensing a resonance of the soul, Bai Sheng sharply whipped his head toward the calm, distant waters.

Aboard the helicopter overhead, Cameron blinked. “?”

In the next instant, Bai Sheng’s expression warped violently. Hurling himself forward without a shred of hesitation, he summoned a cataclysmic barrage of thunder with one hand—Boom!!

Dense, branching bolts of lightning crashed straight down from the sky, blasting a gaping hole right through that massive Cage of Logic before the stunned eyes of all the search personnel!

The true layout of the sea was finally unveiled.

The reason they couldn’t find the prophesied blue fishing boat despite searching high and low was because the yacht had already completely sunk, leaving the sea shrouded in billowing plumes of black smoke. Amidst the dense smoke, a single spike of ice pierced straight through the vault of heaven—spectacular, magnificent, and glinting with a chilling light, resembling a jagged needle connecting the sky and the ocean.

And directly above the sharpest tip of that ice spike, Shen Zhuo and Nielsen were plummeting fast.

That terrifying gravitational acceleration caused their overlapping bodies to be impaled by the ice spike simultaneously!

Everyone bore witness to a scene so gruesome it shattered the boundaries of imagination.

Pinned down by both of Shen Zhuo’s hands, Nielsen had absolutely no avenue of escape. The two-inch-thick column of ice drove in through his back, piercing through both of their thoracic cavities before exiting through Shen Zhuo’s back, only grinding to a halt in mid-air after plunging down over ten meters.

Flesh, blood, and shattered bone mingled together, painting dozens of meters of the ice column behind Shen Zhuo a vivid crimson, glistening under the bright sunlight.

In the next moment, Shen Zhuo dispelled his ability, and the ice column vanished into nothingness.

The two tumbled down together, crashing onto the sea surface. A horrifying, circular crater of a wound had been bored straight through Nielsen’s chest, from which blood erupted like a geyser. He strained to turn his head toward Shen Zhuo, only to witness an absolutely unbelievable sight.

Coughing up violent torrents of blood, Shen Zhuo forced himself to his feet. Flashing upon the back of his left hand was his current evolution rank—X.

The third serum was Rong Qi’s variant.

Genetic Resurrection ability: activated. Evolution duration: 10 seconds.

In an instant, Shen Zhuo’s internal organs were completely repaired, his shattered chest cavity mended, and every single wound across his entire body vanished as if by magic.

Sustained by the horrific power of boundless resurrection, his condition restored to its absolute peak in a single breath!

Only now did Nielsen snap out of his delusion, finally understanding Shen Zhuo’s exquisite calculation of combat timing, his ultimate mastery over every single second, and exactly why he had chosen such a catastrophic method to drag them both down together.

He truly was no match for Shen Zhuo.

No wonder over all these years, Shen Zhuo had never deigned to look at him for even a single second.

An avalanche of unwillingness, jealousy, and rage consumed his remaining sanity. Nielsen splayed his palm with every ounce of his strength, preparing to unleash Tyrant one last time in a desperate, suicidal bid—

Right then, a force so staggeringly immense it defied imagination swept across the sea from the distance, freezing the vast ocean into hundreds of feet of dark ice.

Bai Sheng’s silhouette arrived in a tempest of pure fury. Grabbing Nielsen by the collar with one hand, he unleashed a localized iron fist that blasted him back over a hundred meters!

Nielsen slammed like a cannonball onto the ice, causing massive sheets of frost to fracture violently.

Before he could even attempt to crawl back up, Bai Sheng’s second fist tore through the air. The terrifying impact—weighing several tons—nearly blasted through Nielsen’s abdominal cavity, shattering the ice beneath him into fine powder that geysered into the sky amidst a thunderous roar.

Unlike Shen Zhuo’s precisely calculated strikes, Bai Sheng’s assault was purely retributive—a beating born of extreme, unbridled rage. Only at this moment did Nielsen finally taste firsthand the exact agony he had inflicted upon Shen Zhuo. He couldn’t unleash Tyrant, nor did he possess a single shred of ability to fight back; his entire perception was reduced to nothing but savage blows and excruciating pain, until his vision went black.

He was lifted alive into the air by his frontal bone, gripped tightly by Bai Sheng’s hand, his feet dangling uselessly.

In the next second, he was slammed brutally down into the ground.

Boom—Loud!

A forty-meter-thick layer of ice was blasted clean through as both men plunged into the sea together, triggering a towering, cataclysmic tsunami wave!

The massive swell nearly engulfed the helicopter in mid-air, prompting everyone inside the cabin to scream hysterically.

Drenched from head to toe by the cascading spray, Cameron gripped the cabin door with one hand while holding a megaphone in the other, his furious roar echoing across the sea: “Don’t kill him—! We still need to interrogate him—! Don’t kill him!!”

Beneath the surface of the sea, a profoundly deafening silence reigned as Bai Sheng—completely oblivious to the shouts—clamped his hand around Nielsen’s throat. One punch sent blood spurting from his mouth and nose like a fountain, while another strike forced crimson jets to burst from both ears. A continuous stream of blood drifted upward from underwater, staining a vast expanse of the sea an ominous red.

Splash.

Shen Zhuo dove into the sea like a gleaming, silver fish. Slipping up from behind, he locked his arms tightly around the irrational Bai Sheng, exerting his strength to hold that scorching, rigid torso.

“…”

Bai Sheng’s muscles shuddered violently. After an unknown measure of time, he finally let go with a tremor, allowing the half-dead Nielsen to slowly sink into the depths before turning around to wrap his arms around Shen Zhuo. He began to kiss him with reckless, frantic desperation, his fingers trembling uncontrollably as he caressed his hair and cheeks.

The S-class ability expanded in all directions, carving out a perfectly square, waterless sanctuary within the deep sea. The sunlight refracted down from the surface in shimmering ripples, illuminating Shen Zhuo’s pale, serene face. He pressed his forehead against Bai Sheng’s, offering low, soothing words of comfort: “Calm down, it’s fine… it’s already over.”

Bai Sheng’s chest heaved violently. He held Shen Zhuo in a death grip with one hand while blindly running his other hand over that patch of cool skin between his ribs—the exact spot that had just been impaled by dozens of meters of ice. Though it was entirely healed now, it left behind a faint, barely noticeable white line.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry…” Bai Sheng buried his face deeply into the crook of Shen Zhuo’s neck, repeating his frantic murmurs in a chaotic loop. “It’s all my fault, I shouldn’t have pressed you for answers, I’m sorry…”

—He was drowning in regret.

He regretted demanding that Shen Zhuo define their relationship; he regretted shattering that tender, beautifully surreal illusion.

In this fraction of a second, as if a powerful, innate rationality had completely reawakened and flowed from his heart to his extremities, Shen Zhuo’s pupils contracted slightly.

He parted his lips to say something, but the words felt too heavy, choking in his throat before they could be voiced.

“…No,” Shen Zhuo finally spoke after a long pause.

This tight embrace left his lips pressed right against Bai Sheng’s ear, yet his tone carried a calm that anchored everything: “It isn’t your fault. The one who should say sorry is me.”

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