Chapter 355: Chapter 235: The Unspoken: Strange Power and Chaotic Gods
"There’s an old Eastern saying: ’The best way to eliminate Fear is to face it’..."
Joey grabbed a glass marble from a nearby bookshelf. With a crazed roar, he hurled it with all his might at the twin girls not far away. The marble struck one of the girls on the forehead, causing her to bleed profusely. An identical wound immediately appeared on the other girl’s forehead.
Jenny and Yiwen were stunned to see Joey actually injure one of the monsters. But when they saw his enraged expression, a fire was lit within them, and a surge of ruthlessness followed.
"He’s right! These are just Illusions born from our Fear! They’re not real! We can’t let them beat us!" Jenny’s resolve hardened. She strode forward and stomped on the wailing dead infant on the floor, venting her own Fear and Anger.
POP! Like a water balloon bursting, blood splattered everywhere. The wailing infant exploded on impact, and the piercing cries stopped.
Jenny felt a great weight lift from her chest. Her Fear of the cursed baby carriage vanished, because she had killed the damned monster!
"It really works!" Yiwen exclaimed in pleasant surprise, but their expression changed in the next moment.
As if sensing a threat, the monsters formed a circle and began closing in. The children had no room left to run.
BANG! BANG!! BANG!!!
Just then, violent impacts sounded from beyond the door, each louder than the last. The immense force made the entire house tremble.
Wisps of pale Cyan Flame crept in through the cracks in the door, forming a long carpet of Fiery Fire that spread rapidly.
In the living room, the flames suddenly surged to the height of a person. A figure emerged from the blazing, pale, flowing flames. All three children had expressions of utter shock.
Zhou Chen glanced around, raising an eyebrow in surprise. ’Quite a few "familiar faces,"’ he thought. He slammed a fist down, smashing the old-fashioned typewriter that was constantly typing on the coffee table. Cyan Flame surged over it, burning the wreckage to ash.
A faint, agonized cry echoed in the air.
Zhou Chen reached out and grabbed the long hair of a white-clothed female ghost. Swinging his arm forcefully, he used her like a Meteor Hammer to smash into a medieval Witch. The Witch reacted quickly, swinging the human head in her hand to counter.
With a loud BANG, the female ghost’s legs bent at a bizarre angle. The head in the medieval Witch’s hand exploded, and the Rock-Breaking Force surged through, its tyrannical power blasting the Witch’s arm to pieces as well.
The Soul-Burning Flame flared up, engulfing the female ghost in Zhou Chen’s hand. The searing heat instantly incinerated her into nothingness.
With a thought, the Cyan Flame covering the floor rose like a tidal wave, spreading in all directions. The three children instinctively raised their hands to block it, but the flames seemed sentient, parting to avoid them as they drew near. From start to finish, the fire never came within half a meter of their feet.
The twin girls, the rotting corpse covered in maggots, the one-handed medieval Witch, and the zombie with a talisman plastered to its face were all swallowed by the surging, pale Fiery Fire. They were ignited into blazing torches, granted an equal share of combustion and destruction.
As the great fire burned, the blood and gore on the floor vanished. The bloodstains on the children’s clothes also disappeared into thin air, as if they had never existed.
"Mr. Smith..."
The three children stared, their mouths agape in disbelief. ’Is this a Superpower?’
"You three should leave this place. Go back to where there are more people, and don’t go telling everyone what happened."
As Zhou Chen finished speaking, the mansion’s main door was burned to a pile of ash by the flames. He looked up toward the second floor. "I have something to take care of."
Martin’s shouts came from the doorway, jolting the three children back to their senses. Dazed, they scrambled out of the terrifying mansion. Obeying Zhou Chen, they jumped on their bicycles and pedaled away furiously.
Flames rose from beneath Zhou Chen’s feet, swallowing him whole. When the fire dissipated, he had vanished from the spot, reappearing in the second-floor hallway of the mansion, facing a massive dark shadow that nearly touched the ceiling.
The shadow was composed of a swirling, unstable black mist. Its face had no features, only a pair of sinister, amber eyes. Its form was mostly humanoid, but from the calves down, it had a pair of powerful, beast-like feet, the exact size and shape of the tracks Zhou Chen had found earlier.
’So Old Jack and Joey weren’t wrong about the monster’s appearance,’ Zhou Chen mused. ’What is this thing?’ He stared at the monster, and the monster stared down at him.
After a moment, the monster suddenly began to convulse violently, appearing to be in great pain.
The black mist that formed its body began to boil as if a Fireplace were constantly heating it from within. The mist grew chaotic as streaks of pale white flame burst forth from its body.
"Burst."
BOOM!
The Cyan Flame detonated on both a physical and spiritual level. The monster was instantly engulfed by the expanding, bursting, incandescent white flames. All the black mist was put to the torch, and every last trace of it vanished without a trace.
’Is that it? That was way too easy.’ Zhou Chen narrowed his eyes. Seeing that the mission on the competition’s System Panel hadn’t changed, he thought, ’I knew it wouldn’t be that simple.’
Just then, he faintly sensed something. His gaze shifted to the nearby wall, his eyes seeming to pierce through the building’s obstruction to see a distant enemy.
Cyan Flame was a Spiritual Attack.
As it burned the monster before him, the Cyan Flame had traveled along some sort of spiritual link, burning the being on the other end. Now, he was receiving clear feedback of Essence, allowing him to pinpoint the target’s location immediately.
’Is it the mastermind controlling the monster?’ Not wanting to waste any time, Zhou Chen flashed with light and appeared outside the mansion. Seeing that the children had already biked far away, he used Flame Jump again to rapidly close in on the target’s direction.
This morning, he had remembered what Old Jack said last night and decided to find Joey and the other children to warn them not to wander off, lest they be targeted by the monster. He had even planned to give them some small Artifacts for self-defense. But when he went to their homes, their parents told him the kids had gone out early. So, he made a wish to find them and discovered they were in a rather remote area. Sensing trouble, he had used Flame Jump to track them down.
He never expected that Old Jack’s worries would actually come true.
The monster had targeted Joey and the others, luring them to a secluded place with the intent to kill them.
’But there’s one suspicious point. Why didn’t the monster attack them itself? Why did it use Illusions born from the children’s Fear?’
Zhou Chen then recalled Old Jack’s words: the monster was afraid of children.
’It’s afraid of children, so it didn’t dare to act personally? What exactly about children is it afraid of?’ Zhou Chen pondered deeply.
’Those Illusions were also strange, surprisingly weak. Even unarmed children could kill them... Hmm... there is a plausible explanation. The children became enraged out of extreme Fear, which in turn suppressed the feeling of Fear. And since those Illusions were constructed from the images the children feared, once they were no longer afraid, the Illusions naturally posed no threat.
’...Could it be that fearless children can also harm the monster?
’That seems possible. The monster is very weak. If the children had figured out the truth, they might have even been able to turn the tables and kill it...’
’Afraid only of children, not adults... In that case, the monster’s origin is worth investigating.’
Zhou Chen had never seen such a "peculiar" supernatural monster. He had no idea what had happened in Akita Town to spawn such a creature.
The Forging Association must have sent specialists to scout Akita Town before the competition. Even those old veterans of the Restricted Areas couldn’t clear this place, which just showed how deep the waters ran here.
As his thoughts raced, he had already used Instant Teleportation to cover a distance of three kilometers. The connection through his Cyan Flame grew stronger.
To conserve Essence, Zhou Chen soon stopped using Instant Teleportation and started running instead. With his physical constitution, the remaining two or three kilometers would only take a few short minutes.
Before long, the Essence feedback from his Cyan Flame became clearer and stronger. At the same time, waves of a sinister, cold aura washed over him. He was very, very close to the target, who was currently trying to purge the invasive Cyan Flame from their mind.
Zhou Chen looked ahead. Before him was an amber mine, long since abandoned.
