Li Nan was playing a boring game with Xie Mingxuan when a familiar feeling suddenly washed over him.
As he froze in surprise, Quan Xiaoyu and Chu Tian both opened their eyes at the same time.
Chu Tian immediately released his mental power, only to have it repelled at once.
At the same moment, something smashed through the window, and several tentacles swept into the room.
Chu Tian and Quan Xiaoyu exchanged a swift glance before instinctively darting in opposite directions.
Quan Xiaoyu unleashed his full speed, scooped up Li Nan, and carried him out of the way of the tentacles whipping toward them in the blink of an eye.
On the other side, by the time Chu Tian lunged toward Bai Mingxi, the scales covering his entire body had already unfolded. Bai Mingxi had also just awakened at the sound, and Chu Tian intercepted a potentially fatal strike from the tentacles on his behalf.
It all happened in the space of a few heartbeats.
Immediately afterward, the sound of windows shattering rang out one after another as several more tentacles burst into the room.
Xie Mingxuan and the two little cubs refused to be outdone. They were already fighting the tentacles.
The tentacles were long and pliable. Xie Mingxuan tore several off with just a few violent tugs. Unexpectedly, however, the creatures possessed an astonishing ability to regenerate. Within seconds, the severed tentacles had grown back.
Xie Mingxuan hadn’t anticipated this at first, and the sharp tips of the newly grown tentacles pierced several holes through his body. Although he couldn’t feel pain, he was furious enough to roar in outrage.
The two cubs tore at the tentacles with both claws and teeth. Their animal instincts made them far more cautious than Xie Mingxuan, and they quickly noticed how fast the tentacles regenerated. They avoided injury, but became entangled in an endless struggle with several seemingly unkillable appendages, leaving them unable to break free.
Chu Tian had also figured out the tentacles’ peculiar trait. He understood that fighting the tentacles alone would accomplish nothing.
“Xiaoyu, find a way for us to get out!” Chu Tian said as he immediately unleashed a mental attack, sweeping it indiscriminately across the courtyard outside.
Yet once again, his attack was blocked!
A mental barrier! A mental barrier stronger than his own mental power!
How was that possible?
With the assistance of his spatial dimension, his mental ability should have been virtually unmatched. Yet it had been blocked twice in succession! Even more astonishingly, his mental power had given him no warning before the danger struck. Instead, it was his biological instinct for sensing danger that had awakened him at the last moment.
Could there really be someone at Dawn Base whose mental power surpassed his?
The mental barrier reminded him of someone, however: Su Muxu, who had escaped from the forest.
But with Su Muxu’s ability level, he shouldn’t have been a match for Chu Tian. Had the man evolved? And had he advanced even faster than Chu Tian?
While these thoughts flashed through Chu Tian’s mind, Quan Xiaoyu had already followed his instructions. He swung his samurai sword wildly, trying to clear a window through which everyone could escape.
Unexpectedly, the faster Quan Xiaoyu cut, the faster the tentacles grew. They firmly sealed off the window.
For the moment, they couldn’t get out, but the tentacles couldn’t do much to them either. Still, they couldn’t afford to remain trapped like this indefinitely. The longer they delayed, the greater the chance that something would change. Their enemies must have another move prepared!
“Xiaobai, try using your spatial rift ability and see if you can open a gap. Xiaonan, have Xiaoyu and Xiaoning come over. As soon as there’s an opening, we’ll all charge out together. Watch out for an ambush once we’re outside!” Chu Tian ordered.
Everyone took their positions. They continued hacking and tearing at the tentacles while gathering together, waiting for the right opportunity to escape.
Even Xie Mingxuan was called back to Quan Xiaoyu’s side.
Quan Xiaoyu and Chu Tian took the lead, maintaining their pace as they severed the tentacles. Behind them, Bai Mingxi unleashed a massive spatial rift. Sure enough, an opening appeared in the window.
Everyone seized the opportunity and rushed outside.
Once they were out of the room, Chu Tian immediately tried releasing another mental attack. As expected, it was blocked again.
It seemed their enemy understood his abilities very well. This mental barrier appeared to have been specifically designed to counter his mental power.
However, the more importance the enemy placed on restraining him, the more it revealed one thing: they were afraid of him.
The other party seemed capable only of defense, not attack. Otherwise, they could have killed the group without their noticing and wouldn’t have needed to go to such lengths.
The moment Chu Tian emerged, he began searching for the source of the powerful mental defense.
However, as soon as the four of them landed in the courtyard, a cloud of black mist swept toward them!
As expected, the enemy had another trick up their sleeve.
They dodged again, immediately holding their breath. The two little cubs, however, weren’t human and lacked the instinctive response to hold their breath when exposed to smoke. Caught off guard, they inhaled some of it and immediately began to stagger.
The black mist obscured the moonlight. In the darkness, Quan Xiaoyu noticed that the two cubs were in trouble and rushed toward them. He no longer cared whether anyone saw what he was doing. In that instant, he took both cubs and Li Nan into his spatial dimension.
In an emergency, desperate measures were necessary. There were fruit and water inside the space, and Li Nan had healing abilities. All he could do now was hope they would be safe.
Xie Mingxuan, however, seemed unafraid of the smoke. Instead, the thick black mist appeared to enrage him. He leaped into the air, and with a wet thump, a round head rolled onto the ground.
Quan Xiaoyu raised both hands and sent two streams of fire sweeping in opposite directions. As the mist gradually dispersed, the flames finally illuminated the scene in the courtyard.
The four of them were standing in the garden, surrounded by five enormous octopus-like monsters, each fifteen meters tall.
And each monster had eight human heads.
Quan Xiaoyu recognized the scene immediately. It was as though he had been transported back to the time when J City fell, after Chu Tian disappeared, when he had fought monsters outside a small shopping mall.
Just as before, every human head growing from the octopus-like creatures belonged to a child!
At last, he understood where that familiar sense of unease had come from.
That damned laboratory again!
Those poor children!
Quan Xiaoyu was furious.
Although Bai Mingxi and Chu Tian hadn’t participated in that battle, their companions had described it to them. They had also spent considerable time with the children at the base who had mutated without completely transforming into monsters. Naturally, they understood what they were seeing.
Chu Tian had long suspected that the human trafficking at Dawn Base served a purpose beyond the trade in samurai swords.
Everything that had happened that night had confirmed his suspicions.
However, they had little time to think. The monsters’ attacks were already pouring down upon them.
Now that they were no longer confined to the room, the four of them could finally unleash their full abilities.
Quan Xiaoyu held nothing back. Several fiery dragons burst forth from him, rushing straight toward the monsters’ eight heads.
“Their weak point should be their heads!” Quan Xiaoyu shouted, drawing on his experience from the previous battle.
With fire, speed, and his samurai sword, Quan Xiaoyu took on two enormous octopuses all by himself.
Xie Mingxuan, meanwhile, fought entirely according to his own preferences and instincts. Bai Mingxi therefore stayed behind him to assist, compensating for his mistakes as they fought. For a time, the two worked together surprisingly well, their movements complementing each other with effortless coordination.
With his mental power restricted, Chu Tian didn’t rely on his armor to fight at full strength. Instead, he moved between two of the giant octopuses, forcibly controlling their movements.
At the same time, he carefully observed his surroundings. He was certain that the person maintaining the mental defense was nearby. After all, a mental barrier had a limited range, and the closer its source was, the greater its effectiveness.
Sure enough, several shadowy figures were barely visible in the darkness beneath the main residence.
Chu Tian’s thoughts shifted. He immediately abandoned the octopus monster that had been entangling him and charged decisively toward the shadows.
However, when he was five or six meters away from the figures, he felt himself blocked by an invisible force.
This allowed him to see the people inside more clearly.
That familiar half-human, half-zombie face—who else could it be but Su Muxu?
Su Muxu stood there with faint veins bulging across his forehead, a clear sign that he was exerting his mental power to its fullest.
Standing in front of him was a row of three small figures, each only half a meter tall. Their bodies were round and elongated, rather like potatoes, and covered in downy fur. They had short limbs and stood upright like humans.
Their heads were the most striking feature. The upper halves of their skulls bulged and swelled, making them look like aliens. Yet their still-childlike faces revealed that they had once belonged to human children.
All three little monsters looked exactly alike. They had probably been triplets originally.
At that moment, their tiny hands were tightly clasped together, their eyes closed as they appeared to be exerting all their strength to accomplish something.
With that single glance, Chu Tian finally understood why he had been at a disadvantage.
His opponent wasn’t just one person. It was a combined effort by four mental ability users!
Their ability levels weren’t low, either. Working together, the four of them had effectively suppressed his mental power almost completely.
Chu Tian gathered his strength and attacked the mental barrier blocking his path, relying on the thick armor covering his body and the sharp scales embedded in it.
More than ten minutes had passed since the attack began, yet no one else had been alerted, and no official personnel from Dawn Base had appeared. This meant their enemies had erected a mental barrier around the entire residence to conceal the commotion inside.
The four of them had to maintain a barrier that concealed the residence, block Chu Tian’s mental attacks, and create the barrier in front of them to prevent anyone from approaching in close combat.
How much longer could they hold out?
Chu Tian sneered.
One failed attempt didn’t matter. He would simply keep attacking a second time, then a third. They would see who ran out of strength first.
Meanwhile, Xie Mingxuan was the first to twist off the final head of one of the octopus monsters.
Unexpectedly, the moment the last head was removed, a tremendous amount of black, watery mist erupted from the severed neck, spraying wildly in every direction.
Wherever the mist fell, the carefully tended plants in the garden withered and died.
No one had anticipated this. Bai Mingxi, who had been fighting alongside Xie Mingxuan, bore the brunt of the attack. Caught off guard, he was struck directly by the falling black mist.
He let out a scream and collapsed to the ground.
Hearing the commotion, Quan Xiaoyu abandoned the two monsters he had only half-killed and rushed over, paying no attention to the black mist that had yet to disperse.
Without stopping to think, he immediately transferred Bai Mingxi into the spatial dimension. For now, all he could do was entrust him to the water and Li Nan inside. They would have to deal with everything else after eliminating the enemies.
Xie Mingxuan was unafraid of the black mist. But after suffering one setback after another in this place, he grew even angrier and fought with increasing ferocity.
Quan Xiaoyu remained composed. One octopus monster was already dead, and two of the remaining four were half-dead. With Xie Mingxuan growing more aggressive by the moment, the two of them were now facing four monsters—and, against all odds, they had begun to gain a slight advantage.
Meanwhile, Su Muxu, protected within the mental barrier, was growing increasingly anxious.
How could this be happening?
He had been certain of victory. He had planned everything meticulously. How had things turned out like this?
Among this group, he had already fought the others before, apart from the little beast tamer and his mutated beasts. Yet the speed at which these people’s abilities had improved was astonishing.
In such a short time, they had become much stronger—noticeably stronger.
Why?
The only thing that reassured him was that his fellow mutant, who possessed the ability to control mental power, had not gained any intelligence. Otherwise, if that creature had joined forces with the man who specialized in mental attacks, Su Muxu might not have been able to suppress them today.
Without an increase in intelligence, even if an ability grew stronger, it could only be used through instinct. If the situation went beyond what instinct could handle, the creature would be helpless.
What good was being powerful if you couldn’t control it?
There was something else, too. When the group had rushed out of the room, the little beast tamer and his mutated beasts had still been there. Su Muxu had sensed their presence with his mental power.
Yet when the black mist engulfed the group, the beast tamer and his beasts disappeared!
Disappeared! Vanished into thin air!
At the time, the mist had been so thick that he couldn’t see anything with his eyes. Only his mental power had registered their sudden disappearance.
As far as he knew, people with spatial abilities couldn’t store living creatures inside their spaces. So where had the missing people gone? Why had they vanished? What other strange abilities did this group possess?
And just now, after the first octopus monster died and its poisonous fluid sprayed over the area, another person had disappeared!
At that moment, Su Muxu had been concentrating all his energy on Chu Tian, who was relentlessly attacking the barrier in front of him. He hadn’t paid the slightest attention to what was happening elsewhere.
Then, all of a sudden, there was one fewer person in his perception!
There were definitely secrets hidden among these people!
Su Muxu gritted his teeth as he thought about it.