As the car drove deeper into Wugui Country, Yaji's face was tight with unease and confusion. "Sir, aren't we going the wrong way?"

He'd been counting on leaving this hellhole, not pushing further in?! Yaji hated the direction they were heading. His parents had died in the hands of the monsters in that camp.

Qi Yuan said quietly, "We're not going the wrong way. The person I'm picking up is there."

Yaji gave an almost imperceptible shudder. The little girl gripped her brother's arm with both hands. Their hearts were anything but calm. It even crossed their minds that maybe the two men who'd taken them in had deep ties to those monsters. Why else would they be driving to a military camp to pick someone up?

Before long, the car stopped on a low hill above a small town.

Wen Min alighted and stared into the distance. He said slowly, with a hint of fear, "Mr. Qi, the boss is in the camp just ahead."

If Qi Yuan got himself killed there, the rest of them waiting on the hill were as good as dead too.

Qi Yuan surveyed what lay below. "Mhm. I see it."

Ahead lay what resembled a great desert, the air thick with dust. Steel structures rose imposingly from the haze. Even from this distance, he could make out a tide of patrolling iron vehicles, along with the silhouettes of well-armed soldiers in the watchtowers. Over three thousand men were on standby in the camp.

Qi Yuan instructed, "Wait here. I'll go get someone."

He briskly walked down from the hill. Only seven or eight meters away stood the camp gate. The drones passing overhead didn't seem to register him at all.

Dust and sand filled the air as Qi Yuan's lone, upright figure moved through.

Up on the hill, Wen Min watched Qi Yuan's retreating back. A mixture of awe and bewilderment stirred in his chest. Yaji was simply at a loss.

***

In the camp's watchtowers, several soldiers snapped to attention.

A soldier stared in disbelief. "What's going on? Why is someone approaching us? Where the hell is the drone patrol? How did they miss this?!"

This was a military-controlled zone. No civilian should have been able to enter without clearance? Yet this man was casually strolling straight toward them.

The man steadily drew closer until the watchtower soldiers could make out his face without binoculars. They figured he had to be some lunatic who'd wandered in by accident.

"Halt!"

The moment Qi Yuan arrived at the camp gate, more than a dozen rifles snapped up at him. The soldiers holding them seemed more bored than alarmed.

A squad leader shouted, "What are you here for?! Move, bring him in!"

Their scanners showed no explosives on the target. They were puzzled about how he'd gotten this far, but they wrote him off as a lost civilian.

Four soldiers swaggered toward Qi Yuan with smirks. A clean, fair-skinned young man in a land this desolate was a rare sight.

Despite facing a dense sprawl of steel structures, Qi Yuan’s eyes held a faint smile. "I'm here for someone."

His voice was loud and clear, heard by every soldier.

Before any of them could move, a large truck pulled up beside him. A squad of soldiers in face masks and combat gear climbed out. Their builds were far larger than ordinary troops, barrel-chested and imposing. Gene soldiers. They had just returned from a hunting run and were herding a group of blank-faced civilians at gunpoint.

The one at the front eyed Qi Yuan like a predator, saying roughly, "Our experiment still needs a bit more blood. We'll take this one."

The soldiers stationed at the gate exchanged glances, feeling a mix of relief and pity.

The gene soldiers ran an inhumane project. As fanatical Wu Cult devotees, they had a reason for their work: capturing heretics to complete their rituals. No one taken for their experiments survived, and all of them were made to suffer before the end.

Cracking their knuckles, two gene soldiers closed in on Qi Yuan, looking at him as if he was already dead.

"It seems like you have no intention of playing nice." Qi Yuan sighed and swept his gaze across the thirty-odd gene soldiers. A thread of killing intent rose in his eyes. "Don't blame me for being ruthless."

He had intended to be reasonable about this. However, with over three thousand people in this camp, reasoning with every one of them was exhausting. He wasn't Tang Sanzang. [1]It was far simpler to kill them all. The only ones he could reliably reason with were the dead.

"Die."

A blood-red longsword appeared within his hand, beautiful yet menacing. This was Qi Yuan’s sword in the Flowing Wind World, inscribed with his Origin Divine Technique: Inner Demon Lure. The moment it materialized, every soldier felt something cold tightening in their chest.

The blood-red sword left its sheath. A crimson arc of light cut through the swirling yellow dust. All thirty plus gene soldiers around him were locked in place, their expressions freezing. A gust of wind swept through. With one stroke and a flash of red, they toppled like scarecrows.

Even though Qi Yuan was only at the Foundation Establishment, no Core Formation cultivator could withstand his blow, let alone some gene soldiers.

The civilians the gene soldiers had been herding stared in stunned silence. In an instant, their terror gave way to wild joy and reverence. They dropped to their knees with a collective thud.

"A god!"

To them, Qi Yuan had become a divine savior.

The soldiers in the camp were equally stunned, but they didn't hesitate. A hail of bullets tore through the air from every direction.

Qi Yuan said coldly, "Daring to resist instead of begging for mercy? Die, all of you!"

He drew a line through the air with his sword. A curtain of blood-red light spread before him, catching every single bullet.

The soldiers kept firing anyway, emptying their magazines in a frenzy.

With a small flick of his hand, Qi Yuan reversed all the bullets.

"AAAH!"

"NO!"

"A ghost!"

The dozens of soldiers collapsed in an instant.

Qi Yuan tightened his grip on the sword and surged forward. "Since that's how it is, I won’t show mercy."

He plunged into the military camp like a war god walking through an empty field, reaping lives as he went. He glanced up at a watchtower standing about ten meters tall. The blood-red sword gave a single tremor.

Boom!

The towering structure crumbled as if it were made of sand. Ordinary explosives couldn’t bring down such a fortification, much less human strength. Yet today, someone had toppled it with a single swing of his sword.

The rumble of the watchtower crashing to the ground seemed to jolt the rest of the camp awake. Alarms screamed to life.

"Enemy attack!"

"What's happening?!"

"Did Yuelang break through?!"

Soldiers poured toward the commotion from all over the camp. Officers scrambled out of buildings, bewildered. Most had no idea what kind of enemy they were even facing.

Qi Yuan walked among it all, unhurried.

Several tanks rolled toward him ahead. Their operators were still peering around in confusion. There was no large enemy force anywhere. Just one man with a sword.

The next moment, their confusion was resolved as the young man casually swung his sword, sending a fifty-ton tank flying and slamming it into the building.

"What the?!"

"A ghost!"

1. Tang Sanzang is a Buddhist monk sent on a sacred journey from China to India to retrieve holy scriptures (sutras). He represents compassion and purity. ☜