A Night of Desperation

Chapter 321: Kill Zone 1

"Vice Sect Master Lin, that Yu Hong has exceptional talent. Should we try again to see if we can recruit him into the sect?" Yuan Ming, thinking of Yu Hong’s terrifying talent, was still somewhat tempted.

"No need." The old crone sneered, "Back in my day, I encountered geniuses with even greater talents than him, but what does that represent? No genius can have smooth sailing throughout their lives, and a genius who doesn’t experience enough hardship will bring greater disasters unpredictably, even if they possess strong abilities. It’s meaningless."

... Yuan Ming and the others dared not speak out, as they all remembered that this Vice Sect Master Lin seemed to have had a major opportunity stolen from her by a genius, which led to her indignant defection to join the Mud Doll Sect.

Indeed, the three Temple Master Level masters of the Mud Doll Sect, the Sect Hierarch and the two Vice Sect Hierarchs, all had similar backgrounds.

That’s why it’s understandable why this big shot is so disdainful of Yu Hong.

It’s not jealousy, it’s hatred!

"In that case, how about I fight Yu Hong first to see, which would also make it easier for Vice Sect Master Lin to assess him?" Yuan Ming suggested again.

"On account of your father, it’s possible," the old crone chuckled and agreed.

Yuan Ming’s father is Yuan Ruhai, who is another Vice Sect Master at the same level as her.

And within the Mud Doll Sect, as the leader of the Primordial Embryo’s seven sons, Yuan Ming is the closest to their three leaders, without equal.

This is also why she is willing to give Yuan Ming some face.

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*

Five Star Town.

A line of military vehicles stopped at the outskirts of the town, unloading troops.

Groups of soldiers spread out like a long snake, heading towards the town from all directions.

The magicians, responsible for dealing with special forces, followed the assault teams and entered the town from the front.

The entire Five Star Town was like a giant pentagram, with every street being one edge of the pentagram.

Feixia Sword Meng Chengshuang and Headless Sword Xia Chunling were sitting in a small military jeep, each already starting to prepare their Seals and apply medicinal oil in advance.

A hazy fog enveloped the whole town, and the sky became gloomier as a result.

If Yu Hong were here, he would be able to tell at a glance that this kind of gray fog is the precursor to a Black Disaster outbreak, exactly like the early days of the Hope City World.

Buildings in the town kept whizzing past both sides of the car.

But not a single person was in sight.

"Be careful, something’s not right here," Meng Chengshuang whispered a warning.

"Got it." Headless Sword Xia Chunling responded simply, gripping the sword hilt tightly, quickly raising her vigilance to the highest level.

Squeak!

Just then, a sudden hard brake from the vehicle in the assault team ahead almost caused it to be hit by the vehicle behind.

Without waiting for the people behind to ask.

Boom!

The vehicle ahead abruptly exploded.

Flames burst out from the ground, immediately enveloping the vehicle completely.

Meng Chengshuang and Headless Sword reacted extremely quickly, simultaneously leaping out of the car window, jumping out of the car!

Boom!

A huge flame also exploded under their vehicle, completely engulfing the car.

Da da da da!

The sound of machine guns rang out, and the soldiers began to quickly return fire.

Continuous roaring grenade explosions followed.

They were fighting against a group of black-clad masked men.

They were carrying guns and rocket launchers, quickly appearing on the rooftops on both sides of the town.

It was as if they appeared there in an instant, completely unseen before, and unnoticed by anyone.

By the time they were discovered, more than half the convoy had already suffered devastating attacks.

"Not good!" Meng Chengshuang suddenly froze, a strange feeling rising in her heart.

With one hand, she pulled out a luminescent-white talisman paper, murmured a spell, and stuck it on her forehead.

The talisman paper ignited without fire and disappeared in the blink of an eye, turning to ash and scattering.

At the same time, her perception instantly elevated to another level.

In her current perception, within a hundred meters around her, wave after wave of invisible ripples kept sweeping over the entire convoy of soldiers and magicians, altering all their sensory signals.

"This is... a Neural Interference Technique!" She instantly recognized this extremely rare and powerful Taboo Technique.

"What!?" Headless Sword nearby also heard the conversation and was greatly startled.

This kind of technique could only be used by someone at the Temple Master Level. It wasn’t particularly harmful to magicians, but for ordinary people, it represented the pinnacle of hypnotism; even if there were a large number of them, once encountering a magician who mastered such magic, they would be like lambs to the slaughter, unable to resist.

Only long-range sniping and indiscriminate bombing could break such a troublesome technique.

And what was even more troublesome was that such a technique should have perished long ago. The last cult that mastered such techniques had been completely eradicated by the government in cooperation with the Taoist Sects more than thirty years ago, not a single one left.

But now...

"Order everyone else to retreat!" Meng Chengshuang had not expected the Mud Doll Sect to still possess such forbidden magic.

She quickly yelled to Headless Sword.

This kind of technique, this range, the scale... the opponent this time from the Mud Doll Sect was even stronger than she was in total spiritual power.

"Can you handle it alone!?" Headless Sword drew her sword, sending a flash of silver light cutting through a black bird flying towards her.

The body of the black bird fell to the ground and turned into a puddle of black mud, disappearing without a trace.

Clearly, this was not a real entity but a product of a technique.

"Leave it to me!" Meng Chengshuang’s eyes were fierce, and she likewise drew her sword and quickly slashed, cutting down more than a dozen black birds that pounced at her.

"Even if I can’t win, I can still retreat freely..."

Boom!

Meng Chengshuang’s words were cut short as her body suddenly stiffened, hit in the chest by a sniper bullet from an unknown source.

The bullet pierced through the chest cavity, exiting from the back and bringing with it a mist of blood.

Her eyes widened as her body was propelled backward and crashed heavily to the ground.

"Why... wasn’t there... any warning...!?"

She couldn’t understand.

Experts of the Temple Master Level, due to their extremely strong spiritual power, would automatically develop a sense of danger when faced with threats.

Any sniper attempting to assassinate them would find it extremely difficult.

Because the moment they were targeted, these experts would automatically develop a sense of the danger, thereby knowing from which direction the threat came, and would start to dodge and evade on their own.

But that shot just now...

Meng Chengshuang didn’t receive any danger warning at all...

Her spiritual power alert had actually failed!

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Seagull Beach.

The second, larger convoy stopped at the periphery of the beach and began to unload the troops.

The area had already been evacuated, devoid of people.

The entire beach, while called a beach, is actually a continuous stretch of pale yellow coastline several hundred meters long, belonging to a large area where many beaches are connected.

There are scattered seaside buildings on it, none of them tall, all white little buildings.

On ordinary days, tourists come to play, mainly served by the residents living in these buildings.

Some of them are vendors selling food and groceries, some provide maritime projects by resort villagers, there are also members of the nearby village committees, fishers who live by the sea all year round, and so on.

And the official target, that is, the seemingly normal but actually early joined cult followers of the Mud Doll Sect.

Yu Hong got out of the car first, stood on the road, and looked around; the surroundings were open, with sparse palm trees neatly lined up along the beach.

Further away is the real entrance to Seagull Beach.

The entire stretch of beach was enclosed by a wire fence, with only this entrance guarded by two small stone towers with an iron gate between them.

A white sign with the opening times hung on the gate.

"This is the place." Cheng Shu took a step forward, stood beside Yu Hong, and spoke softly.

"How do we move?" Yu Hong asked.

"Follow the commander’s lead," Cheng Shu replied, "Actually, it’s still the usual—small teams go in to clear the area; we step in to break through when there’s trouble."

"Okay." Yu Hong nodded and gestured to a few Zheng Generation members behind him.

Immediately, several people dispersed and took up positions in a strangely shaped polygonal array.

At the same time, everyone pulled out their respective Inheritance Dao Artifacts, and those without Inheritance Dao Artifacts took out ordinary Dao Artifacts.

Boom!

Just then, a loud explosion came from afar.

A wave of invisible spiritual power, like a gentle breeze, spread towards them.

"Indeed, there are masters here too! Form the array!" Zheng Ying immediately commanded.

She just remembered that she was the actual commander of this Taoist Temple operation, not Zheng Rou.

But as soon as she finished speaking, Zheng Ming and Zheng Xia instinctively looked at Yu Hong to see if he acknowledged Zheng Ying’s command authority.

"Quick!"

Yu Hong nodded, also holding the Guang Han Dao Artifact to his chest, and began chanting the scripture to stimulate the Array.

Although Qingchen Temple is weak and ranked at the bottom among the Taoist Sects, it still has basic protective formations.

The most complete inheritance within the Temple was the very formation they were about to use now—Little Mountain Observation Array.

As the name suggests, this defensive formation was created by one of the ancestors, a genius who got an epiphany while observing mountain ranges, and left it behind.

Its effect is to protect everyone within the formation, raising their resistance to spiritual attacks by one level.

Used here, it means that all the magicians could temporarily resist spiritual area attacks of the Temple Master Level.

As for physical attacks, they would rely on the firearms of the officials and soldiers.

Generally speaking, no matter how strong a magician is, being hit by bullets or artillery means certain death.

Therefore, no magician would ever ignore the threat of firearms.

Hum.

As several people began the chant holding their Dao Artifacts, a transparent and invisible ripple spread from them, quickly enveloping a hundred-meter radius.

This ripple was like a giant hemisphere resting on the ground.

All the officers and soldiers entering and leaving this hemisphere naturally took on an invisible membrane.

This membrane would provide them with a shield to resist a spiritual shock once within ten minutes.

At this moment, in the small buildings on the beach, people had already started exchanging gunfire with the officials and soldiers.

Most of them used homemade guns, with much less power and accuracy than those of the officials and soldiers, so they were naturally forced to retreat steadily.

Until...

Two beach vehicles with roaring engines came careening out, charging towards the magician formation.

Bullets continued to explode sand around the vehicles, but failed to hit them.

It was as if every turn they made was precisely predicting the next point of fire.

Sssst.

Very quickly, the two vehicles screeched to a halt, and the people on them leaped to the ground, sprinting rapidly and precisely dodging all the bullets, closing in on the side of the magician formation in the blink of an eye.

Before making full contact, everyone had already sensed the enormous and dangerous cold spiritual power from the two individuals.

Only spiritual power filled with killing intent could give off a sense of coldness.

One of them was like a vortex of spiritual power, continuously spinning and releasing invisible pulling forces, pulling at the consciousness of everyone nearby.