wuxianovels18 Chapter 79 : Chapter 79
Chapter 79 : Chapter 79
Chapter 79: I’ll Be Right Back!
Faced with Liao Feng’s sudden outburst, the middle-aged man and woman instantly broke out in cold sweat.
They felt as though the next second, they might be crushed apart by Liao Feng’s pressure.
After cursing them out, Liao Feng gave a cold snort and finally withdrew his aura.
The two of them immediately began gasping for breath.
A wave of fear rose in their hearts.
Thinking back on it, they really had overstepped.
The main reason was that they were used to throwing their weight around. Everywhere the research institute went, people treated them with deference.
Even larger military districts than this one greeted them politely.
But what Wang Yinhuan had just said was a direct challenge to Jiang Linlin’s authority.
And to challenge Jiang Linlin was naturally to challenge the authority of the research institute.
That was why they had wanted to use that authority to force Wang Yinhuan into obedience.
That was also why, in their haste, they had started ordering Liao Feng around.
But now that they had calmed down, the two of them were still seething inwardly.
Even so, Liao Feng had gone too far.
He had actually resorted to force. It was outrageous.
They glanced at the surveillance equipment spread throughout the Command Room
and sneered inwardly.
“Commanding Officer Liao is quite formidable.”
“When you need something from our research institute, you greet us with smiles.”
“But once it turns out there is no mineral vein and you no longer need us, you can scold us however you please.”
“Fine. When I get back, I will definitely report your manner of receiving guests to my superiors.”
The female researcher spoke coldly.
If Jiang Linlin and Zhang Kang were not still waiting for the Return Formation, they would already have turned and left.
Zhang Kang and Jiang Linlin crushed their Return Stones.
The Return Formation began to condense.
Meanwhile, after receiving their orders, Li Mu and Wang Yinhuan continued up the mountain.
Ever since Wang Yinhuan said there might be a Mother Crystal in the mountain, Li Mu had activated Fiery Eyes and Golden Gaze and begun examining the mountainside.
Although Fiery Eyes and Golden Gaze could not see through the mountain itself, it could see the flow of True Qi.
It could see through both humans and monsters, so he was not sure whether it would work on Living Crystals as well.
When it came to Living Crystals, his understanding was far inferior to Wang Yinhuan’s.
But he did know what a Mother Crystal was.
Living Crystals, as their name implied, were alive.
They could be carried around by monsters, move on their own, or shift due to geological changes, floods, and other causes.
Then they would absorb energy, gradually grow, and develop into mineral veins.
And a Mother Crystal was the very source that bred those crystals.
A Mother Crystal could breed crystals several times, even more than ten times, faster than crystals that had separated from the parent body and grown on their own.
If one could obtain a single Mother Crystal, it would be equivalent to obtaining an inexhaustible Living Crystal mine.
When Li Mu looked closely, he really did spot something.
Scattered across the distant mountainside were several points where True Qi was faintly stirring.
Though weak, they undeniably existed.
“There’s something over there. I’ll go take a look.”
Li Mu warned Wang Yinhuan and pointed in a direction.
Wang Yinhuan immediately nodded and headed that way as well.
Before Li Mu even reached the spot, one of the large dogs had already bounded there first.
It was the black-and-white one.
The moment it reached the target point, it discovered a soft crystal-like lump.
It smelled exactly the same as the thing Wang Yinhuan had let it sniff before.
But all the ones it had encountered earlier were hard. This one was actually soft.
At once, it bit down on it and, with its rear raised, began yanking at it with all its might.
At that moment, Li Mu suddenly shouted, “Stupid dog, get back!!”
As he shouted, Li Mu’s feet violently shattered the stones beneath him.
His whole body shot forward like a cannonball just fired from the barrel, heading straight for the dog.
Who said the dog was stupid?
The dog was not stupid at all.
The instant it heard Li Mu’s shout, all its fur bristled in alarm.
Its hind legs kicked hard, and the entire dog sprang high into the air.
And at the exact moment it leaped, the ground where it had just been biting at the crystal
began to rumble and quake.
In the next instant, a huge blood-filled maw burst up from the earth with a roar.
It shot upward into the air, snapping twice at the airborne dog.
The monstrous bite force produced two heavy cracking sounds in midair.
There was no doubt that one bite from that thing would have crushed bone like a biscuit.
But although those two bites missed, the dog had already reached the peak of its leap.
The moment it started falling, it would drop straight into that thing’s mouth.
Li Mu arrived.
He swept his cudgel sideways in a single strike.
The monster was sent flying more than ten meters away.
At that same instant, from the spot where the creature had burst out, a finger-thick, brilliantly multicolored strip over ten meters long was dragged out behind it like an umbilical cord.
Then it snapped with a crack.
The instant it broke, the connection point between the monster’s tail and that “umbilical cord,” along with the more than ten-meter section still attached to the monster, shattered into countless crystal-like fragments with a sharp crack.
Half the monster’s body was blown apart on the spot.
Fragments scattered through the air.
There was clearly no sunlight here.
And yet those fragments shone with dazzling radiance.
Even the fireworks Li Mu had seen in the past could not compare to even a fraction of this spectacle.
As for the remaining “umbilical cord,” it rapidly retracted back into the great hole the monster had emerged from.
At the same time, the Return Formation on Zhang Kang and Jiang Linlin’s side had just activated.
There was a flash of light, and the two of them had already returned to the military district’s Teleportation Array.
Inside the Command Room, the moment they saw that monster appear, the two researchers were completely dumbfounded.
How could this be?
Could there really be a Mother Crystal here?
And when Wang Longcheng saw that monster, he was both shocked and delighted.
He immediately gave the order:
“Li Mu! Take Yinhuan and leave at once!”
“There is indeed a very high probability that a Mother Crystal exists inside that mountain!”
“But monsters like that are guards devoured and controlled by the Mother Crystal. Now that it has been exposed, more monsters will come out to attack you!”
“Withdraw immediately!”
The moment Wang Longcheng finished giving the order, Wang Yinhuan felt an arm clamp tightly around her waist.
The next thing she knew, Li Mu had hoisted her onto his shoulder.
The instant they left that spot, the ground where Wang Yinhuan had just been standing exploded open.
Another monster burst out.
This time it was an enormous crocodile-like creature, its tail also connected to that crystalline umbilical cord.
But the moment it burst out of the mountainside, the cord snapped automatically with a crack.
Then the crocodile monster began madly snapping after Li Mu.
The rear half of its body was made entirely of that transparent crystal substance.
Even its eyes were brilliantly multicolored crystals.
“Huahua, Dabai!”
Wang Yinhuan cried out, and the two large dogs immediately ran over at top speed.
She swiftly recalled them into her Beast-Taming Space.
Meanwhile, Li Mu carried Wang Yinhuan and ran rapidly downhill.
From time to time, monsters burst out from the ground ahead of them.
Most of them had rear halves made of crystal.
There were all kinds, wolves, apes, and others, but all had been twisted out of their original forms by the crystals.
But under Li Mu’s constant dodging and weaving, not a single one managed to touch them.
That was because Li Mu kept Fiery Eyes and Golden Gaze active the entire time.
Before a monster burst out of the ground, he could already see a surge of True Qi shooting upward through the earth.
That was also how he had managed to save that foolish dog earlier.
Li Mu finally led Wang Yinhuan safely out of the mountain’s range.
But there were already hundreds of monsters charging out behind them.
A vast glittering mass of them. It was terrifying.
“Li Mu, run! Don’t stop!”
“The Mother Crystal isn’t very intelligent, but it does possess instinct.”
“That pile of fragments that just shattered will release an extremely strong aura.”
“All monsters within several hundred kilometers will soon begin converging on this place!”
“The Mother Crystal knows it will soon be discovered and torn apart by monsters, so it’s making one last desperate struggle.”
“Otherwise, it would never have sent out so many guards to pursue you.”
Wang Longcheng said in a low voice.
Without slowing his steps, Li Mu urgently asked, “Several hundred kilometers? That big a range??”
“That’s still a conservative estimate...”
Wang Longcheng’s tone was heavy.
If he had known, he should have ordered his daughter to withdraw earlier.
Although they had confirmed that a Mother Crystal existed, that Mother Crystal was fated to be torn apart and devoured by monsters.
And now his daughter was still trapped in danger.
At this point, the monsters within several hundred kilometers had definitely already started converging on the area.
To get out, they would have to carve themselves a path through blood.
Even with Li Mu there, Wang Longcheng’s heart was clenched tight.
“Then what’s the point of running!”
Li Mu immediately stopped and set Wang Yinhuan down on the spot. Then he whipped his weapon around hard against the ground, drawing a golden ring of light three meters across.
“Hurry, crush a Return Stone!”
Li Mu shouted the order. Faced with the horde of monsters about to crash down upon them, Wang Yinhuan had no time to think at all.
She could only mechanically obey Li Mu’s command and crush a Return Stone.
“Stay inside this circle. Even if the sky falls, do not move. Do not use any True Qi.”
The moment Li Mu finished speaking, he stamped the ground hard, and with two soft pops, Wang Yinhuan felt her vision blur. There were suddenly three Li Mus standing before her.
That move stunned not only Wang Yinhuan, but even Liao Feng.
What kind of new trick was this supposed to be?
He had only just heard about things like the Transformation Technique.
And now transformation was already old news?
The man was splitting into clones now?
He turned to Wang Longcheng in shock, only to find that Wang Longcheng was equally dumbfounded.
By then, the monsters had already arrived.
The three Li Mus spread out in a fan shape ahead of her and met the monster tide head-on.
From the Command Room’s overhead perspective, everyone felt that Li Mu and Wang Yinhuan would be swallowed instantly by the horde.
Every single one of those monsters was Fourth Grade. The smallest among them stood well over two meters tall.
The larger ones were around four meters.
Compared to the hundreds of charging monsters, Li Mu and Wang Yinhuan looked absurdly small.
But in the very next moment, they realized something.
The three Li Mus held three directions in an airtight defense, like windshield wipers sweeping back and forth across a car’s glass.
Li Mu alone used Flowing Cloud Fleeting Shadow, filling the air with cudgel shadows to block an entire side by himself.
As for the two clones, they held the flanks. Wherever those silver iron cudgels swept, the monsters were almost always folded up on the spot and sent flying backward.
Every strike was an instant kill, without the slightest suspense.
What shocked everyone most was that a few monsters always managed to slip through and attack Wang Yinhuan inside the golden circle.
Wang Yinhuan crouched down with her head in her hands in terror.
But in the very next instant, those monsters struck what felt like an invisible wall of air.
No matter how frantically they attacked, they could not cross even half a step past the golden circle.
The monsters quickly surrounded the circle and attacked from all sides, so Li Mu and his two clones split apart into three directions.
Once the clones lasted for a minute, Li Mu immediately summoned them again.
Meanwhile, inside the golden circle, the Return Formation rapidly gathered.
Because Wang Yinhuan did not use any True Qi while activating the formation, and because the True Qi within the barrier remained undisturbed, the formation assembled very quickly.
Close to the three-minute mark, the Return Formation had already fully taken shape and begun to shine.
“Hurry, get in here!!” Wang Yinhuan cried.
Wang Longcheng’s heart instantly eased. He had never expected that Li Mu would actually be able to protect the Return Formation long enough for it to activate.
Now the two of them were completely safe.
Wang Yinhuan also assumed that after protecting the formation until it activated, Li Mu would simply jump into the barrier and the two of them would return to the city together.
But to her surprise, Li Mu had no intention of entering the circle at all.
As the white light of the formation swallowed her, Wang Yinhuan let out a cry of alarm.
“No!!”
But in the next instant, the white light vanished, and she was already standing at the entrance to the military district’s Teleportation Array.
Li Mu was nowhere beside her.
Instead, her father was shouting through the communicator:
“Li Mu! What the hell are you trying to do?”
By then, Li Mu had already slaughtered more than half the monster horde.
Now that Wang Yinhuan, the little burden, was no longer there, he could finally fight without restraint.
He shouted, “Commander, what does the Mother Crystal look like!?”
Wang Longcheng was instantly furious. So that was what this brat had been planning?
“At this scale, it should be about the size of a human head, multicolored, and heart-shaped.”
“I can find it if I follow those tunnels, right?”
“You can!”
On the screen, Li Mu suddenly unleashed a full circular sweep, knocking the monsters around him flying.
Then he sprang high into the air.
And shouted, “I’ll be right back!!”
Before the shout had even fully faded, there came a rustling sound, and he transformed into a bird.
Leaving behind a field full of utterly baffled monsters, he flew toward the tunnel openings in the mountainside where those creatures had emerged.
And dove straight in.