Chapter 22: The Chase

The Jingtang Building’s 66th floor towered two hundred meters above the ground. No matter how expansive the space lay beyond that narrow wooden door, it could never satisfy the He Ju Beasts—ferocious creatures born to thunder across vast open plains.

Thus, when Mr. He’s pursuit command rang out, the long-confined pack erupted in frenzy.

The winds surged faster once more, air currents churning into a maelstrom. Wind-element exotic beasts burst forth at speeds defying comprehension. The recovering invitees barely had time to register the sight; their eyes caught only a fleeting glimpse of pale cyan mane.

Roars from the He Ju Beasts crackled through the earpieces, yet Shi Zui remained as steady as a mountain. She stood motionless on the rooftop, allowing the abruptly raging gales to howl unchecked around her, as if bent on scattering all in their path.

The rooftop’s air was a vortex of chaos. Ninth-level gales whipped at 22.3 meters per second, rattling the rotten railings along the edge until they teetered on the brink of plunging into the bottomless abyss.

“Wow, this wind is insane!”

“Xiao Qiu, over here—watch your step, don’t fall!”

“Master? Master? Where are you taking me???”

Ye Jingqiu and the others crammed into the stairwell, bounding downward—Aether’s tip had kept them from being shredded by He Ju-controlled winds in the elevator.

Chen Yuan dangled helplessly from Xie Pingzhi’s one-handed grip, lost in bewilderment. The metallic tang hanging in the air thrust her into a realm she’d never known; she half-wished she could throttle herself just to prove this wasn’t a dream.

Ning Wan shook her head with a sigh, clucking her tongue as she mentally slotted Boss Chen onto her priority list for psychological counseling (or brainwashing, depending on the angle). All the while, she helpfully reminded the statue-still Shi Zui.

“That pack racing toward Jingtang Building has clocked 157 kilometers per hour. They’ll be here any second. You could still catch up to Xiao Qiu and the others.”

Shi Zui edged closer to the rooftop’s brink instead. Her combat boots thudded solidly against the concrete. She swept her gaze over the dizzying drop below and asked only, “Status of the remaining personnel in the conference hall?”

Ning Wan caught on instantly. “All safe. The exotic beasts are fully occupied chasing Xiao Qiu and A-Xie. Aether’s sent out the co-sponsorship notice—the roads to Jingtang Building will be sealed off shortly under the guise of construction repairs.”

Piercing sirens wailed from the distance just then. Roadblocks and warning signs sprang up along every approach to Jingtang; alerts about road faults flooded public channels.

The city’s steel torrent parted without a sound. Vehicles and pedestrians alike had been swiftly cleared from the area.

With that, the last flicker of hesitation in Shi Zui’s mind vanished. She nodded, then turned her eyes northward, toward the foggy veil of darkness concealing untold dangers.

Twenty-one C-rank exotic beasts answered their leader’s summons. Sinewy limbs propelled them forward with explosive power, their gaping crimson maws lined with fangs sharp as blades.

Eighty-seven seconds more, and they would link up with their kin, trapping those three foolhardy humans in a pincer.

“Come on, Captain Shi—if you don’t head down soon, Xiao Qiu and A-Xie are gonna get hurt bad. That’s forty-one beasts combined, and these things are masters of swarm attacks and rotation tactics.”

The grotesque visages of the exotic beasts hit too hard; Ning Wan couldn’t sit still.

She knew full well Shi Zui would never let her teammates bleed out unsupervised, but the dread of the unknown still tightened her chest. She drew a sharp breath and issued another reminder.

Shi Zui paused and nodded, her eyes fixed on the tiny tracking chip nestled in her right palm.

Then she clenched her fist around it.

Her Rampage Value spiked.

“Captain Shi, what the… wait!” Ning Wan’s chatter cut off abruptly. She stared at the rooftop surveillance feed, rubbing her eyes in disbelief.

It wasn’t paranoia on her part—Shi Zui now balanced right on the precipice, at a height that would pulverize anyone.

Pale golden lights still flowed in the distance, the heart of the Imperial Capital pulsing with oblivious glamour. But in a dozen seconds or so—the span of a sneeze—the beasts, dormant for centuries, would unleash a savage feast of blood.

Their mission tonight was to stop that at any cost.

Ning Wan blew up. “Shi Zui, can’t you run anything by me first???”

Shi Zui offered a polite explanation. “You probably wouldn’t approve.”

Captain Shi knew her own mind all too well. Aether wouldn’t recommend it, and Ning Wan would like it even less. But desperate times called for desperate measures.

Before Ning Wan could fire back, Shi Zui braced one hand on the railing and vaulted over. Muscles coiled like springs, she hurled herself from the 203-meter perch without a second thought, plunging into the boundless night.

The horde of He Ju Beasts still swarmed toward the building, bloodlusted fiends salivating for the feast they’d craved so long.

Victory glimmered mere hundred meters away. If only—but their hopes for tonight were doomed to shatter.

Aether’s alarm blared through the earpieces. Amid the gale’s roar, deep azure light flickered in Shi Zui’s plummeting eyes.

In the blink of an eye, a storm of pure cyan detonated midair. Blood sprayed toward the heavens—

Instinct: Hurricane Blade, activated.

This was Shi Zui’s least-favored wind-element instinct, yet its lethality rivaled even Yinghuo.

An invisible domain unfurled completely. Her Aether Domain swallowed the twenty-one He Ju Beasts whole.

Countless razor-thin wind blades materialized from nowhere, lashing down like a biblical deluge.

It was utter domination. The He Ju Beasts couldn’t summon so much as a spark of resistance. Every scrap of wind element in the field was locked under Shi Zui’s iron grip; these self-proclaimed wind beasts couldn’t wrest away the slightest wisp.

Hunter and hunted traded places in an instant. The slaughter they’d hungered for had begun—only now, they were the prey.

The towering, wolf-like He Ju Beasts flailed helplessly as the wind blades hammered them without mercy. Hurricane Blade wasn’t a one-shot kill; at its core, it was exquisite torment, a slow death by lingchi.

The blades carved deep, pinpoint wounds. Scalding beast blood erupted in geysers, its cloying reek trapped fast within the wind domain. In mere seconds, Hurricane Blade unleashed over ten thousand strikes. No C-rank exotic beast could endure such punishment.

Shi Zui touched down smoothly, deaf to the agonized howls filling the air. She watched the blood cloud thicken and darken, a faint smile curving her lips. Then, with a flick of her right thumb—

The chip rocketed out like a bullet.

Meanwhile, the short-lived Hurricane Blade dissipated right on cue. Without the wind blades to hold them up, the twenty He Ju Beasts that had lost all signs of life collapsed to the ground in an instant.

The only relatively intact He Ju Beast left in the area was breathing shallowly. It seemed utterly stunned—this low-intelligence creature operated purely on conditioned reflexes, blindly following its leader’s summons. Yet even it chose flight over fight when faced with the specter of death.

A chip, carried on the wind, arrived at the perfect moment. It streaked straight through the air before burrowing precisely into the thick hide of the beast’s back.

Blood sprayed in a few crimson arcs. The agonized He Ju Beast jolted awake as if from a nightmare, its stress response kicking into overdrive. The lame wolf vanished without a trace in the blink of an eye.

Shi Zui spared it no further glance. She fished a set of car keys from her pocket and strode steadily toward the parking lot.

With the tracking handed off to Aether, Ning Wan—who had watched the whole thing unfold—stared in silence at the bloodstains on her screen.

She had figured Shi Zui would use Yinghuo. Fire and wind went hand in hand, after all, and Yinghuo would have wrapped things up far more neatly than Hurricane Blade. High-temperature flames would have incinerated every trace, sparing the cleanup crew a headache later.

Shi Zui always tried to minimize the burden on others, but deploying Hurricane Blade tonight flew in the face of Captain Shi’s usual playbook.

This felt more like payback.

So she did mind after all, didn’t she?

She minded not sensing the Candle Dragon’s movements sooner—otherwise, she could have pulled Shi Wen out of those He Ju Beasts’ clutches.

Captain Shi never aired her worries or frustrations to anyone. Burdened by an ironclad sense of duty, she shouldered every problem herself.

She was great, really. Just terrible at expressing herself.

Ning Wan pursed her lips. Might as well smother the mute or let that motor-mouth Xiao Qiu talk her to death!

“Suggest confirming no Exotic Beasts remain in Jingtang Building before sending in Branch Division personnel,” Shi Zui said, tapping her earpiece with a helpful reminder.

Snapping back to attention, Ning Wan replied glumly, “Got it.”

She shifted her gaze to the other side of the screen, her mouth twitching as she watched Xiao Qiu and A-Xie bolt away, faces alight with a mix of nerves and thrill.

Boss Chen, clutched in Xie Pingzhi’s grip, sported a bird’s-nest hairdo and a thoroughly bewildered expression. The elevator couldn’t haul them down from the sixty-sixth floor in ninety seconds flat, but these two—tapping into Instinct—could manage it.

At a small price, of course.

Chen Yuan looked like she’d been strapped to a roller coaster three hundred times over. “Dazed” didn’t even scratch the surface.

The stairwell was narrow to begin with, now packed solid by dozens of hefty He Ju Beasts.

Fur flying every which way, winds whipping unchecked, barks echoing in chaotic frenzy… As Ye Jingqiu hurtled downward, she snatched a fistful of wolf hair from the air and bellowed a heads-up to the pair out front: “A-Xie, these things shed like crazy—better not sa—mmph!”

The warning came too soon. Ye Jingqiu ate a faceful of fur.

This hellhole was no place to linger. With He Ju Beasts blotting out every light source, she plunged ahead on pure instinct.

Dust churned in the air. Ye Jingqiu vaulted off a railing, twisting midair to land on solid ground.

A blinding shaft of headlights pierced the gloom. In the driver’s seat sat someone she knew inside out.

The captain!

Elation surged through Ye Jingqiu. She accelerated into a flying leap, wrenched open the passenger door, and dove inside.

Xie Pingzhi was right on her heels. Hauling Chen Yuan slowed her just enough that one particularly swift He Ju Beast closed to within centimeters.

The back door hung open. Xie Pingzhi hesitated a split second, then flung Chen Yuan inside first. In that frozen instant, the pursuing beast lunged, its reeking maw gaping wide.

Ye Jingqiu’s door still yawned open. She sensed the threat at her back with razor-sharp instincts and made her choice in a heartbeat.

She aborted her dive into the car. The batwing door caught the wind, and at the razor edge of disaster, her combat reflexes ignited fully.

One hand clamped the door for balance. Her left snapped to the Hunting Knife. Riding the vehicle’s pivot, her gaze locked the target.

Aether’s frantic data stream—wind speed, gravity, drag coefficients—proved irrelevant. Nothing outpaced Ye Jingqiu’s gut. Her wrist whipped forward in a full-power throw—

The Hunting Knife buried itself dead-center in the He Ju Beast’s tongue!

Blood erupted. The beast yowled and crumpled. Xie Pingzhi hopped in on cue, and Shi Zui—Modified Car fully primed—mashed the pedal.

The twelve-cylinder engine thundered to life, unleashing a torrent of power. In the space of a breath, the high-performance beast rocketed into triple-digit speeds.

Pushing peak output, the two-ton monster roared toward the East Suburb like a lion unchained.

Mr. He touched down a beat later. He eyed the fading taillights with a cold sneer, then parted jaws restored to their feral glory.

A high-frequency howl, inaudible to human ears, rippled across every corner of the Ancient Capital. A horde of He Ju Beasts beyond counting surged forth.

Ning Wan’s face tightened. The red dots multiplying on her screen set her heart racing.

Shi Zui meant to settle things for good in the suburbs. True to form, Captain Shi never passed up a chance to hit back—especially not against foes who’d slain Base members.

No one could have foreseen the Trade Fair spiraling into a full-on extermination. Ye Jingqiu and Xie Pingzhi’s ambush had landed a solid blow, with the snatched Candle Dragon Scale as proof positive.

But playing by your own rules meant a devil of a cleanup. The commotion in the East Suburb was already massive, and who knew what ability Shi Zui would unleash next.

Oh, right—and then there was Ye Jingqiu, the new teammate primed to spawn fresh chaos at any moment.

The Modified Car tore toward the suburbs at 180 kph, a fresh pack of dozens of Exotic Beasts giving chase once more.

Team One’s trio showed zero fear, though. Will Ring readouts pegged their adrenaline and stress hormones in the stratosphere—peak condition, no babysitting required.

Her real headache? Convincing the livid Administrative Department to handle cleanup on this gutted shell of a building.

Swift winds had swept through every corner of this building. It wasn’t as if the Base lacked the funds to buy the Jingtang Building outright. The real issue was how to handle the hundred or so ordinary people on the top floor who had witnessed that brutal clash of elements.

The Base’s brainwashing—sorry, psychological counseling—services were perpetually in short supply. There were no convenient Instincts available right now to wipe memories clean, so they’d likely have to pull every string imaginable to beg the Alchemy Department for potions again.

She was at her wit’s end. This time, she really needed to get down on her knees to Yan Zhao.

Ning Wan swallowed her rage, grinding her teeth as she vowed that sooner or later, she’d slaughter the whole lot of them!!!

In one key respect, however, Ning Wan had overlooked a single person.

Chen Yuan.

Curled up in the back seat of the car, Boss Chen’s heart felt like it was about to jolt right out of her chest from the breakneck speed. Having glimpsed the world’s true face, she was on the verge of tears—tears of pure, delirious joy.

The joy stemmed from her fantasies finally proving real. All those years poring over occult books hadn’t been wasted after all. Who knew? Maybe these Daoist masters would clasp their hands in mercy, chant “Amitabha Buddha,” and welcome a mere muggle like her into this cyberpunk Cthulhu nightmare!

The tears came from the dawning realization that there was no turning back. Three minutes ago, she’d watched Master Ye locked in a bloody duel with Mr. He. Two minutes prior, Master Xie had dragged her from the 66th floor straight down to the ground. And just moments ago, when Xie Pingzhi had flung her into the back seat, it had felt less like a rescue and more like being stuffed into a coffin.

Her emotions had rocketed to the heights and then plummeted into an endless abyss, one gut-wrenching drop after another. Amid this whirlwind of sensations, Chen Yuan’s capacity to accept the unbelievable proved remarkably resilient.

Which explained why, when Shi Zui executed a sharp drift to shake off a He Ju Beast that had clambered onto the car door—sending Chen Yuan tumbling from one end of the vehicle to the other—her first dazed thought was one of profound relief: thank goodness she hadn’t eaten dinner yet.

Otherwise, the pristine interior of her beloved car would have been a total loss.

Aether had already mapped the optimal escape route for this modified car, now firmly in full flight mode. The destination: the most barren, unpopulated suburb within a hundred kilometers.

The tracking chip indicated that the injured He Ju Beast wasn’t joining the pursuit. It was lumbering northward at a leisurely pace, no doubt heading for their lair.

Thanks to humanity’s advanced technology, Team One’s task had been simplified to one thing: eliminate every last exotic beast.

Simple on paper.

But pulling it off amid the relentless encirclement of nearly a hundred He Ju Beasts? That posed a bit of a challenge.

Winds—gale-force winds—swirled around the steel behemoth, surging ahead in a relentless torrent. Vast reserves of wind elements were depleted in an instant, enough to alter the local weather. The once-clear, cloudless sky darkened abruptly, shrouded in a hazy veil.

Shi Zui handled both modified cars with icy calm. Xie Pingzhi’s Shame Grace in its complete form was absolutely off-limits tonight, but Shi Zui’s Rampage Value could sustain two more A-rank Instincts without issue.

And then there was Ye Jingqiu. After half a month of foundational training, Shi Zui had absolute faith in her teammate’s boundless potential. Tonight, not a single one of these He Ju Beasts would slink away alive.

Xie Pingzhi huddled in the back seat, maintaining contact with the Base. Even if the Awakeners poured every ounce of their Instincts into slaughtering the hundred-strong pack, the physical toll from those wild Rampage Value swings would be catastrophic.

The Action Division Minister would never permit it. The moment Aether flagged the anomalous enemy count, the Beijing Branch had mobilized elemental weapons.

A drone bearing a glossy black orb reached the designated endpoint. Less than four minutes from now, this chase would draw to a triumphant close.

“The orb holds the Five Thunder Array.”

Qin Zhimiao chimed into the comms channel with the heads-up, hoping it would guide Shi Zui toward the perfect Instinct deployment.

This 3.0 iteration of the Five Thunder Array—fine-tuned over half a month by the Alchemy and Daoism Departments—was finally operational. With no major crises of late, tonight marked its combat debut, prompting even Loteria—who was midway through packing her bags—to have Aether mirror the feed, allowing her to evaluate potential upgrades.

The modified car thundered onward, its engine straining toward meltdown. The He Ju Beasts riding the winds had closed the gap. Wind blades raked the reinforced, blast-proof glass, leaving a web of scars. Wolfish black silhouettes crashed against the vehicle like ocean waves, their triumphant howls echoing outside the windows.

Ghostly, hissing shrieks of intimidation swirled from every direction. Ye Jingqiu clenched the grab handle for dear life, fighting not to be hurled free. She stole a glance out the window: the infinite stretch of one-way road teemed with snarling He Ju Beasts, bounding and leaping around the hurtling modified car.

They had plunged headlong into a sea of beasts.

The preset blast point loomed close. Shi Zui’s gaze locked unyieldingly on the goal, the speedometer needle kissing the perilously red zone. Cold moonlight filtered through in scattered drips, etching Shi Zui’s taut jawline in silver.

Even nearer now. The Will Ring’s Rampage Value spiked exponentially. Then, from behind, a colossal roar erupted—distinct, earth-shaking—sending the wind elements into quivering panic!

It was Mr. He himself, the undisputed A-rank overlord of this territory. When the minions fell short, the boss had to take the field.

Shi Zui spotted the shadowy mastermind first. Distance calculated, she tilted her head and murmured to Ye Jingqiu:

“Yinghuo.”

Just two syllables, but after half a month side by side, Ye Jingqiu grasped her captain’s intent instantly.

Shi Zui didn’t pause for a reply, her focus snapping back to the road ahead. She wrung every last drop from the modified car, the overclocked engine bellowing a full thousand horsepower.

The black orb filled their view. The instant the He Ju Commander lunged—

The elements in the air froze solid. And then—

A pale cyan storm and searing black flames detonated in unison, birthing tidal flames that engulfed the car’s flanks!

Yinghuo Gale Blade—triggered simultaneously.