Chapter 58 : Chapter 58
Chapter 58
By the time Ji Qing hurried to the battlefield, Shao Huayu and the others had already arrived.
The cooperation between the two teams had already been established.
Song Xiaoran stepped back a few paces and returned to the rear of the battlefield to support his teammates’ offense. The pressure on Gu Lingxue eased considerably, and Ling You’er used the opportunity to possess Feng Youyou.
Above the lake, Feng Youyou controlled the wind field to keep herself suspended in the air.
She was the only ability user present who did not need anyone else’s help, but because of that, she was unable to unleash the full destructive power of her Wind ability. She had to keep calculating the operation of the wind field at every moment.
Zhou Que’s fire ability was also heavily restricted over the lake.
The main force at the front of the battlefield had now officially been handed over to Shao Huayu, Zhou Que, and Xie Chang’an. However, the Tang Saber in Xie Chang’an’s hand still could not cut through the soft skin of the octopus Aberrant.
After another failed strike, Xie Chang’an quickly retreated a few steps to avoid the attack of a massive tentacle. The long drain on his stamina had left his breathing slightly uneven.
Seeing this, Zhou Que clicked his tongue in obvious disdain. “Tch. You’re so useless.”
“And you think you’re any more useful?”
Unable to hold back, Xie Chang’an snapped back at him.
This was the first time Xie Chang’an had ever talked back, but the reality was this: one of them was limited by the battlefield because of his ability, while the other could not break through the octopus’s skin with his Tang Saber. Both of them could only serve as bait to draw the enemy’s fire.
Zhou Que fell speechless. “...”
Instinctively, Zhou Que wanted to throw a punch, but then he remembered that he was standing on the ice field created by the other side’s teammate, so he closed his mouth resentfully. There was no way he could start hitting people right in front of the other team’s teammate.
Just as Zhou Que was about to say something else, Shao Huayu, who had just cut off the fifth tentacle, happened to dodge over near the two of them. Without even turning his head, he said directly:
“Don’t start fighting at a critical moment.”
With that, Shao Huayu threw himself back into battle.
His coordination with Song Xiaoran was much better than anyone else’s. The vines that burst through the ice became footholds at the instant before each sudden assault.
Ji Qing suddenly noticed that Song Xiaoran was using vines to reinforce the entire ice field.
Gu Lingxue’s spiritual energy was not enough to support freezing the whole lake, and the clash between both sides kept shattering the battlefield. What Song Xiaoran was doing was essentially planting several support pillars throughout the ice field.
“That’s pretty impressive,” Ji Qing murmured in admiration.
As Ji Qing observed the state of the battle, he moved swiftly through the shadows of the trees. Though he was already eager to join in, there was still some distance between him and the lake.
When he thought of what was about to happen, the corners of Ji Qing’s lips curled into a faintly amused smile.
To make his explanation hold up later, Ji Qing had deliberately transferred himself to a distant beach. Along the way as he ran over, he had a fierce clash with quite a few Aberrants.
The red fish had already issued her orders.
All the Aberrants on the island had been driven into a frenzy because of it, but things were still not over. The sovereign’s decision was to put forward a Lord and sink two-thirds of the island. That was what would happen next without question.
Ji Qing could feel his heart stirring restlessly.
There was something irresistible about knowing the development of events when no one else did. Power and status had always been the things most capable of stirring human desire, and he was standing here—
Just about to witness a complete, foreseeable upheaval.
At last, Ji Qing arrived by the lake.
You Xingluo and Liu Mu were standing beside Song Xiaoran and Gu Lingxue. Neither of their abilities was offensive, so they had not joined the battle directly.
Ji Qing noticed that quite a few Aberrant corpses had already piled up nearby.
Unlike the glimpse of the battle he had seen earlier, Song Xiaoran now looked much more at ease. When Ji Qing approached them, Song Xiaoran was controlling vines to block the Aberrants from getting close while at the same time instructing Gu Lingxue:
“Reinforce the support points as much as possible. Conserve your spiritual energy.”
“Got it.” Gu Lingxue stared fixedly at the ice field and responded seriously. At that moment, she looked less like a poised young lady from a wealthy family and more like a student hungry for knowledge.
You Xingluo was the first to notice Ji Qing. “You took forever getting here.”
“It really wasn’t that slow.”
Ji Qing gave a bitter smile after hearing that.
On the way here, he had also run into other student teams. Most of them had been thrown into chaos by the sudden Aberrant uprising, while a few had reacted quickly and started supporting the other teams.
The safety of their classmates mattered more than the Team Competition rankings.
Ji Qing had run into Lan Nianxuan’s team.
Although Ji Qing had never had a good impression of Lan Nianxuan ever since the ability evaluation, by the time he noticed their team, they were already using a teammate’s sensory-type ability to find people.
The status of a great family descendant was both power and obligation.
Ji Qing turned to Song Xiaoran and Gu Lingxue and asked casually, “Can you still hold on? Something big might happen soon.”
The four people present: “?”
Before Ji Qing could explain further what he had seen on the way, the island suddenly began to shake.
Gu Lingxue, who had not been paying attention to her surroundings, nearly fell, only to be caught firmly by Song Xiaoran. Song Xiaoran shouted sharply, “Watch the ice field. Don’t let our teammates fall through.”
At that, Gu Lingxue hurriedly pulled herself together and refocused on the battlefield.
Trees collapsed. Hillsides slid.
Not far away, the waves grew higher and higher until they became a tsunami as tall as the forest itself. The octopus Aberrant that had been holding its ground all this time suddenly let out a sharp, ringing call.
The companion it had been waiting for had finally arrived.
Though it had already lost seven tentacles, the octopus Aberrant had still been stubbornly holding the line. Now, however, it received the Lord’s order to retreat. Within the towering wall of sea, a colossal figure appeared and vanished in glimpses.
Ji Qing steadied himself amid the island’s violent shaking and calmly looked toward the tsunami.
“It’s huge,” Ji Qing said in amazement.
Just a moment ago, he had been wondering how the sovereign planned to sink the island. So it was by having a humpback whale come over.
The octopus Aberrant immediately gave up tangling with the people present and used its remaining tentacles to frantically smash apart the ice imprisoning its body. Amid a spray of shattered crystals, it slipped into the bottom of the lake.
It would return to the deep sea through the passage beneath the lake.
Feng Youyou intensified her control over the wind field and floated the people standing on the lake toward the shore. The instant Xie Chang’an’s feet left the ice, a whirlpool formed on the lake’s surface.
The whirlpool tore through the ice, and countless chunks of ice spun around the center of the lake.
“Damn it!” Zhou Que cursed.
Victory had been right in front of them. They had been just about to defeat the octopus Aberrant, yet now it had escaped, the spoils of battle were gone, and they would not get any points either.
All of their efforts had come to nothing.
After noticing the tsunami, You Xingluo suddenly turned around and stared gravely at the cave behind the waterfall. He had already understood the Lord’s purpose.
The Lord had decided to bury the evidence.
Without evidence, the Council would never believe his words, much less take action. You Xingluo inwardly felt that the situation was extremely troublesome, but the tsunami was already almost upon them...
They no longer had time to investigate it.
“We need to withdraw,” You Xingluo said with difficulty.
As he weighed the exhaustion of his teammates in his mind, he looked at Ji Qing. “Do you still have enough spiritual energy?”
“Of course I do,” Ji Qing said with a smile. “I’ve been guarding against exactly this kind of crisis the whole time.”
Without hesitation, Ji Qing used his ability to uproot a nearby tree trunk and let the teammates present stand on it. To conserve spiritual energy, he did not choose to float his teammates directly.
At the same time, the five people above the lake landed on the tree trunk. Feng Youyou’s tightly wound nerves immediately eased a little. The long, uninterrupted battle had left her exhausted in both body and mind.
Ji Qing controlled the trunk and sent it flying toward the hillside.
As they retreated, the lake overflowed and the land around it split open. The tsunami swallowed the beach and the forest, burying every trace beneath the sea.
Seawater poured continuously back into the cave.
Layer after layer of rock along the island’s edge collapsed into the ocean. The humpback whale’s impact caused the island to split and convulse, while all around them rang the sounds of shattering stone and snapping trees.
The instant Zhou Que lifted his eyes, he saw the humpback whale in the distance.
It was astonishingly enormous. Anyone who ever witnessed its existence would, without exception, have its image deeply carved into their eyes forever.
Zhou Que frowned. “The Lord?”
You Xingluo immediately denied it. “No, it’s not.”
But the moment those words left his mouth, You Xingluo froze. His gaze swept over the companions around him, and for a moment he did not know whether he should say the rest aloud.
An intelligent Lord from the sea, capable of triggering species evolution.
The enemy they were facing was something so terrifying that it inspired dread in the heart. They had not even seen the Lord’s true form this time. The thought was crushing.
But without concrete evidence, the Federation would ultimately identify the humpback whale as the Lord.
The humpback whale had displayed overwhelming strength and had commanded the Aberrants. Those facts were hard evidence against him, and on top of that, Xicheng needed the transfer port.
No matter how dangerous it was, the second Lord of the island could only be the humpback whale.
Yet You Xingluo murmured lowly and still forced the truth out. “It isn’t the Lord. It’s a shield the Lord pushed forward. An intelligent Lord would never appear before humans so easily.”
A trace of approval quietly flashed through Ji Qing’s eyes.
He had known this explanation would not fool You Xingluo.
That was precisely why one-third of the island had to remain. Only in that way could the Federation be forced to suppress the matter, and only then could all future island investigations be hidden in the dark.
As long as the majority of ordinary people remained unaware, the marine Aberrants would be able to make contact with them steadily and safely.
That was the ending the sovereign of the deep sea had hoped for.
Zhou Que looked at You Xingluo with a baffled expression. He had not understood You Xingluo’s reasoning earlier, and hearing all this now only made him feel more lost.
He knew that the mutation on the island had come from the Lord, but he did not know the details of that Lord.
The tsunami was still surging toward the island.
Again and again, it smashed against the island’s soil and vegetation until the seawater swallowed everything whole. Ji Qing set the floating tree trunk down on the very highest point of the island’s hillside.
This would be the dividing line of the remaining one-third.
But as Ji Qing looked at the tsunami so close before them, a trace of vigilance flashed through his eyes. Even though the plan had already been decided, the force of a tsunami was not something that could be controlled with precision.
Ji Qing already had a premonition that the tsunami would surge over this hill and pour down the other side of the island like a waterfall.
Ji Qing turned to look behind him.
A good number of the students were already boarding the ship, but others were still hurrying toward it. The tsunami was developing too quickly. If no one intervened, it would definitely sweep up some of the students.
Everyone else present had already realized the situation.
Most of the traces of species evolution had appeared in the island’s inner ring. In other words, any classmate who had made it that far might have witnessed the phenomenon.
The Lord was trying to silence everyone.
Shao Huayu said seriously, “It wants to sink this island.”
At that moment, what weighed on Shao Huayu’s heart was not worry about species evolution, but worry about the future of Xicheng’s more than ten million civilians.
“I can see that too,” Zhou Que muttered hollowly. “But it’s in the sea... how are we supposed to fight a sea monster in the water...”
“So obviously we need to run,” Liu Mu said expressionlessly as he patted Zhou Que on the shoulder.
“I’ll go help the other students retreat,” Song Xiaoran said calmly. “Plants can’t provide effective support in saltwater. The most urgent thing right now is evacuation.”
“In that case, I should run too...” Zhou Que let out a weak sigh.
As the others spoke, Xie Chang’an instinctively moved to carry the exhausted Gu Lingxue on his back. He had seen how drained she was, only to be stopped by Feng Youyou with a smile.
“Hey, Classmate Xie~” Feng Youyou said with a smiling squint. “I should carry Lingxue instead. Your stamina is good, so later on, remember to help more of the other students along the way.”
“...Mm, all right.” Xie Chang’an froze for a moment.
His gaze subtly swept over Feng Youyou. She had been the one to restrain all twelve tentacles at the start. Did she really still have enough strength left to carry someone?
Feng Youyou immediately understood the look on his face. Half-closing her eyes, she said, “My spiritual energy is depleted, but I can still grit my teeth and keep going with my stamina. That’s all.”
With that, Feng Youyou hoisted Gu Lingxue onto her back.
Slumped against her, Gu Lingxue said weakly, “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome. You did great this time,” Feng Youyou replied briskly. Although both of them reeked of the sea, neither of the two girls cared in the slightest at that moment.
So Xie Chang’an pulled up his Tang Saber and took off first, running toward the shore.
But after running a short distance, he suddenly stopped. Looking back at the three people still standing at the top of the hill, he asked in confusion, “Then what are they doing?”
“Just worry about yourself,” Feng Youyou said as she passed by him.
“Don’t worry about Hua Yu and the others,” You Xingluo added as he followed after her.
“Right now I really want to complain about you, but I’ll save it for when we’re on the ship,” Liu Mu muttered as he followed third.
“You are absolutely not allowed to talk to him!” Zhou Que protested noisily, suddenly on guard. “You’re all my friends, my friends!!!”
Xie Chang’an stared blankly. “...Huh?”
After hesitating again and again, he finally broke into a run and followed that fleeing group.
At that point, only Ji Qing, Shao Huayu, and Ling You’er remained on the hill.
Staring at the tsunami only one step away, Ling You’er asked timidly, “You two... which one of you wants me to possess?”
At this, Shao Huayu looked at Ji Qing. “Do you still have enough spiritual energy?”
“I should, probably,” Ji Qing answered hesitantly.
He had no idea what kind of answer he ought to give, but it certainly could not be a straightforward “yes.” Shao Huayu showed no reaction and turned to Ling You’er. “Then possess me. I’m running low.”
Ling You’er nodded.
Thus three became two, and Shao Huayu tugged tiredly at his collar.
Summoning a sword of light, he walked forward as calmly as he could. “Come on. This is a good chance to see each other’s strength properly. Let’s find out how much we can do for Xicheng.”
Ji Qing suddenly smiled.
At this point, he genuinely admired Shao Huayu. And, conveniently enough, Shao Huayu’s proposal perfectly matched his own thoughts. Ji Qing stepped forward and answered with a smile, “All right.”
After all, the island still could not be allowed to sink here.