Chapter 48 : Chapter 48
Chapter 48: The Prey Became the Hunter, and the Tide Turned
Li Mu instantly unlocked Seventy-Two Transformations.
【Consumed 200 Triumph Points. Divine Ability ‘Seventy-Two Transformations’ unlocked.】
【Seventy-Two Transformations: Transform into all things and gain their characteristics while retaining your body's original strength. Maintaining the transformation continuously consumes True Qi.】
Seventy-Two Transformations was not a numerical divine ability.
So it was also a skill-tree type.
Li Mu unlocked the first transformation beneath it.
【Flying Mosquito Transformation: Transform into a mosquito. It has no real characteristics, and it cannot even suck blood. Its flight speed depends on the amount of True Qi consumed.】
Fortunately, Seventy-Two Transformations actually had no cooldown.
He spent another 100 Triumph Points to unlock the transformation ability.
Then Li Mu put the remaining 600 points all into Immobilization Art!
Li Mu now felt that a one-minute cooldown was simply too long!
And it consumed an absurd amount of True Qi. Each use took 10% of his total True Qi, and Li Mu had already used it twice just now.
From the moment Li Mu entered the Abyss until now, all the fighting he had done had only consumed about 30% of his total True Qi.
But those two uses of Immobilization Art had already burned through 20%.
At this point, Li Mu only had a little over half of his True Qi left!
And there were still forty minutes until the dense fog ended!
With those 600 Triumph Points, Li Mu lit up four nodes on the skill tree for Immobilization Art in one go.
【Immobilization Art consumption reduced to 5% of total True Qi per use.】
【Immobilization Art cooldown reduced to 50 seconds.】
【Immobilization Art cooldown reduced to 40 seconds.】
【When attacking an immobilized enemy, deal additional damage equal to 10% of True Qi intensity.】
Li Mu moved extremely quickly.
By the time he spent all of the Triumph Points, to Zhao Meiting and the others, it only looked as though Li Mu had frozen blankly for a single second.
By then, they had already figured out why Li Mu had given them the cloak.
Energy was flowing across the cloak, and it seemed to have some defensive effect.
The huge cloak could fully cover all four of them. As long as they sealed themselves inside tightly enough, the smell of blood would be trapped beneath the cloak.
Bone Ghouls were most sensitive to the smell of human blood.
As the smell outside gradually dispersed, it was basically the same as the four of them turning invisible within a small area.
"Li Mu, what are you planning to do?"
At that moment, Wang Longcheng's voice came from the watch. In the end, he could not help asking Li Mu with concern.
Li Mu's eyes turned cold as he swept his gaze across the surroundings. Fiery Eyes and Golden Gaze activated, locking onto a Bone Ghoul charging toward them.
He viciously wiped the blood from the corner of his mouth.
Then he gave Wang Longcheng only a single word.
"Kill."
The very next second after Li Mu spoke, he vanished with a pop in front of everyone's horrified eyes.
He simply disappeared into thin air!
A Bone Ghoul came roaring over, charging straight at the spot where Li Mu had just been standing!
But the Bone Ghoul struck nothing.
It shook its head in confusion and looked around, as if wondering where the person who had just been there had gone.
But very quickly, its nose twitched.
Its gaze locked onto Ma Jun and the others hidden beneath the cloak.
Just as it was about to charge over in excitement, a vicious gust of wind suddenly appeared behind its head.
The long cudgel whistled through the air as though it had appeared out of nowhere!
It came smashing straight down!
Bang!
The Bone Ghoul's head exploded instantly.
Li Mu revealed himself, then quickly vanished back into the fog!
At that moment, Zhao Meiting, Song Biao, and Ma Jun were holding the cloak tightly over their bodies.
Only three pairs of eyes were exposed as they stared outside.
When they saw Li Mu disappear out of thin air, then reappear behind the monster and blow its head apart with a single strike, they were so shocked that they could hardly process it.
What kinds of cultivation arts did Li Mu even know?
A single word, and the enemy froze!
He vanished into thin air and appeared from thin air!
What school had ever taught something like this??
They were not the only ones stunned.
At that moment, the command center was terrifyingly silent!
Wang Longcheng stood with both hands braced on the command platform, his tiger-like eyes fixed dead on the large screen.
Even he could not understand it.
How exactly was Li Mu doing this?
Why could he suddenly turn invisible?
It was not that cultivation arts of this type did not exist.
But there was absolutely no way they should be something his level could master.
Forget the Yellow Rank. Even if Wang Longcheng himself advanced into the Profound Rank now, it would still be extremely difficult for him to find such a mysterious and bizarre cultivation art.
Because he was not even sure whether someone without a space-type talent could learn this sort of cultivation art at all.
"How is this possible? I've never seen a cultivation art like that."
The Guidance Officer spoke in shock.
"It's his talent. His talent mutated."
Wang Longcheng deliberately said this loudly enough for everyone nearby to hear.
When they had chatted before, Wang Longcheng had actually asked Li Mu why he knew Immobilization Art.
Because Li Mu had used it in the First Battle as well.
Li Mu had told him that it was an ability derived from a mutation in his talent.
That was the only believable explanation, so Wang Longcheng had accepted it.
And regardless of whether these abilities really were caused by a mutated talent,
Wang Longcheng had to vouch for Li Mu.
He had to protect whatever privacy Li Mu wanted protected.
After Wang Longcheng said that, the people around him lost a good deal of their confusion.
What remained was complete shock!
And all of this
had only just begun!
Like a ghostly phantom, Li Mu's figure flickered in and out of sight within a radius of a dozen or so meters around Ma Jun and the others.
The howls of Bone Ghouls rose continuously from all around them.
And every time a Bone Ghoul approached Ma Jun's group, the instant they saw the monster,
Li Mu would inevitably appear behind its head out of nowhere.
Then he would bring the cudgel down.
Every strike was an instant kill!
As time passed, the smell of blood from Ma Jun and the others was fully hidden beneath the huge cloak.
Meanwhile, the wound at Li Mu's waist continuously gave off a pungent smell of blood.
And so an eerie scene emerged.
Every Bone Ghoul that came running over was coming for Li Mu.
But without exception, each one would find nothing, then wander around in confusion, looking all over the place.
And at the moment they delightedly discovered Ma Jun and the others, Li Mu would appear and kill them with a single strike.
Three, five, ten, twenty...
Bone Ghouls appeared more and more frequently.
And Li Mu killed them one by one.
What no one could see, however, was that every Bone Ghoul he killed released an invisible stream of energy.
That energy continuously gathered into the cloak covering Ma Jun and the others.
The silver ring on the back of the cloak slowly took on a faint reddish tint.
Time passed.
Nearly half an hour went by!
The fog had already begun to thin.
But the people in the command center could not smile at all.
"This is bad. Li Mu's speed is starting to slow down!"
The Guidance Officer anxiously tapped the table with his fist.
"His True Qi is running dry. That invisibility must consume too much True Qi!"
"That wasn't invisibility. It looked more like transformation."
"It looked like he was turning into some kind of tiny flying insect!"
The people around him began discussing it all at once. The sharper-eyed among them had already noticed that Li Mu had transformed into a tiny flying insect.
And at that moment, Li Mu truly was already at the end of his strength.
He had not stayed transformed the entire time.
Remaining transformed consumed True Qi continuously.
If he maintained the transformation without interruption, the cost was terrifyingly high.
Li Mu estimated that even if he had been at full True Qi, he could maintain the transformation for ten minutes at most before his True Qi was completely exhausted.
So he had only been moving around through the surrounding fog.
Whenever there was the slightest disturbance, he would first activate Fiery Eyes and Golden Gaze for a quick look.
Once he confirmed that a monster was approaching, he would turn into a mosquito, circle behind it, and attack from the rear.
He did not dare maintain a transformation for more than five seconds at a time.
And Fiery Eyes and Golden Gaze also consumed True Qi continuously.
Li Mu only dared keep it active for one second at most.
But now, Li Mu's True Qi was completely running dry.
That was why he had already walked back out of the much thinner fog to Ma Jun and the others.
Clearly, he could no longer keep hiding as he had before.
Li Mu drove the Thornflower Cudgel heavily into the ground.
Then he tore off a strip of cloth and tightly bound the wound at his waist before tightening his sleeves.
When they saw this, a trace of pain appeared in Ma Jun and the others' eyes.
If Li Mu really died here protecting them, they would never be able to live with it for the rest of their lives.
"Li Mu..."
Ma Jun's voice trembled as he tried to say something.
But Li Mu gave them a firm smile.
"Ten minutes! At most, this fog will last another ten minutes!"
"If the fog still hasn't dispersed after ten minutes, I promise you, I'll leave!"
Yaogu was Li Mu's trump card.
The fog was getting thinner and thinner. If Li Mu truly reached his limit, he would definitely have Yaogu carry him away.
But he clearly had not reached that point yet.
At that moment, without even using Fiery Eyes and Golden Gaze, he could already see a shadow rapidly charging toward them through the thinning fog not far away.
Li Mu gave a low shout.
"Until then, stay hidden! Don't come out and make things worse!"
With that, he pulled out the cudgel and charged forward, sweeping it in a horizontal arc!
A long time ago, Li Mu had already increased Mountain-Bearing Art to the strength of three tigers and nine oxen.
Using only the brute force of Mountain-Bearing Art, together with a divine weapon weighing more than seven hundred jin, this strike still smashed the charging Bone Ghoul to the ground.
But because he no longer had any True Qi left, that strike did not kill it instantly.
So Li Mu followed up with another blow, barely managing to shatter the Bone Ghoul's head.
Immediately after that, a second Bone Ghoul charged over.
Li Mu dealt with it the same way and killed it in two strikes.
Inside the command center, a loud uproar broke out.
Someone asked in disbelief, "This kid... could it be that he plans to..."
"Rely purely on physical combat to hold out for these last ten minutes?"