Chapter 44: The Burial

"Damn it, don't look down on people. I wouldn't be afraid even of those old geezers in the Special Operations Forces."

Though he spoke with bravado, Turva's hand trembled continuously as he gripped his broken sword. He could no longer remember the last time he had trembled like this.

In his eyes, Su Yi was entirely inhuman. Surging energy poured from his entire body, and a tangible killing intent struck him like a thousand-pound hammer—he was simply a monster.

What felt most terrifying was that the opponent's killing intent seemed directed solely at him. Xu Chen, the soldiers behind him, and even that young girl all looked as normal as could be.

They showed no reaction to the pressure whatsoever. Being able to manipulate this formless power to such an extent was utterly unimaginable.

Yet Turva was no fledgling newcomer. His rich combat experience, coupled with his ferocious temperament, kept him from retreating despite the overwhelming pressure of his opponent.

Judging from their brief exchanges, the opponent likely possessed some kind of ability that made the blade sharper.

As long as he avoided a direct clash and used skill to evade the razor edge—what the people of Great Xia often called overcoming strength with softness—he still had a chance.

He had practiced the sword since childhood, receiving countless instructions from renowned masters from a young age. Various swordsmanship techniques were second nature to him, and combined with more than thirty years of combat experience, he was far from having zero opportunity.

Re-establishing his resolve, Turva raised his broken sword and continuously slashed toward the man before him. Aided by the wind currents, he could execute countless counter-intuitive maneuvers.

He would not lose his balance, could alter the direction of the blade at any moment, and could even briefly suspend himself in mid-air without needing to push off the ground or walls.

"Clang, clang, clang."

The sound of clashing blades echoed continuously down the corridor, sending sparks flying in a display that seemed evenly matched.

Yet Turva quickly realized something was amiss. No matter what technique he employed,

his opponent always countered with the most ordinary, the most mundane, and the most antiquated methods: increasing the speed of his slashes and repeatedly altering their direction.

There were no flashy, ornate movements.

Only absolute speed and absolute mastery over the angles of swordplay, devoid of the slightest superfluous motion and agonizingly precise.

To use such rudimentary swordsmanship to a degree of perfection that left no flaws—he could only wonder how long one had to practice to achieve it.

Turva felt as though he were being toyed with. It was like an elderly man playing with a mischievous child; the man in black before him took him completely lightly.

Yet in such a confined space, locked in a battle where a single moment of distraction meant death, all opportunities to flee had vanished entirely.

Turva could not accept that he would fall in a place like this, dying at the hands of some inexplicable person. He pushed his physical faculties to their absolute limit, blood vessels bursting at the corners of his eyes, and even forced open his already blind right eye, roaring as he poured his every ounce of strength into resistance.

A sideways hacking strike.

A blocking slash with a horizontal support.

A rising thrust at an angle.

Relying on physical instinct, he shifted techniques continuously, each strike, augmented by the wind, appearing incomparably bizarre and unpredictable.

Yet the harder he tried, the more despairing he became. No matter how exquisite his sword techniques were, they were effortlessly dismantled.

Instead, his own movements grew sluggish due to the depletion of his stamina, gradually failing to keep up with his intent.

"No other presence has appeared..."

Swinging his sword incessantly, Su Yi swept his gaze around his surroundings. He deliberately restrained his strength, not immediately cutting down the foreigner in front of him, precisely to test whether anyone else was watching the battle.

Yet with his perception fully opened, there remained no unusual activity in the vicinity.

The weaker the opponent and the quieter the surroundings, the less Su Yi dared to lower his guard. He needed to test further.

Naturally, he could not drag the time out for too long.

White light flickered continuously within the corridor. Like a phantom ignoring inertia and gravity, Su Yi delivered a powerful punch straight to Turva's chest.

Turva never expected the opponent's speed to increase further; completely unable to react, he took a heavy blow to the chest, his body sent flying backward by the immense pressure and slamming solidly against the glass wall.

"Crack—"

A crisp shattering sound rang out, and the sturdy reinforced glass instantly fractured, accompanied by the simultaneous snapping of his ribs.

A scorching heat rushed up Turva's throat, forcing him to vomit a mouthful of fresh blood as he presented an extremely battered appearance.

"Aren't the people behind you coming out yet?"

A deep, low, deathly silent voice echoed.

Su Yi raised his sword and walked slowly toward him.

"What people behind me?" Turva muttered in momentary bewilderment, which instantly morphed into boiling fury.

From the very beginning, he had been underestimated. The person before him had actually treated him merely as a probing bait. In all his years in the trade, having killed countless people, he had never been treated this way; this was naked humiliation.

"There's a price to pay for looking down on people!"

Turva roared with a hideous expression, abruptly pulling out an injector and violently plunging it into his neck.

Watching from the side, Xu Chen felt a surge of dread and shouted aloud, "Stop him quickly!"

When he escaped the Special Operations Team's encirclement last time, Turva had injected himself with goodness-knows-what, rendering him a match even for five ability-users combined.

Though he did not know which hidden powerhouse of the operations team this black-clad swordsman was, for the sake of his own skin and the safety of all the newly awakened students present, he felt compelled to issue a warning.

Yet,

his voice was still too late.

Turva finished the injection, his injuries instantly healing, his eyes bloodshot, and his veins bulging. His entire presence abruptly surged, and the flow of wind throughout the laboratory grew chaotic, gradually spiraling out of control.

"Kid, this is an enhancement serum that doesn't belong to this world. If you don't kill me in a single strike, just wait to regret this!"

Feeling the surging power flood his entire body, his muscles expanded like twisted, savage vines, emitting a popping crackle. Even his bones grew hardened, turning a deep, silvery-gray that became directly visible through his skin.

His torso expanded to more than twice its original size, effortlessly tearing apart the surrounding alloy walls.

"Kid, I've been mixed up in Great Xia for over a decade. Too many people have wanted me dead, but unfortunately, none of them had the capability."

"Since you managed to force me into using the enhancement serum today, you can consider your life well-lived."

Turva shouted loudly, attempting to drown out the psychological impact of Su Yi's killing aura through his own cries and self-aggrandizement. The violent gale raged wildly within the narrow corridor, flying and dancing without restraint.

The desks, papers, and debris from the shattered walls within the glass room—even the stray bullets fired by the surrounding soldiers—were scattered in disarray.

Turva's eyes burned red, high-temperature white mist exhaling continuously from his mouth. Reinvigorating his spirit, he raised his sword once more.

This serum was extremely scarce; even with the Red Dragonfly elite entrenched for many years, he had possessed only this single remaining dose, and he would never have used it unless driven to the absolute limit.

Yet the side effects of this item were severe in the extreme; every time he used it, his body entered a period of collapse. The agony of tearing through every fiber of his being was unbearable even for him, followed by a prolonged period where no amount of food could satiate his hunger.

Even so, the power it granted was a genuine, manifold increase.

Inside the glass room, Mu Xiaowei curled up in the corner, staring blankly at the unfolding scene. The transcendent spectacle shattered and rebuilt the young girl's worldview over and over again.

For the first time, she experienced firsthand what an ability truly meant, and understood why Xu Chen had said that abilities represented danger.

"It's over, we're completely finished now..." Xu Chen, watching from the sidelines, felt an identical wave of despair. The substance Turva had injected clearly impaired one's sanity; perhaps earlier, because he possessed some knowledge of abilities, he might not have died.

Whether he would still be spared now remained entirely uncertain.

At this moment, everyone's gaze converged upon Su Yi.

Amidst the raging gale,

Su Yi's bangs were blown back, exposing his forehead.

Yet beneath the silver mask, he watched the transformation before him with a completely expressionless face, silently holding the edge of his blade horizontally across his chest.

"This is a phased-out Type-T enhancement serum..."

Su Yi recognized what his opponent had injected at a single glance.

It was an augmentation agent once used by certain extremist factions in the wasteland to rapidly mass-produce civilian armies, but its side effects were excessive, easily causing the user's body to rupture and die. It had been replaced by superior products shortly after its release.

The fact that the foreigner before him could pull out such an item indicated that wasteland technology had indeed leaked into the Blue Star.

Watching Turva launch his self-righteous attack, the eyes beneath Su Yi's mask gradually shifted to a deep, ghostly dark-purple as he quietly raised the longsword in his hand.

Faced with such a person, he held only a single evaluation in his heart:

—Ugly.

The old-fashioned Type-T serum was absolute street trash in the wasteland; anyone with the slightest ambition would refuse to inject it. The healing potion he had given to Lorihi possessed a value that could easily command tons of goods on the black market.

Anyone who took such garbage as their trump card was truly unworthy of further testing.

In an instant.

He struck.

A flash of white light.

Stepping forward leisurely, holding his breath and sheathing his blade, without the slightest ripple of emotion.

Turva, who had been shouting "Go to hell" and "I am the strongest," found his words cut short as he suddenly felt the world spin wildly.

The entire universe was subjected to some inexplicable force, distorting and inverting. In his vision, Su Yi was actually standing upside down on the ceiling in defiance of gravity.

"Huh? What is going on here?"

Confusion filled Turva's mind, lasting until an indeterminate amount of time later, when he saw his own mangled lower half enter his field of view.

Only then did he realize.

He had been cleaved in two...

Blood splattered everywhere, and the icy grip of fear and death arrived simultaneously. His body refused to obey, while his heart swelled with endless reluctance and incomprehension.

Enveloped by the despair of impending death, Turva gradually lost his perception of the outside world.

Only two words of deathly silence echoed in his ears, piercing straight to the depths of his soul.

"Buried."

There was not even time for a lifetime's memories to flash before his eyes.

A moment later,

Su Yi swept his longsword, tracing a flawless ripple through the air with a turn of his body as red and white matter splattered in all directions.

Before the corpse could even hit the ground, he hacked it into mincemeat, completely consuming it in the flames of white fire until it burned away to nothing, leaving no trace behind.

In the wasteland, certain ability-users could still resurrect after death; having suffered losses to this before, he would not leave the slightest possibility of a comeback.

The corridor returned to silence and tranquility. He glanced toward the other side of the battlefield.

Those soldiers had also been nearly all slain by Lorihi, with only a few lingering stragglers frantically fleeing toward the laboratory exit.

Yet before they could take more than a few steps, the silver-haired girl descended from above, cleanly slicing their throats with a dagger and viciously driving a blade deep into their hearts.

With her clean assassination techniques and her sound habit of delivering finishing blows, Su Yi looked upon Lorihi's figure with profound satisfaction. He had to admit that when it came to combat, she was truly exceptional.

Seeing that all the intruders had been dealt with,

Xu Chen wiped the cold sweat from his forehead and let out a long breath.

The laboratory guards had all lost contact, the ability-users had run off outside to drink and slack off, the communication equipment was damaged, and on top of a power outage, the intruders had been Turva—a torment to the Special Operations Team for ages.

With every possible debuff stacked against them, managing to survive unscathed was enough to make one shout in sheer fortune and offer thanks to the heavens above.

Yet Xu Chen had not forgotten the key to their deliverance from this crisis. He walked respectfully toward Su Yi, extending a hand to express his gratitude to the savior of the research facility:

"To think Mr. Cyd had a powerhouse like you concealed here—it's simply astonishing. Might I ask your esteemed name..."

Yet no sooner had Xu Chen drawn near than the black-clad man's sword abruptly pressed against his throat. That matchless killing intent enveloped him like an evil spirit, accompanied by terrifying words that he could not comprehend in the slightest.

"Interrogator, you're up!"