Chapter Eighty-Five: Clash of Attributes and Power (Part II)

“Beep, beep, beep.”

Xiao Ou was about to step forward to investigate the situation ahead when suddenly, the smart brain in his hand emitted an urgent warning. It was the sound triggered when something approached his body at a critical speed. In truth, even before the alarm sounded, the hairs on the back of his neck had already stood on end—a bodily instinct, honed through years of combat.

He didn’t even look back. The Pagoda Sword in his hand glowed, wood attribute power flowed from his right hand, enveloping the blade. He swung backward, and a burst of green light instantly illuminated the underground nest, annihilating the attacking gene body corpse behind him with the highly compressed wood attribute force.

Once again, Xiao Ou didn’t turn to see what had happened behind him. From the very first moment he started tracking the Foundation-level High Wisdom Entity, he knew this would be a contest of wits and strength.

The intelligence of these entities was nearly equal to that of humans, perhaps even superior. Among the rare aberrations in their species, they were born without much combat ability, yet they were the strategists of their kind.

Xiao Ou had faced the wisdom entity, directly and indirectly, several times already. Had he entered the underground nest with Feng and Bai Wan’er, the entity would never have appeared—it might have already escaped. He was bait, luring the serpent from its den, playing every role himself, ultimately to slay the entity and seize the seed.

He knew the wisdom entity watched him from the main nest. If he remained vigilant, it would keep hiding, but when he deliberately showed weakness, after being pursued thrice—from District C to District B, with all the fury built up from such a prolonged chase—it was bound to seize any opportunity, taking the initiative to strike.

Man proposes, heaven disposes. Xiao Ou had laid the trap; whether it succeeded depended on fortune. As expected, the wisdom entity remained as cunning as ever, coming at him in disguise.

Their first exchange inside the nest ended in a draw. Xiao Ou was not surprised. If the entity was so easily slain, they wouldn’t have chased it from C to B. Its attempt to ambush him signaled impatience—it wanted to kill him quickly, uncertain of Feng and Bai Wan’er’s whereabouts. Should the three converge in the nest, the entity would truly be cornered.

The Foundation-level High Wisdom Entity was a tier above the entry-level one Ye Bai had encountered. Though essentially brains, the Foundation-level had three smaller brains, encased not in mere white energy, but with two auxiliary brains swinging like legs as it moved.

The biological detector in Xiao Ou’s smart brain registered red dots—all related to the white energy layer encasing the entity’s brains. To date, no living entity had been captured, nor could one be. If cornered, they chose death in battle; should someone manage to seize a living entity, at the instant of contact, there’d be a flash in the mind, and then only a corpse remained. The main city of the Angry Sea, famed for its technology, speculated this was a form of energy capable of directly affecting animal and human brains, like spiritual force.

Once deceived, the wisdom entity would not fall for the same trick again. No matter how much Xiao Ou feigned weakness thereafter, the surroundings remained silent, not a flicker of energy on the detector.

He moved slowly toward the nest’s center—the core area once divided into laboratory and gene body training grounds. The laboratory was smaller, now destroyed following evacuation; the entire nest spanned the size of three or four football fields.

Corpses abounded in the training grounds. Whenever the entity created a new gene body, it would test them; those that failed became these corpses, the weakest gene bodies faced by Ye Bai and his companions.

Xiao Ou strode boldly into the training ground, exposing many vulnerabilities, yet the wisdom entity made no further move, allowing him to reach the heart of the field, the place thickest with gene body corpses.

Xiao Ou had just stepped into the center of the gene training ground when his smart brain suddenly lit up. The biological detector was filled with red dots—lifeforms had surrounded him.

“Heh, come then. Let’s see what tricks you have left.” Entering the tiger’s den for its cubs—the bait was irresistible, and the prey would surely fall for it.

The second contest between Xiao Ou and the wisdom entity began.

Bang.

A gene body, dead for several years, suddenly stood up before him.

Bang, bang, bang.

One sound was followed by many. Centered on Xiao Ou, the banging continued as the dead gene bodies all rose.

His expression unchanged, the Pagoda Sword trembled in his hand. The wood attribute power flashed; he released the sword, which floated in midair and began to spin.

Buzz, buzz, buzz.

The sword spun faster and faster, the air around them drawn into white whirlpools by the rotating force.

Only then did the sword’s wood power start to manifest—a green cone, its tip curled like a dragon’s claw.

The resurrected gene bodies lunged at Xiao Ou. Though failures, they still had claws, fangs, and bio-armor—no doubt, a full-strength strike could easily tear through several walls. Born for battle, even failures were formidable.

But they faced Xiao Ou, undefeated since childhood. Their defeat was inevitable.

Standing at the center, his Pagoda Sword’s spinning aura grew more intense; his gray protective suit flapped in the wind. Suddenly, his entire body radiated wood attribute power.

From himself, it pierced through the ceiling toward the sky. Enveloped in a pillar of wood energy, at the instant Xiao Ou released his inner power, the Pagoda Sword flashed green and shot upward, circling the pillar and slaughtering outward.

“Where do you think you’re going?”

His eyes stayed alert. As he dispatched these annoying disguises, not far away, the wisdom entity—with two “legs”—was about to flee, a brain in tow.

“Pagoda!” Xiao Ou roared. The cat-and-mouse game had lasted long enough. He was done. He attacked with full force, charging the entity.

Gripping the sword, wood power surged into it, encasing the blade in crystalline wood, runes flickering across its surface.

“Ha!” With a swing, the crystalline sword separated from the Pagoda Sword, shooting toward the wisdom entity on the ground.

The wisdom entity would not sit still. The white, spirit-like substance surrounding its body flickered. The gene bodies Xiao Ou had just slain were instantly pulverized, their energy gathering toward the entity.

In a thousandth of a second, the crystalline sword struck; the entity’s body reformed in less than a blink.

Boom.

The crystalline sword exploded, and from the blast emerged a claw, woven of gray and green, smashing the sword instantly.

Xiao Ou, gripping the Pagoda Sword, slashed at the entity’s head.

Again, the claw. The entity did not dodge, instead pounding the descending sword. Xiao Ou was sent flying skyward, and in that instant, a white whirlpool infused with wood energy burst from the earth, blasting the entity upward.

Xiao Ou flew out of the underground nest first, followed closely by the entity, which crashed through the blackish soil on the other side. Its lower half had vanished entirely. Before its ruined body hit the ground, it tore itself apart and crawled out.

At the moment the wood energy pillar burst from beneath the black soil, Feng concealed himself at the highest point in the area, shrouded in black energy, his smart brain continuously tracking the entity’s position.

Xiao Ou had told him beforehand: this capture mission must succeed, no failure allowed. Everything was proceeding according to Xiao Ou’s plan.

He had entered the nest alone to force out the entity, while the others slaughtered gene bodies above. When he drove them out from below, everyone would trap them.

The only surprise was the sheer number of gene bodies, plus new aberrations—seemingly endless.

Originally, everyone should have entered the nest and slain the entity directly, but the map Xiao Ou brought back made him abandon the plan. The secondary biological civilization was designed purely for survival.

According to the map, the six who entered stood a high chance of getting lost or killed by aberrations in the ear chambers; with luck, they might reach the surface.

The pillar of wood energy wasn’t meant to kill—it was Xiao Ou’s signal to Feng: the entity had been found, prepare to hunt.

The real killing force was the Pagoda Sword. As it circled the green pillar, it destroyed the nest’s ceiling, and at the moment Xiao Ou struck down, he injected wood power and compressed air into the entity’s feet.

Feng, standing atop, saw Xiao Ou holding the sword and looked his way.

In an instant, his dagger—like a voracious beast’s blade—smashed a gene body’s head below, and the wisdom entity dropped out.

The Pagoda Sword flashed in Xiao Ou’s hand, stabbing toward the entity’s location, but the wisdom entity vanished before it could strike.