Chapter 72: Soul Quelling Tower (Part ½)
“Grenade!”
Luo Nan’s soul observed from above. He could see that the two cup-shaped toys were clearly military-standard grenades. He recalled that a defensive grenade had put Crag Burst in a precarious situation a while ago and he was stupefied for a time when faced with the potential might of these grenades in this confined environment. He just instinctively gave Rui Wen a warning. His mind was just a blank on what to do next.
He saw Rui Wen rapidly turn around in the next instant, increasing her speed by pushing off her foot. She actually forged towards the grenades in a rush.
Could it be that she was going to hit them back like in the movies?
Before this thought could finish forming, Luo Nan could only watch helplessly with his all-encompassing view at the explosive power coming from within the grenade. He saw the outer shell warp, split, fragment, and finally explode into the air.
He observed all the details of the entire course of events. It was so precise that time seemed to move in slow motion. But the problem was that the explosion occurred the moment when Rui Wen increased her speed, in an instant faster than the blink of an eye!
Shrapnel didn’t spray out, but there was a strong flash of light and an enormous boom. In addition, electrical arcs flickered about as well.
A shock grenade and a pulse grenade. Two tactical grenades were superimposed. Even a tiger would topple from it.
The explosion exceeded 170 decibels, causing all the glass items indoors to shatter simultaneously. The surrounding neighbors’ windows above and below couldn’t avoid it and the entire apartment story went into a commotion.
Actually, Rui Wen had finished her maneuvers in the instant the two tactical grenades exploded. Her entire body had already leaped in mid-air and was bursting out towards the balcony.
But Rui Wen took the explosive sonic wave like taking a hammer. Her body, which was filled with tension, lost its balance. The distance between the entrance hall and the balcony was seven meters. She would have made it in a single leap normally, but this time she fell halfway there.
Rui Wen displayed great tenacity and persistence. She rolled the moment her shoulder touched the ground and leaped up forward again towards the balcony. She deviated slightly, but the difference wasn’t big.
No wonder she did this. The entrance door behind her had opened up and Jack came charging back in with a body wrapped entirely with dark red flames
In a state where she had taken on a shock grenade and a pulse grenade, it would be hard for her to face Jack in a frontal fight no matter what. She needed to get some time, some space, to adjust her breathing.
But right when Rui Wen had leaped through to the balcony and was about to stand up, a two-meter bulky silhouette came hovering up from below the balcony without a sound.
It was an exoskeleton armor formed from joining together metal modules. It was painted with a layer dark light-absorbing material. It was a bit indistinct with the night scene as the background. But a deep and dense air extended noiselessly from this steel body and temperature of its stored scorching heat caused the air to subtly warp.
Luo Nan could even vaguely see a fuzzy complicated structure appear from the ripples of the warped air, inside and outside the exoskeleton armor. It grew clear until recognition.
Format structure…… Deep Blue Walker.
Luo Nan’s mind turned thoroughly cold: “Yan Yongbo!”
This fellow obviously wasn’t Yan Yongbo, but this fellow had released a deadly smoke shell. Yan Yongbo had said that reinforcements will need five minutes to arrive, but the total amount of time from the end of the communications until the appearance of this Deep Blue Walker did not even exceed forty seconds!
And the Deep Blue Walker and Jack were implementing a pincer attack. One look would say that this was a discussed tactic.
Right now Rui Wen had enemies both in front and at the rear. Although she was rapidly adjusting the tempo of her breathing, she had to recover before the Deep Blue Walker would crash into her. This was certainly an impossible mission
Right now the body of water that was formed from the merging of body and soul was going through changes over and over. Surging waves were no longer rising, instead, the entire foundation was rocking. How hard would it be for Rui Wen to recover her merged-as-one feeling under these circumstances?
The Deep Blue Walker on the balcony extended his hand, seeking to seize Rui Wen who was in a dizzy and unbalanced state.
Luo Nan absolutely didn’t have much time to think. He just knew that he needed to do something. And the sole thing he had that could intervene right now was merely the soul force he had projected over here, only the towering format pyramid.
Right now the living room was illuminated by the Format of Fire on Jack’s body. The dark red glowing flames flickered about.
Under this backdrop with its dark hue, a layer of turbulent light suddenly rippled outside her body. The gleaming waves of light formed a canvas upon which six straight lines crisscrossed. An upright tetrahedron structure was constructed in an instant.
The rippling light shook and the tetrahedron shook as well. The two structures superimposed onto one another and the tempos intertwined to rapidly form a mutual offset. They echoed each other in a dynamic relationship.
From behind, Jack saw this marvelous image that was like an illusion. A sudden thought caused him to increase his speed as he alerted the Deep Blue Walker on the balcony:
“Take her life!”
Nearly in sync with Jack’s shout came the coalescence of Luo Nan’s mind. His consciousness focused:
“Freeze!”
At this very moment, This simple and abstract polyhedron structure was like a soul quelling tower that stood tall in the void. All wave motions were flattened in an instant. And at the same time, it fixed the rippling light outside Rui Wen’s body in place, stopping the vibration of her body and soul which she once found hard to control.
Extreme movement followed extreme stillness. The interference on the mental plane and the material plane exploded with a rumbling recoil and the tetrahedron outside Rui Wen’s body warped and faded away.
This bit of soul force that Luo Nan projected over here had nearly been annihilated and the scope of his senses turned extremely fuzzy. But all of this was worth it.
The instant of stillness was the greatest opportunity.
Rui Wen had seized the key turning point of the body and soul merging in an instant, bringing the tempo of her body and soul under control.
The Deep Blue Walker didn’t rely on Jack’s warning to go for the killing blow. The palm that he reached out with suddenly increased in speed, grabbing onto Rui Wen’s neck in one move.
The problem was that the five fingers covered in armor had yet to perform the killing squeeze. The air on Rui Wen’s body circulated, amassed, exploded, and a formless blade aura came erasing across.
The Deep Blue Walker grunted. There were no visible wounds whatsoever to the exoskeleton armor, but the hand suddenly lost its strength. It was as if water had been wrung dry from the bones and muscles beneath the armor. The hand was shriveled and stiff, losing functionality.
Even more fatal was that disorder appeared within what had been an intact Archetype Format. The Format of Fire weakened in strength.
“Amazing!”
Though Luo Nan’s vision was blurry, he could still sense Rui Wen. He really wanted to give her a high-five right now.
Rui Wen’s attack went from the intangible to the material, from the material to the intangible. It was realized on both the material and the mental planes, a marvelous and outstanding shifting. The ability originally affected the mental plane, having results like the Human-Faced Arachnid’s Siege Hammer attack. Yet it also could slay the material, having inflicted heavy damage to the fleshly body of the Deep Blue Walker.
This genius-style attack exceeded all the variations that Luo Nan could imagine. He was hooked by that ability and awareness to easily shift between the mental plane and the material plane. He really wanted to launch a Siege Hammer attack to do some experimentation.
But Rui Wen maintained a calmness that was inconceivable. It was as if the person who had just sunk into absolute passivity, had just narrowly escaped mortal danger, had just unleashed a brilliant and outstanding attack, was a completely different person.
Her actions were sharp and flowing. She swayed her body lightly and shed herself free from the firm grasp of the Deep Blue Walker’s five fingers. She exerted strength as soon as her feet touched the ground, even though she was barefoot and the ground was covered with broken glass.
Though glass shards were embedded in her toes, the shards were unable to penetrate the flesh of the soles of her feet. She gathered her strength into a fist for an attack and charged with force. She collided directly under the open arm of the Deep Blue Walker together with her terrifying deathly-silent blade aura.