The Sacred Ruins

An odor of blood spread with the wind that blew through the quiet and secluded jungle.

Eyes opened, the dead man laid stiff in the pool of his own blood. The slit on his throat was a deep one, so no matter what power his mutation had granted him, the man was as good as dead.

Chu Feng’s heart was beating fiercely. Although a camp of furious fire was burning bright in his chest, he still felt rather queasy by the killing. All in all, it was his first time that someone died in his own hands.

Chu Feng took a deep breath and calmed his moody sentiment. He kept his cool while striding towards his next target.

The woman had been as mad as March Hare. An eye for an eye, and in a time like this, being soft-hearted would only get him killed by the enemy.

Chu Feng moved stealthily across the forest, using trees as his cover as he freely prowled around like a leopard hunting for its prey.

The suffering he had to endure in the depth of the primitive mountains allowed him to keep his composure even while he was fervently committing manslaughters for the first time in his life.

Another mutant!

The mutant in sight had an arm of abnormal size. His upper body was stalwart, making him look more like an ape than a human. His hair hung down to his waist, loosely banded with a stalk root. This primitive man laid on his stomach on a sand dune, attentively looking in a particular direction.

As hunters, the dormant mutants were all patiently waiting, poised for a fight.

However, none of them was aware that they had long stepped down from the position from a hunter. Now, they were the prey at the mercy of Chu Feng’s deadly strikes.

Chu Feng tightened up his muscles and closed off all the air pores throughout his body. Although he had the power to instantly strike down his opponent, he wanted to wait for the perfect opportunity to take them by surprise.

As the hunter of this game, he wanted his prey to be fully submissive and die without challenging him with a fight.

Puff! With great power and precision, the blade slit through the throat of that mutant with giant arm. The blade glanced by his throat at such a speed that a huge volume of blood was drained from the man’s jugular at only a split second.

Chu Feng’s hunt for men had become habitual and ruthless. Killing had become his second nature.

However, this particular mutant seemed to have been in possession of an exceptionally robust vitality. Even though the blade had lacerated the connective tissues between his head and his shoulder, he still struggled and managed to turn around with a twitchy and wicked face. His brawny torso grew even larger as his arms expanded at an exponential rate.

His body suddenly grew hairy with a thick layer of black fur sprawling from his face down to his feet. A pair of buckteeth stuck out from inside of his mouth, turning his appearance all the more horrifying, making his struggle before death all the more morbid and horrid.

He wanted to roar, to groan, to clamor, but sadly, he was unable. He struggled in a flurry to keep his dangling head from rolling off from its position. The cold glitter gleaming in his eyes screamed recalcitrance as well as desperation. Clearly, he wanted to fight back, and he also hoped his misery would go away by itself.

Chu Feng was taken aback. Even as the head of this beast had been almost dislocated from its position, he still had the tenacity to start a mutation and hope to defeat him with his last breath.

The man had morphed into a giant ape whose hands had both gained the size of a wheel.

Clonk!

Unfortunately, Chu Feng did not even give him a chance as he struck with a fatal blow. With a fling of his arm, the black dagger flew from his hand, hitting the head of his opponent before piercing his skull. This time, the mutant could no longer move an inch. He tumbled on his back with his eyes wide opened.

Chu Feng darted forth. With great speed and precision, he snared the tumbling mutant with his hands. Chu Feng gently laid down this tall and bulky mutant, afraid that the noise would alarm the others.

He unsheathed his black dagger and mopped the dribbling blood. Like a professional killer, Chu Feng was once again on the road, seeking for his next target.

Chu Feng’s expression was cold and emotionless. It reflected the anger and hatred that boiled in his chest. Marching on, Chu Feng tried to justify his killing. "If they want me to die, then they should die before me," Chu Feng mumbled.

Soon later, he took down another two with equal cruelty.

The woods, however, had seemingly turned out to the bloodshed happening within it for all there had been. Little by little, even the roars of beasts and the chirps of birds died out. The place suddenly came to a deathly stillness.

Chu Feng noticed the eerie silence around him, realizing that this might be the sign of something ominous. His heartless killing might have caused his cover to be blown, exposing his position to the enemy.

Silence should have never belonged to a forest of such a size, especially when beasts of all kinds were residing amidst.

Suddenly, a numbness overcame Chu Feng’s alerted body. Then, it became an unspeakable pain. The sharpness of the ache felt like a lance had pierced through his entrails from his back, but the pain did not feel substantial; instead, it was a warning of something fatal coming in his way.

Chu Feng realized the forthcoming danger. Then, like a leopard with unparalleled agility, he speedily scurried off into the depths of the jungle.

Boom!

Almost at the same time, the spot where he had just stood flared with firelight. A rocket had landed there, devastating the trees, the boulders, and the bushes, leaving almost nothing behind. A verdant peak was instantly degraded to a barren wasteland.

Chu Feng caught sight of a mutant who was fluttering his wings in the air right above him. The mutant noticed him too. Carrying a sizeable rocket launcher, he was looking down right at him.

Boom! The weapon was fired again. "He’s here." The fluttering mutant called out as he fired.

None of the mutants knew the look of their target, but they had been ordered to kill whomever stepped into their ring of encirclement.

The deathly silence was shattered as enemies surged from all directions. More than a dozen of shadows glanced by. It was the enemy tightening their ring of encirclement.

Boom!

The winged man fired his rocket from mid-air, suppressing Chu Feng to a disadvantageous position.

The immense firepower pulverized boulders and shattered woods. The forest soon turned into a field of scorching barren earth.

However, none of the rockets landed on target. Chu Feng’s uncanny ability to foresee danger rendered the slow-firing rockets almost useless.

Meanwhile, the other mutants were also quickly closing in from their positions. Then, there came a fearsome rumble of a helicopter from the distance. It was the noise of a military-grade helicopter with devastating firepower.

"You’re a dead man now!" bellowed someone.

At the same time, the mutant in mid-air was also searching for his target. Having missed two consecutive shots one after another sent chills through his spine. "What sort of monster is this?" he thought. "That perceptual skills of his are beyond human!"

He had once met with an old Wushu master during his training at the Deity Biomedical Group. That master had once said that there had been, in the past, many people who are masters at their perceptual skills. Their instinct to dodge a menacing blow aimed at them allowed them to easily leave a combat situation unharmed.

"Is this the master to whom he was referring?" cried the winged man from within.

The man’s hair stood on end, goosebumps formed on his arms, and shiver ran up his spine. He knew that their whole campaign of encirclement and suppression on this man would end in a miserable failure. With that level of instinct, he could be harmed by no-one.

Suddenly, he felt his scalp prickling under his hair. He felt frightened from the tips of his hair to the marrow of his very bones. It was a feeling of being watched by something atrocious, something bloodcurdling.

But he was in mid-air! Who would have the ability to harm him? However, he still tried to violently flutter his wings and shoot into the height of the sky.

However, everything was too late for him. There came a shadow of something dashing skywards in his direction. The shadow came with great speed and agility. Like a giant ape, the shadow used the branches of a tree as a platform, then with a vault and a leap, the shadow reached the winged man’s height. The man could finally see the shadow as a silhouette of a man whose hand was clutching onto a black dagger, fiercely wielding it at him.

Boom!

Clonk!

Two kinds of sound split the air, then in the next moment, there came the head of that winged-man rolling. The man’s headless body plummeted onto the ground as boiling blood spewed out of that gaping red opening of his.

The other mutants caught sight of this scene just in time. All were dumbstruck and astounded. What kind of monster were they going up against? How cruel and cold-blooded was he?

They hastily raised their heads, noticing a shadow glancing by. It was a man brandishing a cutting dagger, but it soon disappeared behind the leaves of the trees’ crowns.

Fear of failure and death loomed large in the mind of a lot of mutants. They had encountered a monster whom they had naively wanted to ambush and kill, but now, everything seemed to suggest that their prey had turned into a hunter. Moreover, their own lives were now at the mercy of that monstrous man.

Boom!

The helicopter finally arrived at the scene. High-caliber bullets came raining down at the forest below. At the blink of an eye, many trees had been destroyed then seen tumbling down.

However, there was still no sights of their target. The man disappeared again.

In a mansion at a county town.

Wan Qing was pacing up and down the empty hallway. Her mind could not relax from its restless state until the death of her enemy was confirmed. She feared that Lin Naoi might learn the facts that she wished to bury. She also feared that her enemy might come to seek for his revenge.

"Relax, Wan. Come and have a taste of this wine. It’s really fine."

Mu, the young man who was still sitting on his couch, still maintained his composure.

At the same time, his communicator rang as well. It was someone keeping them abreast of the developments of their assassination attempts.

"Target in sight. But..."

Mu was notified of the death of those five mutants. This was another tremendous loss both for him and the company.

"What are you waiting for? Take that drug I’ve given to you guys. Take it, then even Kong Kim wouldn’t stand a chance against you," Mu ordered.

After hanging up the phone, the smile on the young man’s face weakened. The cheerfulness was replaced by coldness. "Sure enough, it is a master. He may even well qualify to be on the list of top one hundred mutants in the world."

"Is he this powerful?" Wan Qing was taken aback. The man’s conjecture made the level of her discomposure all the more elevated.

If a master like this was allowed to escape scot free, what followed would be an endless flow of disastrous aftermath for the future.

"Take it easy. I won’t let him escape. Amongst those people I’ve sent to fight, many were on par with the level at which he was; especially after taking the drug I’ve given to them, their fighting skills will skyrocket. Taking him down will not be a problem."

"Are you sure about the effectiveness of your drugs?" Wan Qing asked.

"Yes, I am. The drugs will allow our fighters to unleash all their potentials. Their fighting capacity will enhance tenfold." Mu replied. He looked warm and cordial. "I know that the drugs are still in the testing stage, but why don’t we honor that son of a b*tch as our very first testing subject?" Mu’s tone turned piercingly cold.

In the forest.

Chu Feng noticed a few detectors hidden in some inconspicuous places. He had destroyed dozens of them, but more were discovered one after another.

At the same time, the encirclement was also tightening up.

Having killed five mutants, there were still thirteen left. "Eighteen versus one, plus all those firearms. You damn sure knows how to play the bully, don’t you?" Chu Feng cursed under his breath.

Although none of the remaining mutants seemed to have given much thoughts about their appearances when mutating, with all being ugly and odd-looking, their powers were all of undeniable formidability and explosiveness.

All of the thirteen mutants had a unique body and a unique power. Some had grown three meters in height, while others had a petrified body that could transform everything it touched into a stone like itself. There was also a mutant surrounded in blazing flames with lava flowing under his feet. At the same time, there was also a ball of blaze burning like an aura above his head.

The transformed mutants tightened their encirclement. The helicopter was still hovering overhead, poised to unleash its devastating firepower at any moment.

The mutants had taken their drugs, then almost instantly, they could sense that their power was drastically improving. They groaned, roared, and clamored in an almost uncontrollable and delirious excitement while their eyes were filled with aggression and hostility.

In the distance not far from the scene, there stood an old chemist who had been hiding under a heap of withered leaves and observing the developments of the fighting for all this time. Having seen the effect of his drugs on these mutants, he cheered in a jaunty manner.

At the same time, he rung up the people in the county town.

"The effect of the drug is very positive. Their bodily function has increased by at least eight times!" The chemist sounded fairly thrilled.

"Very well!" Mu gave affirmation to the chemist’s achievement. Although he sounded as calm as he always was, the expression on his face suggested that he was very delighted by this piece of report. The prospect of a glorious victory made him hysterically thrilled.

In the forest, the old chemist was struggling to crawl forward while using the withered leaves as a cover for him to get closer to the battleground. He then frowned after carefully observing the mutants with a binocular. "Hopefully, the mutants won’t get too deliriously excited as a result of the drug. Too dramatic of a fluctuation in mood might bring out some negative effects," he murmured to himself.

This was still a problem on which he needed to improve.

The transformed mutants felt the surge of power within themselves. The growth of their ability made them puffed with confidence and pride. They walked swaggeringly with boastful confidence, besotted with the acquirement of their new power.

"What... What is that?!" An unearthly cry of a mutant suddenly roused the others from their world of imagination. The entire squad of mutants paused to a standstill, in awe of the sight ahead of them.

A formidable black yak formed shadow above Chu Feng’s head. It roared, groaned, and bellowed, bringing about a breath of primitive air to a modern battleground.

This was the ultimate form of Chu Feng’s Demon Ox Boxing Style. It fully displayed itself in face of the forthcoming danger. At the same time, Chu Feng also engrossed himself with the practice of the special breathing rhythm. This was his trump card that allowed his power to enhance tenfold once used.

Usually, Chu Feng stayed relatively conserved about unleashing his full potential. Even at times when his life was threatened by a formidable opponent, he would rarely couple the breathing rhythm to the unleashing of the black yak.

However, the situation now allowed no way out but to resolve to the thorough unleashing of his full power.

"They are in a delirious state which means that their mental state must be near the stage of collapse. Clearly, this is an expected shortcoming of their commitment to fully unleashing their power, but this is also something I can use against them," Chu Feng babbled.

The mutants marched on while their eyes, though blank as a dead fish, were all filled with wild fury and clear signs of near insanity. Each step of their march was firm and determined, echoing their profound determination to kill that obstinate obstacle in their way.

In the next minute, almost everyone committed into their killing actions without prior consultation.

Roar!

It was a blaring roar that could frighten the heaven and startle the earth. Like a deafening thunder, it ruptured the still air that persisted around the stationary woods. It withered the leaves and cracked the trunks, with power no less than a blasting rocket.

It was the roar of the ancient yak. The roar transmitted a sequence of deadly sonic waves into the mutant horde.

"Ah..."

What followed the deadly sonic wave was when the true horror began. The fluctuating mental states of the empowered mutants now came onto the verge of collapse. Both mentally and physically, the mutants were in profound agony.

Blood was seen spewing out of their eyes and ears. Some clutched onto their crackling skulls, while others tumbled and dropped to their deaths in an instant.

The roar itself was not a deadly kind. If these mutants had been in their usual state, the sonic waves would have dealt little harm to them. However, their state of mind after the secondary mutation was like a stretched-out elastic band on the brink of snapping. The roar was the last straw that broke the camel’s back. Their suffering was temporal, but their death was imminent.

"NO!" The old chemist cried a tragic cry. For him, this was perhaps the most miserable failure in the course of his creation. The shortcoming of his drug had been expected, but for it to be the ultimate undoing of these noble mutants was a truly devastating blow to him.

He wanted to put up a fight against Chu Feng, but the thrusting sonic wave soon incapacitated him.

At a mansion in the county town.

Wan Qing regained her composure after hearing back from the latest report that the drug had been exerting a substantial effect on the enhancement of the mutants’ power. An almost tenfold improvement on these mutants’ capability would certainly bring about a devastating fight for both parties, but it would also be the one for Chu Feng to accept his demise.

She was now fully convinced that even Kong Kim would not pose as a match for this team of highly empowered mutants.

The gloomy look on her racy face finally turned to a cheerful one.

Mu remained rather composed. Although the fluctuation in his emotion was evident only moments earlier, he turned once again to the calm and elegant man whom he had always been. His smile was mild. "Let’s just wait for our homecoming soldiers to report on their glorious victory. They would not only be the meritorious statesman who had rendered the outstanding service of disposing that so-called master, but will also be the main force of our company when going toe-to-toe with Bodhi Genes... Oh dear, you have no idea how expectant I am right now!"

"So am I." Wan Qing smiled.

She raised her goblet, then cheerfully exclaimed, "for glory and victory!"

"For glory and victory!"