Chapter 798: Dark Star Battle Body, One Man Slaughters a City (II)

At the edge of the land, a vast city appeared, its expanse filled with once-towering skyscrapers—clear evidence of its former prosperity during the height of civilization.

Now, however, it lay in ruins. Most buildings had collapsed, streets were overgrown with wild grass, and withered streetlamps tangled in vines stood as silent witnesses to the past.

Many roads were blocked by abandoned, crumpled vehicles. Craters left by missiles and artillery shells pockmarked the landscape, and the air was thick with a desolate, deathly stillness.

Tianxuan City had fallen swiftly after the apocalypse began. Yet from the signs, it appeared that later, the military had attempted to launch a powerful assault here.

Now that they had arrived, the next step was simple. Under Chen Chu’s control, Yunxiao hovered ten thousand meters above the city.

"Yunxiao, scan the city map. Locate street signs and search for the position of the library."

Through the spiritual link, Chen Chu transmitted the Lost World’s alphabet to Yunxiao’s AI, allowing it to process the information. Meanwhile, the fighter’s lightwave scanning system activated.

Soon, the entire city's structural map appeared on the main display screen.

[Scan complete. Building comparison complete. Language analysis complete... Target location locked: National Library.]

[Report: lightwave scans have detected large quantities of suspicious biological spectral patterns, exceeding three hundred thousand in number. Threat level: mid-tier.]

"Only three hundred thousand mutated creatures left..." Chen Chu mused thoughtfully. For a city that had once housed ten million souls, only three hundred thousand mutated creatures remaining after a few years wasn’t good news for any surviving humans.

However, it had little to do with him. Once the library’s location was confirmed, Chen Chu maneuvered the jet to descend rapidly from the sky, hovering above a large, square building over forty meters tall.

Whoosh! Whoosh!

Hot shockwaves screamed across the rooftop as the seventy-meter-long Yunxiao settled gently onto the library's roof, occupying only a third of the space.

By now, the sky was darkening, with only the last traces of sunset lingering on the horizon.

"So... we've arrived," Shi Feirou murmured as she stepped down from the fighter jet, her voice tinged with disbelief as she looked out at the ruins, where danger lurked behind every shadow.

In just over an hour, they had crossed half of the empire, flying through countless dangers to reach its capital.

Compared to the dazed sisters, Chen Chu appeared utterly unfazed. Glancing at the darkening sky, he said, "It's getting late. Let's head down and take a look."

Though Chen Chu could ignore the difference between night and day, and see clearly even in complete darkness, it was still more convenient to move during daylight.

Clang!

With a casual tug, Chen Chu tore off the rusted rooftop iron door, and the three of them entered.

The National Library was built in a strict, square style, with six spreading floors stacked above and below, and a transparent glass atrium stretched across its center. Even without electricity or lighting, the remaining sunset illuminated the entire building faintly.

Yet the scene inside was one of utter chaos. Bookshelves lay toppled everywhere, rotting books littered the ground, and blackened, dried bloodstains and fragments of corpses dotted the floor.

Clearly, many people had fled into the library seeking shelter during the initial chaos, only to be slaughtered when mutated monsters broke in. Now, searching for the cultivation classics hidden among millions of scattered volumes would be no easy task.

Shi Feirou gently said, "Every library has a management catalog. It should record where the ancient classics are stored. As long as the catalog is still intact, we can quickly find the secret arts you're looking for, Mr. Chen.

"Of course, that's assuming no one took those books away, or they haven't rotted beyond use."

Chen Chu’s gaze swept over the ruined library as he slowly said, "This world only began cultivating after the apocalypse erupted, when bodies altered by the virus started condensing vitality for enhancement.

𝘧𝓇𝑒𝑒𝑤ℯ𝑏𝓃𝘰𝑣ℯ𝘭.𝘤ℴ𝘮

"Therefore, by the time people realized they could cultivate using those arts, most survivors had either already fled the city or been devoured by mutated monsters.

"Before searching for books, though, we need to clean this place up first." Saying this, Chen Chu looked down toward the lower floors.

In the dark corners of the first floor, over a dozen mutated creatures lurked. Each stood three meters tall and ten meters long, their bodies slender with spider-like, reversed joints. They had already sensed the presence of the three humans.

"You two search for the management catalogs on each floor. I'll take care of this trash." Chen Chu’s figure vanished. Using the Heaven-Stepping Divine Movement, he appeared on the first floor almost like teleportation, right in front of the monsters. With a slight clench of his hand—

Boom!

The air before him collapsed with an explosive crash from the overwhelming force. The nearest monster, radiating strong vitality, was crushed into pulp on the spot.

Roar! Roar! Roar!

The moment the first creature burst into a bloody mist, monsters from all directions lunged out of the darkness, leaving trails of afterimages as they pounced at Chen Chu.

What greeted them was his casually pressed palm.

As that slender, fair hand pressed down, dozens of afterimages flared around him. The space around him seemed to solidify for an instant under an invisible force, then collapsed violently.

Bang! Bang! Bang!

The reinforced concrete ground shook violently as over twenty palm-shaped craters were left behind, each several meters wide and a meter deep. At the center of each palm mark was a grotesque, unrecognizable mass of flesh.

Around the clear palm imprints, broken monster limbs still twitched, painting a nightmarish scene.

If Chen Chu hadn’t been restraining himself to avoid destroying the entire building, a single slap at his current strength could have leveled the whole region—let alone dealing with a few dozen "ordinary" mutated monsters.

As Chen Chu cleaned up, Shi Feirou and Shi Feitong wasted no time. Their figures leapt down, landing separately on the fifth and sixth floors, then quickly descending to the third and fourth.

In a library like this, each floor had managers and designated posts, making the catalogs relatively easy to locate.

"I found it, Mr. Chen! Over here!" In a corner of the second floor, Shi Feitong excitedly pushed aside a collapsed bookshelf over the management counter and pulled out several thick catalog volumes from underneath.

Whoosh!

The air twisted as Chen Chu appeared before Shi Feitong in a flash.

"Let me see," Chen Chu said, taking one of the directories from her arms and rapidly flipping through it, his sharp gaze sweeping over each word.

"This one’s no good." He set it aside and picked up another. Very soon, a smile appeared on his face when he found the section listing the ancient classics: third floor, Zone A, shelves 15 through 48.

"It’s on the third floor. Let’s go."

As they moved among the toppled, half-collapsed bookshelves, Chen Chu casually tossed aside irrelevant books and said in a low voice, "Only the ancient arts from before the Lost World matter. We don’t need anything from later periods."

This area didn’t contain just a few cultivation manuals. There were also thousands of ancient books from the Lost World’s five-thousand-year span: poetry, songs, philosophical texts, and more.

Because some of the books were old and the text blurred, even Chen Chu needed to flip through them individually to confirm, which slowed the search.

Meanwhile, as the sky darkened outside, the entire ruined Tianxuan City seemed to awaken. Sinister figures began stirring in the shadows.

Roar!

Suddenly, a violent roar exploded across the city. The shockwave from the sound alone caused the glass in the ruined buildings to tremble violently, spreading overwhelming fear.

Wooo!

Under that monstrous roar, countless mutated monsters across the city trembled, shrinking back in fear and looking toward the south.

There, a monstrous figure stood over three hundred meters tall. Its body was covered in dark red scales, its head twisted and demonic. A pair of dragon wings sprouted from its back, and heavy black chains wrapped around its body.

From this beast emanated the aura of a peak level 9 existence, and its flesh alone had reached the quasi-mythical level.

Merely by standing there, the sheer power of its aura caused the very air to explode outward, forming ring after ring of white shockwaves that swept violently across a radius of over a thousand meters.

Within the swirling hurricane, the world’s magnetic fields twisted chaotically. The ground cracked and trembled; countless stones floated weightlessly into the air, creating an apocalyptic scene of godlike terror.

This was the horror of a flesh body reaching the pinnacle of strength. Even under the world's declination-era principles that suppressed transcendence, its dense vitality still triggered world-altering phenomena.

At that moment, the monstrous being turned its gaze toward the distant library, its eyes cold and brutal as they locked onto the futuristic silhouette of Yunxiao.

Roar!

The dragon-winged monster let out another savage roar.

Roar! Roar! Roar!

The entire city erupted into chaos. Countless mutated creatures raised their heads and howled to the heavens before surging violently from all directions toward the library.

Boom!

A building collapsed as a towering tyrant over sixty meters tall roared past. Clouds of dust billowed as each of its steps made the ground quake.

From every direction among the ruined skyscrapers, dozens of monstrous figures appeared, each dozens of meters tall. With every leap, they crossed hundreds of meters at a time.

The scene resembled a zombie outbreak from a movie—only these weren’t zombies, but powerful mutated monsters. Even the weakest among them possessed the strength of the Third Heavenly Realm, capable of moving at a hundred meters per second with explosive power, and shrugging off bullets like pebbles.

Not to mention the towering tyrant monsters, over fifty or sixty meters tall, whose heavy scales rendered them immune even to heavy artillery and missile strikes.

In this world, the tyrants were true tyrants. A single one could tear through millions of zombies. Against such beasts, ordinary humans could only despair and await death.

Naturally, Chen Chu and the others also sensed the immense disturbance.

Feeling the ground’s tremors grow more violent, and sensing the waves of qi from level 7, 8, and even more fearsome beings drawing closer, Shi Feirou grew tense.

"Mr. Chen..."

"They’re courting death," Chen Chu said calmly. "You two keep searching. I’ll go handle them."

With that, he flipped his hand, producing a white crystal about the size of a fist. Its gentle radiance dispersed the darkness, illuminating half of the library.

Bathed in the holy light, Shi Feirou and Shi Feitong immediately felt a little relief from their earlier tension.

Leaving the holy light stone behind to illuminate the place, Chen Chu’s figure flickered and appeared on the rooftop of the library. His gaze turned cold as he looked toward the dragon-winged monster several kilometers away.

These monsters actually dared to disturb him while he worked. They were seeking death.

However, even in that brief span of time, Chen Chu had already found over a dozen ancient cultivation arts. Among them were three body enhancement arts, one of which caught even his interest—an art that could be cultivated to the eighth stage.

It was called the Dark Star Battle Body. The art focused on condensing vitality, absorbing transcendent energy and heavy metallic elements from the environment to temper flesh and forge an unparalleled, invincible tyrant body.

If cultivated to the eighth stage, one’s body would become indestructible, exerting an invisible gravitational pull that could tear apart everything nearby, and capable of crushing all with a single punch.

However, the entry requirements for this art were extremely high. It demanded both physical innate awakening and a metal-compatible ability. Furthermore, in this world devoid of transcendent energy, no one could possibly cultivate it.

That wasn’t even saying anything of absorbing heavy metals into their bodies—doing so here would be pure suicide.

Even so, what intrigued Chen Chu wasn’t its destructive power, but rather its unique principle of fusing heavy metals into the body.

His flesh was already monstrously strong, akin to a compressed beginning-stage titan beast. With his physical foundation, he could devour and assimilate entire mountain ranges of metal. If he could absorb and fuse countless heavy metals into himself, he would truly become a humanoid black hole.

Phew!

Just thinking about it made even Chen Chu's heart stir with excitement. With a flash of light, he summoned a black-and-golden halberd over four meters long into his hand.

Without wasting another word, Chen Chu let out a long roar, his figure bursting forth from the rooftop like a falling meteor.

Boom!

In an instant, the ground shattered. Centered around the library, a sweeping black storm exploded across hundreds of meters, collapsing the earth, pulverizing entire floors, and reducing dozens of powerful monsters to bloody mist in a flash.

Moving and swinging the Eight Desolations Halberd hundreds of times faster than sound, Chen Chu utterly annihilated everything before him. The destructive shockwaves collided and expanded at blinding speed. In the blink of an eye, the hundreds of thousands of mutated monsters that had surrounded the library were ground into nothingness.

The skies churned violently from the monstrous power. A world-shattering black storm rose, tearing open the heavens.

Roar! Roar!

Even the high-tier tyrants, draconic demons, and winged monsters charging from the distance showed primal fear on their faces at the sight of such devastation—including the peak level 9 dragon-winged monster.

Chen Chu’s speed was simply too fast. Before any of the monsters could react, they were engulfed by the expanding black tornado.

Boom! Boom! Boom!

Their bodies exploded one after another into clouds of blood and vanished without a trace.

Roar!

Sensing imminent death, the towering dragon-winged beast roared furiously, unleashing its boundless strength in a frenzy. The surrounding air and even space itself twisted violently. Its massive arms swelled and swung out the black chains wrapped around them like colossal whips.

Even the air shattered from the force of its swing, forming a thousand-meter-long transparent liquid passage brimming with power capable of destroying an entire mountain range. The ground split open, a gaping rift stretching thousands of meters.

Bang!

Yet, amid the swirling black shockwaves, Chen Chu's halberd smashed through the chains effortlessly. The liquid passage exploded apart, and there was a desperate howl from the dragon-winged monster as its quasi-mythical flesh detonated, spraying blood and flesh across ten kilometers.

For a moment, the world fell deathly still. Only the black-haired youth holding the halberd stood tall in the sky, his expression indifferent, the ruins of an entire city disappearing behind him.

From the moment Chen Chu moved, it had taken less than a single minute to destroy the entire city, annihilate hundreds of thousands of mutated monsters, and obliterate the peak level 9 dragon-winged beast—all purely through the strength of his physical body. His slaughter efficiency could no longer even be described with words.