Chapter 440: Another Capital

"What's this?"

The gigantic creature was seven or eight stories tall and covered from head to toe with scratched, battered armor. From its appearance, it looked like an elephant, with huge ivory tusks.

Zhang Lie frowned. A genetic lifeform that could defeat the rock giants in a contest of brute strength surely had to have peak- or higher-grade strength.

"Haha! What do you think of the creatures that we've been rearing in our arena?" the elder cried out, triumphant. He wanted to watch Zhang Lie's forces be trampled to death from the beast stampede himself. He introduced, "This is the strongest genetic lifeform in our arena, and he's won ninety-nine matches in a row. Except for our king, no one has been able to suppress him."

"All of you, handle the other beasts. I'll deal with this one!" Zhang Lie commanded, flying toward the elephant-like lifeform.

"[Fists of the Silent Sea: Fade]!" A demonic serpent flew out of Zhang Lie's fist and smashed against the elephant's forehead, causing it to cry out.

Zhang Lie flapped his wings and agilely avoided its attack.

"[Rune: Gravity]!" Zhang Lie raised his hand high up into the air as the image of a dragonturtle appeared before him. The gravity-controlling tablet crashed onto the elephant, and its body sank.

"[The Boundless Blade: Expulsion]!" Zhang Lie's sword arced down and slashed the side of the elephant, leaving a wound deep enough that bone was visible.

The elephant roared in anger as it trampled the ground with its forelegs. Its trunk whipped by Zhang Lie, sending all nearby lifeforms flying.

"Almost there." Zhang Lie flapped his wings again. The elephant, furious, chased after him. Following Zhang Lie's carefully planned route, it trampled over quite a number of its own kind before Zhang Lie lured it toward the capital of Xuechi.

Who didn't know how to lure an enraged creature from place to place?

The elder turned shocked, then anxious, when he realized Zhang Lie's plan. He instantly yelled out, "Quick, stop that fellow! No matter what, you have to prevent him from approaching the capital! Archers, loose your arrows!"

When the sura fighters saw Zhang Lie luring the enraged elephant over, they began to panic. None of them would be able to stop it if Zhang Lie's ploy were to succeed.

The sura fighters quickly loosed their arrows at Zhang Lie.

"[Rune: Gravity]!" A dragonturtle appeared before him once again, and the tablet that crashed down by Zhang Lie's side formed a dome ahead of him that caught all the arrows and sent them raining down on the elephant as it approached instead.

𝙛𝓻𝒆𝓮𝒘𝙚𝙗𝒏𝙤𝙫𝓮𝒍.𝓬𝒐𝙢

The elder himself took to the battlefield, sending a fog of blood rising into the air.

"[First Form: Parting the River]!" Gleaming light honed the edge of Zhang Lie's sword, and a beam of sword energy rose into the air.

As Zhang Lie sliced downwards, sword energy shattered the earth, blowing the fog away and bisecting both the Xuechi elder and the wall behind him. The line of sword energy cut through the elder, through the wall, and then the buildings behind the wall, stopping only three hundred meters in.

This was the effect of just one blow from Zhang Lie.

The elephant trumpeted as it rushed toward Zhang Lie, but Zhang Lie simply sent a punch backwards without looking back. The force of the punch was such that even the elephant was grounded to a halt.

Zhang Lie flapped his wings and flew into the capital of Xuechi. No one could, nor dared, to stop him.

The elephant followed him in, but found that Zhang Lie's figure had vanished without a trace.

The elephant roared again. Unable to find an outlet for its anger, it trampled all over the city, causing the death and injury of countless sura. After the elephant lost its target, its new objective was to destroy the arena in which it had been held captive for far too long.

It turned out that the sura elder had held off the attack long enough to be able to not die instantly. With his dying breath, he surveyed what had happened to his beloved city as fresh blood poured out of his mouth. "Was I wrong?"

If he hadn't tried to use such a tactic, it wouldn't have backfired on him and the citizens of Xuechi.

The forces of Renhuang all copied their leader's antics and lured the genetic lifeforms into the capital, turning it into a true hell.

They stood outside the city as they watched it self-destruct from the inside out.

Once Zhang Lie judged that the beasts had wreaked enough destruction, he made his move and cleaned them up.

"[Fists of the Silent Sea: Fade]!" He punched the elephant's head, which caved in. The elephant began to bleed from all its orifices.

"[Fists of the Silent Sea: Fade]! A demonic serpent emerged from Zhang Lie's fist as a finishing blow. It bit down on the elephant's neck and coiled its body tight around it, sending a stream of corrosive darkness-attuned energy into its body. A notification soon rang out.

[You successfully killed a peak-grade steel elephant. By consuming the flesh of the peak-grade steel elephant, you may receive one to ten peak gene fragments.]

As expected, it was a peak-grade lifeform.

The next step was to clean up the remaining lifeforms in the capital and rescue the humans trapped within. As they walked out of the underground dungeons in which they had been kept, as they saw sunlight for the first time in years, they couldn't help but cry.

Xuechi was destroyed. Zhang Lie and his forces entered the sura king's palace and saw the gigantic pool of blood, almost the size of a swimming pool, filled with black, sticky blood.

Not long afterwards, they found a group of captive humans deep within the palace...