Almost at the same moment Li Yingxue called out.
On the other side, the three members of the team who were inspecting the corpse also suddenly looked up. “Captain, something’s wrong with this mutated bird!”
Just a few seconds earlier, while Lu Yun had been speaking in a low voice with Shen Zhuonian, those three team members had approached the burned bird carcass.
One of them used a long wooden stick to carefully flip over the massive, grotesque remains.
He casually poked the bird’s charred head with the stick—and met a pair of pitch-black bead-like eyes. But they did not belong to the main burned head.
At the junction between the bird’s left wing root and its body, in the charred, curled flesh and fur, there was another smaller, equally hideous head.
That head’s originally closed eyes suddenly opened the moment the stick touched it.
Shen Zhuonian did not even clearly see how Lu Yun moved. One moment, the man was still standing in front of him; the next, he had already vanished. In the next instant, he reappeared beside the off-road vehicle, extending an arm to pull Li Yingxue—who had half of his body leaned out of the car and whose face had turned deathly pale—firmly back into his embrace.
Only at that moment did Shen Zhuonian’s team truly see Li Yingxue’s full appearance.
Silver-white long hair, snow-pale skin, exquisitely delicate facial features that looked almost unreal, and that striking red tear mole beneath the left eye… a visually overwhelming beauty combined with extreme fragility, enough to make even seasoned survivors of the apocalypse momentarily lose focus.
But they only caught a brief glimpse before quickly looking away.
After pulling Li Yingxue into his arms, Lu Yun immediately looked up toward the sky. The others followed his gaze.
On the distant horizon, a dense black mass had appeared at some unknown point in time.
A swarm of mutated birds, as if summoned by some invisible force, filled the sky. Their bodies were enormous, wings spanning almost like they could blot out the heavens. With each flap, they stirred up nauseating gusts of wind carrying thick, rotting stench.
In an instant, this patch of land that had just experienced a small battle felt as if it had fallen into a dark, death-filled pit of decay.
Lu Yun raised his head, and a faint red glow once again began to uncontrollably surface in his right eye.
A swarm of this scale… was extremely troublesome. Even with Shen Zhuonian’s five trained Supernatural Ability users, it would be very difficult to handle.
The difficulty of this “Pearl” dungeon had clearly been severely underestimated. At this moment, Lu Yun was certain this was not an ordinary mid-level survival instance at all.
Without hesitation, Lu Yun lifted Li Yingxue and quickly regrouped with Shen Zhuonian’s team. The seven of them instantly formed a back-to-back defensive circle, vigilantly watching the sky.
Li Yingxue gripped Lu Yun’s shoulder tightly, burying his face against his neck. His head was lowered, teeth biting hard into his pale lips. His face was frighteningly white, and his body trembled slightly.
So noisy…
Too noisy…
It was not only the terrifying screams of the mutated birds outside, but also that strange, intermittent sound that had been lingering in his mind since he woke up—sometimes weak, sometimes intense—now seeming to explode inside his head.
The two kinds of noise intertwined, almost tearing his nerves apart.
But everyone else was fully focused on the threatening swarm above, and for the moment, no one noticed his abnormal state.
The mutated birds only circled high in the air, letting out piercing screeches, without immediately diving down.
In this brief pause, they finally saw the details of the swarm.
Many of these birds had grotesque second or even third heads growing from their wing roots, necks, or bodies.
Jiang Heng’s arm crackled with jumping arcs of lightning as he covered his nose and cursed, “Two-headed, three-legged giant monsters… and they’re in a coordinated swarm. We’ve never seen anything this bizarre before.”
Shen Zhuonian’s expression was grave as he quickly analyzed, “It’s very likely that the one we just killed, before dying, somehow summoned the entire flock.”
“If the entire swarm attacks at once, we won’t be able to break out. We need to find a way to force a breakthrough,” he said calmly.
High in the sky, the restless flock seemed to be communicating through a frequency humans could not hear.
Their keen senses had already locked onto a pure, sweet scent rising from below—the same signal transmitted by their dead companion.
Finally, they identified the source of that irresistible scent: the tiny figures on the ground.
And at the moment Shen Zhuonian finished speaking—
The swarm moved.
As if receiving a unified command, dozens of mutated birds let out deafening shrieks and dove toward the ground in a coordinated assault.
Jiang Heng struck first. Blinding lightning lashed out, instantly turning the leading birds into charred corpses.
Lu Yun slightly tilted his head upward, his heterochromatic eyes—one black, one faintly red—locking coldly onto the sky.
Several birds at the outer edge of the swarm suddenly went still in midair, then, as if confused, abruptly changed direction and turned on their own kind.
In the chaos, some birds did not even react before their heads were cleanly severed by an invisible force.
Shen Zhuonian raised his arm, fingers spread. Moisture in the air rapidly condensed into sharp ice spears that pierced through multiple birds with explosive force.
Two other teammates released fire-based abilities, launching blazing fireballs that exploded midair in bursts of flame.
Another earth-type ability user pressed his hands to the ground. The earth trembled as thick walls rose rapidly, attempting to block the birds’ dive paths.
In an instant, the once quiet grassland turned into a chaotic battlefield.
Earth walls rose and shattered continuously. Fire and lightning intertwined. Ice spears flew in all directions. Burned bird corpses and feathers rained down from the sky.
However, Supernatural Ability users did not have unlimited energy. Under sustained high-intensity output, Shen Zhuonian’s team began to show signs of exhaustion. Their attacks weakened, losing both range and precision.
Meanwhile, the enraged bird swarm became even more violent.
The earth-type user was the first to collapse, his face paling as he staggered backward. The last defensive wall he raised was violently smashed by several birds working together.
A gap opened in the defense line.
The first bird that broke through moved at terrifying speed, its three sharp claws stabbing directly toward the edge of the formation where Lu Yun and Li Yingxue were.
Lu Yun only had time to hastily form a thin water shield in front of them. The back-to-back formation of seven was instantly shattered.
The water shield broke almost immediately upon impact.
Using the brief buffer, Lu Yun dodged backward while holding Li Yingxue. A massive wing swept past inches from Li Yingxue’s back, the foul wind almost suffocating.
The two were forced back by the impact, stumbling away from Shen Zhuonian’s group and temporarily separated from them.