Li Yingxue let out a suppressed groan, his body trembling even more violently.
Only then did Lu Yun notice the abnormality in the person in his arms. His eyes were tightly shut, long eyelashes trembling violently. His palms were ice-cold and drenched in cold sweat, and even his slender neck was covered in a fine layer of perspiration. His breathing had become rapid and uneven.
Lu Yun only assumed he was frightened by the terrifying scene. He tightened his arm, pulling him deeper into his embrace, while simultaneously dodging the mutated birds’ relentless attacks with agile movements.
His motions looked dangerous, but in reality, he always avoided each strike by a hair’s breadth, completely in control.
Lu Yun’s awakened Supernatural Ability was extremely powerful—far beyond ordinary imagination.
But Supernatural Abilities required a process of growth. Over the past six months, his spiritual ability had already reached a level where it could be controlled and even materialized into invisible killing weapons.
He could have used it to silently slaughter the mutated birds, but the situation was rapidly spiraling out of control.
For reasons unknown, nearly all the mutated birds had gone mad. They ignored Shen Zhuonian’s team entirely and all charged directly toward Lu Yun and Li Yingxue.
Even with Lu Yun’s speed and reflexes, protecting someone while facing such dense, multi-directional attacks was becoming genuinely difficult.
On the other side, Shen Zhuonian’s team was also in a fierce battle. A fire-type ability user, trying to protect his teammates, had his shoulder torn open by a mutated bird’s claw, leaving a deep bone-exposing wound. Blood poured out, and the situation was critical.
At that moment, a violent gust of wind kicked up sand and dust, blasting straight into Lu Yun’s face and blinding him for an instant.
Through the haze, he heard Shen Zhuonian shout, “Watch your left!”
Instinctively, Lu Yun tightened his hold on Li Yingxue and rolled to the right.
A mutated bird’s claw barely grazed his back, tearing through his outer coat. He narrowly avoided a fatal hit.
Lu Yun immediately pushed himself up with one hand and, just as he lowered his head to check on Li Yingxue—
He met a pair of slowly opening, hollow, unfocused eyes.
And at the corner of those eyes, a tear silently slipped down.
The crystalline droplet slid across Li Yingxue’s almost translucent, snow-white skin.
Lu Yun froze.
That tear seemed to carry a burning heat, striking something deep in his chest and making it tighten inexplicably.
Even when Li Yingxue acted wronged or spoiled, his eyes only turned red—he had never truly cried.
Was he hurt from the fall?
That single moment of hesitation was all it took.
Another mutated bird seized the opportunity. Its filthy, foul-smelling wings swept violently toward them.
Too close—there was no time to fully evade.
Lu Yun’s pupils contracted. For an instant, he almost lost control and considered revealing his full strength to kill it outright.
Just then, Li Yingxue let out a soft groan. Regaining his rationality, Lu Yun activated his Water-type Supernatural Ability. A stream of water wrapped around Li Yingxue, gently yet swiftly pushing him toward a patch of safety in the grass.
Meanwhile, he allowed himself to be struck by the edge of the massive wing.
His body was sent flying, crashing heavily to the ground.
As for Li Yingxue, safely delivered by the water current to a nearby patch of grass, he lay amid the chaotic battlefield of scorched earth and bloodstains. He seemed unaware that he had just cried, and also unaware of the danger surrounding him.
He simply lay there with his eyes open, unable to see the dark sky above. More tears silently slipped from the corners of his eyes, falling one drop at a time into the soil beneath him.
Something strange began to happen.
Where his tears landed, the soaked grass seemed to be infused with a violent surge of life. As if fast-forwarded, it began to sway, twist, and grow at an abnormal speed visible to the naked eye.
The leaves expanded, the stems thickened—within seconds, the plants had grown several times larger, becoming a deep, unnatural green.
The mutated bird flock seemed to be further provoked. The sweet, clean scent they had been sensing suddenly intensified to an unbearable degree. Already half-mad, they completely lost their last shred of sanity, emitting sharper and more frenzied screeches as their aggression skyrocketed.
At the same time, everyone on the battlefield clearly felt it—the ground beneath them began to tremble.
As if something massive and terrifying was impatiently trying to break through from beneath the earth.
Lu Yun turned his head toward Li Yingxue, who lay quietly in the distance.
Against the backdrop of a darkened sky and a stench-filled battlefield filled with screeches and chaos, the snow-white figure lying still had become the center of all anomalies.
For the first time, Lu Yun felt his heartbeat skip.
In his heterochromatic eyes, an unforgettable scene was reflected.
Countless flexible vines erupted wildly from the ground beneath Li Yingxue.
At first, they looked almost gentle—coiling around his slender waist, his pale arms, his legs… carefully, almost tenderly, wrapping him up inch by inch.
But in the next instant, thicker and more terrifying vines covered in thorns burst out of the earth.
Their tips pierced through diving mutated birds with ease, or coiled like giant pythons, tightening violently and shredding the creatures into exploding fragments of flesh and blood.
The scene was brutally horrific.
“…What the hell…” Jiang Heng muttered, clutching his bleeding arm, staring in shock at the sight that resembled both divine miracle and hell itself, while constantly dodging vines that might erupt from beneath his feet.
But Lu Yun had already moved.
He shot forward toward the vine-wrapped Li Yingxue.
However—he was too late.
He could only watch as the snow-white figure was completely swallowed by layers upon layers of interwoven green vines.
Li Yingxue disappeared entirely, encased within a massive green cocoon.
Lu Yun’s breathing became sharp for the first time. Those usually cold eyes now filled with dense, freezing killing intent as he stared at the vines.
Flashes of memory surged through his mind—the vines shredding mutated birds into blood and meat…
And Li Yingxue, tilting his face up, calling him softly and dependently: “Darling…”
The two images overlapped, violently shaking his rationality.
His right hand slowly clenched. Veins bulged across the back of his hand. The red in his right eye deepened, overflowing with murderous intent as a dangerous aura spread around him.
At that moment, part of the vines attacking the birds suddenly retracted back underground.
The massive green cocoon containing Li Yingxue was lifted and dragged away by the remaining vines, rapidly retreating toward the depths of the forest.
Without any hesitation, Lu Yun turned into a blur and chased after it at full speed.
Behind him, Shen Zhuonian had just helped a wounded teammate to their feet. When he looked up again, all he saw was Lu Yun’s figure—recklessly pursuing the strange green cocoon—vanishing into the edge of chaos and the shadow of the forest.