After everything seemed to calm down and the earth seemed to stop tearing up after receiving such a heavy impact with a magnitude comparable to that of hundreds or even thousands of grenades, Bai Zemin used his Blood Manipulation skill to control the chains holding him in the air to slowly head towards the ground.
The blood vortex still swirled high in the sky and the black clouds occasionally sparkled with a faint blue hue from the lightning that momentarily illuminated the world.
The hundreds of thousands of blood chains protruding from the center of the blood vortex were fully tensed to the maximum, imprisoning creatures that had mutated after acquiring mana and gaining the ability to evolve. Some of these creatures were large enough to compare to small moving fortresses; however, no matter how hard they tried, none of these beasts managed to break free from the thick magical chains.
Bai Zemin's feet gently touched the ground and the sound of his combat boots rang softly amidst the sepulchral silence.
The raindrops were attracted by the blood vortex, the thunder had subsided, and the lightning was no longer so frequent.
Standing in the outer area of what appeared to be a crater caused by a meteorite, Bai Zemin looked up into the sky and watched as slowly but surely the thick black clouds began to disperse one after another.
"The storm is going away." He thought aloud.
His voice sounded extremely lonely and standing surrounded by thousands of vicious appearing creatures looking at him in fear and anger, Bai Zemin's back somehow felt extremely small.
Without waiting for anyone to approach him, Bai Zemin slowly moved forward. His feet moved slowly and carried him deeper and deeper into the crater that his own attack had caused. A few moments later, his head disappeared from the surface and his body was no longer visible.
Bai Zemin did not hurry, he simply advanced steadily. The only sound in his two ears was the sound of his own footsteps and the occasional crumbling of small rocks.
Approximately ten minutes later, he finally reached the deepest area. There, the flesh fragments of an unrecognizable beast as well as tiny shards of what appeared to be some sort of brown metal entered his line of sight.
They were obviously the remains of the First Order earthworm.
The beast, despite being hidden several meters underground, failed to survive the impact of a weapon whose weight hovered around one ton powered by the combined strength of over 70 men in excellent condition before the apocalypse and propelled by a direct increase of 15 times the Earth's gravity.
Bai Zemin raised his head and looked up at the sky. A sigh escaped from his mouth just in time as a gentle cool breeze entered the crater from the surface:
"Bai Zemin, are you okay?"
He blinked for a few seconds before realizing who that voice belonged to. Because of the echo, he didn't recognize it right away but it didn't take him long to identify it.
"Bing Xue? I'm fine." He replied still looking up.
He took out a small flashlight and pointed upwards before flashing signals as due to the depth of the crater and the darkness of the night, even after evolving to this point he could not see ahead.
This was because the depth of the crater actually exceeded 1000 meters!
Bai Zemin's attack had destroyed the entire ground and created a giant hole that went down deep towards the center of the world and whose diameter easily exceeded 2500 meters!
"I will go down!"
Shangguan Bing Xue's voice rang out again and its echo resounded amidst the descending walls of the crater.
"All right!" Bai Zemin replied before focusing his attention on the crimson greatsword.
The tip of the greatsword was deeply stuck in the ground along with about 1/3 of the total body.
"Lucky and it didn't break." He sighed in relief as he reached out for the hilt.
With a sharp upward tug, the ground crunched and split slightly to allow the sharp object to slip out. However, when the two-meter sword was finally completely out of the ground, Bai Zemin realized that maybe he should not have celebrated so prematurely.
At least not before seeing the sword body in its entirety.
The tip of the greatsword had split virtually all the way through and cracks ran the entire length of the weapon's blade. Although the cracks were extremely hairline and small, it was clear that the Rank 1 weapon did not have the ability to withstand an attack of such magnitude a second time or it would definitely crash in the process.
Bai Zemin smiled bitterly in his heart as he realized that he might have to upgrade his weapon a bit if he wanted to fight with all his might in the future. After all, while the First Order Gravity Manipulation skill was a double-edged skill considerably dangerous even to his own life, it was clear to Bai Zemin that a lot of his strength right now depended on that skill.
The increase and decrease of gravity as well as the explosive power that his attacks could gain was extremely important in fights to the death. Bai Zemin was certain that the attack he had just made a few minutes ago had enough power to decimate a Second Order existence without any problems.
As far as destructive power was concerned, the skill Gravity Manipulation was far more important than Blood Manipulation.
Of course, this was only for destruction. In terms of quality and variety or importance when it came to fighting, Bai Zemin firmly believed that the skill Blood Manipulation was at least 100 times more important than Gravity Manipulation.
"You should be thankful that you used hundreds of scales stacked on top of each other to forge the blade of that sword of yours."
A cold, slightly irritated voice snapped him out of his thoughts.
Looking to his side, Bai Zemin could make out Shangguan Bing Xue's beautiful features. She was looking at him with both hands on her waist and was clearly unhappy about something.
"What's wrong?" he asked in confusion.
"You still ask what's wrong?" Shangguan Bing Xue was dumbfounded before stepping forward and getting close enough to be able to touch him if she extended her arm out in front of him. "Your attack earlier almost killed all the soldiers in the base!"
"Oh, that." Bai Zemin finally lit up. However, his reaction was clearly not what Shangguan Bing Xue expected.
"That's your answer?" She looked at him with wide eyes, revealing her inner surprise.
Since the two of them opened up considerably and talked to each other about their lives and families before the apocalypse, it could be said that Shangguan Bing Xue no longer restrained her expressions in front of him. Instead of always keeping a shell of ice around her, she now showed what her heart felt through her facial expressions.
Bai Zemin scratched his head with his free hand, and after some time, he finally explained in a low voice: "You see, I am not such a good person.... Many things I do may seem kind, but in reality everything I do always has a purpose. It may temporarily seem like I'm wasting my time, but I know better than anyone that sooner or later all that wasted time will be paid back in the future.... However, those humans who do not dare to genuinely fight against evolved beings, I am afraid that they are dispensable to me."
To tell the truth, lately Bai Zemin had been questioning whether Lilith's advice was really good... Did he need a faction? Did he really need one? They were all terribly weak, and even a single First Order beast was enough to cause considerable chaos among humanity.
Especially lately; Bai Zemin's power had begun to grow at surprisingly fast speeds and at even faster speeds he was beginning to distance himself from everyone else. First Order beings posed no challenge to him and very probably only those existences infinitely close to the Third Order could pose any real danger to the present him.
In a way, Bai Zemin began to think that perhaps he could do everything by himself without too many complications.
Shangguan Bing Xue looked at him silently and as she slowly processed what he had just said, she finally realized a few things.
The first thing she somehow realized was that while she knew Bai Zemin quite well, in a way it was also true that what she knew about him was what he wanted to show. There was still much she had yet to discover about his personality and the background on which his actions were based.
Another important thing was that, from these words, Shangguan Bing Xue remembered that while Bai Zemin could be kind, he could also be extremely cold and cruel where the lives of others were concerned.
Because it had been a while since the last time he had taken human lives simply to demonstrate his might over everyone, Shangguan Bing Xue had forgotten that during the time the group was confined in the university, Bai Zemin had killed about a hundred students regardless of their genders just to warn the rest of them.
Bai Zemin continued: "At the moment, men who use firearms are still somewhat useful. However, sooner rather than later the firearms built by mankind in the past will slowly become ineffective.... At that time, those people will become basically useless to me. Do you understand what I mean?" He looked straight into her eyes and waited.
Shangguan Bing Xue had a complex light in her eyes. She obviously understood that Bai Zemin didn't really care too much whether those soldiers lived or died because he was very clear that before long they would all become burdens.
Soon, however, the complexity of her emotions calmed down. Those people had nothing to do with her and the life or death of each of them should be their own responsibility. Her top priority was to survive and right behind it was the search for her mother; in this respect, Bai Zemin and Shangguan Bing Xue were exactly the same.
But even then there was something she did not understand. Therefore, after several seconds in which they both simply looked at each other in silence, she asked somewhat hesitantly, "Bai Zemin, what is your real target?"
Bai Zemin looked at her with a serious expression and then a faint smile appeared at the corner of his mouth as he jokingly said, "You really want to know?"
Little did he expect her to respond with such a serious expression, "I want to know."
Bai Zemin narrowed his eyes slightly and his mind raced with lightning speed. Without delay, he blurted out with a faint smile, "My target is total and absolute control. Didn't I tell you that before?"
However, Shangguan Bing Xue shook her head and pushed, "Absolute control of what?"
This time, he remained silent, and seeing this she continued:
"Are you talking only about China? About the whole world? Or maybe of something bigger?"
Bai Zemin lowered his head in silence and seemed to fall into deep thought.
Outside the giant crater, the blood vortex was still whirling tirelessly and the blood chains still clung tightly to the mutated beasts. Slowly, the sound of approaching vehicles reached the bottom of the crater and Bai Zemin raised his head as he realized that the soldiers and soul evolvers were returning to the area after the danger disappeared.
Shangguan Bing Xue remained silent during all this time, waiting for him to tell her his goal. His real goal, and not what she now firmly believed was only a minor goal that he was actually not considering seriously at all.
Finally, Bai Zemin looked her in the eyes again and responded.
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Thank you very much to everyone who voted for Blood Warlock with their Golden Tickets! <3