Chapter 1 From the Beast God Realm

The awakened apex evil bird hailed from the Beast God Realm. Its true form was a silver-gray goose, with a wingspan of nearly nine meters. Each feather was forged as if from steel, sharp and hard.

Its height was that of a two-story building. At first glance, it didn't look like a bird at all, but some kind of feathered dinosaur.

Even after being attacked by sonic boom grenades and blinding flashlights, it quickly recovered and returned to normal, its eyes flashing fiercely once more—the powerful physical qualities of spirit beasts defied common sense, especially those from the Beast God Realm, which were mostly stronger than their natural counterparts.

But clearly, its opponents were equally well-trained.

Blinding flashlight!

Another beam of intense light shone out, enraging the evil bird, which had only just opened its eyes. At the same time, the entire team unleashed its familiar covering fire! In an instant, a rain of spirit energy bullets slammed into the enemy, scattering sparks everywhere.

Even though its steel-like feathers produced a sound like metal striking metal, the numerous spirit energy bullets didn't completely penetrate. Only a few entered its flesh, but the immense impact caused the two-story-tall monster to stagger, almost collapsing.

Blinding flashlight!

Shao Qiming calmly focused the light, like controlling a magnifying glass to focus sunlight and burn ants.

In the real world, there was no such thing as flash resistance. As long as one's eyes were open and exposed to strong light, any creature would feel dizzy, even after ten times—of course, ordinary creatures would be nearly blind after five or six times. Meanwhile, Li Hanshan had already aimed at the giant goose's wing root, firing an arrow that pierced through its left wing and into its flesh!

For awakened apex-level spirit beasts, bullets were already ineffective. If they were the physically enhanced type, only anti-material sniper rifles could inflict effective damage. They were like walking tanks, extremely difficult to bring down and kill.

But Li Hanshan's sniper crossbow was specifically designed for hunting giant beasts. The arrowhead was a high-quality armor-piercing arrow manufactured by the Zheng Nation government, imbued with spirit energy. It was capable of piercing armored vehicles and even injected a blood-dissolving poison needle upon impact, preventing the wound from healing.

An opportunity! Just as the giant goose cried out in pain from the bone-deep wound, Guan Wanjing put away his shotgun, took a deep breath, and concentrated the strength to lift a several-ton barbell into his giant shield. Spirit energy gathered, causing the entire shield to glow. Then, he slammed the shield with all his might at the giant goose's neck!

More than half a year ago, Guan Wanjing could lift ten tons during physical tests. Now, as he approached the awakened apex, his physical strength had more than doubled. If he didn't need to reserve some strength to deal with possible counterattacks, Guan Wanjing felt he could send this evil bird flying with a single blow!

"Gaa!"

Sure enough, even after suffering unexpected attacks, the giant goose was still capable of counterattacking. Facing Guan Wanjing charging with his shield, it furiously raised its wings to strike. This was a swift attack no less powerful than Guan Wanjing's, which required charging!

But even with evenly matched strength, Guan Wanjing and the shield spun backwards in the air for two circles due to the weight difference, rolling dozens of meters away.

Instantly, the barrier between the giant goose and the other team members was gone. With a roar, it flapped its wings, wanting to charge and trample these damned little people to death.

"Blinding flashlight!" "Gaaah! I will kill you!"

The giant goose was furious, rampaging wildly, wanting to kill the human who kept harassing it. But every time it charged halfway, it was blinded and dazed.

The human seemed to have mastered some optical abilities, creating optical illusions that caused its attacks to miss repeatedly, wasting its energy in futile rage.

"Blinding flashlight!"

Faced with the enraged evil bird, Shao Qiming remained calm and unhesitatingly used the same trick, driving the giant goose, which was blinded again, almost mad—the giant goose was obviously not a Saint Seiya; the same trick was still effective.

Shao Qiming's spirit energy attributes were wood and yang, wood with yang, yang with a bias towards light. In other words, he was wood-attributed, but could gather and store sunlight, releasing it—essentially the same as his family's photovoltaic business, which was also in the solar energy business. The semi-spirit-grade blinding flashlight maximized Shao Qiming's light-emitting ability. The flashlight's brightness was enough to instantly blind ordinary people. Only transcendents could withstand it, not being blinded on the first flash.

Of course, monsters like Su Zhou were different. When he stared directly at the strong light, he could even discern the concentration of spirit energy within the light.

Just then, Li Yeyu, who had disappeared from sight earlier, suddenly darted out from behind the giant goose—the strong light from Shao Qiming's blinding flashlight also created the darkest shadows. She relied on the shadows created by the repeated blinding flashes to circle around to the giant goose's back.

Then, she thrust out an armor-piercing cone, striking the giant goose's spine!

"Aaaargh! Why do these descendants of immortals and gods have so many special magical treasures even at the awakening stage?!" The giant goose's bones were hard, and Li Yeyu was not very strong. The armor-piercing cone didn't really pierce its spine, and it was even sent flying by the force of the goose's body shaking—but even so, the pain was real. The bewilderment and confusion in its heart deepened: "And their strength is so great, unlike the humans recorded in the ancient texts!"

As for why, that was obviously because of industrialization! Although it was unknown when the Beast God Realm made contact with immortals and gods, the world at that time probably didn't have industrialization.

As for strength, several thousand years had passed. The cultivation techniques that had maintained their inheritance and been meticulously refined for thousands of years, even during the era of spirit energy depletion, were naturally far superior to the crude initial versions of thousands of years ago. After all, times had changed.

In any case, an awakened apex-level being, even a human, was considered a grandmaster. In the Beast God Realm, which had also experienced spirit energy depletion, such beings were also high-level combatants. Even with its eyes almost blinded and its wings and back in excruciating pain, the iron-feathered giant goose still retained most of its fighting ability. Now, it simply closed its eyes, intending to rely on its spirit energy sense to first kill the guy with the strange light-emitting magical treasure!

This time, Shao Qiming temporarily put away his flashlight and threw out a second sonic boom grenade—this time, the giant goose was deaf. The feathers on the side of its head bristled.

"Too miserable." Guan Wanjing, who had already surrounded it again, shook his head, facing the giant goose, whose bird head clearly showed a blank expression: "Sigh, each of us has five of these spirit energy sonic boom grenades, and most of them are carried by Brother Shao… Although the technical requirements are high, they are produced in quantities of thousands."

Sure enough, facing the iron-feathered giant goose, which had completely gone berserk and seemed to be planning to charge forward with brute force, Shao Qiming didn't panic. He even had time to pull Li Hanshan, who had fired a second arrow that stuck in the goose's left eye, back. Then, he threw out four more concussion grenades—even if the goose was deaf, the shockwaves and vibrations were still obvious, once again stunning the berserk giant goose.

The raging giant goose had extremely strong regenerative powers. One could even see that after its berserk state, the bullets embedded in its body were being squeezed out by the regenerating muscle tissue… But berserk state couldn't affect everything. Rather, because berserk state stimulated the nerves, the sensory input from the trigeminal nerve area became more sensitive.

"Ah Zhou is right. When it comes to fighting, no fancy tactics are as effective as throwing money and items."

Seeing Guan Wanjing and Li Yeyu step forward again, blocking the path of the berserk giant goose from the front and back, Shao Qiming also unhesitatingly took out the blinding flashlight again, gathering spirit energy to intensify the light, aiming directly at the creature's single eye.

He thought, "And if a tactic works, just keep using it until the enemy dies or it stops working—resistance is something that only exists in games. In reality, you naturally use whatever is effective."

Although Guan Wanjing seemed rough and boisterous, he was actually meticulous and had extremely strong control over the spirit energy within his body. Now that the giant goose was both deaf and blind, he pretended to explode forward with spirit energy and immediately retracted it, tricking the giant goose into either defending or counterattacking—but in reality, he only attacked once out of ten times. Most of the time, he either retreated to give Li Hanshan and Li Yeyu a chance to attack, or stayed in place, fooling the giant goose, exposing countless openings for nothing.

This was a secret technique of his inherited martial arts school, originally used to deceive other martial artists, concealing his true intentions and direction of attack. But now, it was also good to use it as a vanguard, misleading the enemy's counterattacks or defenses.

Soon, not much time passed.

Under the seamless cooperation of the entire team, the giant goose was played to the point of collapsing on the ground, with the short burst of berserk state. It could be said that it had no strength to fight back.

It originally wanted to fly away, but Li Hanshan's arrow that pierced its wing root was too crucial, causing it to be knocked back by Guan Wanjing's hammer as it jumped up—this was also why the giant goose looked like it was in shock.

However, none of the four people present cheered because the awakened apex-level giant goose had been defeated, lest they forget to be cautious—Li Yeyu's father was a member of the Security Bureau, naturally cautioning her day and night, and Li Hanshan and Guan Wanjing also had family inheritances.

As for Shao Qiming—he wasn't stupid. The enemy falls down, does that mean it’s really down? What do you know about falling down? Is it possible it's just pretending to fall down? Not to mention his excellent argumentative spirit learned from his friend, in this situation, you must finish it off!

So he unhesitatingly pulled out the blinding flashlight again, continuing to shine it on the giant goose's only eye.

"Gaaaaaaah!"

Sure enough, the giant goose was just faking defeat, seemingly planning to suddenly rise up and take away the few people who were close to it—but since its goal was discovered, the result would naturally be that what was fake became real. It was beaten to the brink of death again by the united four-person team—this time it was for real.

Even so, it was still very troublesome for the four to kill this giant goose… The creature's vital points were basically covered with steel-like feathers, and even if they weren't, there was an extremely tough membrane that was difficult to destroy.

In response, Shao Qiming quickly came up with a good idea. He borrowed Li Hanshan's longsword and cut a wound on the giant goose's back.

As a result, within a few seconds, as the muscles wriggled, the wound closed and stopped bleeding. The evil bird's back returned to its original state as if it hadn't been injured.

"Haha, this is useless!"

Sensing that most of the team of four's weapons lacked lethality, the evil bird giant goose emitted a sharp cry that seemed to mock them: "You humans can't kill me at all!"

"It's a bit difficult, this alien beast's vitality is so strong, it's a bit hard to kill."

Unable to communicate verbally, not understanding what the other party was saying, the merciless Guan Wanjing took his shotgun and shot the giant goose's right eye—this indeed completely blinded the giant goose, but its head was enveloped by thick spirit energy. The impact couldn't reach inside the brain at all, and after all, it was a transcendent creature. What did it matter if the brain was damaged? Maybe it thought entirely with its soul and didn't need a physical body. Although they could challenge and defeat single enemies stronger than themselves, when faced with these spirit beast enemies whose bodies were powerful to the point of being unbelievable and whose levels were higher than theirs, defeating them might be possible, but killing them was difficult.

In response, Shao Qiming had his own brilliant plan—he had a good method, learned from his good brother, for dealing with these hard-to-kill enemies.

"A friend of mine told me to remember to carry white phosphorus with me."

Saying this, Shao Qiming took out a sealed box from his bag. He explained to his teammates, who were clearly surprised and puzzled: "This is a legal method. I applied for permission to legally carry flammable and explosive materials into the camp. Ah Zhou helped me get through the professor's review."

Saying this, he cut another wound on the giant goose's back. Then, Shao Qiming sprinkled the white phosphorus in, lit it, and the whole process was easy and smooth, as if he had done it many times.

Boom!

A raging fire began to burn on the screaming giant goose's back.

Guan Wanjing, the only one in the team who could communicate normally, was shocked on the spot: "Where the hell did you learn this vicious method? It's too terrifying! And Professor Su is your childhood friend. Of course he would pass your review. This is you abusing your position!"

"Of course I learned it from Su Zhou. He said that most spirit beasts have very strong regeneration abilities, and to deal with strong regeneration abilities, use white phosphorus to easily make them feel worse than death."

As he said this, Shao Qiming still smiled brightly and cheerfully. He stabbed the giant goose's body with Li Hanshan's sword, observing its regeneration speed: "He also said that if the other party's regeneration ability is strong, then pull out their fingernails, pull them out continuously, anyway, their regeneration speed is fast—of course, this only applies to humans. And my understanding is that when dealing with enemies with regeneration abilities, after knocking them down, you must constantly harm them and observe their regeneration speed."

"This way, you can also determine whether the spirit beast still has the stamina and strength to counterattack and whether it was just pretending to be dead, with spare power stored."

As he said this, the fire on its back had already begun to spread, and the sound of sizzling meat was already coming out. The iron-feathered giant goose's screams were already half-dead, with more air going out than coming in.

Looking at this scene, Guan Wanjing swallowed—after all, it was spirit beast meat, it really smelled good.

"..." Li Hanshan didn't speak, just took a step back, watching Shao Qiming, who was still smiling and seemed to be thinking about something, with a reverent gaze, and then his body began to tremble.

At this time, Li Yeyu was even more shocked, crazily complaining: "Damn, I originally thought he was a cheerful and handsome guy, but I didn't expect him to be black on the inside?!"

"Why are there no normal people in this team?"

Meanwhile, Yaochi, beside the Peach Orchard.

"Eat people? Where would there be people here for me to eat? And why would I eat people?"

Were the peaches not delicious enough, or the spiritual energy of heaven and earth not delicious enough? I'm at the Transcendent stage, I can live without eating, why would I still eat flesh?

Hearing Su Zhou's question, Garuda tilted its head with a puzzled expression, its golden hair swaying, not understanding the thoughts of this dragon descendant who didn't even answer its questions.

At this time, it could see that the other party, the dragon descendant, nodded slightly, seemingly indicating 'correct answer'. Then, he opened his mouth, his tone gentle and easy-going: "In that case, there is room for negotiation—to be fair, you are indeed not a great villain, but you did hinder me before and sent beasts to attack me, which is very bad."

"How about this, I'll beat you until you cry."

Saying this, Su Zhou exhaled and moved his feet.

Instantly, the solid earth and rocks shattered into pieces, his body disappeared, leaving only the sound of thunder exploding in the air.

In the next instant, Garuda, its eyes wide open, saw an incomparably huge, white fist, heading straight for its face.

Its body flew backwards.

Boom!

Then, its body felt the sensation of being hit.