Chapter 988 - Fighting the Governor of Iron and Blood!
Edited by: Michyrr
The High Priest was Masil’s true master, but Masil never dared to call him such. The High Priest had taught far from just him alone. The entire Arabian Empire feared him, and even the Caliph treated him with great respect.
As he was thinking about these things, Masil trembled, and his progress came to a complete halt, as if he had run into some invisible wall. Masil was at first confused, and then he exploded with fury.
“Beast, hurry up and move!” Masil harshly scolded, at the same time taking out a brown dagger and stabbing it into the head of the centipede monster. The sense of collision that Masil had felt was really because the centipede monster had suddenly stopped moving for some reason.
But this was far from the only thing that would surprise Masil.
In the past, whenever Masil stabbed it with his dagger, the centipede monster would assuredly howl in pain, but this time, the centipede monster not only did not move forward, it remained frozen in place like it had been turned to stone.
“Damn it! Just what’s going on here!”
Masil was both shocked and angry. The dagger in his hand, imbued with a power that was anathema to the centipede monster, stabbed down several more times, even punching a wound through which green blood flowed. Yet the centipede monster remained in place, its body rooted to the spot deep underground. It felt more like Masil was stabbing at an empty shell.
“Bastard!”
Masil was truly getting anxious now. The threat of Wang Chong followed him like his shadow. The smallest error would lead to his death on the battlefield.
“Masil, there’s no need to waste your energy.” At this moment, an indifferent voice rang out over Masil’s head. “I’ve already taken control of this monster. As I said before, you can’t escape!”
The voice was flat and emotionless, but in Masil’s voice, it was like a peal of thunder, a bolt of lightning cleaving at his body.
“Wang Chong!”
Masil’s body trembled like electricity was arcing through it. This was undoubtedly the voice that Masil wanted to hear the least.
A deep fear appeared in his eyes.
And this was not the only thing he had to fear!
The frozen centipede monster suddenly came to life as Wang Chong spoke, the joints of its massive body beginning to move. But the direction that the centipede monster moved struck fear into Masil’s heart. He could only watch as it turned its head around, ceasing its flight to the west, and began to drill in Wang Chong’s direction.
“Bastard! Stop right now!”
Masil lost his head, the dagger in his hand stabbing again and again at the centipede monster’s body. At the same time, he sent a strand of Psychic Energy into the mind of the monster, hoping to regain control of it. However, what greeted him was a callous Psychic Energy assault. Boom! Masil’s Psychic Energy was pulverized at the moment of first contact.
“Just give up on this idea! In front of me, you truly are nothing more than an ant! You won’t have any space to keep up your struggles!” Wang Chong’s cold voice rang out again, but this time, it spoke directly into Masil’s mind.
“No, it can’t be! I’ll never lose to you! I’m the commander of the Behemoth Army, a valued minister of the Caliph. I can’t lose to anyone!”
Masil’s eyes were red as he furiously bellowed, his mind teetering on the brink of madness.
“Say these things to the Tang soldiers you killed!”
A chilling killing intent appeared in Wang Chong’s eyes. His Psychic Energy bored through the center of Masil’s forehead and rapidly began to invade his body.
“No! I won’t lose to you!”
Masil strenuously roared and struggled, but he was incapable of stopping Wang Chong’s assault. He gritted his teeth and launched counterattack after counterattack. Boooooom! Their Psychic Energies constantly collided. Masil knew that his life was on the line, and he stimulated all his potential. But these hundreds upon thousands of clashes all ended with Masil’s defeat. The ferocity of the Psychic Energy domain was far more frightening than one could imagine. Finally...
“I’ve lost. Please, let me go. I swear an oath that I will never take another step into the Great Tang for the rest of my life!”
Masil’s eyes finally lost their last sliver of pride and became full of pleading. In Wang Chong’s Psychic Energy, he could sense a sliver of obvious killing intent. It was obvious that Wang Chong wanted to kill him to avenge the slain Tang soldiers.
“Hmph, too late! I’ll first make you my puppet, then put you through every torture possible until you die from the pain. Let this be the price you pay for your actions, an offering to the heroic souls of the Great Tang!”
Wang Chong’s voice was ice-cold. Under control of his Psychic Energy, the brown centipede monster continued to approach, traveling from deep underground to the surface. Booom! Bang!Wang Chong continued to occupy Masil’s mind, seizing the channels in his mind, taking control over Masil like he had taken over the Behemoths.
For each channel of the mind Wang Chong took control over, he would obtain many things. All that Masil had experienced, including his psychic techniques, were completely exposed to Wang Chong, serving as the spoils of war.
Wang Chong saw Masil grow up in a dark, crude, impoverished, and crowded alley, saw him fight with a stray dog over food, saw him scare away a group of children with his savage face. He ‘witnessed’ Masil use a blunt knife to kill a child who had jeered at him during the day, stabbing again and again into the child’s body. In this way, Wang Chong lived out a completely different ‘life’.
Wang Chong even saw Masil follow a mysterious black-robed man into a temple, where he was taught the methods of Psychic Energy. Many Psychic Energy techniques flowed into Wang Chong’s mind and became his own.
Wang Chong was no pure Psychic Energy expert, nor did he have a systematic education in it, and he certainly did not come from an ancient lineage of Psychic Energy users as Masil had. Everything that Masil knew became Wang Chong’s nourishment, filling in all the gaps Wang Chong had in the Psychic Energy domain.
While Wang Chong was just staggering his way blindly through the Psychic Energy domain at the start, relying on his own abilities to wander through the darkness of ignorance, he now had all of Masil’s lessons and experiences, allowing him to become a true Psychic Energy expert.
This was also why Wang Chong had not immediately killed Masil, and instead taken control of the centipede to make it bring Masil to him.
However, perhaps because he understood the calamity hanging over his head, Masil began to put up an even fiercer resistance. Moreover, Wang Chong had not yet been able to obtain the crucial secrets to raising the Behemoth Army. Besides that, Wang Chong could also sense that Masil’s mind hid an even greater secret deep within.
Wang Chong had no means of knowing what this secret was, but judging by Masil’s reaction, it was an extremely important one, even more important than the secret of the Behemoth Army.
“Let me see what sort of secret you’re hiding!”
In the raging winds, Wang Chong stood on the shoulder of the Behemoth, his eyes cold and stern. Bang! The sky suddenly dimmed as another devilish dragon charged down from the sky at Wang Chong. Behind this hell dragon, a figure stood in the air, his black cape fluttering in the wind.
Abu Muslim stared at Wang Chong, his eyes seething with killing intent.
But then, there was a rush of air as an enormous ape arm swept out and smashed the hell dragon to bits with a single punch.
Roooar!
The giant ape roared, its savage and beastly aura sending countless horses fleeing in fear, many of them even breaking free of their handlers. The giant ape dispelled Abu Muslim’s hell dragon with one punch while its left arm swung the iron cudgel at Abu Muslim.
Its movements were both swift and nimble, in complete contrast with its enormous body.
The infamous Governor of Iron and Blood Abu Muslim was unexpectedly incapable of getting a single step past the giant ape.
“Bastard! I’d like to see how long you can endure!”
As the Abbasid Caliphate’s Governor of the East, the highest authority from Khorasan to Samarkand, Abu Muslim was not a person who could not hold his temper. But despite all the time that had passed, all his attacks had been blocked by the giant ape, preventing him from killing the Tang youth. Even Abu Muslim began to feel a tiny hint of anger.
But what concerned Abu Muslim even more was that the three other Behemoths together with the Tang soldiers had swiftly put the Arabs at an extreme disadvantage. The Arabs were now in complete disarray and suffering grievous casualties. Never in all of his career as governor had he suffered such a massive defeat.
As he stared at the enormous ‘Consecrated’, Abu Muslim called out, his eyes flashing with cold light.
“Ziyad!”
Abu Muslim had barely spoken when a roiling cloud of black energy, tinged with gold and red, began to surge from behind the giant ape like a giant dragon. If one looked carefully, one would notice that at the center of this black energy was a bronze ring decorated with snake inscriptions.
The ‘Ocean Ring’ was yet another of the Abbasid Caliphate’s extremely precious ancient artifacts. Ziyad had been gifted this ancient artifact by the Caliph after rendering great service in the army and being recommended by Abu Muslim. This was one of the two artifacts that served as the nails holding down the Arabian Empire’s eastern regions.
It was through this Ocean Ring that Ziyad was able to reach the Great General level. It allowed him to contend against Cheng Qianli’s Supreme Desolation God and even overcome it.
Unlike Abu Muslim, Ziyad always moved very furtively, like a snake slithering through the darkness. Ziyad would always attack with no warning, no ripple of energy or gust of wind. While Wang Chong’s attention had been taken by Abu Muslim, Ziyad had stealthily worked around to his back and struck.
This attack had all his strength behind it, enough to kill Wang Chong in a single blow.