He raised the Standard Bomb Gun in his hands.
"Ready. Unleash a full barrage."
"Roger."
"Understood."
"With pleasure."
The four of them raised their ranged weapons at almost the same time.
Without a shred of hesitation, they hurled the various explosives they had prepared—as if they were worth nothing—at the crowd of cultists still lost in their wild celebration around the altar.
The next second, firelight consumed everything!
BOOM—!!!
Dozens of Holy Water Purification Bombs and high-explosive grenades detonated simultaneously, the terrifying sound of the explosions almost tearing apart the violet-red sky.
Sacred purifying flames, imbued with Spiritual Arrays, and furious physical shockwaves hot enough to melt steel, intertwined into a storm of death that instantly swept across the entire clearing.
Blinding Spiritual Energy Beams were everywhere, as were flying severed limbs.
Those cultists, lost in their desires, didn’t even have time to react and snap out of their fantasies before they were utterly reduced to charred husks by the sudden, devastating strike.
In a near instant, of the more than one hundred cultists present, only the thirty-odd core members—the strongest among them—remained.
Though they were in a sorry state, they had managed to survive the first barrage.
"It’s the Empire’s lapdogs!!"
A sharp roar, filled with fury and venomous hatred, rang out.
"Prepare for battle! Let them see what true art is!"
"Quickly! Activate your Spiritual Power Protection Devices!"
Dragon Jade ordered in a low voice over the comms channel.
"Understood!"
HUMMM—
An energetic glow lit up the four power armors simultaneously as their defensive modules activated.
The golden Imperial Legion-Grade Mental Barrier Module on Qin Feng’s chest emanated an inviolable, absolute majesty of Order.
At that very moment, the thirty-some surviving Central Nest Nobles, like sharks that had smelled blood, charged madly toward Qin Feng’s squad from all directions.
Their eyes burned with the fury of having their "art" desecrated, and the ecstasy of about to taste fresh "material."
They unleashed all sorts of Fourth-level Killing Techniques.
In an instant, the entire battlefield was enveloped in a bizarre Spiritual Field.
There was a mist that plunged people into illusion, a silent scream that could directly stir the deepest fears in one’s heart, and a seductive, decadent melody that seemed to make even the soul dance.
However, faced with these psychic attacks that would cause any ordinary Fifth-level Martial Artist to instantly crumble, Qin Feng’s squad of four stood firm like a rock in a raging river.
Their Spiritual Barriers blocked out all the psychic corruption.
The battle instantly devolved into the most brutal phase of close-quarters combat.
Qin Feng took the lead, his "Koi-Dragon" Long Spear whipping up golden cyclones of death.
Golden Majesty!
Every sweep of his spear carried an overwhelming dominance, pulverizing those flashy, insubstantial psychic killing techniques and their users into a shower of gore.
Dragon Jade’s Body Technique was like a phantom’s. His Long Saber was silent, yet it always appeared in the most unexpected places to deliver a fatal cut to the throat.
Ning Jing’s long whip was like a furiously dancing dragon. Every crack of the whip produced a sonic boom that tore through the air, splitting enemies in two—weapon and all.
Nissan’s broadsword moved with powerful, sweeping motions. He roared as he charged into the enemy ranks like a human siege tank, embodying the aesthetic of violence to its fullest extent.
The four of them had honed their coordination to perfection through countless bloody battles.
But these noble cultists from the Nest Capital were by no means easy opponents.
Their vitality indexes were mostly above six thousand points, and their Mental Power had become extremely resilient from long-term exposure to Chaos Energy.
They were fearless in the face of death, their fighting styles bizarre and frenzied, causing the four-person squad immense trouble.
The bitter battle lasted for a full hour.
When Qin Feng’s spear pierced the heart of the last cultist who was trying to detonate the nuclear core inside his own body, the battlefield finally fell silent once more.
Over thirty dismembered corpses lay scattered in pools of blood.
The four’s power armors were all covered in new scars. The sound of heavy panting rose and fell on the quiet team comms channel.
"Whew... finally cleared them all out."
Nissan plopped down onto the ground and wiped the sweat from his brow.
"Yeah. Next up, we destroy that altar."
Ning Jing’s tone remained tense.
Dragon Jade looked at the flesh altar, which was still twitching slightly and emitting an ominous aura. His brow furrowed.
"That went... surprisingly smoothly, didn’t it?"
He murmured in confusion.
Everything had been too easy.
So easy that it made him feel uneasy.
’It’s as if, from start to finish, we’ve only been cleaning up a bunch of... unimportant small fry.’
’And the real "Guardian" has yet to show itself.’
The very instant that thought arose in his mind—
A hair-raising SCRAPE... SCRAPE... like fingernails scraping against bone, echoed from deep within the flesh altar.
Something was climbing out from within.
Alarm bells went off in their heads. The four instantly formed the tightest possible defensive formation, their eyes glued to the top of the altar.
A head—one covered in a smooth, pink carapace with a ceramic-like texture, one that was both human and insectoid, a head of such unearthly beauty it was demonic—slowly emerged from the flesh of the altar.