Evolution Begins with Elemental Domination

He fell for nearly three hundred meters, the wind shrieking past his ears like a wailing ghost.

He landed steadily on a steep ramp, sending loose stones skittering down from under his feet. His Strong Thought Perception picked up two cave dwellers—one dead, one crippled. The latter was just struggling to its feet when a Strong Thought Burst blew its head apart.

Su Chen didn’t stop. In the beam of his flashlight, his gaze fell upon a vertical pit gaping open at the bottom of the ramp.

He could vaguely make out scattered, grim skeletons and the glint of reflective Gray Ore Crystals.

He paid them no mind for the moment.

Skill breeds boldness. Without hesitation, and feeling no discomfort from the air, Su Chen leaped into the pit once more.

After falling for another fifty-plus meters, his Strong Will spread out rapidly like ripples on water. The view that formed in his mind suddenly expanded, revealing a massive underground cavern below. Stalactites hung from its ceiling like thousands of blades suspended from the heavens.

At the same time, a short staff floated out of Su Chen’s mountaineering pack, guided by his thoughts, and emitted a burst of brilliant white light.

The light washed over the cavern walls like a tide, instantly illuminating more than ten cave dwellers huddled in the rock crevices.

Their appearances varied, but without exception, they all had deep-set eye sockets. Their severely degenerated vision couldn’t handle the intense glare, and they immediately began to roar and screech in discomfort.

The battle began in an instant.

A glob of scalding, viscous, corrosive sludge shot out from one of their mouths, streaking down like a cannonball and striking the afterimage Su Chen had left behind just a second before.

He activated his Shadow Jumping Skill, teleporting over thirty meters into the air to his left.

VMMMM!!

A powerful gravity field slammed down. It was a weighted binding formed from layers of his Telekinesis, and four of the cave dwellers instantly knew something was wrong. The limbs they used to cling to the cavern wall suddenly grew heavy. Their sharp claws lost their grip on the rock face, and they plummeted down, tearing off large chunks of rock and stalactites as they fell.

The terrible impact of their fall made the surrounding cavern walls tremble.

Dust and smoke billowed up from the ground.

Hovering in mid-air, Su Chen used the precognition from his projected Strong Will to miraculously vanish once more, just as a volley of finger bones shot like bullets and pierced yet another of his afterimages.

Su Chen emerged from a patch of shadow. Before the creature in front of him could counterattack, a Strong Thought Burst from over seven meters away instantly snapped its neck.

Just as he sensed a sharp, terrifying aura wrapped in dreadful pressure closing in, the return-recall mechanism of his Shadow Leap activated instantly. Like a phantom, Su Chen’s figure reappeared in the spot he had occupied just a second before.

...

While the fight below grew heated, with booming sounds echoing all around, it had even drawn out an elite cave dweller. Up at the entrance to the vertical shaft, Yan Ruoruo hadn’t received an all-clear signal. Without a moment’s hesitation, she leaped straight down.

Her Wind Element Flying Skill enveloped her. Currents of air swirled around her slender limbs, sending her black hair flying. Her white athletic wear clung to her waist, outlining her shapely curves.

She landed lightly on the edge of the sloped passage. Using her Insight, the enemies’ weak points glittered like starlight in her vision.

From her superior, elevated position, Yan Ruoruo activated Frenzy and swiftly drew her Magic Longbow, the string twanging again and again.

Catching them by surprise, two of her Wind Split Arrows found their marks, one piercing a cave dweller’s throat and the other the back of another’s head. The shots were vicious, each one either crippling or instantly fatal.

Immediately after, she leaped down, wreathed in Wind Fluff, and drifted lightly to the ground. Now with a wider field of view, her gaze instantly locked onto the elite figure whose entire body was encased in dense bone that looked like heavy plate armor.

Without a trace of hesitation, Yan Ruoruo had already pulled a special arrow with a brownish-red tip from the quiver slung across her back. Infused with Lv5 Wind Split, this specially forged Killing Arrow radiated a terrifying, sharp killing intent.

’He can escape...’

That was Su Chen’s first thought.

From their brief struggle earlier, he knew it possessed a speed that belied its frame.

So, to make sure this arrow hit its mark.

In a flash, he activated Jingzhe. His body shot forward, and he appeared before his opponent like a phantom.

An extremely compressed Weighting Skill slammed down on the elite cave dweller’s back. The focused pressure caused its movements to falter for a crucial instant.

And in that exact moment, the Wind Split Arrow arrived. The creature twisted its body and tilted its head, fighting against the gravity field in an attempt to dodge, but the arrowhead still pierced its right shoulder bone. The Wind energy imploded, blasting its Bone Armor to pieces.

”URGH!”

It shrieked in agony, its forward charge halting.

The next second, Su Chen’s shotgun was pressed against its forehead, the muzzle erupting with three waves of power.

BANG!

He pulled the trigger. The Single-Headed Bullet blasted forward, and the creature’s head instantly exploded like a balloon. After passing through, the force of the shot was enough to send another cave dweller rushing up from behind flying.

’Not bad.’

Su Chen could finally get a direct feel for the shotgun’s power. ’Even without time to add a critical strike, a Single-Headed Bullet at full power, imbued with three waves of energy, can still completely obliterate its skull. And judging by the aftershock, there was plenty of overkill damage. With this baby, I can finally ease my fear of insufficient firepower for a while.’

With their elite leader dead, the remaining cave dwellers in the cavern immediately scattered and fled.

While her Frenzy was still active, Yan Ruoruo took an aerial shooting stance and loosed three arrows in quick succession. One missed, but the other two successfully knocked two more cave dwellers off the cavern walls.