Evolution Begins with Elemental Domination

A person’s demeanor is often trapped by the weight of others’ impressions.

But now, after witnessing their companions die horribly one after another and seeing powerful experts cut down like weeds, fear had quietly taken root.

At that moment, the air seemed to solidify, its flow stagnating.

”Something’s wrong. Fall back, now!”

The Heart Sword Warlock sensed that something was amiss. After unleashing a wave of sword light into the sky, he immediately pulled his men back in a swift retreat.

As if to prove his words, everyone felt an indescribable palpitation in their hearts as a suffocating pressure began to bear down on them.

’Meltdown Implosion!’

Su Chen extended his right hand, and a triple-layered, interwoven Technique bloomed in an instant.

BOOM!

Heaven and Earth fell silent.

A glare so bright it was blinding smashed down from the sky.

All matter was pinned to the ground by an immense, unseen force.

Three enemies hovering at a low altitude bore the brunt of it. They didn’t even have time to scream before they were crushed to pieces by the terrifying impact of Destruction.

A downed Warlock with an arrow in his head, along with a gunman who was a step too slow and lacked an escape method, were also torn apart by the imploding airflow, turning into a mist of blood that filled the sky.

The ground began to crack and melt like thin paper. Under the gravitational collapse and high-temperature eruption, a large crater rapidly formed.

The rock strata churned like waves, and the secondary shockwave from the impact began to sweep through the entire valley like a hurricane.

”What the fuck!!”

”What the hell was that commotion?”

Captain Hong, who had taken a moment to glance over from a distance, and even the combatants near him, were all rather astonished.

Visually, it was as if a miniature sun had crashed into Eagle’s Beak Valley.

The blinding, molten-gold ball of light flashed and was gone, but it left a platinum arc reflected against the distant sky.

Soon, the earth trembled and the air billowed. Even the trees and shrubs over here rustled and shook.

Just moments ago, they were still outside the valley, locked in a struggle with the Ashen Warlock and more than twenty others. Although they were on the losing end and had already lost one person, they could sense that their opponents no longer had their previous aggressive momentum.

The reason was simple.

Screams echoed intermittently from Eagle’s Beak Valley.

Half the Skull Gang had been unable to deal with just one or two enemies, which made these men realize something was wrong.

Now, with another round of explosive, sun-like radiance smashing down, the gang members outside the valley realized the situation was becoming dire.

A small group of them exchanged glances, the thought of retreat blooming in their minds.

Their current situation was dangerous. They seemingly had the advantage in numbers, but their location wasn’t far from Dongfu City. Enemy reinforcements could arrive at any moment.

With the Teleportation Gate destroyed, one of their escape routes was cut off.

Their only way to survive was to quickly leave this area and try to find other factions in Oran City, or perhaps find another Teleportation Gate to make a swift escape.

”Trust Sawyer. Don’t make any rash moves. Think of your families.”

The Ashen Warlock noticed something was off with his team’s morale and abruptly reminded them over the comms channel.

”AH!”

But his words were answered by the sound of a sniper shot, followed less than three seconds later by a deathly wail from the distance.

In the valley, now filled with vast clouds of smoke, another person had met a violent end.

...

Admittedly.

The area-of-effect blast of ’Meltdown Implosion’ couldn’t cover everyone, and the time it took for the power to gather and crash down also gave the enemy time to react.

But the attack also completely broke the formation of the twenty-odd survivors, forcing them into a state where it was every man for himself.

This was an even greater advantage than the one the Ashen Warlock had created with his environment-altering abilities.

In an instant, Su Chen’s Global Perception locked onto an invisible person hiding in the thick smoke.

’Something’s wrong...’

Just as the warning bells of danger rang in the invisible man’s mind, it was too late. He had just tried to activate his Lightning Warp ability when he felt a chill on his throat. Before the searing pain could even register, his head was already flying through the air.

Until the moment of death, his eyes still reflected the afterimage that was too fast for the eye to follow.

To guarantee the kill, Su Chen had activated ’Awakening.’ Bio-electricity shot through his body like silver serpents, pushing his neural transmission speed beyond its limits.

The next moment.

HUM!

Space flickered.

His figure teleported like a phantom, appearing directly in front of the Heart Sword Warlock two hundred meters away.

’I’ve been waiting for you...’

The unspoken words came from his opponent. Lightning flowed in his eyes, his pupils contracting to pinpricks. Relying entirely on his dynamic vision, he seemed to have kept up with Su Chen’s surprise attack.

He had clearly activated the ’Awakening’ state as well, and at Lv7.

Combined with his class’s unique traits, Sword Resonance and Mind Amplification, he achieved a state of unity between man and sword. His neural predictive abilities had long surpassed the peak of humanity, even allowing him to see his opponent’s future movements.

’But this is wrong...’

Everything still felt strained.

The moment he thought he had matched the pace, the instant Su Chen attacked, it was as if the world started dropping frames.

What the Heart Sword Warlock saw was no longer a fluid motion, but a series of overlapping, distorted afterimages.

He instinctively swung his sword to block.

At the same time, relying on over twenty years of tempered training as a sword hall instructor, he abruptly changed his move mid-battle.

CLANG!

The sword successfully met its target head-on.

But the contact was just a momentary feint.

”Die!”

With a flick of the Heart Sword Warlock’s wrist, his physical sword silently deconstructed during the clash. It transformed into an intangible Heart Sword, completely ignoring physical contact and obstruction as it passed through the Holy Sword and stabbed toward the space between Su Chen’s eyebrows.

Turning the corporeal into the ethereal to annihilate the mind.

Similarly, if it struck the opponent’s mind, it would obliterate their consciousness, instantly turning their body into an empty husk.

However.