The Creatures That We Are-Chapter 1186: Pry

The pickup truck exploded.

A hemisphere of flames quickly spread until engulfing half of the Apple Island. Blinding red washed over the world. Even the white moon in the sky dimmed in comparison, drowned out by the firelight.

A minute later, the explosion settled.

A crater was left in the heart of Apple Island, surrounded by charred earth and embers of fire. The colors drained away once more. The landscape looked like a battlefield from a black-and-white war movie.

An intact Black Gold dart hid somewhere in the wasteland. A flash of light emerged—the fusion of Nine Frost, Chen Ying, and Harvest Song.

Three Heads Six Arms ran out at that point. The three awakeners separated in a flash of gold. Then Adept Horse slowly descended from above. The pair of miniature Black Gold rockets under his shoes allowed him to stay afloat for long enough to avoid the explosion.

He turned them off and landed on the ground. Nine Frost gave Chen Ying a look. She immediately closed her eyes and used Sensory.

A few seconds later, Chen Ying shook her head. “No higher lifeform in this area.”

To be safe, Nine Frost wordlessly gathered birds with Avian King to look for traces of Greed in a bigger area.

“Plan A actually worked?” Adept Horse breathed. Even he was in disbelief.

Plan A was the first plan Gao Yang formulated for Team Nine Frost. He knew that Team Nine Frost stood little chance against Greed if they launched a frontal attack, but they could try to catch Greed off guard by exploiting Greed’s tendency to suspect everything.

The plan was simple:

First, ensure that Greed had shown up personally and could be damaged.

That part was done with Adept Horse’s Deception.

Then Harvest Song discreetly used Possession to control the pickup truck to approach Greed.

The truck carried explosives Chen Ying had imbued with the energy of Detonation Expert. Detonating them from a close distance would amplify their power by dozens of times.

Right before the explosion, Adept Horse took refuge in the sky with Jump and the Black Gold rockets he was wearing, while NIne Frost, Chen Ying, and Harvest Song hid in a Black Gold weapon with Mirror Man while fused.

They didn’t care what ambush or trap Greed had set up on the clearing. The explosion was meant to eliminate all threats.

Another minute passed. A crow flew above Nine Frost and croaked twice before flying away.

Nine Frost shook his head. “Greed isn’t found on the entire Apple Island.”

“It’d take special ability for someone to escape from an explosion at this scale in time,” Harvest Song said.

“So Greed...is dead?” Chen Ying asked uneasily. She had thought that Plan A would hurt or even critically injure Greed, but such a swift kill didn’t seem real.

The others shared her sentiment. They exchanged silent glances.

“Wait,” Adept Horse spoke up, face darkening. “My Deception succeeded.”

Chen Ying blinked in confusion. “So? It should succeed.”

“No,” Nine Frost said gravely. “It should’ve failed.”

“Oh!” Chen Ying came to a realization.

Plan A was a Deception to Greed in itself. If Greed was caught off guard, the Deception that Adept Horse was part of would be considered successful, and damage would be done to Greed’s true body.

That, however, was only the case if Greed was alive. If Greed had been erased by the explosion, the Talent shouldn’t have succeeded.

The success was a failure; it meant that Greed was still alive.

“But how? I can’t sense her existence...”

Chen Ying used Sensory once more. Two seconds later, she warned with terror, “It’s here again! Around us! Watch out!”

They didn’t have the time to figure out how Greed had avoided the danger and come out of nowhere; danger was already upon them.

Eerie gurgles surrounded them as dense cracks appeared in the air, opening up into red vertical eyes like space itself had been torn open. The red eyes surrounded the four awakeners like red hails frozen in place. The eyeballs darted toward them in unison.

In that instant, the countless gazes pricked their skin like cold needles, slowly going deeper.

“Unbridled Light!”

Adept Horse raised his hands and gathered a sparkling nebula above his head. It rotated quickly while shooting golden light at the red vertical eyes, popping them like arrows.

Despite the eyes’ macabre appearance, they were incredibly fragile. They all burst into blood mist the moment an arrow hit them, and they did not regenerate. Their numbers were finite.

On the other hand, Adept Horse could conjure as many light arrows as he had energy. Level 7 Light allowed him to use Unbridled Light for three minutes, shooting hundreds of thousands of arrows in all directions.

And it didn’t take three minutes. Thirty seconds were enough for the arrows to shoot down all the vertical eyes. The blood mist spread, thickly enveloping them and obscuring their vision. The Heavenly Way quickly drained the mist of color, though, and they were able to see much better.

None of them dared to get complacent. They pressed their backs together, searching for Greed’s true form.

Thirty seconds passed. The whitewashed mist dispersed and fell upon the charred ground, turning into a thin layer of frost.

Concentrating on Sensory, Chen Ying shouted in alert, “Beanth us!”

The others had noticed the threat only a second later. Chilling energy rose from underground. With little warning, a massive white eye opened up. The four of them were like four dust particles falling onto the eyeball.

It turned out that the burst vertical eyes had seeped into the ground as mist and quietly drew the pattern of a giant eye. It was colorless and too large for the four of them to notice it while standing within it.

“Gather to me!”

Chen Ying was going to bite her finger to trigger an Absolute Barrier, protecting herself and her companions, but it was too late.

Peculiar red light flickered in a staccato from the white eye like flashes of a camera, capturing still frames of their fate.

First step: pry.

Complete.