Chapter 564: Only a Cultivator Can Deal With a Cultivator

The vast command room was dead silent.

Cold sweat beaded on the foreheads of Old Ghost and the others. Several tactical fusion warheads detonating simultaneously—that kind of world-ending power was enough to wipe a small city off the map.

“He should be… dead, right?” Liangzi muttered under his breath, his chubby face still pale with shock.

No one answered.

Wu Liangchen’s face was grim. “Deploy the backup reconnaissance drone. Find out what’s going on!”

Soon, a specially modified drone capable of resisting strong electromagnetic interference slipped into the underground hall that had just undergone its baptism of destruction.

A new video feed, transmitted intermittently over a backup line, began to trickle in.

When the scene in the feed became clear, a collective gasp echoed through the command center. Disbelief was written on every face.

The young man in the simple, ancient-style white robe was still alive!

The center of the Teleportation Array where he stood seemed to be protected by an independent force field. All around him, the rock walls had melted and warped into grotesque, terrifying shapes. Yet the area at his feet, and the massive Spiritual Energy Extraction Array not far off, had miraculously… survived the nuclear blast! Though the edges of the arrays were riddled with cracks and some of their runes had dimmed, their core structures were somehow intact.

However, the young man had lost all of his initial composure and nobility.

His magnificent white robe was now in tattered ruins, hanging off him like rags and revealing patches of scorched-black skin. His ink-black hair was splayed across his shoulders in disarray, and a shocking trail of blood trickled from the corner of his mouth. He was breathing heavily, his chest heaving, clearly having sustained serious injuries.

SPIT—

He violently coughed up another large mouthful of blood. As it spattered onto the ground, it gave off a faint, fluorescent glow.

And even so, he still wasn’t dead!

“My God… Is… is he even human?” Old Ghost’s voice trembled. The scene before him had completely overturned his understanding of reality.

Those were nukes! Several of them, detonated at close range!

‘Even the Immortal Gods of legend could probably do no more than this, right?’

The young man seemed to sense the drone hovering overhead. He snapped his head up, and the eyes that were once filled with contempt and detachment now held only endless venom and rabid killing intent.

His entire aura fluctuated violently with rage, but the team could clearly see the spiritual light around his body fading at a visible rate.

He seemed to realize this as well, and his expression grew even uglier.

Forcibly steadying himself, he glared fixedly in the drone’s direction, his gaze so intense it felt as if it could devour everyone on the other side of the lens alive.

He didn’t speak, didn’t even utter any threats. But that single glance was more terrifying than any vicious curse.

The next moment, fighting through his injuries, he staggered around and unhesitatingly stepped into the Teleportation Array behind him—the one that had also been damaged in the nuclear blast but was still barely functional.

With a flash of light, he was gone.

The atmosphere in the command center was incredibly tense.

“He’s gone?” Song Ling’Er murmured, somewhat dazed.

“But he’s injured, too!” Alina added, her tone a mix of relief and lingering fear. “It seems the nukes were effective after all.”

“Effective?” Old Ghost gave a bitter laugh. “That thing is a monster! He took a direct hit from multiple nukes and survived with just a few coughs of blood. Next time he’ll be prepared, and our little tricks won’t be nearly enough.”

Everyone’s heart sank.

They were right. This time, they had the element of surprise, catching him off guard. They had used the most powerful weapon of war known to man, and had only barely managed to injure him.

But what about next time?

All eyes, as if by unspoken agreement, turned to Wu Liangchen.

Wu Liangchen remained expressionless, but no one could have known the tempest raging in his mind.

The young man’s power had indeed exceeded his estimations.

‘Is that… a true Immortal? A being with the power to move mountains, part seas, and pluck the stars from the sky?’

‘Can an enemy like that truly be defeated?’

Just then, a thought flashed through his mind like a bolt of lightning.

He remembered what Zero had mentioned before dying: Yan Shu.

Zero had said that this Yan Shu had single-handedly killed a descended Immortal and made off with a Starship.

‘So, if I could find out what methods he used back then, wouldn’t that make things much easier?’

With this in mind, Wu Liangchen immediately ordered Old Ghost and the others to start searching for all information related to Yan Shu.

Although Old K had given him a file on Yan Shu before, it was far from complete. This military base, however, contained a wealth of top-secret data. The information he was looking for had to be in there.

The Starfire Organization mobilized at once, but they quickly ran into a problem.

Most of the data in the military base was encrypted. With their current technical skills, they could crack it, but it would waste a great deal of time.

And right now, time was life.

After all, no one knew when the man who had escaped would return.

“Liangzi, get me in touch with Old K,” Wu Liangchen said immediately.

“Yes, sir!”

Liangzi had dealt with Old K for over a decade and had a decent relationship with him, so he was the most suitable person for the job.

「Zhongjing, West Ninth District. In a dark, damp basement.」

Countless cables, like sinister vines, were coiled around a half-human, half-machine figure.

Old K’s electronic eyes, glittering with streams of data, were particularly striking in the darkness.

After Liangzi relayed Wu Liangchen’s request, Old K fell silent for a moment.

“Mr. Wu said that as for compensation, you can name your price,” Liangzi added.