Chapter 97 - 91: Wind Elemental Spirit

Chapter 97: Chapter 91: Wind Elemental Spirit

The deeper he went, the stronger the wind blew. The rock walls on either side of the canyon grew increasingly steep, squeezing the sky above into a narrow, grayish-white fissure.

The loose gravel on the ground tumbled in the wind, making a CLATTERING sound, as if someone were endlessly rummaging through something in the dark.

Chen Shang suddenly stopped in his tracks. He squatted down and picked up a fist-sized stone from the gravel pile. The grayish-brown rock had been polished smooth and round by the wind.

He turned it over in his hands a few times. Through the stone’s crust, his Eye of True Sight spotted a faint cluster of cyan-white light flowing sluggishly within. It was Wind Elemental Energy sealed inside the rock.

This wasn’t a natural formation. Rather, years of exposure to the elements had allowed the Wind Element to slowly seep into the rock’s crevices, trapping it within the mineral structure. It made for excellent Alchemy Materials. Ground into powder, it could be used to concoct a Wind Element Affinity Potion or serve as an additive for a Wind Rune Carrier.

Chen Shang stored the stone in his Space Book and continued forward.

Up ahead, the canyon took a sudden turn. After rounding a protruding rock wall, the view abruptly opened up.

He had arrived at the center of a circular basin. Towering rock walls surrounded him, and the sky overhead transformed from a narrow slit into a vast, circular lid.

The wind swirled wildly within the basin, surging in from all directions and scattering just as chaotically, without any fixed path. The gales battered Chen Shang’s Monatomic Heavy Water Membrane, causing its thickness to fluctuate erratically, forcing him to constantly maintain it with his Spiritual Power.

He had already seen it with his Eye of True Sight: there were several pitch-black rifts at the center of the basin, which were the very source of the wind.

Just as Chen Shang was about to get closer for a better look, a sudden roar exploded across the northwestern horizon.

"This is my territory! Bastard, get out of here!"

The voice was deep and resonant, carrying an explosive force like violently compressed air. The sonic boom sent a layer of gravel bouncing off the basin floor near Chen Shang, scattering it everywhere in the wind.

Immediately after, another calm voice rang out, each word enunciated with crisp clarity. "Brand, I am here on a mission from the Wizard World to investigate. Do not interfere with my operations, or you will bear the consequences."

"Hmm? Is that Dennis?" Chen Shang thought, his interest piqued. "Wasn’t his mission objective to investigate the Wind Elemental Spirit anomaly? How did he end up causing such a massive commotion?"

But then, the first voice grew even more furious. "Don’t give me that Wizard World mission crap! This is my territory!"

Before the words even faded, a torrential gale erupted across the land. Wind blasted outward from all directions simultaneously, as if a hole had been punctured in the firmament. The air pressure plummeted as all the oxygen rushed madly in the same direction.

Chen Shang frowned. He raised his head and saw the entity.

It was a Wind Elemental Lord, standing a hundred meters tall. Its body lacked a fixed shape, resembling a tornado magnified ten million times over. Its base clung to the ground while its peak stretched into the grayish-white clouds.

Its translucent form revealed countless arcs of cyan-white lightning dancing within—like blood vessels, or nerves, or perhaps the circulatory system of some colossal beast. Its "face" was blurry and constantly shifting. Sometimes it appeared on the front, sometimes on the side, and other times in several directions at once. The expressions on those faces flashed by in an instant: anger, brutality, madness, as if venting some pent-up emotion.

Standing before it, Dennis looked as puny as an ant, yet he didn’t run.

His hands moved rapidly over his metal case. The Runes on the case’s surface shifted from blue to red, and then from red to white. A few seconds later, the lid sprang open. Three fist-sized metal spheres flew out, trailing pale blue wakes as they arranged themselves into a triangular formation and shot toward the Wind Elemental Lord.

These were mechanical bombs—specialized Alchemy Creations designed specifically to target Energy Bodies.

When the metal spheres struck the Wind Elemental Lord, they didn’t explode. Instead, they sank into its translucent currents like three sponges, embedding themselves within and frantically absorbing the surrounding Wind Elemental Energy.

The Wind Elemental Lord’s body abruptly shrank. The three bombs had drained a massive amount of its energy, causing it intense pain. Emitting a deafening roar, its body swelled out forcefully. Countless cyan-white lightning bolts erupted from within, blasting the three bombs to smithereens.

Dennis immediately retreated.

One of the Wind Elemental Lord’s wind-arms swept out with a speed almost imperceptible to the naked eye. Dennis only had enough time to tilt his head. The arm, formed of condensed gales, grazed his shoulder. It plowed a deep trench more than ten meters long into the ground, hurling gravel and dirt into the air.

Dennis was flipped over by the shockwave, rolling several times on the ground. The metal case detached from his back and crashed into the distance.

But the Wind Elemental Lord didn’t stop. Fueled by rage, its body continued to expand, growing from a hundred meters to a hundred and fifty meters tall. The lightning inside it shifted from cyan-white to a blinding blue-white, shining so brightly it was hard to look at directly.

Dennis scrambled up from the ground. A stray piece of gravel had slashed his left cheek, and blood dripped down his jaw onto the sandy earth. He looked to be in a miserable state, but in reality, the Wind Elemental Lord had taken severe damage, whereas Dennis had merely suffered a scrape. A minor injury like that would heal on its own before he even made it back to the laboratory.

Seizing the opportunity to finish it off while it was weakened, Dennis manifested two crimson Thermobaric Bombs between his hands. The flames within were incredibly dense, with fine electric arcs dancing across their surfaces.

He thrust both Fireballs at the Wind Elemental Lord simultaneously. One struck its "chest," while the other hit its "abdomen."

The bombs detonated, sending waves of heat radiating outward from the points of impact, burning two massive holes straight through the Wind Elemental Lord’s body.

The creature convulsed violently. Blue smoke billowed from the scorched gaps, and it took a long while for the wounds to knit back together. It was now even more enraged.

As a result, its body began to spin furiously, transforming from an irregular tornado into a high-speed Wind Pillar. The peak of the Wind Pillar pierced the clouds. Countless bolts of lightning rained down from the sky, striking the swirling column and compounding in strength along the direction of its spin.