This was different from the premature, Earth Element reformed human Su Chen had encountered before.
As for the differences...
It was a sturdy, 2.3-meter-tall behemoth, its entire body wreathed in a dense, fog-like Dark Element fluctuation. Three faces were visible on its body; besides the one on its head, a twisted, savage human face bulged from both its left and right pectoral muscles.
One body, three consciousnesses.
Its three-fungus-core central structure was also arranged differently.
Its right hand was even more mutated. An Enchanted Tang Blade had completely fused into its wrist bones, the blade itself bursting out from the palm of its hand.
After its Shadow Jumping Skill failed, the blade glinted under the hazy night sky, emitting a deadly, cold wave of annihilation. In a flash of arcing light, the reformed human spun around and launched a Shadow Assault, slashing at the figure in mid-air.
Simultaneously.
The two faces on its chest also flew open their mouths at that exact moment.
"Die!"
"Die!"
Curse Skill.
Screaming Skill.
As two Dark Element Runes activated in tandem, sound waves carrying a mentally corrupting curse rippled through the air, yet they passed straight through the faint, vaporized figure before it.
Su Chen had clearly entered a phased state, transcending the physical plane.
The blade sliced through, meeting only empty air.
The instant the creature’s momentum faltered, before it could retract its arm, Su Chen’s right hand materialized back into reality. He precisely slapped its blade-wielding forearm, and the Sun Flame power within his palm erupted.
Its entire right arm—the one fused with the Tang Blade—was blown to pieces in a flash of incandescent light.
But that wasn’t all.
A holy shockwave erupted from the point of impact, instantly engulfing the area in a blinding sphere of light. This radiance, carrying True Flame, surged forward, vaporizing all shadows and spores in its path.
The Dark Element reformed human took the full force of the attack. Under this dual purification, the Shadow Armor enveloping its body was obliterated, and it instantly became a human torch.
A surge of potent Life Force had begun to emanate from its severed arm, ready to sprout a new limb, but the exposed mycelial tentacles were instantly melted away the moment they extended half an inch.
Simultaneously, the mental-burning property of Soul Burning struck its triple-consciousness core like a volley of red-hot branding irons plunged into its mind.
"AARGH!"
All three faces contorted further, letting out shrill, agonizing screams.
’Escape! Escape! Escape!’
The Bloodthirsty Fungus’s distributed consciousness network frantically flooded it with commands to retreat. The instinct for survival overrode everything else.
It tried to muster its remaining Rune Energy to activate the Shadow Jumping Skill, but the searing pain in its soul forcefully interrupted the attempt. The Dark Shackles that had just begun to condense in its other hand hadn’t even fully formed before they dissolved into wisps of black smoke in the night sky.
"Not bad."
Su Chen watched the struggling, burning figure with some interest. After unlocking his first Core Authority, the new Soul Burning characteristic of his Lv8 Flame Burst, combined with the holy shockwave from his Lv6 Holy Radiance, had almost completely stripped the Dark Element reformed human of its ability to fight back.
He didn’t dawdle.
"Goodbye."
Close-range Strong Will burst!
An invisible Spirit Force Field clamped down like an iron band, tightly binding the creature’s ruined body in place.
The next instant.
Su Chen stretched out his right hand. An overwhelmingly powerful stream of Telekinesis clamped onto its neck like a giant pincer. With a sickening tear of flesh and bone, he violently ripped its head clean off.
The black blood and mycelia gushing from the severed neck were instantly vaporized into black smoke by the lingering flames around it.
Its immense Life Force kept the lips on its main face twitching. A hoarse whisper escaped from the stump of its throat.
’You just wait...’
Before it could finish, Su Chen’s Strong Will pried open its skull and forcibly ripped out the fungus core. An invisible force then crushed it, revealing four Dark Element Runes that blossomed forth.
With delicate control, he meticulously extracted all the clinging mycelia from them.
’Sooner or later... we’ll make you... one of... us...’
’You animal... bastard... Tomorrow, I will reveal... a brand new form... and I’ll be sure to kill you.’
Immobilized and in agony from the mental burns, the two savage faces on the headless torso spat out faltering threats.
"So noisy."
Su Chen unleashed his Strong Will along two lines, forming shovel-like blades that pierced its left and right chest cavities. He dug out both fungus cores. Then, extending his consciousness to probe the remains, he found no sign of a devoured human brain within the creature’s body.
’Such tenacious Life Force...’
’But one thing is certain: in terms of raw strength, this reformed human’s physique couldn’t compare to an elite cave dweller, but it had been infused with an immense amount of Life Energy.’
Even after its three fungus cores were removed, the remaining flesh and mycelia could still proliferate. He had no idea how long it would last. If left unchecked, the remains could probably form a living fungal carpet in the area in less than a day.
With enough moisture, that would in turn become a mushroom field—a new satellite base would be born.
"No wonder they have to be specially cultivated and incubated."
Su Chen considered this unique trait, which the Bloodthirsty Fungus must have acquired either from some Heavenly and Earthly Treasures or by exploiting a favorable location.
’I wonder what kind of surprise the Jade Lingzhi absorbed by the Jade Pendant will bring.’
「Half a minute later.」
Powerful individuals from near and far began to arrive one after another. They had, of course, sensed the commotion from the fight, but they were too late. Both combatants were long gone.
"It wasn’t a murderer, was it?" someone asked in alarm.
This caused a bit of a panic at the scene.
"No, that’s the body of a reformed human."
A curvaceous woman wearing an invisibility cloak emerged from the shadows.
The most conspicuous traces at the scene were a pool of black, charred ash and a half-inch-deep pit corroded into the concrete ground. Judging by the height and build of the headless corpse, it was most likely a reformed human created by the Bloodthirsty Fungus.

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