The sound of shattering glass wasn't loud amidst the chaos of the alleyway, yet it acted like a silent command, causing a brief pause in all the frenzied roars around.
Imdiately after, an even denser white mist surged forth!
That mist was no simple gas.
It was composed of billions upon billions of active life spores.
They rapidly spread and multiplied through the air, drawing everything around them into the territory of their own life.
The local civilians, already infected and transford into half-human, half-fungal monsters, underwent an even more terrifying secondary mutation upon contact with this higher concentration of life essence!
The fungal plaque-like gray patterns on their bodies began to grow and spread madly, eventually forming a layer of gray-white, resilient mycelial exoskeleton with a texture resembling chitin.
Their bodies were further twisted, their limbs growing thicker and stronger, with fungal tentacles even sprouting from their mouths.
Their strength, speed, and damage tolerance increased exponentially at this mont!
More horrifyingly, the last trace of human confusion in their turbid eyes vanished, replaced by a pure, collective consciousness that existed solely to protect the parent body!
A unified roar erupted from the depths of the zombie horde's throats.
They transford from individually fighting monsters into a fungal army with a clear objective!
They spontaneously gathered around the parent body, forming an impenetrable defensive line constructed of flesh, blood, and mycelium, glaring with bone-deep hatred at all the outsiders in the alleyway.
"Blasphers... must be purified!"
A fanatical expression appeared on Guillau's face.
He could not tolerate this "fallen holy relic" displaying such a terrifying "miracle" before his eyes.
Guillau raised the steel crossbow in his hand, aiming it at the Tai Sui parent body that was continuously breathing.
However, before he could pull the trigger, an even swifter black shadow leaped out from the zombie horde, slamming into him with a motion that completely defied the laws of physics!
Guillau's reaction was astonishingly fast. He dodged sideways at the last mont, but was still sent staggering back several steps by the imnse impact.
He focused his gaze, his pupils contracting.
It was a dockworker who had just completed a secondary mutation.
Half of its body had completely mutated, growing a massive mycelial wall composed of highly dense mycelium mixed with flesh and blood, shaped like a tower shield!
"This is a huge problem..." Julian thought, his heart turning to ice as he watched the scene unfold.
Under the powerful life field of the Tai Sui parent body, these monsters had actually begun to spontaneously and directionally evolve into different combat roles based on battle needs!
There were "shield soldiers" responsible for charging, "assassins" with limbs that had grown extrely slender and adept at climbing, and even a few monsters whose throats had swollen into huge sac-like structures, seemingly preparing for so kind of long-range "spore blast" attack!
This was no longer a simple clean-up operation, but a genuine, full-scale war!
The formidable frontal combat power of the Knights Templar seed utterly inadequate against this fungal army capable of infinite regeneration and continuous evolution.
Guillau and his two battle-hardened attendants were soon overwheld by the tide of monsters, locked in a desperate struggle.
Julian beca the primary target for all the monsters.
Several monsters that had mutated into "assassin" forms were scaling the walls on both sides at high speed, moving like geckos, launching a deadly assault from above his head!
Julian raised his [Withered Thorns] in despair.
He knew in his heart that with his ager self-defense abilities, escape was impossible.
Fortunately, a rapid clatter of hooves suddenly approached from the other end of the alleyway.
Imdiately after, an authoritative roar exploded in the Saigon night sky!
"I.A.R.C.! Comncing cleanup! All non-combatants, evacuate the contamination zone imdiately!"
Several agile figures leaped down from the low rooftops on either side of the alley, landing precisely in the center of the battlefield.
Reinforcents!
Reinforcents from the local Association!
Julian was overjoyed.
Leading this reinforcent group was a French veteran around fifty years old, whose physique remained robust.
He wore a modified French colonial officer's uniform, better suited for tropical jungle combat, his face marked by several fierce old scars.
He did not carry a conventional firearm, but instead held a peculiar flare gun with an alchemical style.
He was none other than the head of the I.A.R.C. French Cochinchina branch, Colonel Jean-Pierre Leclerc, known as "Papa."
"Monsieur Belloc," Colonel Leclerc glanced at Julian, trapped in a desperate situation, and offered a bitter smile. "The rose gardens of Paris are indeed not suitable for a butterfly like you who enjoys dancing in viper nests."
He wasted no more words, imdiately raising his flare gun and firing into the sky.
"Whoosh—!"
A blindingly bright silver alchemical flare shot into the high sky with a long trail, exploding above the zombie horde!
It emitted a silver halo, cold as moonlight.
Under the envelopnt of that silver halo, the madly growing mycelial exoskeletons on all the secondarily mutated monsters rapidly withered and decayed, as if doused with concentrated sulfuric acid!
This was not a lethal attack, but it created a precious, battle-turning breathing space for the beleaguered Knights Templar!
"Master Naimi! Master Nguyen!" Colonel Leclerc shouted. "It's up to you now!"
Following his command, the two "temporary rcenaries" he brought also launched their attacks.
Naimi, the Jiangshi master from Siam whose gaunt fra resembled a desiccated corpse, let out a strange laugh.
He pulled a jar made of black pottery from his robes, its surface covered in eerie runes.
Peeling off the talisman paper sealing the jar's mouth, a stream of black gas mixed with the sound of a child's weeping surged out.
The black gas coalesced mid-air into an infant spirit, less than three feet tall, with iron-blue skin and eyes streaming with bloody tears!
"[Infant Ghost Jar]!" Naimi shrieked.
The infant spirit let out a wail and pounced towards the densest concentration of monsters.
It directly penetrated a monster's mycelial wall, possessing its body!
The "shield soldier" froze, then began flailing wildly.
Its eyes were instantly filled with a red light. It turned and smashed its mycelial wall fiercely against its own companion beside it!
For a mont, the interior of the zombie horde descended into massive chaos due to this sudden betrayal!
At the sa ti, the taciturn Nguyen Van, who resembled a mountain woodcutter, also moved.
The patterns on the vine-woven armor covering his body lit up.
Several black vines covered in thorns grew from his arms!
Those vines behaved like predators with a will of their own, savagely entangling the special individuals whose throats had swollen to the limit, about to unleash their long-range "spore blast."
With irresistible force, the vines tightly constricted their necks, forcibly suppressing the deadly spores about to erupt!
With the coordinated efforts of the two highly Southeast Asian local hunters, combined with the reorganized frontal defense line of the Knights Templar, the expansion montum of the out-of-control spore army was barely checked.
The entire battlefield was forcibly contained within the range of a single city block.
But everyone knew this was only temporary.
The Tai Sui parent body, still rolling on the ground, continued to release life spores endlessly.
As long as it existed, these monsters were inexhaustible!
"Belloc! Guillau!" Colonel Leclerc's voice rang out again. "This thing is completely out of control! Its life activity has exceeded containnt paraters! I am about to implent the final protocol. I give you thirty seconds. Lead your people and evacuate imdiately via the eastern alleyway! Repeat! In thirty seconds, this place will beco scorched earth!"
"Final protocol?"
A sense of foreboding rose simultaneously in Julian and Guillau's hearts.
But they had no ti to hesitate.
Guillau let out a sharp whistle and, leading his two blood-soaked attendants, swiftly broke through towards the direction Leclerc indicated.
Julian, under the cover of the two local hunters, followed closely behind.
At the last mont of his retreat, he turned back for a deep look at that thousand-year-old Tai Sui, bathed in silver light and chaos.
That was supposed to be William's hope for a cure.
But now, it had beco a disaster poised to devour everything.
Thirty seconds later, when everyone had evacuated to a safe distance, Colonel Leclerc retrieved a peculiar, fist-sized, diamond-shaped tal bomb from his alchemically-styled military backpack.
The bomb's surface was densely inscribed with runes of the sa origin as the earlier flare.
"In the na of the Association..."
A flash of reluctance and resolve crossed the old soldier's face.
"...ashes to ashes, dust to dust."
He activated the bomb's delay chanism and hurled it with all his strength towards the center of the zombie horde, right where the Tai Sui parent body lay.
Having done this, Leclerc turned and sprinted at full speed towards the evacuation route without a backward glance.
Ten seconds later.
A wave of gray ripples swept through the entire city block, centered on that bomb.
Under the envelopnt of that gray ripple, everything fell into absolute stillness.
The monsters froze in place, their expressions still fixed in mid-roar.
Then, their bodies beca like sandstone weathered for a thousand years, rapidly turning into piles of gray-white powder.
Hard stone pavent grew moss, which then quickly withered and cracked.
Wild grass in the corner of a wall experienced an entire cycle of spring, sumr, autumn, and winter in an instant, ultimately turning to withered husks.
A Town-class alchemical bomb capable of releasing a "Withering Curse" forcibly "zeroed out" the very concept of all life within the entire city block.
When the dust settled, all that remained of that block was a dead, silent expanse of pale emptiness, like the surface of the moon.
That thousand-year-old Tai Sui, along with all the offspring it had created, had been cleanly erased from this world.
Julian stared blankly at the scene before him, which resembled a Divine Punishnt, his heart cold as ice.
William's antidote... was gone.
And while this terrifying disaster had been forcibly suppressed on the level of the inner world, the imnse losses it inflicted upon the Surface World remained an undeniable, ssy aftermath.
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