Chapter 63: The Sabers Feasting

Sand flying and stones rolling, shattering everything in its path like withered weeds!

Wherever the particle blade light passed, all things were severed.

A massive trench ran entirely through the fourth floor of the shopping mall, piercing straight through the wall and shooting out more than ten meters before finally stopping.

Looking at the cut surface of everything, the steel was glowing red, the concrete was charred black, and all the facilities in the fourth-floor children's playground were completely incinerated and melted!

Such tremendous destructive power shocked Lu Ming while giving him a practical, beyond-text understanding of the strength of a king-grade Xenogeneic.

The lethal range was three hundred meters, and the flight speed reached the limit of its range almost instantly.

Was it the speed of sound?

Probably not quite. At least in the eyes of an advanced hunting warrior like him, the Cross Pulse was not an unavoidable killer move, but taking down an intermediate hunting warrior would be effortless. Even against an advanced hunting warrior, if caught by surprise, it could still inflict severe damage or even kill them.

There was only one problem: the cross-overlapping release method felt somewhat wasteful.

If a single horizontal slash could clear Xenogeneics within a ten-meter radius, then a vertical slash was purely for show. It would be better to cast the blade light separately, which would not only increase the number of attack segments and the lethal area, but also allow for arbitrary combination and flexible application.

The problem was whether this skill could actually be split up or not. The information received in his consciousness was too ethereal, resembling more of an undeveloped release instinct, presumably originating from the biological traits of the Tyrant Owl King.

Let's try it again.

"Cross Pulse!"

The instinctive information within his consciousness once again urged his wrist, conditioned to draw his blade and carve a cross.

Indeed, it was a fixed release.

Yet doing it this way felt entirely unnatural.

A weapon was called a weapon because it could be used and commanded by humans, rather than humans being restricted by their weapons.

Therefore, he had to try to master this instinct and release it according to the master's own will.

Thus, just as the cross shape was about to form, Lu Ming forcefully altered the trajectory of his draw, making the upward vertical blade light deviate from the cross path and swing out at an oblique angle.

The skill did not break—it was possible!

A look of joy appeared on Lu Ming's face. As long as changing the trajectory did not terminate the skill, he could definitely perform manual control.

Little did he know, the moment a smile crossed his face, a rebellious consciousness quietly seeped from the hilt into his palm, connecting to his nerves and transmitting straight to his brain.

Lu Ming furrowed his brow and looked down at the Owl King battle blade, especially at the crossguard engraved with the head of the Owl King, where blood-red pupils were emitting a crimson glow.

Whether it was his imagination or not, this red light seemed much brighter than before.

Even stranger was that as he stared into the pupils, the pupils seemed to be staring right back at him, carrying a hint of... anger?

Feeling a bit uneasy in his heart, Lu Ming was just about to focus his study when the blade shook violently. The crimson pupils rapidly dimmed, and that sense of anger vanished in an instant.

"Huh?"

Lu Ming raised the blade and examined it from left to right, but not the slightest anomaly remained visible, as if everything that had just happened was merely an illusion.

Yet was it an illusion? Clearly not. Rather, his manipulation had caused a instinctive resistance from the Sickle Owl battle blade, which was a biological weapon.

However, this resistance lacked any real force, presumably because the biological weapon's rank was too low for its intelligence level to achieve any sort of backlash.

Lu Ming, who was busy analyzing the anomalies of the blade, failed to notice that Chuxue, nestled in his arms, had just averted her gaze from the Owl King battle blade.

The highlights in her deep red pupils gradually faded, and her icy gaze returned to its usual tranquility and laziness.

Stealing a glance at Lu Ming and seeing that he was still puzzled by the blade's changes, the corners of Chuxue's lips curved into a soft arc.

...

Well then...

Since no clear conclusions could be drawn, prioritizing the further splitting of the skill was more important. What if triggering another anomaly allowed him to dig deeper?

Adjusting his mindset, Lu Ming gripped his blade, lowered his stance, and silently chanted once more: "Cross Pulse!"

Blue light flooded the blade, and particle blade light poured forth like a flying stream.

This time, the release instinct in his mind did not appear.

The two particle blade lights flew out completely parallel, exactly as he intended.

Flowing smoothly without any obstruction or passive release sensation came as a surprise to Lu Ming.

The result was precisely what he wanted.

Wasn't the process just a bit too abrupt?

The blade had resisted, after all; shouldn't there have been at least a period of taming?

Surrendering so suddenly made him feel almost embarrassed.

In that case... let's unleash a few more rounds of "Cross Pulse: Altered" to calm down.

"Cross Pulse!"

"Cross Pulse!"

"Cross Pulse!"

Three successive castings, six streaks of blade light intersecting vertically and horizontally, instantly slashed the wall directly in front of them into a hollow lattice.

He wasn't exaggerating; the feeling of pulling off blade lights was genuinely addictive. The crucial point was that this skill seemed to have no cooldown and could be used continuously.

However, just as Lu Ming felt a surge of pleasant surprise, the Owl King battle blade became scorching hot. Looking at it again, the entire blade edge had turned glowing red.

"Ah, this..."

Lu Ming wiped the sweat from his brow, understanding the reality in an instant.

It was true that a biological weapon's skills had no cooldown, but correspondingly, it had its own limitation: load.

Using biological skills at a high frequency caused the weapon to heat up, thereby accelerating its rate of wear and tear.

He glanced at the stats of the Owl King battle blade.

Specialized Biological Energy: 880/1000
Xenogeneic Biological Activity: 3000/6000

As expected, six Cross Pulses consumed the specialized biological energy normally, but dropped the biological activity by exactly half—roughly equivalent to half its life.

Feeling slightly apologetic, it wasn't a major problem; he had plenty of Xenogeneic blood to spare.

It was a good opportunity to see how the Owl King battle blade devoured Xenogeneic blood to replenish its activity.

"Little Xue, I'll put you down for a moment. I'll hold you again shortly."

It was hard to operate with just one hand, so Lu Ming gently set Chuxue down beside him.

He retrieved 200ml of ordinary Xenogeneic biological blood from his spatial pouch and aimed it at the Owl King battle blade.

Originally, he intended to pour it directly onto the blade edge, but the moment the Xenogeneic blood approached, the entire blade seemed to come alive, sprouting several mercury-like tentacles from its surface.

The tentacles intertwined and morphed, shifting to form a bowl-sized cavity.

At a single glance, Lu Ming knew that was the feeding passage of the Owl King blade.

He opened the stopper of the vial containing the ordinary Xenogeneic blood and poured it all in.

Instantly, the sound of glugging and swallowing echoed from the cavity.

To be honest, bizarre as it was, the novelty was completely real.

A weapon that could eat—and its table manners were passable, a thousand times better than the aggressive state of the Sickle Owl larvae.

As the red blood-energy gradually filled the blade, the biological activity of the Owl King battle blade recovered by 50 points.

That was the alienated energy contained in 200ml of ordinary Xenogeneic blood.

The same volume of mutated Xenogeneic blood was worth 100 points.

Class E royal Xenogeneic blood was worth 500 points.

He was reluctant to use the latter two because they could increase the probability of equipment inheriting Xenogeneic skills.

The former was massive in quantity and could be squandered freely; once used up, he could simply hunt more larvae to replenish it.

Thud!

A crisp sound came from Lu Ming's hand.

The emptied blood vial shattered into shards and then weathered into powder.

Looking at the pale green powder covering his hand, Lu Ming tilted his palm slightly, letting it scatter from his hand while reaffirming the strict order of this world.

When Xenogeneic blood was produced, it came with its own test tube, so once used, it would automatically be destroyed. Not a single extra scrap was given—everything was strictly about borrowing and returning in kind.

Seeing that Lu Ming did not pull out any more Xenogeneic blood, the Owl King battle blade assumed Lu Ming was done feeding and prepared to retract its feeding cavity.

Lu Ming uttered a "Hey," attempting to stop it from shrinking back with a human call.

He had assumed the blade would ignore him.

To his surprise, upon hearing his voice, the feeding cavity paused for a moment and then extended back toward his hand once again.