Chapter 135: Mixed Rice

Disregarding his injuries, Ning Chuan unleashed the final remnants of his life energy, charging desperately into combat with the monsters.

"This guy has lost his mind!"

The stubble-chinned man furrowed his brows deeply, his gaze darting about. A flicker of an escape thought crossed his mind, but he quickly realized that monsters filled the jungle in every direction, converging on their position with nowhere left to run.

The young man beside him grew even more terrified.

"What do we do?"

"No choice now, we have to fight our way out!"

Clenching his teeth, the stubble-chinned man drew a dagger and joined the frantic battle against the creatures.

Meanwhile, Lin Dong remained the focal point of the carnage. Surrounded by countless monsters, he moved as if stepping through empty territory, his blade sweeping out to effortlessly slaughter hordes of mutated fungi.

In a flash, he charged straight toward the prime entity.

A look of furious hatred crossed the prime entity's face. Extending its hands forward, it unleashed countless fungal spores that erupted in a dense, white fog, surging toward him like a roaring dragon.

Unfazed, Lin Dong shifted his thoughts. His Corpse Domain expanded in that direction, and the terrifying, oppressive pressure instantly shattered the foggy spores into nothingness.

The domain continued its momentum, enveloping the prime entity entirely.

"Crack, crunch!"

The prime entity's body behaved like a lump of plasticine being kneaded by massive hands, caving in at multiple points. The once upright posture of the mimicry suddenly deformed into a nightmarish, inhuman shape.

"There can only be one Ho-Nam in Causeway Bay!"

Lin Dong muttered inwardly, though he felt a slight sense of discord, as if he had wandered onto the wrong set. No matter. By now, he had already reached the prime entity with his blade in hand, raising the blazing edge to strike straight down.

The razor-sharp longsword sliced cleanly through its torso.

"Ugh—ah—!"

A piercing, hysterical shriek tore from the prime entity's throat, sharp enough to pierce human eardrums. Yet it did not die; instead, its body began to swell rapidly.

Like bursting blisters, crimson tumors erupted across its skin, densely packed and overlapping in the blink of an eye.

Within mere breaths, the prime entity ballooned to a height of over three meters.

Devoid of facial features, its entire body bristled with tumors of varying sizes, completely transforming it into a towering 'tumor giant.'

Lin Dong swept his gaze across it, feeling a mild wave of trypophobia threatening to rise.

Yet he knew deep down: this was its true form!

Roaring furiously, the prime entity raised a colossal fist and smashed it down toward Lin Dong. Packed with overwhelming force, it descended like Mount Tai crushing the summit.

"This prime entity possesses Class A strength..."

Lin Dong analyzed calmly. It was fortunate they discovered it early; if it had been allowed to mature to Class S, it certainly would have proven to be a massive headache.

Facing this formidable strike, Lin Dong simply put his longsword away. He curled his hand into a fist, raised his arm, and met the attack head-on in a brutal collision.

"Boom—rumble!"

As the two forces collided, terrifying shockwaves rippled outward, forming a gale-force blast that shattered the surrounding trees to splinters and caused the earth beneath their feet to collapse.

Yet Lin Dong's physique was simply too formidable, far beyond the prime entity's capacity to match. Its thick arm fractured inch by inch, and its massive body was sent hurtling backward through the air.

"Roar—!"

The prime entity thrashed in furious discontent, unwilling to accept defeat. In truth, its greatest strengths lay not in physical combat, but in spore parasitism and hallucinogenic manipulation.

Unfortunately, Lin Dong's Corpse Domain was overwhelmingly powerful, representing a nearly inescapable existence.

Moreover, the gap in their combat tiers was vast. The prime entity had not yet fully matured, leaving it entirely crushed beneath Lin Dong's might.

Its massive body crashed heavily against the ground like a torn sack of grain.

Just as it struggled to push itself back up, it realized Lin Dong had already leaped into the air, bringing a single boot down viciously toward its head.

"Boom—rumble!"

The colossal impact made the earth shudder violently, fracturing the ground in continuous waves.

The prime entity's massive skull was stomped into a bloody pulp, and simultaneously, a crystalline core shot out into the air.

Lin Dong's single stomp instantly silenced all the clamor in the forest. The surroundings grew still in an instant as the surviving mimic minions collapsed limply to the earth, their bodies shrinking, shriveling, and rapidly decaying into rot.

All screeching ceased. The chaos settled, leaving only the crackling pops of burning flames. The cheerful firelight cast flickering, dancing shadows across the surroundings.

"Are they all dead?"

In the clearing, only the three men with stubble remained.

Ordinarily, they would never have held out this long, but Lin Dong's strength was too overwhelming; he had slaughtered the prime entity within mere breaths, sparing the three of them from immediate death.

"He's so strong!"

The young man stared at Lin Dong in awe, having witnessed the entire battle unfold before his eyes.

Such a hideous, terrifying monster had been disposed of with effortless ease...

"Yeah."

The stubble-chinned man nodded, his steps turning unsteady as he nearly collapsed to the ground. Although the prime entity had been eliminated, his bodily functions had long been compromised, and the mushroom toxin still lingered within him.

Once his nerves relaxed, a wave of sickness washed over him.

He felt as though he had a fever of forty degrees Celsius, utterly devoid of strength, coupled with an intense, creeping itch across his skin.

Finding it bizarre, the stubble-chinned man lifted his shirt to check, only for his expression to curdle into sheer horror, startling him so badly he fell flat on his backside.

For sprouting right across his abdomen, out of nowhere, were clumps of mushrooms!

Because the prime entity had already perished, they weren't crimson tumors... this was simply the lingering aftereffect of being parasitized.

"Th-this... what do I do?"

Panic gripped the stubble-chinned man's heart. He had not escaped death after all; his life force was still draining away.

Worse still, once the mushrooms sprouted, the itching ceased, replaced by a searing, agonizing pain.

In desperation, his gaze drifted toward Lin Dong. He thought to himself that someone so powerful might actually have a way to help. The stubble-chinned man clung to this hope as if it were his last straw.

"Quick! Please, help me!"

"Oh..."

Lin Dong appraised him with a glance, walking over step by step. Seeing a human grow mushrooms struck him as rather novel.

"Eating something bad for your stomach, I suppose?"

"Uh..."

The stubble-chinned man froze, though upon reflection, it wasn't entirely wrong—he *had* eaten something severely detrimental to his gut.

"Do you have a way to fix this?"

"I do."

"That's wonderful!"

Hearing this, the stubble-chinned man rejoiced, feeling certain his judgment of Lin Dong had been correct.

The young man beside him also lit up with hope, as his own symptoms were an exact match.

However, in the very next second, Lin Dong flicked his wrist. A flash of blade-light sliced through the air, cleanly severing the stubble-chinned man's head from his shoulders.

"Fixed."

"........." The young man stood frozen in place, staring dumbly at the stubble-chinned man's corpse. He hadn't expected *this* to be the method of resolution.

Before he could snap out of his stupor, another arc of blade-light came sweeping toward him.

Lin Dong graciously granted him release as well...

Not far away, Ning Chuan knelt on the ground. Mushrooms had sprouted across his shoulders and neck, but he paid them no mind, his eyes completely hollow. It seemed that upon learning of Xiao Yan's death, his heart had died along with her.

Lin Dong strolled over at a leisurely pace, flicking his blade out to neatly pry the crystal core from the corpse.

Ning Chuan's body pitched forward, collapsing onto the earth.

In truth, once parasitized by the fungi, the three of them were doomed to die regardless of Lin Dong's intervention, and the final stages of toxin-induced death would have been excruciatingly painful, far beyond normal endurance.

Not wishing to watch them suffer through the agony, Lin Dong had simply sent them on their way ahead of schedule...

His gaze lingered for a moment on the three corpses.

"Mushroom-fried rice..."