251: Chapter 251 Blood Butcher's Escape Leaves Endless Trouble

When the countdown on the data light screen showed 'five', Chen Wuwang's finger was still hovering in mid-air.

His Mechanical Prosthetic Eye flickered steadily with a red light, as if it were breathing.

Blood Butcher's limbs were bound by chains, and electric currents coursed through his body, pinning him against the rock wall.

His face was pale, black blood continuously flowed from the corners of his mouth, and his chest heaved slightly; he looked as if he were about to draw his last breath.

But his eyes were still moving.

His pupils had constricted to tiny points, staring fixedly at the center of Chen Wuwang's brow, as if waiting for something.

Chen Wuwang did not move.

He knew that look was not one of fear or despair, but of a calculated plan.

A dying man would not look at someone like that. Only someone desperately gambling with their life would.

The cave was very quiet, and the sound of blood dripping onto the ground could be heard.

Drip, drip... hitting the stones with a soft 'splat'.

The air smelled of rust and scorched flesh.

The countdown reached 'three'.

Chen Wuwang's finger twitched slightly as he prepared to act.

At that moment, Blood Butcher suddenly moved.

He wasn't struggling or counterattacking; instead, he bit his own tongue.

With a 'crack', his tongue was bitten off entirely.

Fresh blood sprayed out, but instead of flowing downward, it surged toward his Dantian.

Chen Wuwang's Mechanical Prosthetic Eye immediately detected an anomaly—

The originally chaotic true essence inside Blood Butcher's body suddenly began to contract, as if being squeezed tightly by an invisible hand.

"Burning life?" Chen Wuwang's gaze turned cold.

There was no time to think.

A roar erupted from Blood Butcher's throat, sounding less like a human and more like the dying howl of a wild beast.

His right arm exploded with a 'bang', and his flesh and blood transformed into a streak of red light, shooting straight toward the rock ceiling.

Boom!

The six chains vibrated violently; two snapped instantly, sending fragments flying everywhere.

Chen Wuwang took a half-step back, his left hand held across his chest as a shield layer immediately deployed from his armor.

A blood mist rushed toward him, sizzling as it struck the shield.

When he looked again, Blood Butcher was no longer there.

Only a shriveled body remained leaning against the wall, its eye sockets sunken and skin gray.

A dark red shadow skimmed across the ground, rushing outward, reaching the cave entrance in the blink of an eye.

This was the Blood Escape.

But it wasn't an ordinary Blood Escape.

It was an escape technique bought at the cost of destroying thirty percent of his Golden Core and sacrificing his essence blood and soul.

It was a forbidden technique that legends said the Blood Demon Sect Master would never use unless driven to a dead end.

Chen Wuwang stood still and did not give chase.

He slowly lowered his right hand, and the hand seals dissipated.

His Mechanical Prosthetic Eye locked onto the fleeing blood shadow and began tracking it.

The data showed: energy extremely unstable; fragments were constantly falling from the edges of the blood shadow, which could dissipate at any moment.

"He's heavily injured," he whispered.

Although the blood shadow was fast, in his eyes, it was already crippled.

Every movement stuttered slightly, as if it were about to collapse.

But it continued to flee, escaping with all its might.

Fleeing into the darkness.

Chen Wuwang looked up toward the cave exit.

Dawn had not yet arrived.

There were no stars or moon in the sky; the cloud layer was very thick, as if the entire Eastern Wasteland were being covered.

The wind had stopped, and not even the insects chirped; it was far too quiet.

He stood in the middle of the cave, the corpse Blood Butcher left behind at his feet, charred black and emitting a foul stench.

A strange, metallic sweetness lingered in the air, like the scent of blood that had been burned and then cooled.

He did not move.

Nor did he give any orders.

He just stood there, withdrawing his gaze from the direction the blood shadow had vanished, looking at his own palm.

At that moment just now, he could have struck.

The termination code was ready; with just zero point three seconds more, he could have completely wiped out Blood Butcher's Cultivation Technique mark, leaving him without even a chance for Reincarnation.

But he had stayed his hand.

It wasn't out of soft-heartedness or hesitation.

Rather, he had discovered something else.

Just a split second before Blood Butcher activated the Blood Escape, a tiny fluctuation appeared in his internal psionic array—it wasn't a System issue, but someone outside tampering with it.

The duration was extremely short, less than a hundredth of a second; if not for his Mechanical Prosthetic Eye's ability to capture nano-scale changes, he wouldn't have noticed it at all.

Someone was intervening from the outside.

Or, something was waiting for this remnant soul to return.

"Blood Demon Sect... this is going to be a big problem," he said softly.

He knew that with Blood Butcher's escape, things had only just truly begun.

The Blood Demon Sect would not accept the fact that their Sect Master had been beaten until he had to flee back with only a single breath left.

Even if Blood Butcher lived, they would go mad.

Three hundred years ago, Blood Butcher had relied on a remnant technique to fight his way out of an encirclement, devouring the essence blood of a thousand people to become the Sect Master and establish a great power spanning three domains.

Now, having been beaten until only a shadow remained to flee for its life, if word got out, the entire Sect's face would be trampled into the ground.

They would retaliate.

And it would be with their full strength.

Chen Wuwang narrowed his eyes, quickly calculating in his mind—the Blood Demon Sect had seventeen Nascent Soul Cultivators, eighty-nine Golden Core Elders, and twenty-three affiliated families.

If a full-scale war broke out, they could mobilize at least three hundred thousand Cultivators, which, combined with the Blood River Array, would be enough to tear through one-third of the Eastern Wasteland Alliance's defensive lines.

Not to mention the old monsters hidden underground—it was said that two of them had been stuck at the Soul Transformation realm for nearly a hundred years, needing only a grand blood sacrifice to achieve a Breakthrough.

Once Blood Butcher returned, even if he only had one breath left, he could become the key to that blood sacrifice.

"A storm is coming," he murmured.

It wasn't a guess; it was a certainty.

He turned around and took one last look at Blood Butcher's corpse.

That body had already begun to rot, the skin splitting open to reveal blackened bones and sinews.

A few insects crawled out from the ears and burrowed into the rock crevices.

He didn't have anyone dispose of it.

Nor did he call anyone to inspect it.

He just stood there, like a stone.

At that moment, a gust of wind blew in from outside.

It carried cold air and dust, hitting his face.

A low growl echoed from the distance; some Yao Beast had caught the scent of blood and was heading this way.

But he didn't move.

His mind was already arranging the next steps—increase the alert frequency of the border watchtowers, recall the earth dragon mecha squad to the Main Peak for standby, have the Artifact Refining Workshop produce a batch of high-explosive Talisman Mines overnight, and simultaneously notify all clans of the Alliance to enter Level 2 readiness.

But he couldn't move now.

Nor could he give the orders.

Because he had to remain here, in this cave, at the place where the battle ended.

He had to stand his ground.

Until he confirmed that the blood shadow had truly disappeared, until he was certain this 'victory' was not a trap.

He looked down at the chain fragments by his feet.

The break points were very smooth, as if they had been forcibly torn apart by high-frequency vibrations.

Blood Butcher hadn't broken free on his own; someone had sabotaged them from the outside.

"Someone was providing backup?" He sneered.

It didn't seem like it.

If it were backup, why hadn't they acted sooner? Why wait until Blood Butcher was almost crippled before intervening? It felt more like... a test.

Testing if he would go for the kill.

Testing if he had left any openings.

Testing if he had truly mastered the method to crack Demonic Techniques.

"Interesting." The corners of his mouth curled up slightly, but his gaze grew even colder.

The Blood Demon Sect had always been vicious, but they were never stupid.

They knew Blood Butcher would fail this time, and they knew he couldn't escape unscathed.

But they still sent him.

This meant that what they wanted wasn't to win this battle.

Rather, they wanted to see exactly how strong the Chen Family was.

And especially, what kind of capabilities he, Chen Wuwang, actually possessed.

"Using Blood Butcher as a pathfinder?" He chuckled softly. "Fine then, I'll give you plenty to look at."

He raised his right hand and made a grasping motion in the air.

A module on his wrist emitted a signal that shot straight into the sky.

Three seconds later, a satellite hidden in low Earth orbit quietly pivoted, its lens focusing on the direction the blood shadow was fleeing.

He would keep watching.

Until that blood shadow hit the ground.

Until he saw clearly which mountain it returned to, which cave it entered, and whose hands it fell into.

When the time came, he would not only show the Blood Demon Sect the meaning of technological crushing, but also make them understand—

Letting a crippled wolf return to deliver a message wasn't an act of mercy.

It was the beginning of the hunt.

Inside the cave, the wind gradually died down.

He remained standing, his back to the corpse, facing the cave entrance.

Outside, the sky was not yet bright, and the darkness was heavy.

A trail of blood stretched in from the cave entrance, stopping halfway like a severed lifeline.

He did not move.

Nor did he speak.

He just stood there, as if waiting.

Waiting for dawn.

Waiting for the storm.

Waiting for that night that was sure to come.