# 397
**Chapter 397: Self-Destruct**
Beneath the black sky.
Two figures streaked across the air like lightning, leaping lightly across the rooftops of buildings. At this moment, they were getting closer and closer to the edge of the mist.
Behind them, a terrifying sandstorm was brewing.
The figure wearing the Sun Wukong mask glanced back. The wind mixed with sand whipped at his clothes, and his eyes narrowed slightly.
“His speed doesn’t seem that fast. Should we stop and wait for him?”
Tang Monk shook his head. “Stopping would make it look deliberate. Just charge straight out of the mist. He’ll definitely follow.”
Sun Wukong nodded. The two figures didn’t slow down at all, continuing to race forward!
A few minutes later, just as they were about to reach the edge of the mist, walls of sand suddenly shot up from the border, sealing off every possible escape route!
The two figures were forced to stop in front of the sand wall and turned back to look.
On the path they had come from, more sand walls had risen, forming a ring that completely trapped them inside. As the walls grew taller, the ring eventually converged at a point above their heads, fusing together seamlessly.
A hemispherical dome of sand, like a giant bowl flipped upside down on the earth, had completely cut off their escape.
“Looks like he wasn’t slow—he was just afraid we’d run. He was waiting here all along.” The figure in the Sun Wukong mask chuckled bitterly and shook his head. “We were too naive.”
In the sky, grains of yellow sand converged into the form of a tall and imposing man, hovering silently in the air.
The pressure of the “Limitless” realm descended upon the earth.
Tang Monk looked up at the figure in the sky, frowning in thought.
“An agent of a sand-related god…”
The man in the air looked down at the two of them and spoke slowly:
“Where else can you run?”
“Quite the aura.” The figure in the Sun Wukong mask shrugged and gave the sky a middle finger. “Come down here! We won’t run! Let’s have a nice chat!”
The man’s brows furrowed at the blatant provocation, and he sneered.
“Still so arrogant when death is near… I’m curious—what team are you? I’ve never heard of a squad running around wearing Journey to the West masks.”
“We?” Tang Monk looked up at the man, the corners of his mouth lifting slightly beneath the mask. “We are… the Fifth Special Squad.”
“Special Squad?” The man raised an eyebrow and shook his head. “You’re too weak. You can’t be a special squad.”
“Strength isn’t the only measure of a team,” Tang Monk said calmly. “Just like today—you may be in the Limitless realm, but you still can’t do anything to us.”
“I can’t do anything to you?” The man laughed as if he’d heard a joke. “You’re trapped in my barrier. How are you going to escape? Waiting for your three teammates to save you? Too bad… they can’t even save themselves. I can’t think of any way you could turn this around.”
Tang Monk just looked at him quietly, smiling without replying.
The man shook his head, reached out into the void, and countless grains of sand gathered in his palm, forming a six-meter-long giant blade of yellow sand. His eyes were cold as he looked down at the two.
“Being wiped out here is the final fate of your so-called Fifth Special Squad.”
The figure in the Sun Wukong mask twitched at the sight of the exaggeratedly large blade. He turned to Tang Monk and whispered:
“An Qingyu, can I withdraw now?”
An Qingyu, wearing the Tang Monk mask, nodded. “You can. Thanks for your help this time, Li Yifei.”
“Pfft, it was nothing. I was bored just sitting around anyway. Didn’t expect I’d get to see you again here…” Li Yifei, still in the Sun Wukong mask, grinned. “Next time I get out, the three of us should hit the barbecue stand for drinks!”
An Qingyu’s lips curled into a faint smile.
“Oh right, are you sure you’ll be okay alone here?” Li Yifei suddenly asked.
“Don’t worry. I won’t die.”
“Alright. See you next time.”
Li Yifei looked up at the man in the sky, lifted the edge of his mask, stuck out his tongue, and then burst into a flash of magical light, vanishing from the spot.
The man’s face darkened instantly when he saw someone disappear into thin air.
He had just declared that the entire squad would be wiped out—only for one of them to escape right after.
“A space-type Forbidden Ruins, huh? Didn’t expect that,” the man said grimly. His gaze fell on An Qingyu, the only one left, and a cold smile appeared on his face.
“Looks like your teammate abandoned you…”
“Did he?” An Qingyu spoke slowly. “Seems like you really want to kill me.”
The man looked at him calmly. “So what if I do?”
“In that case, I won’t wait for you to do it.”
An Qingyu smiled faintly and began unbuttoning his shirt. A layer of frost suddenly appeared on his chest, spreading rapidly across his skin.
The temperature inside the sand-and-stone barrier began to plummet.
The man’s brows furrowed.
“You’re strong, and your trap was clever. But the details were lacking. For example, in this mist, you can only rely on Bell Cranel’s vision to control the situation—your intel processing is too slow. And you hesitated too much, missing your best chance to strike…”
An Qingyu’s shirt was now open. At the center of his chest, a white light was rapidly intensifying.
“Unfortunately, we’ve already located Bell Cranel.”
A smile appeared on An Qingyu’s face.
The next moment, his body exploded. A blast of extreme frost instantly froze everything around him. A towering pillar of ice shot skyward from where he stood, and the surrounding sand barrier was completely frozen, then shattered inch by inch!
Frost surged in all directions!
The man’s pupils shrank. He quickly retreated, but even so, his feet were frozen mid-air by the spreading ice.
“He self-destructed?” The man looked at the massive block of ice—nearly half a building tall—and said in surprise, “All that talk, and he just blew himself up? Dead, and still causing trouble…”
What he didn’t notice was that in the shadow of a nearby building, a rat picked up an invisible thread from the edge of the ice and quietly slipped into the sewer.
…
Cangnan City.
Underground cavern.
Bang—!
The lid of a coffin-like white experimental chamber suddenly burst open. Cold air poured out like a tide. A naked boy slowly sat up from inside, looked down at his body, and smiled.
“The first clone wore out faster than I expected. But this Ten-Slice Ghost Child’s cloning ability is surprisingly useful…”