Free Web NovelChapter 323: Chapter 166: Puppet Swarm, Unstoppable Performance
"This is so... evil."
Her voice was filled with unconcealable disgust.
"He’s desecrating life. This isn’t a power a Martial Artist should have!"
Only Yin Liulan’s eyes, which usually held a hint of laziness, were now narrowed slightly, glinting with a dangerous light.
She ignored Su Yunjin’s moral judgment and, in a cold tone, issued a command.
"Nie Cang, immediately cut off all the other instructors’ viewing access. Classify Lin Ye’s Spirit data as top secret. Without my permission, no one is to view it."
A chill went down Nie Cang’s spine, and he instantly snapped out of his shock.
Yin Liulan’s gaze remained locked on the battlefield where the dead were being resurrected, her voice holding a faint, almost imperceptible tremor. "This Spirit... on a real battlefield, its value is immeasurable!"
That one sentence was a moment of sudden enlightenment for Nie Cang.
He finally understood the fundamental difference between Yin Liulan and Su Yunjin.
Su Yunjin was an excellent logistics and research officer. What she saw was a desecration of life, a violation of morality.
But Yin Liulan, a military elite who had retired from the corpse-strewn, blood-soaked front lines, saw something else entirely: a supreme weapon that could turn the tide of battle and achieve the greatest victory at the smallest cost!
...
On the battlefield, Lin Ye had no idea what a stir he had caused.
An intense wave of dizziness crashed over his mind.
’I have to change my strategy.’
After a moment of thought, he acted on an idea and severed the Spiritual Power link to half of his Silk Puppets.
THUD, THUD...
Dozens of Silk Puppets instantly lost their support, collapsing back into piles of rotten flesh on the ground.
Countless black mycelial strands, nearly invisible to the naked eye, seeped out from their bodies, dissolving into pools of viscous black liquid that quickly soaked into the scorched earth below.
However, a moment later, Lin Ye’s expression turned to one of astonishment.
In his spiritual senses, the mycelium that had soaked into the ground hadn’t vanished. Instead, as if it had found a new breeding ground, it began to spread and multiply frenetically.
The same black mycelium began to grow inside all the alien corpses he had previously killed—the severed limbs and torsos scattered across the battlefield.
He took a quick sense of it; the number of corpses invaded by the mycelium had already exceeded one hundred and fifty.
A sudden shock went through Lin Ye.
’Wait a minute...’
’I think I’ve discovered something incredible.’
He had only sacrificed fifty Silk Puppets, yet the mycelium had spread to more than three times that number of corpses.
With another thought, Lin Ye made fifty more of the newly infected corpses lurch to their feet.
The feeling of his Spiritual Power being rapidly consumed returned. Without hesitation, Lin Ye gave his entire Army of the Dead—a total of one hundred, including the fifty previous Silk Puppets—an extremely simple command:
Attack all living things ahead.
Then, he decisively severed his Spiritual Power link with these one hundred Silk Puppets.
After doing all this, Lin Ye extended his Spiritual Power toward the remaining fifty-odd corpses that had been invaded by mycelium but not yet activated.
Something completely unexpected happened.
The one hundred Silk Puppets he had given orders to and then "set free" were actually carrying out his command autonomously. Because the Core Mycelium remained within them, they roared and charged toward the newly formed twenty-seventh wave of the Celestial Abyss Race!
Lin Ye swept his gaze over the battle.
As expected, without his precise control, the Silk Puppets’ movements were stiff and their coordination was chaotic. They were far from strong enough to defeat the well-trained Alien Race Legion in a direct confrontation.
However, they were genuinely capable of pinning down and delaying the enemy. By relying on fearless encirclements and sneak attacks, they could even kill a few of the ordinary aliens who got separated from the group!
A sharp glint flashed in Lin Ye’s eyes. He had finally realized the most terrifying way to use his [Silk Puppet] skill!
’Using corpses to raise more corpses!’
In a war of attrition, as long as enemy corpses kept piling up, the entire battlefield would become a natural breeding ground for the mycelium.
Although his current limit was controlling only one hundred Silk Puppets at a time.
But if he relinquished control over those one hundred Silk Puppets, let the mycelium in their bodies seep into the ground to infect more corpses, he could create a "reserve force of puppets" far exceeding his control limit!
He just needed to select one hundred from the reserve force, give them a simple command, and then withdraw his Spiritual Power connection.
Then, he could repeat the process and activate another hundred.
By doing this, he could break through the current quantity limit of [Silk Puppet] as if he were exploiting a bug, and assemble a Dead Legion in the truest sense!
The more Lin Ye thought about it, the more astounded he became.
He had originally thought of this skill as just a support ability for scouting, trial-and-error, and creating cannon fodder.
Only now did he realize that under the right circumstances, it possessed a terrifying power that was almost unstoppable.
’Truly, there are no useless skills, only foolish people who don’t know how to develop them.’
[The 28th wave of attacks is about to begin!]
The cold, mechanical prompt pulled Lin Ye back to reality.
He glanced at the even larger Alien Race Legion coalescing in the distance, but a smile touched the corners of his lips.
’Bring it on.’
Lin Ye raised his Star-Piercing Spear and, instead of retreating, charged headfirst into the enemy ranks, beginning a great slaughter.
At the same time, he severed his Spiritual Power links to all the Silk Puppets previously implanted with mycelium.
Across the battlefield, one Silk Puppet after another fell, transforming into large patches of black ooze that seeped into the ground.
The most terrifying part was that the strange black mycelium even began to burrow into the bodies of the still-living aliens, corroding their skin.
Lin Ye could clearly feel that the total amount of mycelium under his control was increasing exponentially!
