Apocalypse: I Can Upgrade Everything

Chapter 179: Who Is the Master of the Mist?

Although the Blood Resentment Machete wasn’t a top-tier Artifact, Chen Ye never let it leave his side. Even while driving, he kept it strapped across his back—a persistent discomfort he tolerated because he knew the wasteland didn’t give you time to look for a weapon when things went south.

The blade possessed an innate lethality against Anomalies. Chen Ye didn’t expect it to win the war, but it was a hell of a lot better than nothing.

The green willow branches, one end lashed to the hilt and the other to his forearm, acted like a supernatural extension of his reach. The machete whistled through the air, shredding a Mist Thrall that tried to phase through the truck’s windshield. As the entity dissolved into vapor, the blade—pulled by the branches—immediately redirected toward the next target.

The Mist Thralls were predictable, almost mindless in their combat style, and their physical defense was laughable. But their ability to reform made them an absolute nightmare.

A Thrall shredded by the machete would simply re-condense inside the cab a second later. Chen Ye felt freezing, misty hands clamp onto his shoulders, trying to haul him out of the driver’s seat and into the Great Fog. He flicked his wrist, the machete returning to his palm just in time to dice the entity again.

More vapor poured through the vents. Three more Thralls were beginning to manifest in the cramped space.

Chen Ye exhaled a violent blast of smoke, physically displacing the encroaching fog and pushing the half-formed monsters out of the vehicle.

“Yezi! We can’t hold them! We’re gonna die here!” Iron Lion roared.

BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!

A series of air cannon blasts rocked the truck, sending it swaying violently.

CRASH!

The Doomsday Pickup slammed into a concrete flower bed, the force of the impact flipping the multi-ton vehicle onto its side.

Chen Ye kicked the door open and scrambled out of the skewed cab. Iron Lion hit the pavement in a heavy roll, his remaining arm already morphing into a flesh-and-blood cannon that continued to spit fire.

From beneath the overturned truck, a severed, heavy iron chain lashed out like a viper. It coiled around the waist of a nearby Mist Thrall and yanked it into the shadows beneath the chassis.

Shadow Drag.

Even in its ruined state, the Doomsday Pickup was actively triggering its defensive abilities to protect its master. Chen Ye felt a brief surge of genuine affection for the machine—it had come a long way from the rusted tricycle he’d started with.

The chain hissed and clanked, dragging one ghost after another into the dark, but it was like trying to drain the ocean with a thimble. There were simply too many of them.

If I can’t outrun them, then I’ll out-think them, Chen Ye thought, his eyes narrowing.

Let’s see who the real Master of the Mist is. You brainless ghosts… or me!

“Iron Lion! On my mark!” Chen Ye yelled, ducking behind the truck’s undercarriage.

“I’m with you, Yezi!”

Chen Ye pulled a fresh Huazi Cigarette from his pocket. He didn’t just light it; he inhaled the entire thing in a single, lung-searing drag, the cherry glowing a fierce orange before turning to ash.

He exhaled, but it wasn’t a normal puff. Thick, oily smoke erupted from his mouth, his nostrils, and even his ears. Five distinct streams of supernatural mist surged outward, coalescing into a dense, expanding cloud that swallowed the street.

Chen Ye stood in the epicenter of the roiling gray storm, his silhouette shifting like a wrathful deity. The smoke rapidly expanded—fifty yards, a hundred, then two hundred.

Iron Lion, caught in the radius, felt his sight and hearing vanish instantly. He began to panic.

“Twelve o’clock!” Chen Ye’s voice boomed directly into his mind.

Iron Lion didn’t hesitate. He leveled his cannon and fired. The roar of the blast was instantly muffled by the Absolute Aura Shielding, suppressed by the sheer density of Chen Ye’s smoke.

As the Mist Thralls charged into the gray soup, they lost their way. Deprived of their supernatural tracking, they wandered aimlessly, looking like glitched NPCs in a broken video game.

But the horde was relentless. For every ten that lost their way, a hundred more flooded the zone. In Chen Ye’s Abyssal vision, the street was becoming a solid wall of white.

“Fire at will! Center mass!” Chen Ye commanded.

Iron Lion’s cannon barked incessantly, vaporizing clusters of Thralls. But they just reassembled, over and over.

Chen Ye’s mind raced. He needed a distraction, something that could match their numbers. He thought back to the siege of Rong City. What was the one thing that had truly overwhelmed him?

The Crawlers.

The Crawlers were simple, driven by base hunger—easier to simulate than a wolf, and far more numerous.

Chen Ye reached into his mist. A pale, four-legged shape scrambled out of the smoke, pouncing on the nearest Mist Thrall. The Thrall, acting on instinct, grabbed the simulated Crawler and began dragging it toward the deeper fog.

The Crawler fought back with mindless ferocity, biting and clawing until the Thrall dissolved into vapor. Two more Thralls descended on the Crawler, hauling it away into the dark.

It worked. Every Crawler Chen Ye “birthed” drew away two or three Thralls, thinning the herd within the immediate vicinity.

Chen Ye went into “overdrive.” He began mass-producing simulated Crawlers, a tidal wave of gray-white beasts erupting from his mist to clash with the ghosts.

The battlefield became a chaotic meat-grinder. Killed Thralls re-condensed. Dragged-away Crawlers vanished from Chen Ye’s control. Every time he lost a pawn, he spawned a new one.

It was a war of “fog-spawning.”

Because he was focusing everything on the simulation, his defensive barrier developed cracks. Iron Lion saw the carnage through the gaps and stood his ground, his air cannon roaring like a heartbeat. He didn’t understand the magic, but he knew he wasn’t going to let Chen Ye die.

“Yezi! How much longer?!”

“Hold the line! Just a little longer!”

They were backed against a ruined storefront, three sides of them a roiling ocean of biting Crawlers and shrieking ghosts. Half a minute passed, but to Chen Ye, it felt like an age.

He was chain-smoking now, burning through a fresh pack of Huazi Cigarettes to provide the “fuel” for his army. The empty boxes littered the ground.

The Heavy Machete hummed, darting through the fray like a guided missile, shredding any Thrall that managed to bypass his simulated frontline.

But human willpower has its limits. Chen Ye was fighting an entire city’s worth of fog. He was a boy trying to punch a hurricane.

He checked his watch.

12:36 PM—They found Iron Lion.

12:39 PM—Now.

Three minutes, Chen Ye thought, his breath coming in ragged gasps. It’s been three goddamn minutes. Why aren’t they leaving?

The circle was closing. Iron Lion was drenched in sweat, his back against Chen Ye’s. The giant’s missing arm and shattered head were starting to bleed again under the strain.

“Damn it… she said three minutes!” Chen Ye hissed.

But the fog didn’t lift. The Mist Thralls didn’t retreat. Deep in the unseen heart of the Great Fog, thousands more were waiting their turn.

How many more were there?