He was covered in blood, marked with numerous horrific wounds, looking utterly terrifying.

However, Nobita's sudden appearance and his warning came a bit too late, as the situation was so urgent that Nie Chuan’s strike was already executed on reflex.

The blade gifted by the little brother was indeed extraordinary; with a sharp swish, the mollusk was cleaved in two by a single cut.

"Ah!" Nobita stomped his foot in frustration from the side, urgently shouting, "Run! Run fast, get away from there!"

None of us understood why Nobita was so afraid; what exactly was he terrified of?

But we soon discovered that the mollusk Nobita had split in half wasn't dead. Instead, both halves thrashed violently on the ground.

Soon, a clear, viscous substance secreted from both halves, slowly coalescing to form the other half of the body—it had unexpectedly transformed from one individual into two.

"This is fission reproduction, like a single-celled organism," I remarked, somewhat astonished.

Nie Chuan commented from the side, "More than just fission reproduction—it's mutated too!"

I looked closely and noticed that the newly grown halves on both mollusks were covered in sharp, blade-like spines.

Before I could process what was happening, the two mollusks slowly stood up, then rotated their torsos backward in a profoundly bizarre posture.

The body structure of these things was clearly different from humans; a person can twist their waist perhaps ninety degrees at most, but these creatures twisted their entire upper bodies around, much like Luffy in One Piece.

It didn't stop there; they not only surpassed human physical limits but also twisted back from that extreme angle.

After watching them contort their bodies like this several times, I finally understood what they were about to do.

But by the time I realized it, it seemed too late, because the two mollusks had begun to spin rapidly, transforming into living meat grinders.

The blades covering their bodies glinted coldly as they spun toward us at an incredible velocity.

With the frozen mollusks blocking our escape behind us, there was nowhere to flee.

Just as the blades sliced an open wound across the back of my hand, sending blood spraying, a sudden roar came from behind, and someone charged forward.

Turning around, I saw Nobita leaping high, seemingly having used the backs of several frozen mollusks as leverage.

Though Nobita was ferociously aggressive, I noticed his intended landing spot didn't seem to be the two rapidly spinning mollusks in front of us, but rather... us.

This descent looked as terrifying as Mount Tai crushing down. Before he could land on us, Nie Chuan and I instinctively crouched as low as we could.

But at that moment, Nobita’s hands clamped onto our shoulders, one on each of us, pressing us down forcefully.

A second later, with a dull thud, the three of us were flat on the ground.

In the second following our fall, we heard several sharp clinks, like daggers embedding themselves in a wall.

I quickly rolled over and looked up, only to see the frozen mollusks riddled with countless small and large shards of blade.

Looking at the mollusks that had grown the blades, they had dissolved into a pool of transparent substance covering the ground.

It turned out their bodies could not withstand such high-speed rotation; they had ejected all the substance coating their bodies, including the blades that had sprouted internally.

If Nobita hadn't pushed us down, we would have become pincushions.

"It's not over yet. I think there was originally only one of these creatures; the reason there are so many now is a result of Xie Yuting fighting them," Nobita coughed up a mouthful of blood and said gravely.

Seeing his ashen face, I asked, "Are you alright?"

Nobita shook his head. "I'm fine, not dead yet, just got bumped by a few of the bigger ones."

Then Nobita pointed at the substance particles on the ground and added, "Look."

When I looked, my scalp instantly prickled, because the tiny substance particles on the ground were slowly growing larger, sprouting limbs and heads, taking on the form of mollusks.

"The speed of this fission reproduction is too fast, and their growth rate is astonishing!" Nie Chuan was drenched in cold sweat.

We were now in an unprecedented predicament. If these things continued to divide and multiply so rapidly, we would be finished soon.

We compressed our formation, standing back-to-back while keeping watch on our surroundings.

At this moment, Nobita said, "If my guess is correct, we might still have a chance if we can find the very first one and destroy it."

Nie Chuan also turned to me and said, "Xiao*, you can see the so-called Nian (). You must be able to find it."

I nodded. "I'll try..."

Blinking my eyes hard, I took two deep breaths to calm myself down as quickly as possible, and then I began to examine the mollusks one by one.

As mentioned before, every mollusk contained a very faint trace of Nian. When they absorbed external energy, this Nian would become stronger.

The Nian of yokai seemed to be blue, but this blue would lighten when they initiated an attack.

Thinking carefully, my differentiation of Nian primarily relied on variations in strength and color. But if the Nian state of the original mollusk was identical to that of its clones, I wouldn't be able to distinguish it at all.

Furthermore, the biggest immediate problem was: even if we found the source, how could we kill it?

I shook my head, forcing myself not to dwell on the possibilities, and once again began to examine the Nian within each mollusk.

I couldn't find any clues, whether the opponent was deliberately hiding itself or if its Nian was truly identical to the clones.

Aside from the mollusks that had absorbed energy being slightly stronger, I could find no other difference.

Time ticked by, and countless mollusks were slowly closing in on us.

A layer of cold sweat covered the forehead of each of us, yet none dared to make a rash move.

Nobita warned us, "Do not attack them again; it will only lead to our faster demise."

Rapid fission reproduction, the ability to absorb any attack, and being seemingly indestructible.

I finally understood the terror of this yokai. Individually, it wasn't strong, but with these three characteristics, it transformed into an invincible superpower.

Perhaps this is the essence of the principle in Chinese martial arts: using softness to overcome hardness?

Though the three of us weren't exactly iron-spined, unyielding men, we were still three genuine fighters, yet we were about to be completely overwhelmed by a horde of jelly-like things. I truly felt sour about the situation.

As I was pondering this, a slimy arm draped itself over my shoulder.

But just a moment before it touched my shoulder, a strange thought flashed through my mind, as if someone was whispering to me, "Bite it... bite it..."

This situation was somewhat similar to when the Kǔ Lóng burrowed into my throat in Black Bamboo Gully—that uncontrollable urge to bite.

So, without knowing why, my jaw naturally opened, and I sunk my teeth into the mollusk's shoulder.

I bit down incredibly hard; I felt the creature attempting to retract its arm, but after several tries, it failed.

The instant my teeth made contact with its arm, I felt the faint Nian on it rapidly flowing toward my throat.

In almost three seconds, the arm in my mouth shriveled rapidly, and a full-body shiver wracked me.

Next, I noticed my nosebleed starting to flow slowly.

Wiping the blood, I looked up again. The appearance of the surrounding mollusks had changed before my eyes.

Although the Nian inside them was still weak, I could now discern the difference in every single one.

This difference was very subtle; specifically, the Nian I had initially seen appeared as concentrated clumps. But now, I observed that the Nian within most mollusks was distributed in a vascular pattern throughout their joints, but it almost never covered the brain.

Only one, hidden at the very back of the horde, possessed an extremely weak Nian, but it encompassed the entire brain.