Following that, his figure was slapped out of the vicinity of the fire as he crashed right into a mass of rubble.

"Dark Savior!!!" Cried Atish, extremely worried about Virus' current condition within the rubble.

Of course, it didn't take long before Virus emerged from within the debris again. Only this time, his surface injuries seemed even worse than before.

'As expected, it seems I'm still rather disadvantageous in this situation even with her assistance… the odds are indeed on the Plant Kraken's side.' He concluded calmly while gazing at the Kraken in the distance.

Actually, Virus had known the possibility of this type of situation developing was rather high from the very beginning. Still, since this was his only option and because there were still some chances of success left, he had decided to go along with it and see how the situation would proceed from thereon.

But now, he had failed indeed.

"This won't work, the Plant Kraken's smarter and shrewder than I thought." His eyes didn't leave the sight of the creature while he shook his head repeatedly.

"Ah… then, what do we do now?" Helplessness flashed through Atish's eyes. By now, perspiration had filled her forehead. "I can't hold it off for much longer either…"

Without responding at all, Virus merely placed a hand beneath his jaw before beginning to contemplate and calculate the alternative possible answers to this particular circumstance.

'I need to be quick and deal with the monster as soon as possible before rushing to check Hu Yuexin's current situation. Though extremely unlikely, she might've survived by hiding somewhere that was able to keep her safe from the crash.'

'But how do I deal with this fucking veggie?' Closing his eyes, as he wondered about this particular question, massive amounts of calculations started to pass through his head nonstop.

Moments later, his eyelids abruptly fluttered open as a few sure-fire solutions revealed themselves before him.

'Solution number one requires me to wait for the other guardians to get here before dealing with the monster together with them.'

'Solution number two… I can summon my transportation spaceship here and crash the cockroach veggie beneath it.'

'Solution number three… I need to…'

Unfortunately, solution number one was against his goal of dealing with the Plant Kraken, which was to kill it as quickly as possible before charging to see how Hu Yuexin was doing currently. So this option was instantly denied by him.

Solution number two was rejected as well since that would draw too much attention and suspicion to himself. This option was rejected with the foresight to the future when his identity was finally revealed to the world.

But coming to solution number three, shaking his head helplessly, he could only decide to proceed with it. 'Solution number three it is then.'

There were indeed some detrimental points and aspects to proceeding with the third solution. But… it was indeed the best and most efficient method to handle the monster considering the limiting criteria he had in mind.

Having made a decision already, Virus no longer went on to consider option number four or five. Instead, turning toward Atish, he inquired, "I have a method of killing it. But in order to do that, I need you to restrain it for a minute or two. A few minutes at most. Can you do it?"

Furrowing his brows, a cloud of confusion covered Atish's sight. "I can do it… but what can possibly change in a minute or two?"

"Just do it. Leave the rest to me." No longer bothering himself with her, Virus directly sat down cross-legged on the wrecked asphalt before closing both his eyes.

Witnessing such a scene, Atish's lips parted from one another as she could only stare at Virus's strange chain of action speechlessly.

Meanwhile, having closed his eyes, Virus instantly concentrated on his internal body.

Soon, an awareness of his Energy Pathways together with the motes of energy coursing through them displayed itself to Virus.

Next, controlling all of the internal energy, he led them to the thirteenth knot straight away as he crashed them against it. 'Sigh… if I want to break through the 13th, 14th, 15th, 16th, 17th, and 18th twists in my Energy Pathways, I would need several decades at least before successfully breaking through to the [Liberation] stage. But considering the strange phenomena happening all over the Earth, I don't have the time for that.'

He continued, 'Therefore, the only option I'm left with is to discard the idea of untwisting those remaining knots and instead forcefully bring about the first circulation within my Energy Pathways utilizing only twelve of my Pathways. Sigh… what a pity.'

In fact, since the very beginning, Virus had known that he would be able to forcefully break through to the [Liberation] stage from the moment he had affluently untwisted the twelfth obstruction and entered the thirteenth level of [Energy Disentanglement] stage.

This was the case because the moment a person disentangled his twelfth knot, a kind of gate of law would be opened for that person as the world itself would permit the said being to directly breakthrough to the next stage of cultivation on will.

Of course, the more knots one had and the more he untwisted of those knots, the greater one's cultivation would become after breaking through.

Sadly, however, it seemed that opportunity was not going to present itself to Virus as he was now about to head on connect his twelfth pathway to his first, thus completing the first circulation within his body and forcibly breaking through to [Liberation].

Anyhow, after guiding every bit of energy within his pathways to the twelfth one, he immediately tried joining the first one to the twelfth by trying to push the internal energy gathered within his 12th pathway directly to the very first itself, thus creating the first circulation.

Virus was expecting a great deal of obstruction on this path of trying to forcibly progress to the next stage since history had proven that when those with more than 12 Energy Pathways tried to break through earlier, before untwisting all their pathways, they would face a great hindrance that would result in the process of progressing to the following stage extremely hard.