Nicola could clearly feel that the light element from the arrow had stuck to the Yellow Bishop's body.
But after that, all sounds disappeared completely. Even footsteps vanished. It was so quiet around that you could hear a pin drop!
"Are you sure those two arrows can really affect him?" she whispered uncertainly. The Yellow Bishop had clearly stopped moving forward for some reason, but he didn't show any signs of mental disturbance.
"I actually wanted to make him hallucinate and turn back," Adrian said with an awkward smile. "If he has some resistance to it, at first his mind might try to fight against the Battle Qi's confusing effects. But I'm confident in my Battle Qi ability! Usually there's no big problem with targets who are around my level or weaker. Of course, if he's much stronger than me, that's another story..."
Adrian couldn't risk peeking out to see what was happening. Ancient God Religion bishops were usually sixth rank or above, though they shouldn't be too much higher than that.
But just as he finished speaking, they heard the Yellow Bishop's heavy breathing echoing through the corridor. The breathing got louder and louder, quickly turning into terrible screaming. However, the screaming didn't last long before everything went quiet again.
"Is it working?"
The situation changed so suddenly that Nicola couldn't control her curiosity. She carefully peeked around the corner.
What she saw was a pile of neatly cut-up meat pieces at the end of the laser corridor. She got excited and quickly pulled Adrian back the way they came.
"Great! He must have accidentally turned off his invincibility while his mind was confused, and got hit by the laser!"
Slow and steady wins the race - and this time it worked perfectly! Although they were weaker than the Ancient God Religion, thanks to knowing the enemy's weakness beforehand, dealing with the Yellow Bishop was much easier than expected.
Thinking about this made Nicola more confident about using Adrian to fight against the Ancient God Religion's invasion.
"But why are you running so urgently? Is something wrong?" Adrian wanted to check the body, but Nicola didn't give him time. He could only follow behind her and ask.
"Don't forget there's another bishop who broke in from another area! Unlike this guy in yellow, that one might be our real threat!"
"The other one is stronger?"
This made Adrian feel uneasy.
He was starting to feel something wasn't right. To people who didn't know the full story, the Gray Bishop's methods seemed weird, but at least it showed he was afraid of the traps, and he didn't seem as impressive as the Yellow Bishop.
But the problem was - because they couldn't understand him, they couldn't tell how scary the Gray Bishop really was! After seeing what the Yellow Bishop could do, Adrian began to realize that the way the other bishop destroyed the control center from far away probably wasn't going to be easy to handle!
"That's Psionic Energy! It's a special ability different from magic - it controls all types of energy directly from their source to affect reality!" Nicola explained.
She had seen this ability used once before, by the dark angel Claudia that Michelle summoned using the converted Angel Descent Formation.
Actually, although Claudia that Michelle created using dark elements could only reach six-wing level, what made her really powerful was her Psionic Energy ability!
This came from Michelle, who controlled energy Authority. When she used the formation to summon Claudia, she gave her some of that power! When Claudia died, this Authority automatically returned, letting Michelle know instantly even though she was thousands of miles away.
But Ancient God Religion bishops were just humans - they couldn't copy this method! The only way they could control Psionic Energy was through their absolute faith in their "Spring" god that they always talked about!
"Even though I don't really understand what this 'Psionic Energy' does exactly, since it's given by gods like invincibility, doesn't it have the same weakness? Like that Yellow Bishop?" Adrian asked. They had just killed one enemy using mental control, so he thought they could do it again the same way.
"How could it be that easy! Although Psionic Energy users don't have crazy strong body protection like invincibility, their mental defense is definitely not something your little wooden arrows can break!" Nicola said with a cold laugh.
After saying this, she ran back at full speed to where the control room was. But it was too late - their "home" had been robbed!
The Gray Bishop had reached this place easily while they were gone. The results were terrible - several people were lying all over the floor in pools of blood. It was impossible to tell who was still alive.
"Tell me how to control the underground traps! You can avoid the pain that's coming!" The Gray Bishop stood there casually with his hands in his sleeves, questioning one of Adrian's men who was "hanging" high on the wall by air.
"Let Karl go!"
Adrian had just rushed out from the passage entrance. He couldn't handle this shock - he got so emotional he was about to charge forward to save Karl.
"Idiot, hide!"
Luckily before he could move, Nicola grabbed him around the waist and pulled him hard into another nearby corner, successfully hiding where the bishop couldn't see them.
"Oh? So there are still some that got away..."
The Gray Bishop's voice hadn't even finished when Adrian felt an extremely strong wind brush past his cheek and hit the control panel behind him.
The control panel was instantly smashed to pieces by some invisible force. Obviously Nicola had just saved his life!
Right after, several more invisible force came whistling toward the passage entrance. Each attack was incredibly powerful - even the super strong walls got some dents from the continuous hits.
"Is that the Psionic Energy you talked about?" Adrian was shocked and took several seconds to recover. But hearing the Gray Bishop drop Karl and slowly walk toward them, he said with some struggle:
"But they're all my men. If I don't go save them..."
Actually from that brief encounter, Adrian could feel that the Gray Bishop's actual strength shouldn't be much different from his! After all, he was a Battle Qi awakener. If it was just one-on-one, as long as he was careful about the Psionic Energy, it seemed like he might not lose.
"Forget it! Even if he was actually weaker than you, once he uses special abilities, don't try to fight head-on unless you're above seventh rank!"
But Nicola didn't let him argue, dragging Adrian deeper into the passage.
According to her, since Psionic Energy users could control invisible energy, they could easily control people from far away through walls - this was one of Psionic Energy's biggest advantages! Of course, this required the Gray Bishop to know their exact location.
So they needed to hide where he couldn't see them while they planned what to do next! Although theoretically Psionic Energy should also be able to sense strong energy flows, as long as she and Adrian didn't use any magic including Battle Qi to attack, it shouldn't be a big problem.
Sure enough! Because this passage had many corners, and the control panel being destroyed took down the whole lighting system making it pitch black inside, the Gray Bishop only followed for a short distance before turning back to continue questioning his prisoner.
"How do you know it so clearly? Have you met these Psionic Energy users before?" Adrian felt a bit relieved and couldn't help admiring how knowledgeable Nicola was.
"You could say that..."
Actually compared to the Gray Bishop, Claudia's Psionic Energy now seemed much weaker to Nicola and wasn't very useful as reference! After all, the difference in their basic strength was huge - even at his weakest, this Gray Bishop was still above sixth rank!
But she couldn't tell him that she actually learned most of this knowledge from novels and media in her past life on Earth, and wasn't even sure if it would work. So she just vaguely brushed it off.
The Gray Bishop was definitely the first Ancient God Religion enemy with Psionic Energy that Nicola had met. She hadn't dragged Adrian back just to run away - she quickly summarized the ways she could think of to defeat the enemy:
"We have only two ways to kill someone with Psionic Energy! One is to completely overwhelm them with stronger power, and the other is to catch them off guard!"