Chapter 108
Chapter 108
Mourning Remains moved.
Its limbs of shattered bone bent and extended at unnatural angles.
Its entire body unfolded like a crumpled sheet of paper and lunged at the three hunters.
A piercing shriek filled the air–the sound of countless bones grinding together, sharp enough to hurt the eardrums.
Fang Yue reacted first.
He stepped across and swept his massive sword sideways. The curse inscriptions blazing along it erupted with dazzling light.
The phantom of a gigantic divine sword manifested like a mountain and slammed into Mourning Remains from the side.
It was like some legendary deity revealing its true cosmic form.
The sword cut into the translucent membrane. Black liquid sprayed out, and the many faces within screamed silently.
All damage and pain would be shared among the thousands upon thousands of trapped souls.
Mourning Remains did not even pause.
One arm of broken bone whipped around like a skeletal lash, striking at Fang Yue with terrifying force.
A peak 4-Star anomaly attacked far faster and more powerfully than the creatures in Dead Silence Academy.
Had Qin Lan actually been present, that lash might have reduced him to bloody mist before he could defend himself.
Fang Yue growled and swiftly brought his massive sword around to block.
Golden curse inscriptions suddenly appeared over his body–defensive support from Lu Xingshan.
The bone lash struck his left arm and instantly shattered the defensive inscriptions.
Fang Yue grunted and flew backward, crashing into the nearby ruins in a towering cloud of dust.
The exchange might have sounded slow, but it had taken only an instant.
[It looks like you can’t stop it.]
The voice sighed softly. It held no surprise, only the certainty of having expected this result, along with an almost affectionate helplessness.
[Why are human bodies so fragile?]
[You should have joined us long ago…]
Shen Qiu’s figure flickered over Mourning Remains’ head. Her twin blades, gleaming with blue frost, pierced its skull…
Or where a skull ought to have been.
She had remained concealed nearby, avoiding every means of detection like an imperceptible shadow.
[Frost Spike]
Shen Qiu’s ability was freezing. It affected both the corporeal and incorporeal. It could even freeze the mind.
The effect took hold immediately. A thin layer of ice formed over the stinking membrane, and the expressions on the countless faces within slowed.
It was useless.
The opponent’s curse energy was so powerful that a brief surge was enough to erase the negative effects.
It was like dropping a single bead of ink into a water tank. No change could be seen.
Instead, gray-white mist erupted from the wound her blades had opened. Like an enormous mouth, it swallowed Shen Qiu whole.
Countless faces within the mist turned toward her simultaneously.
Their eyes had no pupils, only hollow darkness. Yet Shen Qiu felt innumerable gazes fixed upon her.
Cold and ravenous, they seemed intent on peeling her soul from her body.
[How does it feel? Wonderful, isn’t it?]
The whisper softened, its tone boastful.
[The process of turning souls into this is rather complicated… but what can I say? I’m a genius.]
Shen Qiu clenched her teeth. Frost-blue light blazed from her twin blades as she tried to freeze the surrounding mist.
But it was too dense. It rapidly devoured the cold. Her skin began to pale, and her consciousness blurred.
A beam of golden light shot into the mist from outside.
One of Lu Xingshan’s curse inscriptions.
The light became a thin barrier around Shen Qiu from head to toe, isolating her from the mist’s corrosion.
She twisted both blades violently and ripped open a gap in the fog. Her body flashed, breaking free.
Her face was white as paper, and the hands clutching her short blades still trembled.
In those few brief moments, the mental pressure from the countless dead souls had inflicted a severe impact on her.
“Thanks,” Shen Qiu said quietly.
Lu Xingshan did not respond.
Lu Xingshan kept his gaze locked on Mourning Remains. His right hand moved rapidly through the air, drawing one curse inscription after another from his fingertips.
[Oh? This is rather interesting.]
The whisper rose in pitch, curious at the discovery of a new toy.
Mourning Remains seemed to sense the threat.
Its body abruptly contracted. Every limb assembled from broken bone withdrew.
The whole creature curled into an enormous sphere of bone and flesh.
Fang Yue struggled out of the ruins, his left arm hanging limply at his side.
The previous strike had broken it, but the bone was visibly healing.
He dragged his massive sword in his right hand. His face was covered in blood, but his eyes had only grown fiercer.
“Goddammit… No one but my wife has ever dared whip me!”
“Who the hell do you think you are?!”
The corner of Shen Qiu’s mouth twitched. She clearly wanted to curse at him, but said nothing.
Lu Xingshan, still releasing curse inscriptions, could no longer restrain himself.
“What the fuck… We’re in a fight! Who wants to hear about you and your wife’s mysterious little hobby?”
“Is getting whipped something to be proud of?!”
Fang Yue raised his chin smugly.
“That’s where you’re mistaken…”
“My wife’s beautiful. Being whipped by a beautiful woman is a pleasure–”
Lu Xingshan barked over his strange declaration.
“Stop fucking around… I’ll open a path. Kill that thing!”
He tapped twice at the air, producing a silver-white curse inscription.
Light flared beneath Fang Yue’s feet. The next instant, he vanished and reappeared directly inside Mourning Remains’ core.
Teleportation.
This ability was Lu Xingshan’s trump card.
It was precisely this heaven-defying spatial technique that had allowed him to reach Qin Lan in time on multiple occasions and prevent certain disasters.
Teleportation required coordinates, however, and Shen Qiu had planted this one.
Her previous attack had not merely been an assassination attempt. While she drew Mourning Remains’ attention, she had marked its body with coordinates.
The cost was enormous.
Maintaining the coordinates, using them, and breaking through the isolation created by the opponent’s curse energy all consumed vast amounts of power.
Teleporting beside a stray dog would have been effortless for Lu Xingshan.
But his target now was a peak 4-Star anomaly created by a being from the Abyss.
Sending Fang Yue inside it alone drained much of the color from Lu Xingshan’s face.
The massive sword descended.
Golden light collided with gray-white fog in a deafening shriek.
Inside Mourning Remains, Fang Yue began spinning in an extraordinarily brutal and domineering fashion.
Anyone who had played an online game had seen this move in one form or another. The narrator personally preferred to call it–Whirlwind Slash.
Broken bones sprayed in every direction, and black liquid fell like rain.
Shrieks and wails mingled with the surging gray-white fog.
The bones inside rotated like millstones, trying to counterattack Fang Yue.
“Out! Now!”
Lu Xingshan reacted instantly and activated his ability again. A silver-white curse inscription tore open space to rescue Fang Yue.
Then it was interrupted.
[You think you can come and go as you please? What made you believe life was so convenient?]
As the voice sounded, an intense mental shock erupted from every fragment of the corpse, aimed directly at Lu Xingshan.
Hundreds upon thousands of silver needles seemed to pierce his consciousness at once.
Even a man as resolute as him screamed in agony.
Spirit was the weakness of most Anomaly Hunters.
The attribute was simply too difficult to improve. Unless someone was a freak like Qin Lan or practiced a Curse Codex such as Soul Tower, even a 4-Star Anomaly Hunter’s Spirit would not be particularly high.
Lu Xingshan also practiced Soul Tower. That, combined with several curse inscriptions that weakened the attack, was the only reason his sanity did not shatter immediately.
His teleportation inscription was disrupted all the same.
And now Fang Yue was trapped amid countless bones, being crushed by an enormous, rotating millstone.