Chapter 235
Chapter 235
But after falling inside, I had roughly inspected the entire underground chamber.
I was certain it had been completely empty!
How could there be a living thing here?
Had it emerged from this deep, narrow tunnel?
That did not seem likely either!
From the beginning, more than half my attention had been fixed on the tunnel entrance. It should have been impossible for something to approach without my noticing.
In a split second, all those thoughts flashed through my mind…
But no matter what, the fact stood before me!
Something else was present in this dark underground chamber.
A talisman was already pinched between two fingers of my right hand–a fairly powerful Evil-Shattering Talisman. I could not determine whether the thing was a ghost, corpse, or demon, nor how strong it might be.
To be safe, I naturally chose one of my stronger offensive talismans!
Huff, huff, huff…
The eerie breathing in the darkness drew closer and closer behind me, while growing even fainter than before.
Clearly, the damned thing was conscious. It intended to catch me off guard with a surprise attack!
I decided to turn its scheme against it and continued pretending I had noticed nothing. Facing the pitch-black eastern tunnel, I kept sweeping my flashlight around as though examining it, allowing the breathing behind me to come ever closer…
Closer, closer!
I could even faintly sense a sinister chill brushing the back of my neck, making my hair stand on end and raising goose bumps.
“Now!”
I shouted inwardly and spun around.
The stream of qi within me had already surged along my meridians into my palm and poured into the talisman between my fingers. I hurled it forward.
“Evil-Shattering Talisman!”
Boom!
The talisman burst into flame, radiating far greater heat and offensive power than an ordinary talisman flame.
The firelight instantly illuminated the view before me.
In that instant, I clearly saw what had made the faint breathing sound. It was… a human head!
A terrifying human head suspended in midair.
It was badly rotted and shriveled. All the skin had vanished, exposing the skull.
Yet two eyes remained in its sockets! Its teeth were sharp and pointed, nothing like normal human teeth.
Below the neck of the floating head, a stark-white spinal column remained attached. Its lower end formed a sharp, pointed tail of bone.
With nothing but a spine connected beneath the human head, at first glance it resembled a humanoid jellyfish or octopus.
It was a bizarre evil entity that should have existed only in nightmares!
I never imagined this terrifying thing was the source of the breathing. Was it a living thing or a dead one?
In the very instant I first glimpsed the horrifying evil, the Evil-Shattering Talisman was already flying straight toward its face.
It probably had not expected that I had discovered it long ago and had merely pretended to be defenseless, waiting until the final moment to launch a fierce counterattack…
The flying-head creature had no time to react and took the Evil-Shattering Talisman head-on.
Boom!
An even larger burst of flame exploded, accompanied by a sizzling sound like water hitting boiling oil. When an Evil-Shattering Talisman struck an evil entity, it burned furiously and erased the creature’s power.
Wah, wah, wah!
Knocked backward, the flying-head creature emitted cries like a baby’s from its mouth full of sharp fangs. The sound stabbed at my eardrums and chilled my heart.
“I can’t let it retreat! This thing is skilled at hiding. If I don’t destroy it here, it’ll probably lurk in the darkness and wait to ambush me. That would be a terrible nuisance.”
As the thought flashed through my mind, I gave the flying-head creature no chance to retreat or evade. My feet shifted, and I lunged forward using martial arts footwork.
I moved with astonishing speed, like a cheetah bursting forth to seize its prey.
During that motion, I had already drawn the ritual blade from the sheath at my waist…
That was right!
Even when attending school, I secretly kept the ritual blade sheathed at my waist. Covered by my jacket, it was basically invisible.
“Ritual blade–thrust!”
Qi streamed from my palm and spread along the hilt to cover the entire ritual blade.
Then I drove it viciously into the exact center of the flying-head creature’s forehead.
Squelch…
Like a red-hot knife piercing a lump of melting lard, the blade opened a gash in the creature’s hard, dark-yellow skull and sank inside.
I flicked my wrist and drew downward with a deft burst of force.
Craack…
The ritual blade traveled from the skull, over the bridge of the nose, and down to the jaw, splitting the flying-head creature’s entire head into two halves along the centerline.
At that moment, I could see that the skull was empty. None of the soft tissue of a normal human brain remained. There was only a dried, shriveled mass the size of a fist, with a red, tumor-like growth attached that rose and fell.
That was probably the source of the flying-head creature’s power!
Without the slightest pause, I followed through by launching another talisman from my left hand.
It was another Evil-Shattering Talisman!
Whoosh… Boom!
Trailing firelight, the talisman blasted directly into the split skull at close range. It instantly burned the shriveled brain tissue and the attached red tumor completely away.
By the time that chain of attacks ended, light sweat had appeared on my forehead. The entire process might have looked simple, but I had attacked rapidly while maintaining extreme concentration, launching two Evil-Shattering Talismans and directing one strike with the ritual blade.
Had this happened more than a year earlier, that sequence alone would have completely drained me.
Now, it merely left me slightly tired.
Clearly, my cultivation was still advancing at an extraordinary rate!
Clatter…
The flying-head creature’s remaining wreckage–the split skull and the sharp spinal column attached beneath it–fell to the ground with a sound like solid objects colliding.
It lay completely still.
Clearly, I had destroyed this strange, sinister creature in an extremely short time.
Whew…
I let out a long breath and vigilantly surveyed my surroundings. Only after confirming there was no second creature did I slowly crouch down.
I wanted to carefully examine what this flying-head creature actually was.
I lightly tapped its bones, producing sharp metallic clinks. They were clearly very sturdy–far harder than ordinary human bones.
They might not equal metal objects, but they were probably at least as hard as stone!
Then I examined the sharp bone tail, or perhaps bone spike, at the end of its spine. Used to attack, it would be almost like a keen spear.
It would pierce a bloody hole straight through a human body!
I felt immensely fortunate that I had not held back to test it at the beginning, but had attacked with all my strength. I had not used any ultimate trump card, but at least every move had been a powerful high-level technique.