Chapter 17

Chapter 17

When the flames flared up again, I actually saw snow drifting down from the September sky.

Only the snow was tinged faintly red.

The flat road beneath my feet suddenly turned rugged and uneven.

Countless arms, like snakes, burst up from underground.

They tangled together, swaying their limbs as they surged toward the iron basin.

I swung the Soul-Whip, guarding the area around the basin with everything I had.

Crack after crack rang out, the whip strikes weaving an airtight barrier around the iron basin.

The fire inside the basin never dimmed in the slightest.

Just then, pairs of ice-cold hands clamped around my ankles.

Their sharp nails seemed to pierce my skin and sink straight into my bones.

I lifted my foot and kicked down viciously.

There was a crackle from the iron basin, and a thick snake body coiled around me!

A head that was half-human, half-snake poked out by my neck.

Before it could bare its fangs, I drove my fist straight into it.

Then I clenched my fingers mercilessly and seized that snake head in my palm.

As the snake body tightened around me, its skull also creaked inside my grip.

At that moment, my heart was filled with nothing but fury and the stench of blood.

I could not even feel the pain in my body.

It was not until I crushed the snake head in my hand and my body suddenly loosened that I realized I had almost been strangled to death by it.

I opened my mouth and spat out a mouthful of bloody foam.

As the flames in the iron basin flickered, the space around us seemed to change again. Some invisible force was compressing toward us.

A savage rage surged up inside me. As long as I was here today, no one was putting out the fire in that basin!

Lightning flashed faintly at the edge of the sky. I brandished the Soul-Whip, each crack louder than the last.

When purple lightning tore across the heavens, my face, already like that of an Asura, looked even more like a vengeful ghost, frightening the surrounding spirits into scattering.

I lashed out with one final, ruthless strike, bringing a burst of electric light with it. Screams and wails erupted all around me in an unbroken wave.

Then, with a sudden whoosh, the fire in the iron basin shot violently into the air!

When it scattered again, the road had returned to silence.

The disk had been completely reduced to flying ash. The wind blew, and nothing was left.

I had no time for anything else. I rushed back to the car to check on Uncle Cheng.

The disk was destroyed. Uncle Cheng’s condition should have improved, right?

But to my shock, when I opened the car door, Uncle Cheng was once again leaning back against the seat with his head tilted up, dry roars rasping from his throat.

His thin chest bulged forward, and both his hands kept clawing wildly.

I had no time to think. I quickly undid the buttons over Uncle Cheng’s chest.

At the position of Uncle Cheng’s heart, two pitch-black lines like blood vessels were twisted together, resembling a chrysanthemum in full bloom!

In a panic, I made a video call to Tang Ling.

Tang Ling was startled when she saw Uncle Cheng’s condition too. After thinking for a long while, she told me to pour a couple mouthfuls of liquor down Uncle Cheng’s throat.

I did as she said. After Uncle Cheng drank the liquor, he finally stopped stiffening up as if he were suffocating, but his condition still showed no sign of improving.

Listening to each breath grow heavier than the last, I felt as if my heart had sunk to the bottom of an icy abyss.

Tang Ling searched for a long time, but in the end, she had no solution either.

“Grandpa Cheng drank liquor mixed with bone ash. That bone ash had already been contaminated. The methods of the Nine Chrysanthemum Shrine have always been sinister and vicious.”

“Although we destroyed the disk, a part of that thing still entered Grandpa Cheng’s body. I’m afraid Grandpa Cheng won’t make it through tonight.”