Chapter 82
Chapter 82
Ya Yu: human head, serpent body, a symbol of imprisonment, murder, and madness.
Great sheets of dust shook loose as the black-gray shell congealed around Ya Yu began to crack.
Revealing what lay beneath… a corpse.
This ancient, powerful creature had undoubtedly been dead for a very long time.
The coiled serpent body was covered in wounds from blades and axes, and from those gashes, scorching lava flowed day and night without end.
Thick iron chains were sunk deep around Ya Yu’s body, binding its corpse fast to this underground palace for who knew how many years.
When the lava shell covering Ya Yu finally sloughed off completely, Han Lie caught a strong stench of rot.
There was a sound at his side. At some point, the Hanba Corpse had already dropped to its knees like a condemned sinner, clutching its head and trembling all over.
The Shamate Hou was hanging off it like an accessory, its sharp teeth still clamped into the side of the Hanba Corpse’s neck, its red fur puffed up into a fluffy ball.
Amid the flames, the tender sprout that had grown from the Wooden Bead had only managed to push out one tiny bud before seeming to run out of strength. It lay quietly in the ashes.
Ya Yu’s corpse moved again. Under the watch of countless eyes, it slowly lifted its lava-streaming head.
It had no hands and no feet, only a human head and an enormous serpent body.
With that single rise of its head, the entire underground space shook along with its movement.
As lava poured everywhere, Ya Yu opened its mouth and bit toward that tiny bead.
Lava surged with the motion.
The Hanba Corpse, which had occupied someone else’s altar, did not dare move at all and was swallowed by the lava.
Amid a sizzling crackle, it was soon reduced to a mass of charred bones.
The Yong Birds filling the air scattered in every direction.
The Red-furred Hou also began to stir restlessly. Some could vaguely be seen ignoring the beast king’s restraint and turning tail to flee.
The Shamate Hou’s heart trembled. Still clamping its teeth around Han Lie’s pant leg, it tugged, signaling for him to get ready to run. An existence of this level was not something they could provoke.
After that brutal battle, half of Han Lie’s face had been burned rotten. His whole body was covered in burns and wounds gouged open by Yong Bird claws.
Only because of the adrenaline did he not feel much pain.
When the Hou tugged him, he abruptly snapped back to himself.
He was not some waterlogged idiot who would risk his life to pick up a bead at a moment like this.
He only felt a little regret. Every time Qin Ying appeared, this Wooden Bead would turn hot.
Losing it made him feel as if his connection to the Supreme Deity had been thinned by one layer.
Suppressing that regret, he shifted his feet, about to retreat together with the Hou pack.
But the instant he turned, his steps halted.
As Ya Yu slowly rose to seize the Wooden Bead in its mouth, its coiled serpent body loosened slightly.
Han Lie saw what had been wrapped in the very center of Ya Yu’s serpent coils-a Wooden Puppet.
It was the size of an adult woman, crude and archaic in workmanship. Its arms and legs were stiff and straight, without joints, and its bald head had no facial features.
There was no way to tell whether it was male or female. Its abdominal cavity was open, hollow inside, showing the color of raw wood.
To the naked eye, it looked utterly unremarkable, with no reason at all for it to have been trapped by the corpse of an ancient Monstrous Beast like Ya Yu.
At the center of Han Lie’s chest, where the Hanba Corpse had clawed open that red mark, a heat fiercer than anything before began to burn.
The foot he had lifted to retreat seemed to be nailed in place.
A powerful intuition told him that thing should belong to a god.
He should go and take it.
The one who stopped at the same time as him was the Shamate Hou.
Man and beast exchanged another glance. Then, in perfect unison, they charged toward Ya Yu’s corpse.
Ya Yu’s corpse had been dead for countless years. Part of its body had rotted in the sealed gloom, while part had already turned to stone, so its movements were extremely slow.
Two shadows darted forward, working together as they closed in.
Han Lie stepped off the Hou’s back for leverage and leaped high into the air.
Grabbing onto the rotten bones protruding from Ya Yu’s body, he forced his way into the coils of Ya Yu’s serpent body.
The Hou twisted on all fours and beat the human face of the Ya Yu corpse to the Wooden Bead, snatching up the bead wreathed in blazing fire.
Hou fed on fire. The flames burning on the Wooden Bead smelled so delicious to it that drool poured from its mouth as it ran.
Its saliva, which could turn matter into jade, doused the flames on the Wooden Bead, but slid right off the tender sprout.
The Ya Yu corpse had long since died. It possessed no mind, no capacity for thought.
It had only come to fetch the Wooden Bead because of the instincts still lingering in it.
When the Hou carried the bead off, the Ya Yu corpse stupidly gave chase.
This chase and flight actually made things easier for Han Lie.
Like a flea, he clambered through Ya Yu’s body, hauling himself along its petrified organs toward the center.
Soon, he had climbed to the Wooden Puppet coiled within Ya Yu.
The Wooden Puppet’s abdomen and chest cavity were hollow. Magma dripped onto it, leaving charred black marks.
But the scorching quickly healed and faded, as if the Wooden Puppet held an endless vitality within it, capable of infinite self-repair.
After twisting his head left and right to check his escape route, Han Lie seized the opening, wrapped his arms around the Wooden Puppet, and hurriedly retreated.
The Ya Yu corpse, which had been stupidly chasing the Hou back and forth, suddenly froze.
“Go!”
Han Lie did not allow himself any false hope just because the Ya Yu corpse had stopped moving. Anyone with eyes could see the great swaths of crumbling cracks spreading across its body.
The moment he landed with the Wooden Puppet in his arms, he shouted to the Hou.
The Hou, bead in its mouth, tapped its claws against the ground and tossed the white fur on its forehead, signaling for Han Lie to follow.
The two of them broke into a mad sprint.
They had just reached the White Stone Path when the sound of something collapsing came from behind them.
There was no need to look back. They could feel that scalding heat against their skin.
They did not dare look back, and so they could not see the collapsing Ya Yu or the endless magma flowing out from inside its body.
Led by the Hou, Han Lie, who had the Wooden Puppet clamped under one arm, did not return by the Sand Lizard rope ladder they had used to descend. Instead, he followed the pack of Hou into a beast tunnel dug out by animal claws.
The instant they slipped inside, scorching magma surged in after them.
The magma did not roar as grandly as a flood, but the pressure it brought was far more suffocating.
Han Lie panted heavily. There was not a single patch of good flesh left on him.
In the pitch-black tunnel, he and the beasts ran for their lives.
Behind them, the magma pursued them like a living thing.
Just as his strength was gradually giving out, Han Lie hardened his heart.
He could die, but this thing had to be delivered to the Supreme Deity. Perhaps it could help the Supreme Deity break free.
As he ran, he bit open the wound on his fingertip, already burned nearly cooked.
The tip of his tongue tasted the scent of his own flesh. He let the blood drip down.
He could no longer speak. He could only silently recite the sacrificial prayer in his heart.
Just as the magma burned up to his heels-
His hands suddenly emptied. The Wooden Puppet clamped beneath his arm vanished.
As Han Lie staggered and nearly fell backward, several Hou lunged over and propped up his back.
With effort, they managed to carry him and kept running outward.
After sacrificing the Wooden Puppet, Han Lie let out a breath. The pain from old wounds and new injuries surged over him all at once.
His limbs went weak, and he sprawled across the back of a Hou, his mind going hazy.
Just as he was about to drift off, light suddenly flared before his eyes.
The Hou had violently dragged him out from underground, emerging from a cavern on the side of the Divine Shrine.
One drop. Two drops…
Warm rain fell from the sky and landed on Han Lie’s eyelids.
In his daze, he heard the soft call of deer.
He heard Aman urgently calling his name.
He lay on his back across the Shamate Hou, his two burned feet dangling to the ground, dragged along until they were a bloody, mangled mess.
No longer able to feel pain, he saw a shadow that blotted out the sky standing at the edge of the heavens, reaching a hand toward him.
“Han Lie.”