Archfiend

Chapter 97: Spirit Treasure Vortex (1)

“Kill!” In that moment the Red Spider Lily bloomed at the lakeside of the Four Great Joint Pools, the illumination of brilliant qi rays should’ve left everyone unable to open their eyes, yet neither Xu Yangyi nor God Ming shuttered their gazes. On the contrary, they now happened to both erupt with heaven-shaking bellows, rushing towards the volcanic lake in unison!

Everyone recognized that at most… they only had half an hour! If the demon core wasn’t seized by then, this opportunity wouldn’t be any of theirs! Once one approached, the hand couldn’t be otherwise stayed!

“Open the tenth coffin!” God Ming issued a screech that tore at his throat and split his lungs. At this moment, in front of a real treasure, his style of a cultured and refined gentleman was nowhere to be seen!

This time, none of the old men stopped him. Following his order, one of the old men’s pair of eyes suddenly erupted with faint green light. Next, he began to echo with a mechanical cracking from head to toe. From his center… his entire body began to neatly separate, revealing countless elaborate gears within… and a fine bronze coffin. 

Countless hairs dug into the small holes on the coffin that were dense like pinholes. In the wake of a rumbling explosion, the coffin responded and splintered apart. It was a boy around ten years old wearing an exceptionally spacious red changpao. His hair was disheveled and there was a blue talisman stuck on his pale forehead. Chained in silver shackles, he shrieked quietly and rushed towards Xu Yangyi like a marionette, together with God Ming!

The puppet’s skin was snow-white, yet its eyes were completely black. Its mouth seemed to lack a lower jaw, open wide to a terrifying degree! The inside was packed with rows of sharp teeth! Soundless cries bubbled forth from its throat, stirring the qi and blood to instability and the mind to chaos!

“Severing Dragon Typhoon!” Similarly, Xu Yangyi snarled furiously. Time was at hand, a struggle for every second on the clock! He was unable to tolerate a trace of reservation! His silhouette was like a shooting star overtaking the moon, charging straight to the lake! Both of his hands assumed a clawed stance, his veins bulging. In the air, they dragged out ten several-meter white scars like a spiraling hawk and forcibly lacerated the night sky!!

A single blow! All that was sought was one strike! In the duo’s hearts, they were both understood very well. The moment of contact was bound to be an alternation of killing moves, the mere beseechment of one strike would determine victory and defeat!

“Hissss…” At this time, the black-eyed boy’s throat suddenly expanded and his veins swelled. In the next second, three serpentine tongues darted out from his mouth and traveled across tens of meters! Not before long, the tongues surprisingly weaved a net in the sky, dexterously unimaginable! They firmly obstructed Xu Yangyi’s path of advance!

“Chrip!” The tongue net was spread thick with countless inch-long mouths along the tongues. Already, they opened up collectively! Ghastly white teeth revealed inside the mouths, a menacing screech was heard at the same time! Those who stepped forward would die!

Xu Yangyi’s gaze was like lightning. Presently, each judgement was of paramount importance, however, courage was even more of essence! 

Those who obstruct me shall be slain without mercy!

His figure didn’t diminish in the slightest, and he furthermore didn’t stop like an ordinary person because an object had suddenly appeared in front of him. Even now, the net seemed completely worthless against him! On the contrary, his speed grew even faster! Like a shooting star cutting across the sky, his charge was aimed at the tremendous net!

“Rapid Shadows!” At this moment, both of his hands suddenly formed into fists! A white qi halo erupted in his hands with a rumble, and two qi blades surged forth! The large tongue net practically served no obstacle, already turned into strips of ground meat and flying down!

Yet God Ming didn’t even bat an eye! He hastened towards Daomaster Jadewave’s corpse with full strength. In addition to the talisman stuck to his leg, his speed was even faster than before!

Likewise, Xu Yangyi didn’t spare a glance. Whoever grasped the origin crystal first would be the one standing at the very end!

In the midst of his peak speed, he seemed to feel time become sluggish, and the strong odor of blood wafted through the air. This was from the wounds he had gained from the small, fine piranha-like mouths biting into his body as he crashed his way through the tremendous net!

With the distance already drawn back by a small segment, Xu Yangyi inhaled deeply, absent of any hesitation. In the next second, his hand condensed a blaze no less than a few meters in size!

“Ten Cardinals Red Lotus!” 

Within his body, qi soared like a tide. He was simply apathetic as both of his fists attacked with full might in the wake of his charge! Yet he wasn’t advancing… he was retreating!

“Wind Brandishes Traces!” He snarled in fury, and his speed quickened by three or four times in an instant! In the sky. Like a human-shaped cruise missile, he borrowed the recoil of the Ten Cardinals Red Lotus and the sudden acceleration of the added Wind Brandishes Traces! He was wreathed in a long flame tail, roughly a single fold faster than God Ming, and rushed in front of the corpse!

“Bar his path!!!” God Ming only caught sight of an inconceivable shadow suddenly overtake him. Almost without a thought, he let out a furious roar that shook all around. 

The three old men had long since rushed towards the corpse, but their speeds were far from comparing to Xu Yangyi and God Ming. Under the swoosh of countless strings collapsing, God Ming’s long hair that filled the sky forcefully threw something, surprisingly tossing over the black-eyed boy!

Woooosh… With the sound of fluttering paper, the talisman on the red-gowned, black-eyed boy’s forehead immediately transformed into fiery stars, igniting spontaneously, unprovoked by the wind.

“Hiiisssssss!!!” In the air, the boy unleashed a heart-shaking screech! As he flew over, his entire body grew larger as if he was filled with air! Followed by a hissing noise that rained down ceaselessly on the ear, all of his clothes burst apart into shreds and his body warped! His shoulder muscles endlessly morphed, and just as he was about to fall, he had already transformed into a colossal monster, one that was a full three meters in height. Growing the heads of a tiger, bear, and pig, along with the tail of a snake, he was covered from tail to snout in black fur!

“ROAARRR!!!” The chimeric tiger-bear-pig faced the heavens and bellowed angrily, bringing forth a tangible sound wave! Xu Yangyi’s pupils needled; he could neither advance nor retreat! 

Boom! The qi and blood of his chest roiled, directly slamming into the boy’s wall-like sound wave. He rigidly gritted his teeth. “Dragon Biting! Rapid Shadows! Tiger Crane!”

“Break! Break! BREAK!!!” Xu Yangyi only sensed each and every one of his entire body’s cells come to a boil! The time of life and death was drawing near. Confronted with a great enemy, such a battle that sent the adrenaline soaring, and combat that could be counted by the second, all he felt was his heart expedite! 

Boom… A hair of a ripple emerged before him, and subsequently both of his hands whirled madly like electricity. The front of the invisible barrier immediately fluttered with over a hundred ripples!

Bang! A second. Barely a second! The sound of breaking glass rang out in front of him, and the roar of the three-headed demonbeast came to a sudden end! His reactions seemed to have never been so quick. He calculated it a bit and knew from God Ming’s despaired face that even like so… it was too late!

The disparity was roughly half a second! He… would enter the demon body half a second earlier than God Ming! Without any pause, right now, time was everything. Xu Yangyi watched the tremendous, mutilated wound become increasingly closer, to the extent that he could even smell the towering visceral stench! The bones inside and the internal organs were all visible!

“NOOOO!!!!” God Ming was in a state of madness, his hair like a tide. Followed by his blood-dripping screech, all of his hair pierced towards Xu Yangyi! It was a silver ocean! A sea of death!

Xu Yangyi carried not the slightest bit of hesitation, already charging towards the massive, labyrinth-like wound!

“NOOOOOO!!! BEGONE!!!” God Ming’s shriek reverberated in the entire dead volcanic lake. “I demand your death!!!” Soon, over twenty puppets flew over to Xu Yangyi’s side! The three-headed demonbeast was already less than ten meters away!

So long as it was an instant… All that was needed was a mere twinkling! At this time, Xu Yangyi’s heart throbbed violently!

“Puh!” A mouthful of blood sprayed out from his mouth without the slightest warning! He stood frozen in shock. In a split second, his bodily strength vanished. This mouthful of blood wasn’t from an injury, but rather… the blood in his body that was inexplicably billowing.

He looked on in astonishment towards his qi sea. That stone-like seed was actually cracking open at the seams at this critical moment! An indescribable sensation bubbled up in his mind, a kind of thirst… for qi, a longing for flesh!

In an instant, sudden enlightenment surfaced in his mind. Standing here, he could clearly feel the erupting waves of shiver-inducing qi within the wound of the tremendous, several-hundred-meter-long greater demon. It was the fluctuations coming from the demon core. However, these fluctuations were unexpectedly drawn to the strange seed within his qi sea.

“The heavens aid me!” Originally, God Ming was grinding his teeth and urgently rushing forth, yet he suddenly saw Xu Yangyi who was standing still for about two to three seconds! The time was brief, but it was already enough! His twenty-plus puppets had charged behind Xu Yangyi!

“Kill!” In his state of ecstasy, over twenty swords pierced towards Xu Yangyi’s back, along with an explosive roar! As for Xu Yangyi himself, he seemed not to have regained his wits whatsoever! At this moment of grave mortality, his body suddenly trembled. In a flash, he regained clarity. Behind him, over twenty squalls of wind pierced straight to the middle of his back, mingled with a deathly screaming!

“Damn!” At surprisingly such a pivotal juncture! He immediately charged forwards, yet it was still too late. By the interweaved cries of iron and metal, over a dozen wounds, so deep that bones could be seen, emerged on his back!

“Fuck!” He rigidly clenched his teeth, his forehead became slick with cold sweat in no matter of time. He had promptly escaped, so there were no mortal wounds. However, blood torrented out, drenching his camouflage uniform in mere moments!

The sharp pain caused his back to ache with a scorching heat! As for the camouflage on the upper-half of his body, it had also been torn to shreds under the criss-crossing of those swords! It had turned into rags hanging off his body. 

God Ming sighed deeply, his gaze becoming ice-cold. “This game… should end…”

“Puppet Transfers The Self.”

Just as these four words were said, a sudden fuzziness appeared in the space between one of the twenty-plus puppets and himself. Already, he had exchanged positions with that puppet, standing at Xu Yangyi’s side.

Without anyone’s discovery, at this moment, as blood gushed out from within Xu Yangyi, the blood within Jadewave’s body headed towards his wounds in a devilish manner, rising against the current and upwards! It was like a blood-sucking leech had caught the scent of its natural predator!

Xu Yangyi faintly panted; he had lost too much blood, yet there existed no feeling of dizziness. There wasn’t enough time for him to consider why, as he calmly stared at the enemy before him. 

Likewise, God Ming didn’t even bat an eye at him. The matter seemed to return to the starting point once again. Both of their hearts were burning brightly as if lit aflame. Xu Yangyi wordlessly swept an eye over his watch. The time… A whole two hours and tens minutes had passed.

With the passage of these ten minutes… there was at most an additional ten minutes until other cultivators were bound to hurry over! Late-stage Foundation Establishment… as well as the Great Circle, even Core Formation cultivators! They wouldn’t permit any Qi Condensation cultivator to divide the soup of Daomaster Jadewave’s legacy! 

Xu Yangyi and God Ming already stood at the gateway of a demon core. How could they possibly be willing! Once the demon core recognized a master, no one could take it! In daring to take the origin crystal, wasn’t this risking the taste of a demon core’s self-detonation?