pjbooks Chapter 1005 Sacrifice
Chapter 1005 Sacrifice
The monster let out a low groan, its body jerked violently, and a small spurt of fluorescent blue blood gushed from the wound on the back of its neck. But its reaction was astonishingly fast; almost the instant it was stabbed, it swung its staff behind it. The energy from the crystal core on the staff's tip condensed into a crescent-shaped blade of light. A-Jiu didn't have time to retract her sword and could only use the dagger in her other hand to take the blow head-on.
The dagger clashed with the blade of light, sending A-Jiu flying backward. She spat out a mouthful of blood mid-air, crashing heavily into a bone pillar several meters away before sliding to the ground. Her right arm hung limply at an unnatural angle, clearly broken. Blood trickled from the corner of her mouth, staining half her face, but as she leaned against the base of the bone pillar, a strained smile forced across her face, contorted with pain. She had succeeded.
Her source energy poison has already entered the monster's body. Even if he can suppress it, he will need to expend some of his power to fight it. And with his power not yet fully stabilized, even a small amount of his power is a crucial breakthrough for Lin Qiye and Mo Yuan.
The monster clutched the wound on the back of its neck with one hand, and fluorescent blue blood slowly seeped through its fingers. Its face was several times more somber than before, and the light in its fluorescent blue eyes flickered erratically, as if disturbed by poison, causing a brief fluctuation in the circulation of its crystal core energy. The fluorescent blue shield surrounding its body flickered a few times, its thickness noticeably thinning.
Right now.
Seizing this fleeting opportunity, Lin Qiye abandoned any fancy techniques with his black iron spear, instead using the most primitive and ferocious method: a direct, head-on smash. He gripped the spear horizontally, the shaft glowing with a dark golden light as it crashed down on the monster's head like a tidal wave. The monster was forced to raise its short staff to block, but having diverted some of its strength to suppress the toxins within its body, its shield was no longer as strong. The impact caused the staff to vibrate violently, and the brute force forced its knees to bend slightly, its feet carving two deep furrows in the ground.
He had no time to catch his breath. Mo Yuan's blade had already arrived.
A cyan blade aura, like a dragon emerging from the abyss, slashed down from the monster's right. Mo Yuan had been preparing this strike for a long time; the runes on the blade were shining brightly, and the blade aura was as solid as a real, physical longsword. The air was torn into two visible shockwaves before the blade's edge. The monster barely managed to block with his staff, but this time the crystal core shield couldn't completely deflect the blade's sharpness—the blade tip pierced the shield, leaving a deep, bone-revealing wound on his right arm, blood splattering everywhere.
The monster grunted, finally losing its footing and staggering forward two steps after being hit twice in quick succession—and these two stumbles caused it to fall from its originally advantageous position, exposing the gap behind it.
Lin Qiye had been waiting for this opening. After striking, he smoothly retracted his spear, the butt of which touched the ground as he used the momentum to flip and circle behind the monster, thrusting the spear tip straight for its heart. If this thrust landed, even with the protection of the crystal core, the dark golden blood demon power attached to the spear tip would be enough to shatter the monster's heart.
However, just as the spear tip was about to touch the monster's back, the monster suddenly turned around, a very eerie smile on its lips.
It wasn't the rage of a cornered beast, but a calm acceptance of having everything under control. He released his hand from the back of his neck, letting the poison-tainted, fluorescent blue blood gush from the wound, without any attempt to suppress the toxicity. Instead, the energy within his crystalline core suddenly contracted to an extreme point, then burst forth—not an aggressive burst, but an assimilative one. That energy resonated with the boiling magma in the center of the altar, and the magma in the altar's depression, as if summoned, suddenly rose a thick column of liquid from the depression, like a twisting serpent of light, sweeping towards the four people's location.
"Scatter!" Mo Yuan shouted sternly.
Lin Qiye was forced to abandon the pursuit and rolled to the side. The liquid grazed his clothes, instantly burning the hem to ashes, and even the dark golden source energy protecting him was scorched with a shallow mark. Mo Yuan also dodged to the side, and the liquid column crashed into the area where they had just stood, melting a charred crater several feet deep into the ground.
Taking advantage of the opening, the monster lightly touched the ground with its toes, and like a leaf blown by the wind, it floated onto the remaining corner of the altar's base, looking down at them. Its short staff lay horizontally in front of it, the fluorescent blue crystal core at its tip no longer flickering, but becoming unusually stable, as if it had finally completed some crucial fusion. The wounds on the back of its neck and arms were still bleeding, but it paid no heed, not even attempting to stop the bleeding, letting the fluorescent blue blood flow down its body, dripping onto the broken altar base and being absorbed by the charred bone plates.
"You think you have the situation under control," he began, his voice calmer than someone who had just been driven to the brink, "but have you ever considered why I'm fighting you?"
Lin Qiye's pupils contracted slightly.
"You're stalling for time."
"Yes." The monster readily admitted, "I need time to fuse with my core. You thought that I was just adapting to my new power during that time, but actually I deliberately slowed down to stabilize you and make you think there was an opportunity to take advantage of you—because if I had suppressed you with all my might from the beginning, you might have scattered and run away. And once you escape this hall, with your previous experience, it will be very difficult to gather you together again."
He looked down at the three from the altar's base, a disturbing fanaticism flickering in his fluorescent blue eyes: "Although the altar's self-destruct program has been activated, its core structure has not completely collapsed. As long as I reactivate some of its functions with the newly fused crystal core, plus your life force—two high-ranking deacons and a monster capable of suppressing the array's core—this sacrifice will be enough to allow the core to reactivate the array and complete one last summoning before complete collapse."
"Sacrifice?" Ah Jiu covered her severed arm and looked up.
"Yes. Your flesh and blood, your primordial energy, your lives—all will become the final catalyst for the Soul-Guiding Array. And I, I will use this body as a vessel, so that when the master's consciousness descends, there will be a ready-made shell to possess." The monster's voice became even deeper than before, each word seemingly filled with the fervor of a martyr and the obsession of a thousand years of solitude. "I have waited too long in these mountains, from being created by the master, to replacing Mr. Xun, to being nailed to the rock wall for twenty-six years—this is the day I have been waiting for."
As soon as he finished speaking, he raised his short staff high, and the fluorescent blue crystal core on the staff head burst forth with a dazzling deep blue light.
The entire hall floor began to tremble violently. Fragments of shattered light plasma from the altar's crater floated up, coalescing in mid-air into twisted arcs of light that converged towards the four people's location. Simultaneously, the bone structure on the hall's four walls, eroded by both the sealing array and the altar's energy, began to peel away, revealing dense, ancient runes beneath—runes far more complex and massive than those on the altar's base, covering the entire dome and the four bone walls.