pjbooks Chapter 1008 Mysterious Magic Runes
Chapter 1008 Mysterious Magic Runes
Before the monster could finish speaking, it transformed into a fluorescent blue meteor, its short staff carrying all the energy from its burning core, and thrust straight toward Lin Qiye's heart.
This attack was delivered without any reservation.
The altar's core emitted a piercing hum as it burned, and cracks on the crystal core's surface spread at a visible speed. With each inch they spread, the light at the tip of the staff intensified. A visible vacuum channel was torn open in the air, and air molecules at the channel's edge were ionized by the high temperature, exploding into rings of eerie blue plasma ripples. Drawn by this power, the ancient runes on the temple walls lit up simultaneously, as if playing a final elegy for this attack.
Lin Qiye stood still, without dodging.
It wasn't that he didn't want to dodge, but the changes happening within his body made it impossible for him to move an inch. The power surging from the depths of his bloodline was completely beyond his control. The dark golden blood demon power surged wildly through his meridians, pushing each meridian to its limit. The cracks on his body that had been sealed by the light membrane burst open again, but this time what flowed out was not blood, but a dark golden light mist that was somewhere between liquid and gas, enveloping his entire body in a flowing halo.
His mind was clear, even clearer than ever before.
He could see the short staff rapidly magnifying in his pupils, feel the terrifying energy of the burning crystal core at its tip, and calculate the trajectory and landing point of the attack in his mind—but he couldn't control his body. It wasn't that he was bound or suppressed, but rather that his body was being taken over by another, higher-level will, as if some being dormant deep within his bloodline had finally been awakened and was using his body to take its first breath.
Then he heard a sigh.
It didn't come from the outside world, but from the deepest part of his soul. The sigh was old and weary, carrying the vicissitudes of countless years and an indescribable sorrow, like someone who had been asleep for far too long, waking up to find himself facing a world even darker than before he fell asleep.
The moment the sigh sounded, Lin Qiye raised his right hand on his own.
It wasn't that he raised his arm voluntarily; rather, a force beyond his control manipulated his arm, his fingers spread, palm facing the short staff that was about to pierce his heart. The charred mark on his palm, burned by the core of the seventh array, suddenly lit up, but it wasn't gold, nor fluorescent blue; instead, it was an extremely pure dark gold—the exact same color as the blood demon power within him.
The mark began to rotate.
Peeling from his palm, it hovered three inches in front of his hand, spinning rapidly and expanding continuously, transforming from a scorch mark the size of a fingernail into a dark golden halo about a foot in diameter. At the center of the halo appeared the pattern he had just seen on the black iron spear—two curved horns crossed and guarding a dark golden sun, and the vertical pupil-like eye at the center of the sun suddenly opened.
A beam of dark golden light shot out from that vertical pupil, colliding head-on with the fluorescent blue crystal core energy burning at the tip of the short staff.
There was no explosion.
There was no shockwave.
There wasn't even a sound.
The instant the two energies collided, everything fell into an eerie stillness—the floating fragments of light solidified, the boiling crater in the altar subsided, and even the collapsing dome-shaped bone fragments overhead hovered in mid-air. The entire world seemed to have been paused; the only thing still in motion was the point where the two energies met.
There, the dark golden beam of light was slowly but irresistibly pushing the fluorescent blue crystalline energy back inch by inch. It wasn't a rebound, nor an offset, but an absorption. With each inch the dark golden light advanced, it transformed that inch of fluorescent blue energy into the same dark golden color, merging it into the beam and making it thicker, brighter, and more solid.
The monster's expression changed from fanaticism to shock, and from shock to fear.
"This is impossible. This is a great divine power that only the master's true form can unleash. You are merely a bloodline inheritor, how could you possibly..."
Before he could finish speaking, the fluorescent blue crystal core on the staff shattered with a crisp sound.
The crack finally spread to the very core of the crystal, splitting it in two. The instant it split open, all the energy accumulated within the crystal over thousands of years was released, but not under the monster's control. Instead, it was forcibly drawn in by the dark golden beam of light, flowing like a river overflowing into the vertical pupil at the center of the halo.
The crystal core shattered.
The short staff began to disintegrate from the tip, turning into dust inch by inch and slipping from the monster's grasp. True horror finally surfaced on the monster's twisted face. He tried to retreat, to loosen his grip on the staff, but it was too late—the dark golden beam of light, having devoured the crystal core's energy, suddenly surged, spreading along the remains of the staff to his arm, then his shoulder, his chest, and his entire body.
He was frozen in mid-air by the beam of light, like an insect encased in amber, unable to even move his eyes. The dark golden light seeped into his body through every pore, devouring and transforming the fluorescent blue crystalline energy within him, re-tempering his body, which had been replicated by the Bone Tower, from the inside out.
"No—you can't—" The monster's voice was completely distorted, like a communication device being jammed, sporadically uttering a few broken syllables, "I've guarded my master for so many years—I can't—".
Then he heard that voice.
That voice, emanating from Lin Qiye's body, did not belong to Lin Qiye. It was deep, ancient, and majestic, carrying a kind of pressure that made one's soul involuntarily want to kneel down, yet it also contained a faint, imperceptible gentleness.
"You've been guarding this for so many years, thank you for your hard work."
The monster's body trembled violently, and tears welled up in its fluorescent blue eyes, which were about to be completely swallowed by the dark gold. The tears evaporated as soon as they flowed from its eyes, but it was indeed crying, like an abandoned child who had waited alone in endless darkness for thousands of years and finally heard his father's voice.
"Owner……"
These were the last two words he uttered.
The dark golden beam of light abruptly retracted, shrinking back into the halo in Lin Qiye's palm along with all the absorbed energy. The vertical pupil in the center of the halo slowly closed, and the phantom images of the two horns also dissipated. The entire halo shrank back to a charred mark the size of a fingernail, falling back into Lin Qiye's palm.
The monster—or rather, the former Mr. Xun, or the fragment of consciousness replicated by the Bone Tower and reshaped by the crystal core—was no longer a complete body. After being tempered from the inside out by the dark golden beam of light, the fluorescent blue crystal clusters and distorted runes on his body disappeared, replaced by a faint dark golden sheen. His face was no longer distorted, no longer ferocious, and even regained some of the soft features that humans should have. Only his eyes had completely lost their luster, and his body fell from mid-air like a puppet with broken strings, crashing heavily onto the ruins of the altar, where he remained motionless.
Time returned to its normal flow within the hall.
The bone fragments hovering above continued to fall, the magma in the altar pit boiled again, and the luminous tendrils formed from the magma collapsed one by one because they lost their controller. Mo Yuan and A Jiu, who had been bound in place, finally broke free.
Mo Yuan and A Jiu exchanged a glance and then fled outside!