194: Chapter 194 Li Shanyuan, Transformed into a Forbidden Figure
Moreover, what truly made Zhou Kai feel suffocated...
...was that within the haze behind the woman, one eerie figure after another began to emerge.
The first to walk out were Bai Ling and Xiao Hong.
They had been "resurrected" by this ancient city and this woman in an even more distorted and terrifying way!
On Bai Ling's exquisite face hung an extremely stiff and eerie smile.
Her limbs were twisted at anti-human angles, following behind the Cheongsam Woman like a marionette.
Inside Xiao Hong's blind eye socket, countless black tentacles were writhing.
Their bodies appeared a translucent grayish-white, emitting a sense of resentment and deathly stillness.
The appearance of the two women was merely the beginning.
With every step the Cheongsam Woman moved forward...
...a dozen or even dozens more figures would appear in the haze behind her!
There were the elite Ghost Controllers who had previously entered the ancient city with Zhou Kai.
Some had been cut in half at the waist, others had only half a head left; all dragged their broken husks, silently gathering behind the woman.
There were even hideous taboos Zhou Kai had never seen before, emitting S-Rank or even SS-Rank Rule Power fluctuations!
Deformed giant apes with three heads, flesh-and-blood butchers covered in human eyes...
Densely packed, hundreds and thousands of them!
They were all existences that had been swept into the ancient city by the rules!
Now, they had all become Puppets controlled by the woman.
"Bai Ling... Xiao Hong..."
Zhou Kai looked at his former comrades-in-arms, who had now turned into this miserable state—neither human nor ghost.
At this moment, extreme fear was replaced by endless rage and unwillingness.
"Aaaahhhhh!!!!"
Blood wept from Zhou Kai's eyes; like a cornered beast driven to desperation, he let out a shrill roar toward the sky.
He was unwilling!
He was unwilling to die in this ghostly place so inexplicably, and even after death... to be eternally enslaved!
Boom!!!
The instant Zhou Kai's rage reached its peak.
In the Void Realm behind him, a dull boom echoed once more!
The stone tablet phantom that had originally dissipated completely actually... solidified in an instant!
Green light flared brilliantly.
That broken tablet, covered in eerie patterns and bloodstains, actually began to slowly manifest into a true physical entity!
Immediately following that.
"Roar—!!!"
A Vicious Beast's hiss, more violent and Soul-shaking than before, erupted from beneath the stone tablet!
The Ao Beast phantom descended once again!
And this time, its body was ten times larger!
The silhouette of that ancient descendant—with a dragon's head, tortoise's body, and snake's tail—almost completely burst the entire dark street!
Inside the Rebirth Temple on the West Continent.
Lin Chuan's mind, which had just regained its calm, surged with a violent wave once more.
"Interesting, very interesting, jie jie jie..."
He keenly sensed it.
This descent of the Ao Beast phantom did not rely on the dragon-roar rules that had crossed space.
Instead, it was forced out entirely by the extreme unwillingness and rage within Zhou Kai's body!
"Rumble—!!!"
While Lin Chuan was contemplating, the massive Ao Beast phantom, carrying a majestic Aura that could suppress ten thousand ages, slammed fiercely toward the Cheongsam Woman.
Under this strike, the surrounding space let out an overburdened cracking sound and collapsed in large areas.
However.
Facing this strike that was enough to crush heaven and earth, the Cheongsam Woman holding the Broken-bone Oil-paper Umbrella did not retreat in the slightest.
The pitch-black vortex on her face expanded to its limit at this moment, as if it wanted to swallow the entire world!
Zzzzt—!
The Ao Beast phantom and the pitch-black vortex collided fiercely, producing the ear-piercing sound of rule annihilation.
The moment it touched the vortex, the Ao Beast phantom, which had a sky-toppling Aura, actually became extremely slow, as if it had fallen into a quagmire.
Then, the Ao Beast's massive body began to become transparent and illusory at a rate visible to the naked eye.
The Rule Power suspected to be from a Fallen God was simply too overbearing and unsolvable.
Even a forbidden object from the Kunlun Ruins could not withstand such rules!
Bang!
After holding out for only ten breaths.
The Ao Beast phantom let out an angry roar and collapsed once more.
A deep crack appeared on the surface of the solidified green stone tablet as it shrank back into Zhou Kai's back.
“Pfft!!!”
Zhou Kai bled from all seven orifices, his bones shattered throughout his body, and he slumped onto the ground like a pile of mud.
Within his blood-blurred eyes, there was an endless sense of desolation.
In the end... it still wasn't enough!!
Tap, tap-tap!!
The Cheongsam Woman had already arrived in front of him.
That abyss-like vortex face was less than half a meter away from him.
Desperate coldness continuously swallowed Zhou Kai's Soul.
In the final second before Zhou Kai's consciousness was about to be erased.
"amitabha buddha..."
An extremely eerie yet somewhat familiar Buddhist chant...
...abruptly echoed in this deathly silent ancient city street!
Buzz—!
Accompanying the Buddhist chant.
On the surrounding bluestones, an extremely thick blood-colored mist suddenly rose.
Immediately following that.
Under Zhou Kai's disbelieving gaze.
A figure clad in tattered kasaya and as thin as a skeleton slowly walked out from the blood mist.
"Li... Li Shanyuan?!"
Zhou Kai struggled to widen his eyes, his voice as raspy as two pieces of sandpaper rubbing together.
The newcomer was none other than Li Shanyuan, who had been dismembered and killed by the eerie armored soldiers shortly after entering the ancient city...
But his current state was extremely wrong!
No Life Qi of a living person could be felt from him.
Half of his face was that of a compassionate monk, while the other half was that of a hideous vicious ghost.
His eyes were hollow and lifeless, yet they flickered with an extremely eerie ghostly light.
He had already become a taboo!
"You... you're not dead?" Zhou Kai asked with a struggle.
Li Shanyuan did not speak.
He only silently walked forward, blocking the space between Zhou Kai and the Cheongsam Woman.
Immediately following that.
A terrifying scene occurred!
With Li Shanyuan's appearance.
At the back of the street, squads of armored soldiers appeared!
Then, under Li Shanyuan's rule Control, these eerie soldiers surged forward like a tide.
Using their rusted weapons and broken bodies, they firmly blocked the way in front of the Cheongsam Woman.
Boom! Boom! Boom!
The armored soldiers and the "Bai Ling" and others behind the Cheongsam Woman instantly engaged in a fierce battle.
Although countless armored soldiers fell in just an instant.
Their numbers were simply too many, appearing almost infinite.
They even managed to forcibly halt the Cheongsam Woman's footsteps temporarily!
"Go."
Li Shanyuan let out a non-human, raspy low growl.
He grabbed the limp Zhou Kai, and with a flash of his figure...
...he directly crashed through the door of a nearby ancient wooden building and rushed inside.
Bang!
The wooden door slammed shut, cutting off most of the terrifying sounds of slaughter from the outside.
Inside the house, it was pitch black, filled with a strong stench of rot.
Li Shanyuan threw Zhou Kai onto the floor and slumped down beside him, gasping out large mouthfuls of black gas.
"This... what exactly is going on?"
Zhou Kai endured the intense pain and stared intently at his former comrade, who was now neither human nor ghost.
An extremely complex, bitter smile appeared on Li Shanyuan's half-human, half-ghost face.
"It's a long story."
"I'm already dead..."
His voice was ethereal and eerie, as if coming from another dimension.
"But my will still exists, and it has fused with the 'Mind Taboo' inside my body."
"Furthermore, at the moment of my death, my will and my 'Mind Taboo'... fused with this city!"
"I am now considered a part of this city."
Hearing this.
Not only was Zhou Kai stunned.
But far away on the West Continent, a hint of surprise also rose in Lin Chuan's heart.
Through the Peeping rule, he clearly perceived it.
Li Shanyuan's current horror level was only SS-Rank First Order!
An existence of this level was not even an ant in front of the Cheongsam Woman, who was suspected to be a Fallen God.
But he was actually able to Control some of the eerie armored soldiers in this ancient city!
"I used the fused ancient city rules to temporarily cut off that woman's perception of this area."
Li Shanyuan's voice became increasingly weak.
"But I... cannot take you away from here."
"I cannot leave either."
A flash of despair appeared in his hollow eyes.
"The rules in this city are too vast and too distorted."
"What I fused with is only the tip of the iceberg of the ancient city."
"Unless... I can completely Control this ancient city."
"Otherwise, you and I... will both be trapped here forever until we die."
Completely Control the entire ancient city?
Zhou Kai's heart sank to the bottom once again.