238: Broken Covenant

The roaring of the black tortoise as it broke through the permafrost of ten thousand years became the bell toll of a trap.

The moment it burst from the ice, the ambush descended.

Three ghostly blue phantoms, like venomous fangs reaching out from Hell, tore through the pitch-black, frigid deep water, and from three completely different directions, they bit down hard on the submersible that had just regained its freedom!

Those were not energy beams at all, but three physical harpoons condensed from extreme Divine Power!

The harpoons were inscribed with twisted and ancient demonic patterns. The moment they touched the ship's armor, those patterns seemed to come alive, spreading wildly like bloodthirsty vines, completely locking down and freezing the entire submersible's energy circuits!

Inside the bridge, ear-splitting alarms and the groaning of metal structures under unbearable strain blended together. All the lights flickered wildly at that moment, finally turning into a dazzling scarlet.

"Alarm! Encountering unknown anti-energy field attack! Energy shield forcibly disintegrated! Main and auxiliary power reactor output forcibly interrupted!"

"Rudder failure! Steering System locked! We, we're just a nailed-down tin can now!"

Xiao Zhao, the young crew member in charge of the helm, looked at all the motionless dashboards and shrieked, his voice filled with unbelievable terror.

Through the violently shaking crystal porthole, everyone finally saw the true face of the attackers.

Or rather, nine cold, water-suspended Deities.

They were five meters tall, their profound dark ice bodies seemingly able to absorb all surrounding light. At the joint connections, silent rotating energy vortices emitted a heart-pounding oppressive power.

Their faces were smooth as mirrors, without eyes, ears, nose, or mouth. Only a scarlet, gem-like Soul core was embedded in the center of their brows, like the eyes of devils indifferently watching the ants of the mortal world.

Nine Puppets, no more, no less, formed the most standard Three Talents Killing Array, trapping the immobile black tortoise in the center.

They floated silently, and that absolute sense of oppression originating from the Soul level solidified the already chaotic air in the bridge into a tangible entity.

Oriental Shuo's emaciated figure walked to the front of the bridge. He ignored the piercing alarms in his ears, his already cloudy old eyes staring directly at the frozen Puppets outside. A thought, like a spring breeze melting into rain, was transmitted to those nine killing machines.

"We bear no ill will, having come in pursuit of an ancestral covenant. We humbly request..."

His communication was not yet complete.

The response he received was an extreme, pure killing intent.

One of the Puppets instantly condensed a cold, gleaming ice spear.

Then, it hurled it forward!

Swoosh... The ice spear seemed to tear through the boundaries of time and space, transforming into an extremely fast phantom that vanished from its original spot.

The next instant, the black tortoise bridge's special crystal porthole, capable of withstanding tens of thousands of tons of deep-sea pressure, was silently pierced through like the most fragile thin paper.

The ice spear precisely impaled the chest of the screaming crew member, Xiao Zhao, from earlier, and the immense inertia pinned his entire body against the alloy wall behind him!

Xiao Zhao's scream couldn't even complete its second syllable before it abruptly stopped.

Blood was about to gush out but was instantly frozen by the terrifying cold Qi emanating from the spear shaft, a cold Qi that seemed capable of freezing the Soul.

The look of utter terror on his face was eternally fixed in that last second, transforming him into a twisted and despairing ice sculpture.

Pale frost, centered on him, bloomed like a flower of death, completely freezing the warm flesh and cold metal bulkhead into one.

The burst of emergency power was fleeting, that force only pushing the nine Puppets back a hundred meters.

They quickly reassembled in the darkness, their ghostly blue Soul cores flickering in the deep, dark water, like vultures waiting to feast on a corpse, full of patience and cruelty.

Inside the black tortoise's bridge, silence replaced the alarms.

"Emergency power exhausted, main engine repair program forcibly interrupted, restart requires seventeen minutes.

The shield System is completely paralyzed. We are now a living coffin."

Li Xue凝's voice broke the suffocating silence. She had quickly checked the ship's status, her voice terrifyingly calm.

Oriental Shuo stood before the young ice sculpture. His emaciated hand trembled slightly in mid-air, wanting to brush away the solidified astonishment and pain on that young face, but ultimately, it did not fall.

The covenant he had upheld his entire life brought him, instead, a spear shot directly at him and the tragic death of his kinsman!

"They are hunting, but their target is not just us."

Su Lei's cold voice rang out behind the two.

His eyes were slightly closed. In that very instant, a powerful mental imprint had brutally Wedge Li Xue凝 and Oriental Shuo's Sea of Consciousness.

Segments of chaotic battle perspectives, surges of bloodthirsty killing instinct, and a cold, clear command exploded in their minds: hunt all outsiders, offer sacrifices to the sleeping queen.

"The second batch, prey..."

Oriental Shuo slowly closed his eyes, and when he opened them again, the sharpness and killing intent of a Sword Saint had re-coalesced.

Only this time, that killing intent was no longer peaceful, but carried a madness of 'jade and stone burning together' after the collapse of a belief.

"Someone came in before us."

"They triggered the alert line here, otherwise, the scale of the ambush we'd be facing right now would be at least ten times larger."

Su Lei walked to the pierced crystal porthole. Biting cold wind, carrying ice shards, furiously poured in, but he seemed oblivious, merely gazing at the enormous City of Frozen Ice outside.

"To survive the encirclement of these monsters, and even to so precisely divert the trouble to us, the first intruders are not good people."

As soon as his voice fell, deep within the distant ice city, several clusters of energy, filled with blasphemous and defiling connotations, suddenly erupted!

Immediately after, violent and muffled explosions penetrated the thick ice and seawater.

That was not an attack from the ice Puppets.

Forgotten Ones Sect.

This name, representing taboo and disaster, simultaneously appeared in the minds of the three people.

"They want to use explosions to lure more Puppets over, making us their shield!"

Li Xue凝 instantly understood the other party's malicious scheme.

"We cannot sit back and do nothing."

Su Lei suddenly turned around, his eyes like ten-thousand-year-old ice, his will like a drawn blade.

"Abandon the black tortoise."

"What?"

Oriental Shuo turned his head sharply.

"If we stay here, in seventeen minutes, we will be torn to shreds by an endless horde of Puppets and another group of rats hiding in the dark."

Su Lei pointed to the tallest white giant tower in the center of the city.

"That's where the crown of wisdom is, and it's also the most energy-concentrated and best-defended place in this city. We need to go there."