28: Chapter 28 The Failure of the Withered Totem and the Victory of the Anti-Toxin Gene
The God of Corrupt Corpses' bloated body rose and fell slightly on the shoulders of the Stitched Abomination. His murky eyes reflected the eerily silent desert and the solitary figure at its edge.
He had lost his patience.
This game of cat and mouse, after the initial mockery, left only an irritating emptiness.
He would use the bloodiest, most direct way to crush this ignorant, arrogant brat before him, letting all the deities observing this place see clearly the consequence of provoking an established god.
"Minions, charge!"
His voice was no longer a maniacal laugh but a roar saturated with viscous malice, his vocal cords grating like rotting flesh scraping against bone.
"Chop down that tree and burn it for firewood!"
Boom—!
The moment the command was given, the tens of thousands of undead troops beneath him finally moved.
The skeletal warriors in the front row stepped forward on bony legs, ghostly blue soul flames igniting in their hollow eye sockets. Their bone blades were rusty yet carried the chill of death. Following closely were thousands upon thousands of rotting zombies, emitting mindless roars as they dragged their broken bodies across the sand, leaving trails of dark green, foul-smelling drool.
The earth trembled, the yellow sand wailed.
The terrifying oppressive force of the Undead Scourge materialized into a tangible advance at this moment, sweeping towards Su Chen's seemingly flimsy defensive line.
Watching this, the God of Corrupt Corpses' greasy lips curled into a cruel arc.
But he was not yet satisfied.
Contempt was one thing; action had to be ruthless. This was the bloody iron rule he had distilled from countless god wars. He would never give Su Chen any possible chance for a comeback, not even one in a billion.
Therefore, from the very beginning, he would snuff out all of his opponent's hopes.
His bloated hand plunged violently into the rotting flesh of his own chest. After a sickening sound of tearing, he actually pulled something out from within.
Hum—!
It was a totem.
A totem ten meters tall, its entire body pieced together from countless twisted, wailing, ash-white bones.
Atop the totem was a massive dragon skull with hollow eye sockets; its base was a dense pile of human skulls. Countless tiny runes flowed through the gaps in the bones, emitting a deathly aura that stirred the soul.
[Sixth-Tier Divine Artifact · Death Withering Totem]!
This divine artifact was one of the cores of his divine kingdom system, a terrifying weapon of slaughter forged only after he massacred an entire living plane and extracted the life essence and death curses of billions of living beings.
Specially designed to counter all living creatures!
"Brat, pay the price for your ridiculous arrogance!"
With a vicious laugh, the God of Corrupt Corpses summoned all his strength and hurled this incredibly heavy bone totem with all his might towards the center of the battlefield!
The totem tore through the scorching air with a shrill whistle, like a falling white star.
BOOM!!!
With a deafening crash, the totem slammed violently into the sandy ground at the center of the battlefield, kicking up sand waves dozens of meters high.
The moment it landed, the densely packed runes on the totem suddenly flared to life, emitting wails that seemed to come from the deepest depths of the underworld.
A visible gray ripple, centered on the totem, abruptly expanded!
This was not an energy shockwave, but a curse on the level of rules.
Wherever the ripple passed, the heat in the air was instantly drained, and the sand grains were coated in a deathly gray-white pallor.
"Die!"
"Wail under the Withering Curse!"
The God of Corrupt Corpses spread his arms wide, his expression maniacal and intoxicated, as if he had already seen the scene he envisioned.
That gray wave of death would sweep across the entire battlefield in an instant.
The wyverns in the sky would shrivel and plummet like punctured balloons, the ants on the ground would turn to dust on the spot, and even that enormous mother tree would lose all vitality in an instant, becoming a piece of rotten, withered wood.
All life would wither under the might of his supreme divine artifact!
However.
The anticipated wails did not sound.
On the battlefield, there was still only the thunderous tread of the charging undead army and the monotonous shrieks of the wyverns.
One second passed.
Two seconds passed.
That gray ripple that swept through everything had already passed through the front lines of the Steel-Fanged Ant formation, through the circling Corrupted Wyverns in the sky, and even through that colossal mother tree, the ultimate target.
The entire battlefield was deathly silent.
Nothing happened.
Nothing. Happened. At all.
The maniacal grin on the God of Corrupt Corpses' face froze.
He watched helplessly as that gray ring of death swept over those lowly bugs like a harmless breeze.
Those pitch-black Steel-Fanged Ants not only did not instantly wither, turn to dust, or become desiccated corpses.
Instead, the moment they were touched by the gray ripple, a layer of eerie, profound dark green phosphorescent light suddenly flared on their thick carapaces.
That light brimmed with tyrannical vitality, carrying a primitive and domineering toxicity, as if it treated the death curse as some insignificant nutrient, instantly devouring and dissolving it.
[System Alert: Detected instant-death curse attack...]
[System Alert: 'Primordial Ten Thousand Toxins' gene activated...]
[System Alert: Full immunity achieved!]
A series of system prompts rang out in Su Chen's mind, yet they sounded like the loudest slaps, striking the God of Corrupt Corpses' face with brutal force.
"This..."
The God of Corrupt Corpses' murky eyeballs bulged wildly from their sockets from excessive shock, almost popping out.
He stared fixedly at those unscathed bugs, then looked in disbelief at the totem still emanating death energy.
His mind went completely blank.
"How is this possible?!"
A sharp, distorted shriek was squeezed from his throat.
"That's a Sixth-Tier divine artifact! An artifact specifically designed to counter living creatures!"
His voice was filled with incomprehensible madness and collapse.
"Your bugs... your bugs aren't living beings?!"
High above, atop the mother tree.
Su Chen hovered quietly, the golden sunlight gilding him with a halo of sanctity.
He looked down at the God of Corrupt Corpses, who appeared crazed and demonic. The emotion revealed in his eyes was something close to pity.
Like a being from a higher civilization looking down upon a primitive still playing with mud.
"Times have changed, old man."
His voice was soft, yet it clearly pierced through the entire battlefield, reaching the ears of the God of Corrupt Corpses and all the observing deities.
"My Zerg Swarm has long since completed genetic ascension."
The moment his words fell, the pity in Su Chen's eyes vanished, replaced by bone-chilling coldness.
He raised his right hand and slashed it down violently.
It was a signal representing slaughter and termination.
"Sarah, cut him down!"
The command was as binding as divine law.
Behind Su Chen, the figure that had been standing motionless all along could no longer restrain its boiling battle intent.
The Queen of Blades Sarah's crimson eyes flashed with explosive killing intent!
Hum!
Her figure vanished from her spot in an instant, transforming into an ink-green phantom impossible for the naked eye to track.
She didn't even glance at the zombies and skeletal cannon fodder charging ahead. Those lowly creations weren't even worthy of a second look from her.
Her target, from the very beginning, was only one.
The deity's true body, standing on the shoulders of the Stitched Abomination!
The ink-green stream of light tore through space, ignoring the dense formations of the undead army. With a straight, unstoppable, and resolute momentum, it shot towards the God of Corrupt Corpses!