29: Chapter 29 Underground Raid and the Deadly Strike of the Mother Tree's Poisonous Mist
The dark green streak of light was the prelude to death.
It tore through space, and it tore through the God of Corrupt Corpses's last shred of hope.
That light broke the sound barrier, even surpassing the limits of thought, carving a straight, lethal trajectory through the undead army's impenetrable formation.
Everything in its path, whether snarling skeletons or sluggish zombies, turned silently to dust the instant they made contact with the streak.
They were not cut down, but were erased from the very plane of existence by a higher-tier life energy.
From beginning to end, the target of the Queen of Blades Sarah was solely the divine entity standing upon the Stitched Abomination's shoulder.
Those low-level undead constructs weren't even worthy of being obstacles in her path.
"Stop her! Stop her now!"
Watching the female god of slaughter, wreathed in the terrifying pressure of the seventh rank, charging toward him with an unstoppable momentum, the shock and astonishment on the God of Corrupt Corpses's face finally transformed into pure terror.
His two murky eyeballs trembled violently, the soul fire in their sockets flickering madly, nearly extinguished by the killing intent rushing toward him.
The dignity of a deity vanished without a trace, leaving only the most primal instinct for survival.
He roared insanely, divine power surging from his body as he desperately commanded the few most elite Stitched Abominations around him, attempting to build a wall of flesh and blood.
"Trying to move?"
A frigid voice sounded, not seeming to come from high above, but directly from the depths of his soul.
"Did you ask for my permission?"
Su Chen's voice held not a trace of emotion.
He still hovered at the peak of the mother tree, the golden sunlight illuminating his indifferent profile, like a deity judging the mortal world.
His gaze had long since locked onto the entire battlefield.
The moment the God of Corrupt Corpses gave his order, Su Chen's command was issued in tandem.
An intangible psychic wave instantly crossed a thousand meters, piercing deep into the earth.
"Lurkers, Impale!"
Boom!
Boom! Boom! Boom!
The ground in the middle of the battlefield, trampled solid by the undead army, groaned under unbearable strain.
Then, the earth collapsed with a thunderous roar!
It was as if hundreds of slumbering earth dragons had chosen that moment to turn over simultaneously.
The two thousand Lurkers, having stewed for so long in the deep, dark tunnels below, their killing intent accumulated to its peak, received the highest command from their monarch.
Their time of lying in wait was over.
The feast of slaughter had begun!
Thud—!
Thud—! Thud—!
That wasn't the sound of churning earth.
It was the sound of blades piercing flesh and bone, so dense it formed a continuous cacophony!
Countless spines, several meters long and gleaming with a chilling cold light, shot up from the depths of the earth without any warning!
It was a forest of deathly spears rising from hell.
Every single spine precisely targeted an undead unit above.
The phalanx of Stitched Abominations preparing to obey the divine decree and intercept the Queen of Blades instantly suffered a devastating blow.
Their proud, thick hides were as fragile as paper before spines capable of piercing alloy armor.
Thump!
One of the largest Stitched Abominations, having just taken a step, had its abdomen pierced by three massive spines. The tremendous force lifted its entire body into the air.
Its belly was torn wide open. The stitched-together, partially digested limbs and foul-smelling entrails within, mixed with dark green corpse blood, cascaded down like a waterfall.
Rows upon rows of zombies were precisely skewered by the longer, thinner spines, strung up like candied haws on bamboo sticks, hanging in mid-air, twitching feebly.
The once orderly, murderous undead formation was shattered in an instant, transforming into a bloody, flesh-strewn hell on earth.
The battlefield was brutally torn open by this sudden subterranean assault.
But this was only the beginning.
There wasn't the slightest ripple in Su Chen's eyes.
As if the bloody scene before him was merely a routine exchange of pieces on a chessboard.
His second command followed immediately.
Cold, succinct, and brooking no argument.
"Rott, release the poison."
Whoosh—
That command was like the key turning a doomsday switch.
Far to the rear of the Zerg Swarm, the Abyssal Poison mother tree, towering like a mountain range, saw hundreds of giant bud-like spouts on its massive canopy bloom simultaneously.
An indescribable, suffocating sense of oppression enveloped the entire battlefield.
There was no earth-shattering roar, only a low, drawn-out hiss of expelled gas.
A wall of pure malevolence and destruction, a purple-black cloud, blotted out the sky, pressing forward with an all-devouring momentum.
This was no ordinary fog.
This was the ultimate weapon fused with the legendary eighth-rank toxic strain 'Abyssal Gaze'—Abyssal Poison Mist!
Sizzle—
A sharp, grating sound of corrosion became the sole dominant melody on the battlefield.
The wall of purple-black poison mist surged over the undead army's lines like the most violent tsunami.
The first to bear the brunt were those undead impaled on the spines or grievously wounded on the ground.
The moment they touched the mist, their bodies began to emit thick smoke violently.
It wasn't steam, but the lament of their flesh, bones, and soul fire being decomposed and dissolved by this overwhelmingly potent toxin.
The rotting flesh of the zombies visibly turned into pools of black pus.
The resilient bodies of the Stitched Abominations lasted less than two seconds longer before the mist, dissolving completely, leaving behind only incomplete giant skeletons that then began to mottle and crumble.
Even the sixth-rank artifact, the 'Death Withering Totem,' which the God of Corrupt Corpses still regarded as his final trump card and which still emitted faint gray ripples, did not escape unscathed.
The Abyssal Poison Mist enveloped it.
Under the mist's corrosive touch, the totem—reputed to specialize in countering living beings and forged from divine bones—began to show a web of fine cracks on its hard surface.
The runes inscribed upon the totem dimmed one after another.
The aura of death it emanated, faced with this more primitive, more domineering abyssal poison, was like a candle in the wind, swiftly extinguished.
"No! My artifact!"
"My army!"
The God of Corrupt Corpses's distorted shriek now sounded filled with boundless despair and anguish.
He watched helplessly as his undead legion melted away in swathes, like snow thrown into a furnace.
He watched helplessly as the artifact he relied on for his dominance cracked and crumbled within the poisonous fog.
Attacked from both front and rear.
Above, a world-ending poisonous cloud blotted out the sky.
Below, hellish bone spikes erupted without warning.
And in between, there was that rapidly approaching dark green reaper, and the Corrupted Wyverns circling in the sky, ready to dive at any moment.
This was a checkmate situation.
This was a massacre, completely asymmetrical, that held no suspense from the very beginning!