181: Chapter 181 Seven Curses

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Xie Feng opened his eyes in a gray abyss.

He did not remember how he had come here, what his name was, where he came from, or where he was going.

He only remembered one thing: something was ominously repeating the exact same sentence in his head.

That sentence was an ancient will poured directly into the depths of his consciousness, every syllable carrying the corruption and evil unique to gray protoplasm.

Abhoth was speaking to him.

"You once made a pact with Me. You broke it. The God of Toads interceded for you, preserving a wisp of your consciousness. The price is a curse. From now on, you shall climb, crawling all the way before the God of Toads. Until you crawl there, the curse will not cease; after you crawl there, the God of Toads will naturally tell you what to do next. If you stop, if you give up, if you are swallowed by the abyss, I will take back this wisp of consciousness. You will have no more chances."

After hearing these words, Xie Feng blankly lowered his head to look at his own body.

"I am a monster, right? I am not a human?"

His lower body had completely disappeared, replaced by a pool of gray-green colloidal solution that constantly deformed, writhed, and split.

The Son of Abhoth, the larval form of the Source of the Unclean.

That gray-green solution extended downward from his waist, its edges still greedily spreading outward, beginning to silently devour and assimilate upon touching the grayish-white protoplasmic debris on the ground, and then continuing to spread outward.

There was a familiar stitch mark on the palm of his left hand, and something wriggled at the edge of the stitches, as if greeting him.

There was a through-hole in his chest, inside of which floated a constantly beating miniature sun, its dark red core flashing violently at a high-frequency rhythm.

His face was covered by a tattered black veil, most of which was soaked in gray-green mucus.

Beneath the veil, one eye socket was empty, while the other was crammed with three shattered eyeballs.

He did not recognize his own face, his own hands, the miniature sun in his chest, or the pool of constantly writhing gray-green colloidal solution on his lower body.

He only knew that he had to climb up.

He reached his right hand out toward the rock wall.

Those ancient and cold permafrost layers had been soaked by Abhoth's protoplasm for countless years, and the rock wall was covered with foul life.

As soon as his fingertips touched the surface, dozens of cilia ejected from deep within, plunging into his fingernail crevices and the skin of his fingertips, greedily sucking the remaining magic power within his body.

He could not feel pain, but he could feel his magic power value dropping at an extremely slow and steady rate.

He also reached his left hand up.

The sewn-up mouth on the palm of his left hand curled its corners in dissatisfaction when it was pierced, and he tore open the stitches in one motion, the huge mouth immediately beginning to devour the filth in reverse.

He climbed up a step.

The gray-green solution writhed beneath him, the newborn Son of Abhoth larva instinctively repelling the corruption around the mother body.

Upon contact, the edges of the solution began to corrode and annihilate each other, two forces of uncleanness that were of the same origin yet mutually exclusive constantly tug-of-warring across Xie Feng's lower body.

This tug-of-war was consuming his stamina, but he did not know what stamina was; he only knew that the ancient will continuously surging up from the depths of the abyss was still repeatedly echoing in his head.

Night fell and dissipated again.

Xie Feng had climbed on the rock wall for I don't know how long.

His magic power value had been sucked to the bottom by the hyphae, but the miniature sun in his chest was still beating, and every pulsation would surge a small stream of dark red heat from his heart position, barely maintaining his arms from falling off the rock wall.

All the Great Old One marks on his body had fallen silent, and only Abhoth's voice was mercilessly repeating in the depths of his consciousness.

After climbing for who knows how much longer, a dry and ancient permafrost layer gradually appeared on the rock wall, and Abhoth's aura was becoming sparse.

The pool of gray-green solution on his lower body was still writhing, but its edges no longer spread outward frantically.

Before him was a palace composed of countless spider silks.

A half-human-high humanoid spider was continuously, endlessly and diligently weaving a web.

It turned around and saw him with surprise.

"Little one, do not come closer; the aura on your body will corrode my web. I am too busy, I have no time to help you, and you seem to be looking for someone?"

That seemingly beautiful and busy lady spoke to him while weaving her web.

"Yes, lady, I am going to see the God of Toads, but I need to be cursed. Can you help me?"

He felt that this lady was too beautiful, breathtakingly beautiful, like the suffocation of being choked by a spider web, so he subconsciously asked this beauty for help.

"Oh, going to see my good neighbor? Of course you can, little one, but I am too busy. Take this, go, go find It."

The lady gently shook her spider abdomen, and a strand of spider silk was spat out, binding his waist and preventing the Son of Abhoth from continuing to erode upward.

"Thank you, can you tell me your name?"

The amnesiac him asked very politely.

"I would love to as well, alas, no one helps me complete this endless work, so I have no time to peel you out of these wonderful curses. However, you might be of some use to that mage Haren-Dour, who is older than humans."

He used to study magic for the first time across the deep valley, and still lives there today.

The spider web I just completed leads to the door of his house, and your weight is just right to test the strength of the web. Take this spell-binding, cross the bridge to Haren-Dour, and tell him: Atlach-Nacha sent me."

Having said that, the Spider God stepped back and quickly disappeared without a trace.

He quickly crawled along the spider silk to reach the opposite bank.

The end of the spider web connected to a huge staircase.

A coiled giant snake guarded the staircase, its body stained with huge markings, its torso as thick as the waist of a robust soldier.

While making its sharp snake tail rattle like a fork-bell, the giant snake poked out its ferocious head, the sharp fangs in its mouth resembling sickles.

Seeing an even more terrifying monster, the giant snake timidly crawled away.

"I really am a monster."

Thinking this, he crawled past the staircase.

And stepped into Haren-Dour's Palace of a Thousand Pillars.

The bizarre and silent palace rooms were carved out of the gray bedrock of the earth, countless faceless entities composed of smoke wandered anxiously left and right within them, and monster statues with various appearances could be seen everywhere.

The lamps on the dome seemed to float in the dark night, the burning flames resembling ice and rock.

An evil spirit resided within these halls, ancient beyond all human understanding.

Terror crawled everywhere in the palace, like an invisible poisonous snake liberated from sleep.

This was a chair supported by five pillars.

The lofty seat had no stairs, and it seemed that only winged creatures could approach it.

However, upon the seat was a figure shrouded in dense darkness, draped in shadow like a thin veil.

Thousands of distorted faces emerged from the originally smooth walls, resembling countless mad demons.

Their necks were all elongated and probed outward, and their deformed bodies struggled out inch by inch from the stone wall toward his direction.

The same faces also crammed the ground beneath his feet, constantly rolling, swaying, and baring their teeth.

Finally, the figure spoke.

"Thanks for the gift from Atlach-Nacha. I appeared hesitant because I didn't know how to deal with you. My familiars gathered on the walls and ground can't wait to feast, yet the reality is that demand far exceeds supply. I grant you a curse; go, go up and see the God of Toads."

He walked out of the palace and climbed upward.

Finally, finally, in a dark cave, he met the God of Toads.

It extended its huge toad-like head with infinite laziness.

Its eyes opened only a crack, as if still between half-dreaming and half-waking, looking like two phosphorescent-seeping fissures appearing on a black face without eyebrows.

Finally, the curse on his body was cleared away, and he always felt like he had seen this story somewhere before.

The God of Toads slowly spoke:

"You really are a handful. Go, as repayment, go help my progeny."

A portal slowly opened beneath his feet.