47: Chapter 47 The Toad God, I'm Doomed Now

Xie Feng stood inside that small, silver-white circle, his spiritual energy dropping at a rate he could clearly perceive.

The hyphae probed inward at the edge of the light, retracting the moment they touched it, only to stretch out again; with every extension and retraction, they reached half an inch further than the last time.

"Buy time?"

No, the anomaly would not wait in the ruins; it would go out. The city-sealing grand formation was still pressing down on top of Cangyun City, and hundreds of thousands of commoners could not escape. Xie Tianxiong and Tu Ziguan were still outside.

This anomaly had just absorbed the gaze of the Primordial Immortals and become stronger than before; it would not be satisfied with squatting in the ruins of the City Defense Mansion.

It would go out and kill people until the entire city became a hotbed for hyphae and black mucus.

"Fight to the death?"

That wouldn't work either.

His strongest trump card was the Gate Guide, but he had already tried it.

The mark would absorb the gaze; however much he drew, it would eat, and the more it ate, the stronger it became.

Using the Gate Guide against it was equivalent to feeding it.

The cards he could use had already been played out.

In an instant, Xie Feng noticed that drop of mucus.

The black mucus dripping from Meng Yi's chest fell to the ground. When Xie Feng's spiritual energy swept across it, that drop of mucus suddenly moved in his direction.

It was moving on its own; the semi-solid colloid wriggled against the ground, resembling a snail without a fixed form.

Its direction of movement was not random; it was moving toward Meng Yi.

Xie Feng's spiritual energy locked onto that drop of mucus.

"No, I've seen black mucus many times before, but the drop of mucus in front of me has no sweet taste."

Xie Feng's spiritual energy repeatedly swept over that wriggling black colloid, replaced instead by a purer, more primitive stench—like silt dug from the deepest parts of the underground, unpolluted by anything else, carrying only the scent of the earth itself compressed for hundreds of millions of years.

The way that drop of mucus moved was also changing, no longer flowing slowly against the ground as it had before.

It contracted; the semi-solid colloid constantly changed its shape during movement, sometimes stretching into a thin line, sometimes shrinking into a spherical mass, and sometimes extending several extremely fine pseudopodia from the sphere to prop against the ground and drag itself forward.

Xie Feng's right eye socket suddenly twitched tightly!

It was not an anomaly derivative, but a true, living juvenile mythos creature that did not belong to this world.

The hyphae on Meng Yi's body were anomalies, and the mist-like face was an anomaly.

The black mucus dripped out from the mark of the Great Old Ones; it did not share the same origin as the hyphae and mist.

The hyphae and mist were native anomalies forcibly stitched onto Meng Yi's body.

But the mucus came from the core of the mark; that was the power of the Great Ones themselves.

That mark was not a mere symbol; it was secreting.

Why was it secreting? Absorbing?

Was it hungry?

What was it eating?

This thing was a Cthulhu-mythos creature, not an anomaly derivative—had it been affected by the anomalies?

His remaining spiritual energy poured into the Gate Guide, beginning to spur his thoughts.

Son of Abhoth?

No, the Son of Abhoth was gray and possessed a weird flesh-like texture.

Shoggoth?

A Shoggoth was a black colloid, but its size was too large, and Shoggoths would emit a "tekeli-li" sound; these mucus droplets did not emit any sound.

Not large in size, black, colloidal, constantly morphing, secreted from the body of a Great Old One...

Something clicked into place in Xie Feng's mind.

"Formless Spawn!? I knew I guessed right back then! This mark belongs to the God of Toads!" Xie Feng cried out in pleasant surprise.

This was the progeny of Tsathoggua, whose moniker was the God of Toads; it was the laziest among the Great Old Ones, squatting in some underground cave year-round and hardly ever moving.

In the original work, it would get hungry and eat sacrifices.

Therefore, its progeny, the Formless Spawn, would acquire food for it.

The Formless Spawn was something secreted by Tsathoggua—black, colloidal, lacking a fixed form, constantly wriggling and morphing.

The mucus before his eyes was the juvenile form of the Formless Spawn.

The source of the gaze brought back sixty years ago was the God of Toads!

It was just that Xie Tianxiong hid it so well, making Meng Yi think it was some celestial Cultivation Technique and get it onto his own body; now, he could also be considered part of the Xie Family's direct lineage!

"Way to go! Dad!"

Tsathoggua's mark on the Xie Family's direct lineage wasn't just a simple symbol; it was a label tagged onto food!

If the anomaly had been allowed to act entirely on its own, its derivative being so cautious definitely wouldn't have left any traces. Unfortunately, Tsathoggua's power was not of the same origin; they couldn't control the Formless Spawn!

That was why Xie Feng could see those things that looked like black mucus.

The hyphal anomaly and the mist-like anomaly treated Tsathoggua's mark as their own source of power, but they didn't know that the mark was also eating them!

Using their spiritual energy to feed the Formless Spawn, once the Formless Spawn took form, it would eat the hyphae on Meng Yi's body, consume the mist-like anomaly, devour Meng Yi's skin pouch, and then leave Cangyun City to return to Tsathoggua's side, regurgitating everything it had eaten back to the maternal body.

To Tsathoggua, the anomaly contamination of the entire Cangyun City was nothing more than takeout.

"You damned little cupcake! I'll speed things up for you!" Xie Feng slammed his blind stick against the ground, deciding to take a gamble.

All his spiritual energy simultaneously poured into his right eye socket, injecting all of it in one go.

The Gate Guide was violently pulled open from the depths of his eye socket, and the gaze of the Primordial Immortals surged in like a breached dam.

His chest grew hot at the same time, and Ghatanothoa's mark responded to the Gate Guide.

Cthulhu's eldest son sensed the gaze of the Primordial Immortals and began to ooze outward unwilling to show weakness.

The powers of two gods were simultaneously activated within his body.

Xie Feng picked up the veil from the ground, and the aura of the Bloated Woman diffused from it.

Sweet, rotting, like a large handful of withered petals crushed and scattered in the air.

The veil spread out in the air, releasing the aura of the Bloated Woman without any reservation.

The sweet scent instantly overpowered the stench of the hyphae and the coldness of the mist, and a layer of oil film blanketed the entire ruins.

All the wriggling black mucus on the ground stopped simultaneously; they changed direction, no longer crawling toward Meng Yi, and turned entirely toward the floating veil.

The mark on Meng Yi's chest swelled violently, grayish-green scales frantically turning outward from the depression, a black-red core bulging out from deep within the scales, and the pulsing frequency suddenly accelerating.

It was absorbing frantically; the essence of the mark was devouring. It had been designed by the God of Toads to devour all supernatural power it came into contact with, but it had an upper limit.

It was merely a mark, and its devouring capacity had a threshold.

Xie Feng pressed all the light within his right eye socket forward, shining it onto the mark on Meng Yi's chest.

The gaze of the Primordial Immortals.

The mark of the King of Volcanoes.

The aura of the Bloated Woman.

Three types of power surged into Tsathoggua's mark simultaneously.

The pulsing of the mark suddenly accelerated, so fast that the grayish-green scales didn't have time to flip out layer by layer, bursting apart in entire sheets instead.

The black-red core bulged out from deep within the scales, growing larger and larger, and cracks began to appear on its surface.

What seeped out from the cracks was not black mucus, but something brighter, hotter, and carrying a dark red luster.

Meng Yi's body began to swell. The anomaly seemed to have noticed something and frantically tried to withdraw its own power.

Hyphae frantically peeled off from its body, and the mist-like anomaly's face emitted a prolonged shrieking cry. Its three apertures opened wide simultaneously, and mist was sucked out from the apertures, pouring entirely into the core of the mark.

It was devouring all the anomaly power on its body, attempting to use everything it could absorb to fill the fissures inside the mark torn open by the overload.

The three powers were still pouring inward. Xie Feng's spiritual energy was about to hit rock bottom, so he pressed his very last bit of spiritual energy into the Gate Guide.

The Gate Guide inside his right eye socket emitted an extremely slight tremor, like a string pulled to its limit.

Tsathoggua's mark exploded.

Discovering that nothing happened, the anomaly emitted giggles resembling a hollow whistle from its three apertures.

...

Then, that arm reached out.

That arm did not follow any biological structure within human cognition; it wasn't pushed outward from inside the core, but probed over from some deeper, more distant direction that didn't belong to this space at all.

That arm was extremely thick—disproportionately thick—and its surface was covered with a layer of extremely short, dense black downy hair. That downy hair shimmered with a damp luster in the dark red light leaking from the core, with a tiny droplet of mucus hanging from the tip of every single hair.

The skin beneath the downy hair approached that plump, slightly wrinkled texture found on a toad's belly.

"The God of Toads... in person?" Xie Feng muttered to himself.

Five fingers spread open. Rather than fingers, they were better described as five plump fleshy protrusions extending from the palm. At the end of each fleshy protrusion grew a flat, slightly depressed bony plate, the surface of which was covered with dense pores that continuously oozed that damp black mucus.

There were no webbings between the fleshy protrusions, but the plump flesh and skin caused them to stick together when opened.

Those five fleshy protrusions grasped Meng Yi.

Meng Yi's consciousness was awakened at the very last moment, forcibly ground out from his deep slumber by the mere existence of that hand.

His right eye widened abruptly, bloodshot veins bursting within the human eyeball, his pupils contracting to the size of a pinprick before beginning to tremble frantically.

His mouth opened, squeezing out a crushed scream from his throat. When the anomaly and his voice rushed out from his mouth, they had already been distorted by the existence of that hand into a frequency that human throats could not possibly produce.

His head sank into the core; the entire person was grabbed upside down and pulled into the core.

As the last section of that hand's fleshy protrusions slid past the edge of the core, the black downy hair flashed one last time in the dark red light.

The ruins fell silent.

Only the derivative anomaly mist clusters and hyphae all around were constantly drawing closer to Xie Feng, who had collapsed from exhaustion.

"... I'm dead for sure this time."