75: Chapter 75 Don't Provoke a Paranoid and Violent Madman

Outside the city.

Mo Tang pulled the wooden box, and it began transforming into a Puppet. Gu Jian stood to the side, scanning the surroundings.

The anomalies on the outer edges of the camp were already too numerous to count. Tu Ziguan untied the straps of the oiled canvas wrapping and hoisted this bottom-of-the-trunk treasure onto his shoulder.

"Strike a pose, my precious!"

It was a square iron box with an extremely long iron barrel, the inner walls engraved with spiral grooves. The muzzle end was embedded with a heat-resistant layer forged by Master Huo using old Earth-Fire copper ingots.

A maxim heavy machine gun.

"Is there any high Realm Cultivator! Lend me some spiritual power!"

"I'll do it."

Elder Sun walked over. He and the previously mentioned Steward Sun of Cangyun City came from the same family. Having long heard from younger generations that these few possessed some strange abilities, he simply came over to see if there was any way to break the deadlock.

Not a single person in the Artifact Hall of the Qingyun Sect had ever seen this thing. Mo Tang's eyes widened in shock beside him, and the Puppet in her hand almost dropped to the ground.

Tu Ziguan pressed the ammunition belt into the feed port, gripped the charging handle with his left hand, pulled it back, and let go, resetting the bolt. Elder Sun injected spiritual power. The rune circuits inside the barrel lit up layer by layer from the feed port to the muzzle the instant the spiritual power was infused. The dark golden light patterns rotated and accelerated along the spirals, and the air at the muzzle emitted an extremely sharp charging buzz the moment the rune circuits were activated.

"Come on! Let's go!"

Tu Ziguan let out a strange cry! He viciously pulled the trigger, and bullets condensed from spiritual power spewed out from the muzzle. The gunshot was extremely dense and heavy. A firing rate of six hundred rounds per minute stretched the spiritual power bullets into a dark golden whip of light, sweeping horizontally across the front of the camp.

The leading few lava anomalies were torn to shreds by the bullets, and before the fragments could even hit the ground, they were beaten into even finer slag by the ensuing barrage of bullets. The black sticky substance was nailed to the ground by the bullets, its gel-like body trembling violently under the continuous impact, until after a moment it was beaten into a puddle of stagnant water. Cartridge cases flew out from the side of the receiver, clanging as they landed and piling up into a small mountain of copper at Tu Ziguan's feet.

The Disciples of the Artifact Hall in the camp were all looking over here, several of them with their mouths hanging open. A Fourth Realm Disciple of the Tianque Sect stared at the maxim for several breaths before being pulled back by a Senior Brother to continue forming the array.

The Third Princess stood right in the center of the camp, holding the Phoenix jade talisman in her hand, looking up at the distorted humanoid figure in the sky.

The princess lowered her head, flipped the jade talisman over, and injected spiritual power into it.

The Phoenix crest unfolded from beneath her feet, and the torn opening paved the way all the way forward. A dark golden Phoenix phantom spread its wings within the crest, and wherever its wingtips swept, the plasma structure of the flame-type anomalies trembled violently before the entire area bloomed with golden flames.

The Imperial Guards immediately formed a blade array and cut in, the golden light patterns on their long blades bursting into dazzling golden light in the darkness with every slash.

The Elders of the Tianque Sect embedded the final batch of Seal rune stones into the temporary array bases on the outer perimeter of the camp. Dark red rune light spread from the array bases in all directions, laying down a layer of fire-attribute barrier on the ground.

Qin Tianzong was the first to fly up from the underground fissure. He glanced at the maxim in Tu Ziguan's hand, then at the dark green figure in mid-air, and tossed his detection board onto the nearby rock wall. "I'll ask you what this is when we get back."

Tu Ziguan changed an ammunition belt, pulled the bolt, and pulled the trigger.

The gunfire rang out once more.

On the scorched grassland outside the city, Xie Feng stepped barefoot across the frost and ashes covering the ground, leaning on his cold crystal blind staff. The three-lobed flames in his left eye contracted extremely unstably, his pupils splitting and closing, closing and splitting again.

He suddenly tilted his head at an angle that a normal human cervical spine could never manage, as if someone had called out to him from behind, but behind him there was nothing except the spreading frost.

Within the imagery deep in his consciousness, in a space without direction or distance, black mist churned, and deep within it crouched a three-legged creature.

It had no face, no facial features. On its entire head, only an extremely thick and long tentacle hung down from where its face should have been. The tip of the tentacle split into three lobes, each oozing black slime. Three legs supported a bloated torso.

Its forelimbs—if those could be called forelimbs—held a ten-sided die.

The die was tossed up, tumbled through the air a few times, and landed in a darkness devoid of ground.

The die was tossed for the first time and landed, flashing an image before his eyes:

He saw the exact moment when Yog-Sothoth's Silver Gate first opened deep within his consciousness. Yog-Sothoth's calm Incarnation watched him from behind the door as he knelt in the darkness, trembling all over.

The die showed IX.

The die was tossed for the second time:

Xie Feng knelt on the ground of the Mirror Tomb, his own blood streaming down from his eye sockets, gripping his own eyeball in his hand. The light of The Guide surged out from his hollow eye sockets, shining onto the core of the mirror anomaly.

The die showed IV.

The third image was everything before his eyes right now!

The die rolled continuously across the ground, rolling...

Slowly stopping on III.

The mark of Cthugha flared up fiercely right above his heart, flashing out of control, furiously, and without rhythm. Dark red light plasma surged out from the three-lobed pupils of his left eye, streaming down his cheeks and dripping onto his dark green skin. The extremely short and dense layer of black down on the surface of his skin stood on end after being soaked by the light plasma.

Those lava-like anomalies crouched one by one on the grassland, their core plasma structures becoming incomparably clear in Xie Feng's eyes.

They were enemies.

Those black anomalies were also enemies!

The blue anomalies on the ice surface were all enemies!

Fear surged up from the base of his spine. He feared these anomalies—he feared their shapes, their temperatures, and every sound they made.

Then, amid the wild flashing of Cthugha's mark, that fear instantly transformed into hatred—a pure, unreserved hatred that wanted to grind all these living, writhing, screaming things into dust.

Under paranoia, all of this condensed into a pure... "malice".

Xie Feng took a step forward. His left foot crushed a small patch of the spreading ice layer. The sound of the grayish-blue illusory runes shattering beneath his foot caused the pupils of his left eye to twitch violently. Cthugha's mark flared violently once more, its brightness dimming the Third Princess's newly deployed golden Phoenix flames for an instant.

The next moment, mucus slowly dripped from Xie Feng's entire body onto the ground as Formless Spawn twisted their forms and spread outward. The light on his chest flickered to the extreme, and Fire Vampires leaped and sprang out from within.

The blind staff slowly melted into streams of gray flames, gently wrapping around Xie Feng's hands. The breath of the deep sea blessed him so that he would not be burned by the ice flames.

The mana within his body flowed slowly as Xie Feng casually grabbed a struggling anomaly and sliced it open with his bare hands.

"Kid naf ngl Black Goat, h Yuggoth wgah"

A Dark Young slowly strolled out from the woods. Then Xie Feng grabbed a second anomaly...

The snickering of the three-legged creature was still beside his ear, extremely light and faint, yet overpowering the gunfire of the maxim, the whistling of the Imperial Guards' long blades cleaving the air, and the roaring blaze of the golden Phoenix flames.

Xie Feng could not hear it.