69: Chapter 69 Blade of Desperation

"Is that thing your heart, or is it your battery?"

This question made the temperature in the secret chamber drop another two degrees.

Nogami's blade tip paused for a split second—so brief that if Yan Zheng hadn't been staring fixedly at the blade, he wouldn't have noticed.

But that instant was enough.

Enough for Yan Zheng to confirm one thing: that crystal was related to Nogami.

"A question not worth answering."

Nogami's voice returned to that monotone, menu-reading flatness.

"The dead do not need answers."

Yan Zheng: ( ꐦ ˘ ͈ ᗝ ˘ ͈ )

The Dark Energy longsword carved a black arc through the air, moving so fast that Yan Zheng only saw a blurry afterimage between the start and the finish.

He pulled the short blade he'd confiscated from a ninja out of his toolkit and held it horizontally before his chest with both hands.

Metal clashed.

The moment the short blade's body made contact with the Dark Energy blade, Web-like cracks appeared on it. High-frequency vibrations traveled from the hilt to his palms, then surged up his arms all the way to his shoulder blades.

Then, the short blade snapped.

It broke cleanly in two. The upper half flipped twice in the air before landing with a clatter on the stone floor three meters away.

The aftermath of the Dark Energy didn't stop when the blade broke; that black Impact slammed directly into Yan Zheng's chest, lifting him right off the ground.

The sensation of his back hitting the chamber wall was like being run over by a van going thirty miles per hour.

Yan Zheng: ( ꐦ ； ᗝ ； )

His head struck the inscribed stone wall, and a burst of white light exploded before his eyes.

He slid down the wall, his knees slamming into the stone floor, the taste of rust welling up in his mouth.

"Very slow."

Nogami's footsteps as he approached were unhurried, the sound of his wooden clogs striking the stone floor carrying the rhythm of a funeral drumbeat.

"Your puppet is very interesting, but the controller themselves is no different from an ordinary person."

Yan Zheng wiped the blood from the corner of his mouth with the back of his hand and looked up at the White figure walking against the light.

"Sir, this is the first time someone has called me ordinary to my face. I'm a little sad."

"You do not need to be sad."

Nogami stopped three meters away, his blade tip pointing at the ground, his posture so relaxed it was as if he were facing a scarecrow in a training ground.

"Because sadness requires time, and you no longer have any."

Yan Zheng: ( ꐦ ⌓ ꐦ )

He pushed himself up against the wall, the remaining half of the short blade still clutched in his right hand. The break was jagged, and the longest metal spike was no more than ten centimeters long.

His brain was racing.

Faster than at any other time in his life.

Secret chamber, runes, suppressing Undead Energy.

The Undead Knight couldn't get in, the Brute couldn't get in, not even a single skeletal finger could reach inside.

What about his system?

The Mental Power link was still there, and the system panel could still be opened, but all functions related to "Undead Manipulation" were grayed out and unclickable.

The gray buttons on the panel were like a row of dead lightbulbs mocking him.

No, not all of them were gray.

When Nogami took his second step, Yan Zheng glanced down at the corner area of the system panel. There was a button there he had never used before; the text was very small, and the color was dark yellow.

[Emergency Material Injection (Temporary)].

The prompt text next to it was even smaller: [Temporarily inject a stored material into the host's body to gain the material's corresponding ability. Time limit: 60 seconds. After the time ends, the host will suffer severe physical backlash. Cooldown: 72 hours.]

Yan Zheng's pupils constricted.

"Sir, may I ask you a second question?"

Nogami's blade rose, this time pointing at the top of Yan Zheng's head. The opening stance was a standard Iaido overhead slash.

"No."

"Then I won't ask."

Yan Zheng: ( ˵ ꐦ ✧ ω ✧ ˵ )

Nogami's second slash came down.

Yan Zheng rolled to the side, the blade's wind grazing his scalp; a few strands of hair were swept up by the Dark Energy and turned into black mist.

The stone floor was cleaved by the slash, leaving a two-finger-wide crack with a dark red light glowing at the bottom.

As he rolled to the edge of the altar, Yan Zheng's fingers frantically scrolled through the system panel.

Material library list.

"The Hand ritual bones, no, these are Undead materials; they're as useless as junk in this room."

"Reinforced ninja bones, no, same logic."

"Photon Absorption and Release gene."

Yan Zheng's fingers stopped.

Photon ability, sourced from one of the core materials of the Undead Knight, but essentially a Mutant gene ability.

Unrelated to the Undead.

Unrelated to mysticism.

The secret chamber's inscriptions suppressed "Undead Energy" and "Dark Energy."

They did not suppress Mutant genes.

He looked up at the black crystal above the altar, then back at Nogami, who was sheathing his blade to gather strength.

"Sir."

Yan Zheng pushed himself up from the floor using the hilt of the broken short blade. His gold-rimmed glasses were crooked on his nose, and there was a crack on the lens.

"You just said I was an ordinary person."

"That statement is half-right."

Nogami's third slash came down.

Iaido slash, faster than the previous two.

The Dark Energy longsword, wrapped in a black vortex, slashed down from above, cutting through the air with a shrill whistle.

At that moment, Yan Zheng pressed that dark yellow button.

[Emergency Material Injection initiated.]

[Injecting material: Photon Absorption and Release gene.]

[Temporarily injecting...]

[Countdown: 60 seconds.]

Yan Zheng: ( ˵ ꐦ ✦ ᴗ ✦ ˵ )

His hands erupted with golden light in an instant.

It wasn't the steady, elegant halo of the Knight, filtered through a skeleton.

It was something that burst directly from beneath his skin—raw, violent, like a Sun had been stuffed into human veins and then exploded.

Yan Zheng's palms instinctively raised above his head.

The golden Photon Impact collided head-on with the Dark Energy longsword in mid-air.

The inscriptions in the secret chamber all lit up at that moment.

Not the slow, dark red pulse from before, but a frantically throbbing white-hot color, like an overloaded transformer screaming in silence.

A wave of air exploded from the point where light and dark collided, and the black iron spikes at the four corners of the altar were ripped out by the roots, flying toward the four walls like four darts.

The stone walls cracked, and rubble flew everywhere.

Yan Zheng was pushed back two steps by the air wave, only stopping when his heels hit the base of the altar.

And Nogami was also pushed back three steps.

His Dark Energy longsword's outer blade shattered during the collision, and the remaining blade shortened by nearly half.

He looked down at his blade.

Then he looked up at the golden light still throbbing on Yan Zheng's hands.

"You... are also a Mutant?"