158: Hunted by demonic claws, escape from the abyss
That roar from deep underground was not a simple sonic attack, but contained a chaotic and tyrannical will that struck directly at the Soul! Ye Chen felt his Sea of Consciousness as if hit by a heavy hammer; his vision went black, his blood surged in reverse, and he nearly fell from his light flight. The sheer power of it was terrifying!
He endured the discomfort as the chaos ancestral talisman spun rapidly in his Qi Sea, its clear stream of Chaos rhyme protecting his mind. His speed did not decrease at all; it even increased! The destructive aura coming from behind was like a maggot on a bone, chasing him closely, making his spine chill and his hair stand on end!
“Rumble—!”
The entire grotto completely collapsed! Countless huge black stones mixed with scorching lava fell like a rainstorm! The passage was shaking violently, the rock walls cracking, as if they would close completely at any moment!
Ye Chen pushed his speed to the limit, his figure turning into a blurry gray line in the narrow, twisted, and constantly collapsing passage, perilously avoiding falling boulders and lava flows. His Chaos Domain shrank to within three feet of his body, forcibly pushing aside obstacles and swallowing dissipated energy to provide him with continuous power.
However, the existence from deep underground clearly did not intend to let go of this ant who had disturbed its slumber and taken an important "item"!
“Ssh—!”
A condensed beam of destructive light, interlaced with dark red and pitch black, seemed to possess a life of its own. It ignored the collapsing rock obstacles, instantly piercing through layers of space to chase directly after Ye Chen's back! Wherever the beam passed, even space left a scorched scar that could not close for a long time, emitting a nauseating smell of sulfur and decay!
Fast! Too fast! So fast that Ye Chen didn't have time to make any dodging movements!
At the moment of life and death, Ye Chen's pupils shrank. The Divine Sense that had surged after the Fusion of the ancestral rune fragment allowed him to capture the fatal crisis a split second in advance! He twisted his body violently, placing the guixu sword horizontally behind him, and poured the newly stabilized Chaos Gang Qi from his body into the blade without reservation!
“Chaos Barrier!”
The guixu sword's gray light flared brilliantly, and the blade seemed to instantly transform into a heavy shield flowing with Chaos currents, blocking the destructive beam!
“Bang—!!!!!”
An indescribable explosion erupted in the passage! The destructive beam slammed hard against the Chaos Barrier!
Ye Chen felt as if struck by lightning, his entire being hit head-on by a falling star. A cracking sound of dislocated bones came from his right arm holding the sword, his palm split open, and blood instantly stained the hilt! A violent, chaotic, and extremely corrosive force surged through the guixu sword into his body, frantically destroying his Meridians and even trying to contaminate his Chaos Gang Qi!
“Puff!”
He spat out a large mouthful of blood, which was actually mixed with some strange dark red energy—the invading power of destruction! His figure was like a kite with a broken string, flying forward even faster than before, violently crashing through several boulders blocking the way, his momentum unchecked!
Just a single attack from a distance had such power! If he hadn't just fused with the ancestral rune fragment, causing his strength to increase greatly and the quality of his Chaos Gang Qi to transform, and if the guixu sword's material weren't special, this one blow would have been enough to destroy both his body and Soul!
“Can't stop!”
The sharp pain and internal injuries stimulated Ye Chen's nerves. A ruthless look flashed in his eyes, and using the massive impact of being knocked away, he didn't try to stabilize himself but instead activated his Protective Aura again, shooting forward like a meteor toward the direction he had come from in his memory! He didn't even dare to look back at the full appearance of the underground entity; he only knew to escape! Escape with all his might!
Behind him, the range of the collapse expanded rapidly, and the destructive aura spread like a tide, pursuing relentlessly! The entire underground trembled and wailed under the wrath of that unknown existence!
“Swoosh!”
Ye Chen finally rushed out of that long, sloping passage and returned to the basin with several broken stone pillars! However, the basin was also unrecognizable now; the ground had cracked into countless gullies, dense Devilish Qi rolled like boiling water, and the dim yellow clouds in the sky became even more distorted and restless.
He did not stop for a moment, identifying the direction of the rift valley he had come from. He raised his speed to the absolute limit of his life, even burning a trace of his life essence blood, turning into a nearly transparent gray blood-shadow that tore through the air and sped away!
Behind him, the ground in the center of the basin suddenly arched upward and then exploded! A terrifying giant claw covered in pitch-black scales, as large as a small mountain, with dark demonic flames burning at its fingertips, completely broke through the ground. Just the exposed part emitted a pressure that changed the color of the heavens and earth! The giant claw reached toward the direction of Ye Chen's escape, and in a way that seemed slow but was actually fast to the extreme, it made a distant grasping motion!
“Buzz!”
The space for thousands of feet around suddenly solidified! It was as if it had turned into a giant, invisible piece of amber! The air stopped flowing, the rolling Devilish Qi stagnated, and even light became distorted! A spatial confinement force so powerful it brought despair descended instantly!
Ye Chen, who was flying for his life, suddenly stiffened. He felt as if he had fallen into the bottom of a ten-thousand-fathom sea, with irresistible and terrifying pressure coming from all directions, trying to crush and confine him on the spot!
Tiangang Realm! No, this power far exceeded a normal Tiangang Realm! This was a terrifying power that touched upon the rules of space!
“Roar—!!!”
The tyrannical roar came from underground again, seemingly angry at failing to crush this ant with one strike. The five fingers of the giant demonic claw tightened, and the spatial confinement force suddenly doubled!
“Crack, crack...”
The Chaos Domain around Ye Chen emitted an overburdened groan, the gray air currents fluctuating violently as the range was forcibly compressed! He felt his bones wailing, his internal organs as if they were being displaced, and his light flight almost completely extinguished!
“Open for me!!!”
Ye Chen's eyes were bloodshot as he let out an unwilling roar! Deep within his Qi Sea, the chaos ancestral talisman felt the host's crisis on the brink of death and, for the first time, actively and unreservedly burst forth with brilliant light! A surge of Chaos Origin power, far purer and more vast than Ye Chen's own, gushed out and instantly flowed through his whole body!
“Chaos is formless, myriad laws cannot invade! Break!”
In a moment of inspiration, he forcibly fused this new power with his own Guixu Sword Intent and the rhyme of the Chaos Myriad Transformation Art. No longer trying to resist the spatial confinement head-on, he guided this power like the sharpest chisel, aiming at a certain point in the solidified space ahead, and violently "drilled" through!
“Ssh—!”
The sound of cloth being torn rang out! That space, solidified like amber, was actually forcibly torn open by this special power fused with Chaos Origin and Guixu's extinction, creating a tiny, extremely unstable crack!
This was the single thread of survival!
Ye Chen's figure was like a swimming fish, passing through the crack perilously at the moment it was about to close!
“Puff!”
The backlash from crossing the spatial barrier made him spit blood again, but he didn't dare pause for a second. Burning his essence blood, he continued to flee for his life toward the rift valley!
Behind him, the giant demonic claw seemed to pause slightly because Ye Chen could actually break free from the spatial confinement, and then it erupted with even more terrifying rage! But its massive main body seemed restricted by something and could not completely leave the underground; it could only angrily wave its giant claw, churning the clouds and turning large tracts of land and rocks into powder!
Without looking back, Ye Chen plunged into the rift valley filled with pale purple poisonous miasma from which he had come. The poisonous miasma in the rift valley also became wild and chaotic under the impact of the terrifying external pressure, but for Ye Chen, who possessed the chaos ancestral talisman, it became the best cover instead.
Like a bird startled by the mere twang of a bow, he dashed left and right in the rift valley, pushing his speed to the limit, fleeing recklessly away from that terrifying basin.
He didn't know how long had passed, but until the suffocating pressure behind him could no longer be felt, until the Protective Aura in his body was once again on the verge of exhaustion, and his injuries were so heavy that his vision darkened in waves, Ye Chen finally lost his strength, falling from his light flight and crashing heavily into a relatively hidden pile of rocks.
He struggled to set up a simple concealment Formation, but could no longer hold on. His vision went black, and he completely fainted.
In his final perception before losing consciousness, the chaos monitoring compass in his arms, seemingly due to the awakening and rampage of that terrifying existence earlier, was transmitting a more complex and chaotic fluctuation, pointing toward some deeper and more distant directions of the Demon Abyss...