76: Defeat the Minotaur!

Within the Secret Realm at this moment, heaven and earth shifted once again.

"The Secret Realm has refreshed again?"

Lu Chen gazed at the sky and fell into silence.

He and Ning Xiwei had gathered several female Disciples they happened to encounter within.

They seemed to be from other academies as well.

They joined their squad.

Lu Chen had considered this.

The Secret Realm ahead required people.

They needed scouts!

Ning Xiwei gazed at the blood-colored moon in the sky.

She said in a heavy voice, "It's changed again! What is this? A blood-colored desert? A blood-red wasteland?"

"It doesn't matter what it's called; let's just be careful."

Lu Chen spoke to Ning Xiwei through their mental connection.

The moon of the Blood-Red Wasteland hung eternally within lead-gray clouds, like a blood scab nailed to the sky.

Ning Xiwei's deerskin boots crushed a stark white leg bone; the tip of her staff, inlaid with star-shards, glowed with a faint light, casting fragmented spots of light upon the bone-paved ground.

"Maintain formation," she said softly, her silver hair fluttering in an elegant arc within the rank wind.

The three team members behind her immediately tightened their defensive circle; the Fire Elementalist's palms sweated as he gripped his staff tighter.

Lu Chen looked down at his own phalanges glowing with a faint green light, his joints making a tooth-aching click as they moved.

Thinking back to before his Transmigration, he was still staying up late grinding games, but now he had become Ning Xiwei's summoned creature—a thinking Skeleton Soldier.

This body was much sturdier than he imagined; when he tried to swing his rusted bone saber, the blade actually carved a half-meter-deep furrow into the stone wall.

"Three hundred meters southeast, abnormal energy fluctuations," Lu Chen suddenly spoke, the deep blue Soul Fire in his hollow eye sockets flaring up.

This was an ability he had gained after transmigrating, allowing him to sense magic fluctuations within a one-kilometer radius.

Ning Xiwei's long eyelashes fluttered. This lowest-tier Skeleton Soldier always managed to provide warnings before she could even issue an order; yesterday, he had even torn apart an ambushing Stinger Magic Vine with his bare hands.

While the summoned beasts of other students were still struggling to avoid traps, her skeleton was already holding a rusted shield picked up from who-knows-where, precisely parrying seventeen poisoned arrows.

The ground suddenly shook violently. The blood-colored sand surged like boiling blood, and a ten-meter-tall dark shadow burst from the earth.

The monster with a bull's head and a human body was covered in a carapace with magma patterns; the sparks snorted from its nostrils ignited the air, and its Rank 6 pressure caused the entire space to warp.

"Light Cage!" Ning Xiwei swept her staff, and golden chains shot out from the Void Realm.

The Minotaur roared and swung its battle-axe, the chains shattering into starlight. The Fire Elementalist's Explosive Flame Orb detonated on its chest, yet didn't even leave a scorch mark.

Lu Chen's phalanges dug into the ground. He could clearly see the purple crystal core throbbing at the monster's heart, the fatal weakness of all magical creatures.

But the magic barrier inherent to a Rank 6 creature was like an iron wall; ordinary attacks simply couldn't breach its defenses.

"Thirty seconds," he said suddenly. "I need thirty seconds to make contact with its main body."

Ning Xiwei didn't ask why.

As the Minotaur's giant axe came crashing down, wreathed in magma, she bit her fingertip and drew a blood rune on her staff: "Holy Light Judgment!" A light more blinding than the sun descended from the heavens, forcefully melting the battle-axe into molten iron. Blood trickled from the girl's lips; the high-tier Light magic was frantically draining her vitality.

Lu Chen's bones began to heat up. The ground beneath him collapsed as he leaped, his bone saber tracing an eerie black arc through the air.

The magic barrier surrounding the Minotaur melted like spring snow upon meeting the blade; only then did Lu Chen realize that his bone surfaces were covered in dark gold patterns at some point.

"Roar—!" The monster swung a fist like a hill. Lu Chen dodged mid-air and thrust his phalanges into the crack in its chest.

The moment his hand grasped the purple crystal core, he felt a surge of violent energy rushing in through his finger bones, and his Soul Fire suddenly erupted into a pillar of fire reaching for the sky.

Ning Xiwei's pupils contracted slightly.

Her Skeleton Soldier was undergoing a terrifying transformation; dark gold patterns spread across his entire body, and his originally grayish-white bones were gradually being plated with a metallic luster.

What shocked her even more was that when Lu Chen crushed the Rank 6 magic core with his bare hands, all that energy was actually absorbed by him.

"You..." She had just started to speak when she saw the skeleton suddenly turn and lunged toward her.

A heatwave smelling of sulfur brushed past her neck as Lu Chen shielded her in his arms; the Minotaur's death-throe tail strike exploded against his back, creating spiderweb-like cracks.

The moment the Minotaur crashed to the ground, black rain suddenly began to fall over the Blood-Red Wasteland.

The viscous raindrops vaporized into purple mist on the surface of Lu Chen's bones, and those dark gold patterns began to move as if they had come to life.

Ning Xiwei pressed her hand to her chest and took half a step back as the summoning contract suddenly transmitted a needle-like stinging pain.

"Your Soul Fire..." She stared at the flames in the skeleton's eye sockets, which had turned dark red. "It's devouring my Mental Energy."

Just as Lu Chen was about to speak, hundreds of crimson fissures split open in the ground.

Countless skeletons rose from the flowing magma, piecing themselves together into a thirty-meter-high bone wall that trapped everyone.

The roar of turning gears echoed from the distance, and under the blood-colored moonlight, the phantasmal image of giant interlocking gears was faintly visible.

"It's an ancient war machine," the Ice Mage in the team said, his voice trembling. "These bones are being used as fuel..."

Just what is the true gods secret treasure?

Lu Chen heard the words of the Ice Mage in the team.

Once again, he grew suspicious of the true gods secret treasure.

Regarding this world, he had always found it to have a profound connection to his previous world.

But he could never quite put his finger on it.

Ancient immortals and ancient technology?

What on earth was it?

And what were those so-called gods?

The doubts in Lu Chen's heart grew more and more numerous.

All the answers still required further exploration!

Before the words had fully faded, the bones on the ground suddenly surged up.

Lu Chen grabbed a bone spear thrusting toward Ning Xiwei; dark gold patterns spread along the weapon, instantly shattering the ambushing Skeleton Soldier into powder.

Only then did he realize his devouring ability was spiraling out of control; every time he eliminated an undead creature, cold energy would surge into his Soul Fire.

"Don't use magic attacks!" Lu Chen parried flying rib fragments. "They have resonance runes inside them!"

But the warning was already too late.

The moment the Fire Elementalist's Flame Burst hit the bone wall, the entire wall exploded.

Tens of thousands of bone fragments reorganized in the air, transforming into a swarm of bone eagles that blotted out the sky.

Ning Xiwei's mage robes were torn by sharp claws, leaving three gashes,

and golden incantations appeared on her exposed snowy-white shoulder.

Lu Chen's Soul Fire trembled violently.

Those incantations were identical to the ancient inscriptions he had seen in the Minotaur's crystal core; the dark gold patterns suddenly surged toward Ning Xiwei uncontrollably.

When his phalanges touched the girl's skin, time and space in the Blood-Red Wasteland seemed to be paused.

Countless memory fragments flooded into his Sea of Consciousness.

Lu Chen saw a Valkyrie in platinum armor thrusting a longsword into an altar, twelve chains pulling a torrent of light from her body;

He saw Ning Xiwei as an infant being implanted with a glowing curse seal;

Finally, it settled on a certain bronze throne—where a skeleton identical in form to his current self sat, except that skeleton was dark gold all over, with millions of undead kneeling in worship below the throne.

"You saw it?" Ning Xiwei's voice carried a tremor.