Chapter 415: Activation [V5C122 – A Distance Within Reach]

Qianye soon discovered that not all the flesh in the hole had been blasted into oblivion—a rather large piece of scarlet meat was still half-floating therein. It would appear that this irregularly pulsing man-sized organ was the giant beast’s core, an existence akin to the human heart.

The giant beast’s core was actually able to block an attack from the Wings of Inception? While Qianye was still in astonishment, the giant beast’s lifeless body suddenly began to collapse and fell roaring onto the ground.

Although the center of this giant beast’s body had been hollowed out, the remainder of its body was colossal. The impact wasn’t at all inferior to a collapsing building or a crumbling mountain and quickly drowned Qianye within.

Qianye forced himself to leap toward the side, but something struck him hard from behind. He could only feel his surroundings turn dark as he sunk down. By a curious stroke of coincidence, it was actually the giant beast core that had smashed into him. It was unexpectedly heavy, solid, and easily weighed tens of thousands of kilograms—the force instantly smashed Qianye into the earth.

Even Qianye’s vampiric constitution couldn’t take this blow, and a dozen or so bones were quickly fractured throughout his body amidst cracking sounds. Fortunately, his golden blood energy was incomparably alert. It swam frantically around his chest during this organ-displacing quake and sprayed out specks of golden light which repaired the cracked bones and prevented them from shattering.

The giant chaotic beast was eliminated by a single attack from the Wings of Inception. This proved that the strength of its body was just so-so, yet the sturdiness of its core was on a completely different level.

However, the dazzled Qianye couldn’t think that much, and neither did he realize that cracks were starting to form on the giant beast core pressing down upon him and were spreading out continuously. The numerous cracks shattered at the same time, pouring out countless wisps of essence blood which drowned Qianye from head to toe.

The blood was pure, limpid, and bright red, a stark contrast from the bodily fluids ejected by the giant beast. There wasn’t any unpleasant odor at all, and on the contrary, there was even a type of fragrance to it. The most terrifying part was the amount of vitality contained within.

The essence blood seemed to be sentient—they crawled unceasingly over Qianye’s body and entered his body through his mouth and nose. The giant beast’s vitality was hundreds of times more powerful than the ordinary ones and would crazily activate everything it passed by.

Qianye’s entire body was currently soaked in this blood. Fleshy bulges and granulations were appearing all over his body, and even his bones were producing spikes which extended in every direction. Before long, Qianye would lose his own consciousness and turn into a second chaotic beast.

Qianye was faced with this peril as soon as he woke up from his daze.

Only a single color remained amidst the exuberant vitality—a flourishing scarlet. Even the several ordinary blood energy in Qianye’s body could no longer control themselves. They devoured the giant beast’s essence blood unrestrainedly and began to expand rapidly.

The purple blood energy was also in imminent danger as the density of the giant beast’s essence blood reached a point where it could induce activation merely from external contact. The purple blood energy thus fled back into its ability rune, still swelling up and shrinking periodically on the verge of activation.

Only the dark golden blood energy remained unaffected as it swam around the heart and kept guard on this most important territory. Perhaps in order to prevent its domain from being tainted, the dark golden blood energy became extremely tyrannical. It flushed all of the ordinary blood energy out of the heart and even kicked out the purple blood energy along with its ability rune, not allowing any of them to remain within.

Qianye’s thoughts were incomparably clear at the most dangerous juncture and weren’t flustered in the least. He knew that the only path to survival was to whittle away this essence blood. The unwavering will and determination he had cultivated over the years of hardship granted him the power to remain steadfast and not give up easily. He stopped paying attention to the changes to his external body and focused on guarding his last strand of clarity as he slowly circulated the Mystery Chapter.

The vortex born of the Mystery Chapter emerged with great difficulty in this world of abnormally dense vitality. It started with an insignificant black dot and began to expand at an extremely slow pace—both its range and speed were less than half the norm. It had also been squeezed into the heart and found it difficult to expand outward.

However, the vortex wasn’t devoured by the giant beast blood which filled every corner of his being. On the contrary, wisp after wisp of vital blood was drawn in and crushed by the rotating vortex. The impurities were cast out while the remaining essence was drawn into the deep darkness at its center. In the end, wisps of pure darkness origin power would seep out from that sable mass.

During the usual refinement process, the origin vortex would treat eight out of ten parts of the essence blood as impurities to crush and discard. The higher the quality of the essence blood, the fewer the impurities contained within. However, impurities made up less than half of the giant beast’s core blood. This was astonishing because such quality was comparable to a vampire duke.

This made the process of refinement abnormally slow.

Only at this point did Qianye manage to free up his perception to check the changes in the other parts of his body. He quickly discovered that the activation of his body could no longer be avoided. After a moment of hesitation, he hardened his heart and abandoned all control over his body, choosing instead to focus his attention on actuating the Mystery Chapter.

Qianye’s vision turned dark in the blink of an eye as he lost all senses. His head was beginning to activate and grow.

At this moment, Qianye could no longer be seen within that pool of fresh blood under the giant beast corpse—there was only a madly growing mass of irregular flesh. This piece of flesh was displaying a terrifying devouring ability. Even the hard substances surrounding the giant beast’s core had been torn out to become a part of it.

After the core had completely disappeared, that mass of flesh started devouring the giant beast’s remaining flesh and blood. Moreover, it started to spread out in every direction like a flowing river and started swallowing everything in its wake. Even the soil wasn’t spared, and a hundred meter pit gradually formed in the area as its countless strands stretched out in a radiating pattern.

The forest was no longer deathly still as countless beasts of all shapes and sizes scuttled out from unknown places. Their lairs were extremely strange; some were underground, some were in trees, and some were even nested within other odd beasts. These creatures could only tremble as they gazed at the crawling streams of flesh coming toward them. They didn’t dare run away at all and were quickly devoured and incorporated.

In the Black Forest, large trees fell one after another and vanished.

At the core of the mad pile of flesh, there was a pristine independent space surrounded by the giant beast’s heart blood.

Qianye’s heart was hovering within it. The dark golden blood energy was revolving around it and occasionally spilling out specks of golden light to stabilize this space. The vortex of the Mystery Chapter was rotating continuously above his heart, dragging in strands of blood energy and releasing misty wisps of darkness origin power for the dark golden blood energy to absorb.

Meanwhile, Qianye’s consciousness had entered a wondrous state. It had broken away from his body entirely and was observing the operation of this small space in silence. He could no longer feel his own body but was still able to circulate the Mystery Chapter.

At this moment, Qianye had no idea what situation he was in. However, what he could do at this moment was limited—the only thing he was capable of aside from observation was to wait.

An unknown length of time passed by in this manner. Qianye, in his infinite boredom, suddenly recalled a serious issue. The world in front of him was formed of blood energy and darkness origin power. Then where were his daybreak origin power and nodes?

The commonest sign of a human who had fallen to Evernight was a suppression of daybreak origin power by darkness. The change would continue to modify and transform the body until the human became a complete dark entity.

At the thought of this, Qianye’s heart suddenly sank. He might’ve been drenched in cold sweat if he were still capable of feeling his physical body. Even at the juncture of life and death, he had never considered the option of transforming into a dark entity in order to extend his life.

As though in response, Qinaye’s consciousness shook violently, and the pristine independent space suddenly transformed. Transparent ripples swept through the nothingness and dragged out a rune of unknown significance.

And the scene gradually being revealed behind this rune was actually… a realm?!

Qianye’s vision zoomed in as he exerted effort to see more clearly. What he saw through a transparent screen was a faint scarlet mist with nine specks of light shining brilliantly within. Seven of them formed the shape of an upright ladle with its head raised, while the other two were somewhat darker and located below the handle.

Why was this image so familiar? A beam of light flashed through Qianye’s consciousness while he was puzzling over this matter. Those were his nine origin nodes!

It turned out that the omnipresent scarlet behind the screen wasn’t static and was gushing about constantly. Judging from its rhythm and pattern, those were the tides of the Combatant Formula.

The transparent runic wave shooting through this space eventually vanished into the distance where Qianye’s consciousness could no longer track. Qianye felt an ineffable sense of relief although he couldn’t fully comprehend what he had just seen and soon brought his attention back to the present space.

Song Zining was sitting in his study thousands of kilometers away, and for some reason, he was feeling restless at the moment. He decided to put down the documents and proceeded to prepare paper and ink with which to draw.

People believed he was placing too much emphasis on miscellaneous arts, but no one knew that the Three Thousand Flying Leaves Art was reliant on breaking the mysteries of the mortal world. The three thousand daos were all interconnected—that which he had chosen involved seeking the dao via painting and polishing his heart in order to forge ahead.

Song Zining paid rapt attention as his pen moved as though it were flying. In the blink of an eye, a rain-drenched mountain range began to take form. Such artistry satisfied even Song Zining himself, but it was at this moment that his hand trembled for no reason. A big drop of ink fell from the brush and quickly tainted the forming landscape.

A dark glimmer arose from the fine paper. The glow formed half the veins on a bodhi leaf but failed to produce a complete image. The network of veins collapsed one by one and eventually disappeared.

The uneasiness in Song Zining’s heart intensified. He slowly put down his brush as he pulled over and rang a bronze bell.

Moments later, a thin but spirited old man slowly entered and greeted politely, “What instructions does the Seventh Young Master have for me?”

“Teacher, have the caravans left?”

The old man said, “All of them have set out on time. Two of them have already exchanged their goods in secret. The other three will exchange their load at a midway stop after two or three days and hurry over to the designated rendezvous location.”

Song Zining paced a couple of times within the room and said decisively, “A change of plans. Tell the remaining three caravans that they don’t need to exchange goods anymore and to head straight to the designated location.”

The old man was somewhat startled. “Seventh Young Master, those three caravans contain fewer goods, but they still make up four parts in total. Without an exchange, the total value of the goods will exceed half. This… won’t the losses be too great?”

Some hesitation appeared on Song Zining’s countenance, but he still said resolutely after some thought, “I’ll be leaving soon and might take a while this time. There can be no mishaps regarding that plan, so let the losses be! Just consider it a repayment to the clan for nurturing me.”