Chapter Ninety: The Bone-Armored Ghost Fortress

Although the Venom Serpent had been utterly imprisoned within the diamond-hard body and could not escape, it had at last begun to move with ease. With a single step, it stirred up a monstrous tide of bones, and the earth trembled.

Zhang Liaoyuan’s black-scaled giant had also finally taken shape. Three ghastly vertical pupils stood side by side as it thrust out its fist and smashed into the Venom Serpent.

Its arm collapsed as if it had been blown apart, flying backward, while the Venom Serpent was likewise forced to retreat two steps.

Roaring furiously, the Venom Serpent’s body manifested layer after layer of silver scales. Its frame swelled, its joints twisted, its muscles bulged, and it transformed into a dragonlike humanoid creature.

With a sudden movement beneath its feet, a gale whirled up. A dragon-scaled fist slammed into the black-scaled giant’s head and blasted it apart.

The Venom Serpent had always been the source of the chi veins, a life-form made purely of spirit, and in the matter of reshaping reality it was no weaker than any meridian user.

If Zhang Liaoyuan had not laid such an extravagant trap while it was sleeping and recovering, the Venom Serpent should have been the sort of existence that could change heaven and earth with a single thought.

The sight of the Venom Serpent only made Adongsa even more excited.

Its existence proved that Adongsa’s chosen path was correct. A life-form made of pure spirit could indeed exist; all his research into the persistence of consciousness had not been in vain.

Though a purely spiritual body seemed to have many flaws, it was still a real example.

As long as the direction of research was right, results would come sooner or later.

But the most important question now was how to survive under the fury of the Venom Serpent.

The Venom Serpent had lurked for at least three thousand years, and though it had fallen into the humiliating necessity of sleeping, it was still a high-order life-form that had surpassed the limits of matter. Its power still weighed down on every being on this planet. Even if it had been sealed into this tiny body, it remained an enemy that had to be met with everything one had.

Now that it had taken on this form, it would inevitably wipe out all beings capable of threatening it in its rage, and Adongsa, who urgently needed resources to rise, would certainly not be spared.

In other words, Zhang Liaoyuan had forced Adongsa into a decisive battle with the Venom Serpent. It was a straightforward, undeniable trap.

Adongsa let out a low cry. “You’re too reckless. How could you devise such a thoughtless plan against a being that has never revealed its true form? Once the Heavenly Way acquires a flesh-and-blood body, who knows what will happen?”

Zhang Liaoyuan said coldly, “This is our last chance. If we can’t kill it here, do you think it won’t awaken one day in the future?”

Further words were useless. Adongsa vented its fury in a blast of searing flame hotter than four thousand degrees, only for the Venom Serpent to slap it back and send the fire surging in reverse.

“Hold it off.”

With those three words, Adongsa shed its body and drilled itself into the cracks of the rocks, vanishing at once.

Zhang Liaoyuan, however, cooperated with unusual readiness. Controlling the black-scaled giant, he drove its entire body of twitching fibers, like vines and like a nest of serpents, into a colossal arm that lashed at the Venom Serpent.

The Venom Serpent’s power to turn the unreal into the real had already pushed the force of diamond invulnerability beyond Zhang Liaoyuan’s former limits, but precisely because of that, it could no longer break free from this prison-like body, and many of its miraculous abilities could not be used.

The collision of the giant and the greater giant stirred up a storm. The tremendous pressure of the wind even sheared a thick layer off the surrounding rocks.

Zhang Liaoyuan’s arm was blasted apart and then reformed. The Venom Serpent was also forced back three steps.

“Ignorant monkey. You think this is enough to defeat me?”

The burly dragon-man grew larger once more, even its scales cracking apart. It exhaled a breath of white vapor, and a thunderclap boomed from the bare ground.

The Venom Serpent vanished in an instant, leaving behind only a plane-like trail of vapor in the air. Its fists and kicks, fierce as a bursting mountain flood, crashed down upon Zhang Liaoyuan.

Zhang Liaoyuan immediately unleashed the manifestation of his martial path, but it plainly had little effect. The fractures of space and time caused no hindrance to the Venom Serpent. One could only watch as the black-scaled giant’s body shattered from top to bottom, its black fibers breaking apart in a dreadful sight, as if it were about to be beaten into a heap of loose threads.

The Venom Serpent’s speed had long since surpassed the limits of the naked eye. Ordinary people could not even see its afterimages, and even Zhang Liaoyuan could scarcely keep up.

At that moment, the ground suddenly began to shake violently.

Not just the ground, but the entire Tomb of the Black Death Emperor was trembling.

—-

Adongsa’s soft body slipped through the cracks, smashing through rock until it discovered some dark substance below, unlike any kind of stone composition.

It kept descending and soon reached a narrow chamber.

At the center stood a massive sphere supported by vines. Its surface was crisscrossed with huge walnut-like grooves, and many vines radiated outward from it, burrowing into the black rock walls, extending who knew where.

A dead silence permeated the place. Adongsa could not even sense the ever-present delta waves of the Black Death Emperor from here.

Adongsa barely squeezed out part of its body and wriggled forward to the sphere, cutting the vines away and attaching its own tendrils to it.

But after several minutes of silence, nothing happened.

A faint laugh suddenly rang out in the stillness.

Adongsa reflexively shot out a blade-claw, only for it to strike empty rock.

The blond woman who had appeared out of nowhere gently stroked Adongsa’s blade-claw and said, “At last I’ve found you, Adongsa.”

She wore a white lab coat that was obviously too loose, as if it were meant to conceal something. Her eyes were like spiders in the dark, and her entire body was covered in chilling sutures, making it impossible to imagine what she had once suffered.

Although the blond woman’s scent, warmth, and touch were all undeniably there, Adongsa had never once detected her presence. Even now, her figure seemed to drift erratically at the shallow surface of consciousness, as though she might be utterly forgotten with the next blink.

“A psychic ability...” Eight eyes, capable of sensing the entire spectrum, spread across Adongsa’s body and fixed on her. “A power that dilutes your own presence. More than that, you should have a second spatial ability as well, or you could never have passed through the Tomb of the Black Death Emperor and entered this neural center.”

Faced with the monstrous alien creature, the blond woman only smiled. “Hello, Adongsa. My name is...”

“Frankenstein. I’ve wanted to meet you for a long time as well. You’re even more mysterious than I imagined.”

Adongsa cut her off without ceremony.

“Chief director of the Biohazard Center, the most mysterious thirteenth member of the Amest Thirteen Council, the accomplice who delivered Leviathan to the Celestial Capital Nation, a psychic with biological modification abilities...” Adongsa rattled off seven or eight horrifying titles in succession, then paused slightly, leaving room for the other side to speak.

Frankenstein nodded repeatedly, then said as if waking from a dream, “There’s no need to make it so complicated. Just call me Frankenstein.”

Adongsa’s eyes, like a snail’s antennae, circled around her once. “To think you can possess multiple superpowers. It seems your research in this area is indeed far ahead.”

Frankenstein shook her head. “You should have guessed the essence of superpowers already. But to turn them into practice has already far exceeded the limits of modern science, perhaps even the limits of all humankind.”

Adongsa’s floating eyes flicked in agreement. “Principles are cheap; technique is priceless. The essence of superpowers is the sixth sense, or even the seventh and eighth senses, awakened in human beings. These extra senses allow humans to touch the seams of space, the fluctuations of mass, even the changes in cause and effect. But such senses lie buried deep in the soul and cannot be used in any material form.”