Chapter 405: Another Dire Duel Has Begun
In the realm of the undead, a small winged figure stood atop a black hill crest and braced against the wind. The figure wore a brilliant silver cuirass covered in intricate patterns that reflected a soft silver glow.
A silver mask covered the face, except for the eyeholes which revealed two deep purple lights. On its back hung a short black rod.
The figure was none other than Yan Luo. The aura she emitted was the peak of Earth-rank, almost ascended to Heaven-rank
Overlapping faulds hung in layers below the torso. They gleamed, reflecting metallic light. Underneath the faulds, two greyish-white skeletal legs were visible.
Standing behind Yan Luo in packed formations were countless undead creatures numbering at least a few million. Most were human skeletons, though some were skeletal beasts while a few appeared to be zombies. Their army extended from the crest of the hill all the way to the earth.
Standing closest to it was the towering skeleton Wu Ye. On Wu Ye's hands, a long gilded blade made out of bone glowed yellow with a formidable mien, almost on par with Yan Luo.
Yan Luo's body suddenly shuddered a little against the wind, as if sensing something, then abruptly turned in another direction.
"What's wrong milady?" Wu Ye emitted a sort of hum.
Yan Luo spread her wings wordlessly and leaped into the air. She zipped into the sky like a silver comet as she shot off at full speed.
Wu Ye emitted a low growl and shone bright yellow as its body drilled downward all the way to the ground before chasing after Yan Luo.
The league of undead creatures gave a battle cry and started stampeding in the direction Yan Luo was headed. Some of those who had wings immediately launched into the air, while some—such as spartoi* and zombies—lunged forward into a sprint.
[spartoi: skeletal creatures]
A mammoth league of undead creatures rushed off into the distance.
...
A long time passed and the dust had cleared and settled. On the ground was a crater several miles deep. The earth around it looked like it had been forcefully flayed, erasing even its former hills from existence.
At the bottom of the crater lay two bodies. They were none other than Shi Mu and Liu An.
Shi Mu was completely covered in a layer of densely-packed black scales, but almost half of them—if not more—had shattered, leaving his body a bloody mess.
He coughed a few times before blood rushed out of his mouth the moment his eyes fluttered open.
Shi Mu inspected his body's current condition and gave a mirthless smile. The best description of his current state would be "abysmal": his Real Qi was almost completely depleted, and rushing into his body were tiny wisps of venomous chill from the atmosphere that were gradually paralyzing him.
He had already sustained a great wound from before, but now he was rendered motionless.
In midair, the space channel had long vanished; Yet something else was floating where it once was. It was a slowly spinning black brick—the Fallen Angel Desk!
It radiated jet-black light before they amassed into a black dome around Liu An and several dozen feet around him.
Shi Mu, lying only a few feet away from Liu An, sighed a breath of relief. The dome had impeded the flow of dark chill energy into his body.
He quietly started to practice The Art of Breeding a Strong Evil Ape and turned his head to watch a very close-by Liu An, his expression shifting as he did.
Liu An was now covered by a layer of crimson bones that took the form of an egg-like barrier. It looked very familiar to Shi Mu, and in a flash, he remembered that it was the very same blood-colored skeleton from before.
Crack, crack.
The blood-colored skeleton cracked and shattered into fragments before bursting into flames, and just as abruptly, every piece of it was gone. Just like that, a tool as powerful as the Heavenly Ghost Streamer was gone completely.
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When the flames died, Liu An's body was finally exposed. He looked just as gravely wounded as Shi Mu if not worse: his face was deadly pale, his garment completely torn and ripped, his body marred and scarred as blood seeped out of the wounds.
Liu An may have practiced both martial arts and magic, but his physical endurance was unsurprisingly inferior to Shi Mu. Even with the aid of the Heavenly Ghost Streamer, Huang Long's near-full force strike had still inflicted grievous damage on him.
Liu An could feel Shi Mu's eyes lingering. He turned.
Their eyes met. Then they turned away just as quickly, silently.
Shi Mu struggled to produce two high-ranked Fire Attribute Spirit Stones and started absorbing their Spiritual Energy hungrily to replenish his Real Qi. His body was slowly encased in a faint red light.
Liu An was doing the same as well, but the lights surrounding his body were grey instead.
A long time had passed. The two could finally get up on their feet as they looked at each other, still silent. Their wounds were not completely healed, but at least their Real Qi had recovered.
Shi Mu was the one who broke the ice first. "I had no idea that you possessed the ability to bring our physical body all the way into the Dead Spirit World."
"You're right to think it's impossible under normal circumstances. The deathly miasma around here is so pervasive, even a Heaven-rank powerhouse may not be able to handle it over a long time. Any limitations are out of the way once one possesses the Fallen Angel Desk," Liu An replied flatly, his eyes lingering on the hovering Fallen Angel Desk.
Shi Mu watched the black brick suspended in midair, his eyes twinkling.
Just as Liu An had explained; This was the Dark Moon Cult's most precious treasure. Could its ultimate power be the ability to rip through the void to allow one's physical body to cross into the land of the afterlife without being corroded by its deathly miasma?
"It seems you're quite interested in this Fallen Angel Desk yourself, Brother Shi?" Liu An spied Shi Mu's expression before waving his hand, summoning the Fallen Angel Desk to come to him from its place in midair until the object was floating before them.
The black dome produced by the Fallen Angel Desk had shrunk, but the two of them were still protected..
"This lowly one can't help it—you did mention that it was the Western Dark Moon Cult's most treasured religious relic," Shi Mu replied.
"Well, the Fallen Angel Desk was once shared by both the Eastern and the Western branch of the Dark Moon Cult, but when the Western branch left to proselytize on the Western He continent, they took the treasure with them as well. Unfortunately they couldn't protect the treasure either—the White Ape Demon King back then sundered it into halves with a single blow, and so one half of it had been lost in the wild, only to be picked up by this lowly one coincidentally; The other half was sealed within the Heaven Ascension Treasure Vault, and had only been uncovered today," Liu An explained, chuckling a little to himself. "This magnificent tool requires only the energy from Star Stones to continue its operation, but those stones are far from inexpensive."
He waved and projected an arc of grey from his hand, which struck the Fallen Angel Desk before it merged into it.
The Fallen Angel Desk shook slightly, but it stabilized itself very soon.
At the same time, deep within Liu An's eyes, a layer of grey light surfaced. It was very dim so it couldn't really be seen easily.
"Well well! Now that two pieces of the Fallen Angel Desk had reunited in your hand, I'm sure you're going places very, very soon!" Shi Mu's eyes were briefly enshrouded by doubt while his eyebrows creased slightly as he watched Liu An's action, but he still managed a smile as he spoke.
"I certainly hope that Brother Shi's auspicious words were right," Liu An watched the Fallen Angle Desk, his eyes filled with an odd sort of emotion.
"What's next for you?" Shi Mu asked.
"What's next?" Liu An's face twisted into a maniacal grimace before throwing himself into a fit of laughter. "With this treasure in my hand, the entire Western Dark Moon Cult is completely mine! Now all there's left to do is to train up a large army of undead and zombies, then with the aid of Fallen Angel Desk, I will dive into the deepest abyss of the Dead Spirit World so that I can make multiple pacts with a horde of demonic kings; In time, I'll return to Dongzhou Continent and annihilate the Transcending Heaven Immortal Cult while the glory of Dark Moon Cult would be built right on their demise!"
Shi Mu's eyebrows were completely furrowed as he watched Liu An's crazed action.
It was then when his expression stifled.
Liu An's body was slowly glowing in faint grey-white light, his pupils starting to fade out into ashen white. His face was still pale, but the glows in his pupils blazed more and more strongly.
A stream of venomous chill—unique only to the Dead Spirit World—was starting to perforate from Liu An's body, and it was filling the entire atmosphere rapidly.
Liu An turned his head to Shi Mu very slowly before staring into his eyes.
Shi Mu's heart beat loudly. Liu An's pupils had turned completely ashen white—in fact, they had become two grey vortices of concentrated deathly miasma. The entire sight was starting to creep into the macabre.
At the same time, Liu An's arms were starting to be covered by a thick, green dermal layer as his ten fingers elongated into sharp, talons-like structure white emerald green nails—several inches long—shot out from their tips.
In a manner of seconds, Liu An's aura had already returned to his most powerful state—and still, it was intensifying.
"... Now I get it. The Fallen Angel Desk also allows its user to directly absorb the deathly miasma of the Dead Spirit World in order to recover wounds," Shi Mu spoke after a long lapse of silence.
"Brother Shi Mu truly possesses the eyesight many would vie for. You are able to guess what's going on accurately just by observing it for a while." Liu An's lips were quivered in an unnerving arc as he looked at Shi Mu. "As the treasured relic of the Dark Moon Cult, the Fallen Angel Desk was bound to possess incredible abilities, such as transforming deathly miasma into pure spiritual energy before the body absorbs them."
"You've been trying to buy yourself time through these small chats, haven't you?!" Shi Mu's body shook and leaped several dozen feet backward, exiting the dome created by the Fallen Angel Desk. With a flash of red, a red barrier extended from his body before covering his own body.
"Brother Shi, I want to be candid with you... You've always been someone I genuinely admire. You and I share so many similarities that sometimes I can't help but wonder, if we weren't dead-set on cultivating ourselves—if we were just two, normal young men—we would have become the best of friends... the best of brothers," Liu An said. "With your talents and abilities, if you would be my trusted left hand, the two of us would be able to conquer the entire Dongzhou and Western He continents—that old priest, Wu Chen? Prior Hao? Even that Huang Long would no longer pose any threat to us!"
Shi Mu stared at Liu An before enunciating his words hard, "Unfortunately for the two of us, we just don't see eye-to-eye in life, do we? Even if I agree to be your comrade, it's still too late for me, isn't it? You would rather no one knows a single thing about the Fallen Angel Desk, don't you?"
"Correct. The Fallen Angel Desk's secrets are too precious and important to be compromised by a single life. For the honor and death wish of my beloved mentor, for the future of my cult, please just remain here... forever. It's alright, when you die, I'll train you and personally bring you up as my best, strongest zombie king... and let you reign over my army of the undead!" Liu An finished, his face already contorted into a crazed grin, but his eyes belied not a single shred of glee, and was instead cold and distant.
His robe suddenly flutterer wildly as a surge of aura exploded from his body. Judging from the aura, it seemed that it was drawing closer and closer towards Heaven-rank powers as pressure spread all over the surroundings, causing wild turbulence and violent gales.
Shi Mu's clothes were thrashing as the violent gales howled, but his eyes were more equanimous than frightful.
Liu An, watching his expression carefully, was a little surprised at his reaction. He lifted his left arm which had been completely healed without leaving a single scar.
"Brother Shi is truly different from others! Even in the face of death, you remain calm. Quite the opponent a certain Liu had always wanted to fight a duel with—and how fortunate that I finally have the chance to do what I'd desired!"
Liu An flashed a cold smile before his body flickered and reappeared a few feet before Shi Mu. He then extended his five fingers like a talon and clawed downwards.
Dazzling grey lights shone out of his fingers as they ripped through the air with an earsplitting pelt of "sssssttt sssstttt".