Almighty God of War - Chapter 122
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This chapter was translated by Lunox Team. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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122
Hwangbo Pung gritted his teeth while breathing heavily.
“Damn it!”
Blood from his iron-like trained fists was dripping onto the floor.
Paeng Mangyeong’s situation was the same.
The arm wielding the great sword was growing heavier by the moment.
Each Blood Jiangshi’s abilities weren’t far behind theirs, and even the wounds they barely managed to inflict regenerated at a terrifying speed.
Seeing this dealt them psychological damage, making their bodies feel heavier than usual much faster.
Urgency was evident in Pung Socheong’s voice as she looked back at Guyang Cheongang and shouted.
“Prince Hahou, quickly find the core! We can’t hold on much longer!”
At that moment, Akasha’s voice rang through Guyang Cheongang’s mind.
[Found it! At the center of the pond, three zhang below the surface, there’s a high-density energy reaction!]
Guyang Cheongang’s eyes sank coldly.
‘My palm force’s effective range is two zhang. Three zhang down might be unreachable even if I pour out all my internal energy. Huu… But I have no choice but to take the risk… I’ll get as close to the surface as possible and end it in one strike!’
The next moment, his body movement using the Phantom Shadowless Divine Method pierced through the Blood Jiangshi’s defensive line like a blue comet.
The Blood Jiangshi’s claws scratched at his afterimage, but his real body was already floating right above the pond’s surface.
Rotating his body in mid-air with his legs pointing toward the ceiling, he drew up every last drop from his dantian without reserve.
Over sixty years’ worth of internal energy condensed above his right palm, and the surrounding air began to twist as if screaming.
Immediately after, blue lightning that burst from his palm illuminated the entire underground cavern like broad daylight.
“Explosive Thunder Flame King Hammer!”
Kwaaaaaaaang-!
His palm force became a massive iron hammer, piercing through the surface and boring deep into the pond.
Instantly, the Blood Pond formed a pillar of blood that explosively shot up as if to pierce the ceiling.
Even the surrounding Blood Jiangshi were blown away like pieces of paper by that tremendous shockwave.
Using the rebound force from striking the surface, Guyang Cheongang landed sliding toward the pond’s edge, his legs trembling and buckling.
Gritting his teeth, he staggered and swallowed the blood rising up his throat.
He couldn’t tell if he had succeeded or failed.
A moment of silence passed.
Chwaaaaaa-
The pillar of blood that had shot skyward came pouring down like a waterfall.
And the entire Blood Pond began bubbling and boiling while screaming as if souls were being torn apart.
Keuaaaaaaak!
With death throes and horrible screams, the steel-like Blood Jiangshi crumbled like sandcastles and scattered as dark red dust.
It was a success.
But without time to savor victory, a vicious cold energy exploded from within Guyang Cheongang’s body.
As the price for using all his internal energy, the five major acupoints of the suppressed Nine Yin Severed Meridians began rampaging all at once.
‘Keuuk…!’
Pain like glaciers crushing his meridians.
He immediately put a Premium Yang Dragon Pill in his mouth.
As the elixir pill melted, warmth spread through his dantian.
He gritted his teeth and gathered that warmth to fight against the extreme yin energy that was trying to devour his body.
‘This damned shackle… I will definitely break it!’
The other companions also applied wound healing medicine to their injuries and entered energy circulation and breath control.
After half an hour passed, Hwangbo Pung and Paeng Mangyeong, who had finished recovering first, stood up.
Then Hanjo and Pung Socheong, and finally Jegal Hwi opened his eyes.
Their gazes naturally turned toward Guyang Cheongang.
He was still in the middle of energy circulation and breath control.
“What kind of… internal energy method is that?”
Jegal Hwi muttered with a shocked expression.
It was because of the mysterious cold energy enveloping Guyang Cheongang’s entire body.
Previously, when he performed energy circulation and breath control while suppressing the Nine Yin Severed Meridians, thick ice covered his entire body, but now it was different.
Thousands upon thousands of small ice particles were rotating in a spiral around his body.
The particles, smaller than fingernails and rotating regularly as if alive, sparkled like jewels while emitting a blue light even in the darkness.
“I’ve never heard of such a heart method…”
Pung Socheong muttered in a daze.
She felt pity along with an inexplicable sense of awe as she watched Guyang Cheongang’s pained expression and the mysterious ice particles circling around him.
Paeng Mangyeong unconsciously swallowed dry saliva and muttered.
“Huh… Is it because he’s a divine physician… Even his energy circulation and breath control is so different from ordinary people.”
Though he had seen many extraordinary people and was well-versed in martial arts, this was the first time he had witnessed such energy circulation and breath control.
Guyang Cheongang’s distorted complexion quickly became peaceful.
The extreme yin energy of the Nine Yin Severed Meridians was being absorbed and purified by the Transcendent Impermanence Divine Art, circulating stably.
After an hour, the ice particles dissolved like mist under sunlight, and Guyang Cheongang slowly opened his eyes.
He felt the shocked gazes directed at him and clicked his tongue inwardly before speaking.
“The martial arts I’ve learned are a bit unusual, so what you saw happens when I perform energy circulation and breath control. Please don’t mind it.”
His voice was calm, but the cold sweat beaded on his forehead told of the dangerous situation he had just faced.
Guyang Cheongang brushed off his clothes and stood up, then looked at his companions with a grin and said.
“Shall we go again?”
His nonchalant attitude, as if he were going to the market to buy something, made the tense people laugh.
Jegal Hwi nodded and responded.
“We should go.”
The group looked around.
As if no battle had ever taken place, they could see a cave gaping open like the entrance to hell behind the now completely dried red pond.
The group moved toward that place.
The passage revealed as the blood pond dried up wound its way deep underground.
Each time they turned a corner, it felt like being sucked into even deeper darkness.
The air grew heavier and heavier.
The stench of rotting corpses, mold, and an indescribable fishy smell mixed together and stung their noses.
The walls that emitted a faint light were covered with damp and sticky mucus.
With each step, a squelching sound came from beneath their feet.
Like the walls, the floor was also pooled with an unidentifiable black liquid that clung to their shoes, making each step heavy.
After descending about three hundred zhang, the passage came to an end.
And before the group, another underground plaza revealed itself.
The height to the ceiling alone seemed to be dozens of zhang, and its width was so vast that the end was not visible.
But what was most shocking of all were the corpses piled on the floor.
Thousands of corpses like mummies with only skin over bones were piled like mountains, and tens of thousands of skulls were scattered like pebbles.
An overwhelming aura of death swirled throughout the entire space, making one’s whole body shudder just from looking.
“My lord, those people…”
Hanjo looked closely at part of the pile of corpses and spoke in a voice rigid as stone.
“They are the villagers of Ghost Valley Village.”
Terrible killing intent blazed in his eyes as he continued speaking.
“On the Empire’s land… how dare they commit such blasphemy…”
His voice contained fierce anger at the violation of imperial authority.
Pung Socheong’s face had also turned pale.
“How could such a great disaster not have even a whisper of rumor in Jianghu…”
No matter that this happened in the frontier, the fact that Hao Gate failed to detect an incident of this scale was not simple in meaning.
It meant that the capabilities of those who committed this act were enough to mock Hao Gate’s information network.
Hwangbo Pung muttered in a heavy tone.
“Wearing human skin and doing such things…”
Paeng Mangyeong and Jegal Hwi were also looking at the carnage with shocked expressions.
The group’s gaze turned toward the center of the space.
There stood a massive altar, with ten incense burners arranged in a circle around it.
Ten Black Robe Monsters could be seen standing before each incense burner, from which green smoke containing terrifyingly intense death energy billowed up.
Their gaunt faces were covered with bizarre tattoos, and their black robes were inscribed with eerie patterns drawn in red blood.
Incomprehensible incantations flowed endlessly from the Black Robe Monsters’ mouths.
“Krurh anak morgul… Krurh anak morgul…”
At the highest point of the central altar lay a bone fragment the size of a human finger.
Dark red smoke billowed up from the bone fragment, merging with the green smoke from the incense burners and shooting up toward the ceiling.
In the midair of the cave where the smoke was directed.
There floated an Ancient Corpse King, nothing but bare bones remaining, lying horizontally parallel to the ground in midair.
Its appearance was both eerie and overwhelming.
Its height alone seemed to be a full zhang, and each bone that was black rather than gray looked as hard as steel.
Red light occasionally flickered in its empty eye sockets, and its very existence seemed to overwhelm the entire space.
All the smoke from the incense burners and bone fragment was being absorbed into the Ancient Corpse King’s body.
Whenever the monsters’ incantations reached their peak, clicking sounds came from the Ancient Corpse King’s joints.
The group easily realized what the Black Robe Monsters were doing.
They were refining the Ancient Corpse King by injecting it with the death energy from the incense burners and the blood energy from the bone fragment.
Paeng Mangyeong unconsciously gripped the blade at his waist tightly.
Deep disgust rose on his face along with boiling anger.
Jegal Hwi muttered quietly.
“Death Spirit Blood Divine Ritual… I thought it had disappeared during the Great War of Orthodox and Demonic, but to think I’d live to see this day…”
Guyang Cheongang’s expression had also hardened.
‘Akasha… those bones… they’re the same as those things?’
[Yes. The energy patterns match those from the Blood Spirit Demon’s corpse and the Crown Prince’s heart. All three originate from the same source.]
‘Analyze the energy flow of that incense burner, bone fragments, and that disgusting corpse.’
[Doctor, they appear to be conducting a form of biological enhancement.]
‘What do you mean?’
[They are directly ‘imprinting’ the high-concentration demonic energy emitted from the bone fragments and the blood energy from the incense burner into that person’s meridians and bone marrow. And that skeletal figure is not a corpse.]
Guyang Cheongang’s eyes widened.
‘It’s alive?’
[Yes, though faint, vital signs are detected. However, it’s transforming into a completely different life form from ordinary humans. It seems to be undergoing extreme cultivation to make the power of those bone fragments its own.]
Guyang Cheongang’s gaze became even sharper.
If it wasn’t a dead corpse but a living practitioner of demonic arts, it could be a far more dangerous existence.
Jegal Hwi’s group was also shocked upon seeing the Ancient Corpse King and bone fragments.
Hwangbo Pung clenched his fists and asked Jegal Hwi.
“Brother Hwi, that thing, isn’t it that?”
Jegal Hwi nodded with a grave expression.
“That’s right. It’s exactly what we’ve been pursuing.”
The ‘matter within the alliance’ they had mentioned recently was precisely this.
Jegal Hwi sent a sound transmission to Hwangbo Pung and Paeng Mangyeong.
[Elder Brothers, it seems the information obtained from the Main Alliance’s Heavenly Secrets Pavilion was correct.]
The Heavenly Secrets Pavilion was the organization responsible for the Azure Heaven Martial Alliance’s intelligence.
Hwangbo Pung nodded and responded via sound transmission.
[As the higher-ups suspected, do you think those Black Robe Monsters are… remnants of the Demonic Cult that were driven to the Southern Continent forty years ago?]
[The possibility is high, but it’s not certain yet, Elder Brother.]
[But what are those things doing right now?]
Just then, even more intense red smoke rose from the bone fragments on the altar.
And the flickering fire in the eye sockets of the Ancient Corpse King floating in midair began to grow increasingly brighter.
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This chapter was translated by Lunox Team. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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