In the silent night, the two moved through the giant factory illuminated by the furnace's glow, each harboring their own purpose. The sound of clashing steel echoed from beneath the floor, a labyrinth of long corridors where various machines bristling with metal pipes were slowly transported through the air.
There was no map to be found here. Not a single heartbeat could be heard, yet the scent of blood was strikingly clear, mingled with the smell of steel scorched by high temperatures.
Li Yue and Lane stood at the edge of a corridor, gazing down at the grotesque spectacle below. Bodies dripping with blood and flesh hung from hooks, being carried toward other rooms. Mechanical parts were being assembled there, with occasional roars and massive clouds of steam surging up from the depths.
Li Yue frowned. Everything here filled her with a mounting sense of revulsion.
Tap, tap... Something seemed to be moving in the corridor. The rhythmic sound of clashing metal approached. Li Yue and Lane looked toward the other end of the hallway as a humanoid figure walked toward them. Its flesh was parched, its skull replaced with metal, and its skin was entirely gone—whether it had burst during the process of becoming a blood demon or had been cruelly flayed off was unknown.
Li Yue focused her senses. There was indeed no trace of blood, nor even the feeling of a living being.
With a wave of her hand, Li Yue unleashed a blood blade. The effect was mediocre; it only managed to slice the creature's body. Its toughened core and the blood demon's inherent resistance to her made her magic feel strained for the first time.
Against a bloodless blood demon, she couldn't directly detonate the blood within its body. Moreover, the flesh of a blood demon had a certain resistance to her unique blood. Given their similar physical structures, it was only natural.
“This is a bit troublesome,” Li Yue said, drawing a mithril longsword. Lane, meanwhile, charged forward at high speed, his gunblade savagely carving through the creature's body.
His blade burned with blue flames, causing Li Yue a slight sense of discomfort. She suspected this was church magic, which was why she felt such a strong repulsion toward it.
They continued onward. The path wasn't complex, but it certainly wasn't simple. Different rooms housed varying numbers of mechanical units. As Li Yue and Lane descended, they had to deal with the machines that were beginning to stir.
Bang! Li Yue sliced through a massive metal door, which collapsed onto the floor. A mechanical unit lying on an operating table inside stood up, only to be punched into the wall by an increasingly irritable Li Yue. She followed up with dozens of slashes, hacking its flesh into tiny pieces.
“Actually, it's easier to just attack the core. Stab it in and give it a twist, and it's done,” Lane said with a smile. Li Yue exhaled sharply, clutching her forehead. She felt an extreme emotion threatening to seize control of her.
The air here was stifling and bone-dry, making Li Yue extremely uncomfortable. Instead of searching for a path floor by floor, she felt like tearing everything to shreds.
“What is... this?” Lane pointed toward a small room. It was empty except for numbered buttons on the wall, resembling a giant box suspended by iron hooks.
“An elevator... I suppose.” Li Yue walked inside and pressed the bottom button. The entire machine lurched into motion, slowly descending.
“What do you call this?”
“It's magic-driven, so let's call it a magic lift.” Li Yue's lip twitched; she wasn't even amused by her own joke.
Lane raised an eyebrow, wondering if Li Yue had seen such things elsewhere. He fell into a silent contemplation as they waited for the iron box to reach the bottom.
He was already feeling exhausted. Although he had long prepared himself for a battle with Reinhardt, he was at most half a Great Mage; it felt as though there was little he could do.
Yet, it seemed he had already done everything he could. He had presided over his parents' funerals. He had no wife or children. He had a few friends, but they had their own lives. He had traveled to many parts of the world.
His only regret, it seemed, was this younger brother...
He snapped back to reality and found that Li Yue had already stepped out of the elevator to scout the bottom floor. The heat here was of a different intensity, with occasional splashes of molten iron visible.
Li Yue crouched down slightly, as if listening for something. She tapped her fingers, and blood flowed from her nails, piercing into the ground and spreading out beneath the surface.
“Follow me.” Li Yue walked toward what appeared to be a dead end. Though confused, Lane followed her.
Before them stood a massive metal wall. Lane swung his sword at it, but it was solid, the impact making his hand go slightly numb.
Li Yue gave him a meaningful look and pointed her fingertips at the floor. Over a dozen slashes swept across the ground in rapid succession. When the dust cleared, the steel plating—several dozen centimeters thick—had been completely shattered, revealing a small room below.
Li Yue was the first to jump down. It was an entirely white room, filled with some old notebooks that seemed to have been written not too long ago.
“If we took the usual path to where Reinhardt stays, we'd never get there. So we might as well just drop down like this.” Li Yue sensed the life signals outside the room. Somewhere in the far distance, she could hear a faint, subtle heartbeat.
That was definitely Reinhardt!
Lane flipped through the notebooks. They contained detailed records of the steps for human modification and even research on human internal organs. It seemed they were the result of dissecting countless humans, though whether they had been dead or alive was unclear.
“The medical value is quite high,” Li Yue said, leaning in to look. Lane's hands trembled slightly. They pushed open the door to reveal a secret room that looked like a laboratory. Humanoid forms were kept in glass vats along the walls.
In a corner, containers were piled high with blood crystals. Judging by their luster, their quality wasn't particularly high.
“No need to save them; they're already blood demons,” Li Yue said flatly. Lane seemed to grow more agitated as he pored through the thick stacks of experimental records in the lab. The contents were harrowing.
Boom! Several massive explosions echoed from the distance.
“What happened?” Lane's hand jerked, and the experimental report he was holding fell to the floor, revealing another report beneath it. The title on it read: Florodis.
Li Yue flipped it open and skimmed the contents, her brow furrowing slightly.
“Reinhardt has his sights on the Death Abyss. He wants to study this God's legacy,” Li Yue said calmly. “He's trying to dig deep into the earth. Even though this place is far from the center of the Death Abyss, the edges of that God's legacy have reached here.”
Li Yue pointed to the ground.
“And coincidentally, it seems he's about to succeed.”
“What is the price?”
“A more terrifying and violent cold wave. It might even be a cold wave that never ends,” Li Yue frowned. “Because doing this is equivalent to waking up the Death Abyss.”
Boom! The wall behind the laboratory shattered. A dense swarm of mechanical units filled the room to their right. The corridor to the left led to the room where Reinhardt was.
“There are too many. We won't have enough time, and we can't kill them all,” Li Yue's lip twitched. She felt that if she didn't activate the Blood Moon, she might actually die here.
“Leave them to me...” Lane drew both his gunblades. His four Sacred Books transformed into a whirlwind of pages that enveloped the entire room. “I'll leave Reinhardt to you.”
“Should I hold back?”
“...” Lane remained silent for a moment. He didn't nod, nor did he shake his head. He simply stood in front of Li Yue without speaking. The answer seemed to be left unsaid, or perhaps it was an intentionally ambiguous one.
Li Yue walked to the corner and consumed every blood crystal she had brought with her. She smashed all the containers holding the other blood crystals and swallowed them one by one, acting with the desperation of someone burning their bridges.
The aura around her began to surge terrifyingly. Her nails grew crimson and sharp, and her eyes fully transformed into vertical pupils. The whites of her eyes turned black, while her irises became a deep blood-red.
Her white hair even shimmered with a faint light, and her fangs grew increasingly sharp.
“It seems... time is running out.” Li Yue shredded the logbook in her hand. Her body convulsed, and her movements became staggering, as if a new soul were struggling to adapt to the body.
“If it's not absolutely necessary, I'll leave him alive.”
Li Yue spoke with little confidence, but it was all she could say for now. Her voice trembled violently, and there was a faint, haunting resonance to it.
Li Yue's steps seemed labored, and the sound of flesh being torn apart already echoed from behind her. She accelerated into a dash. Violent explosions roared ahead, accompanied by the faint sound of something shattering.
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