Dark green light flared in their eye sockets. Holding rusted swords or broken spears, they lined up in neat ranks before Withered Bone, resembling a well-trained army.
But this was only the beginning.
Withered Bone's fingers tightened slightly, and more bones rose from deep within the ground, seeped out from the crevices in the rock walls, and surged from the piles of shattered bones stacked in the corners.
One skeleton after another formed, stood, and fell into formation at his feet, the dark green lights in their eye sockets merging into a single sheet, illuminating the entire domed space like a land of ghost fire.
Jiang Lin made a rough estimate of their numbers.
At least two thousand.
All of them were undead units at the 4th-Rank early stage, arranged in a dense formation that surrounded Withered Bone layer upon layer in the center.
An undead army of this scale was already enough to utterly crush the defensive forces of most small to medium-sized towns in a frontal assault.
Even a 6th-Rank powerhouse, when faced with an undead tide of this magnitude, would gradually run out of strength in a battle of attrition.
Jiang Lin stood in place without moving.
He looked at the neatly arrayed skeleton army and spoke:
“Is this the extent of your abilities?”
The corner of Withered Bone's mouth twitched slightly, resembling a smile, yet also looking like some other expression.
He did not reply. He merely raised his hand again and pressed down gently in Jiang Lin's direction.
The hundreds of skeletons in the very front row moved simultaneously.
They advanced with orderly steps, their rusted swords gleaming coldly in the dim red light as they stepped over the shattered bones on the ground, making fine, cracking noises.
Jiang Lin did not retreat.
He raised his right hand, spreading his fingers with his palm facing down toward the ground.
In the next instant, a dark red rift silently cracked open beneath his feet.
The rift expanded and spread, extending in all directions like a spiderweb.
Deep within the rift, countless crimson eyes lit up simultaneously, resembling burning embers in the darkness.
One after another, crimson claw-wings surged out from the rift.
They varied in size, some large and some small, but every single one of them emitted an aura fluctuation of the 5th-Rank or above.
Bony wings unfurled, and dark red eyes locked onto the skeleton army ahead as they let out low hisses.
Fifty.
One hundred.
Two hundred.
Three hundred.
The rift continued to expand, and crimson claw-wings poured out from the depths like a tide, spreading across the domed space.
Four hundred.
Five hundred.
The rift began to narrow.
Jiang Lin felt nearly half of the magic essence in his body drained away.
Five hundred 5th-Rank early stage crimson claw-wings was already the absolute limit of what he could currently summon and maintain simultaneously.
He withdrew his hand, and the rift beneath his feet slowly closed.
Withered Bone's smile vanished.
For the first time, a genuine ripple of emotion appeared in those dark green eyes.
He stared at the crimson claw-wings pouring out of the rift, the light in his eye sockets flickering violently.
Those were absolutely not creatures of this world.
He could not even identify their origin.
The aura of these creatures had nothing to do with the undead, nor did it match any known characteristics of the demons.
They seemed more like things that had crawled out of some completely foreign abyssal rift, carrying an ancient, bloody scent that did not belong to this planet.
“You...” Withered Bone's voice carried a hint of uncertainty. “Which evil god's believer are you?”
Jiang Lin did not answer.
The five hundred crimson claw-wings moved at the exact same instant.
They advanced in a fan-shaped formation, their bony wings spreading under the dome, their dark red eyes locking onto the skeleton army ahead like a tide of blood sweeping across the ground.
The skeleton army rushed forward to meet them.
The dark green light and dark red blood energy collided in the center of the domed space, producing a dense clamor of cracking bones and hissing shrieks.
Rusted swords hacked at the Blood Demons' bony wings, sending off fine sparks, while the Blood Demons' sharp claws tore through the skeletons' cervical vertebrae, ripping skulls from spines.
This was a pure war of attrition.
Withered Bone's skeleton army was superior in numbers, but their individual strength was only at the 4th-Rank.
Jiang Lin's Blood Demons were fewer in number, but they were all at the 5th-Rank, clearly possessing the advantage in quality and offensive power.
A skeleton was torn to shreds by sharp claws, its shattered bones scattering all over the ground as the dark green light in its eye sockets went out.
A Blood Demon was pierced simultaneously by several broken spears, letting out a shriek before dispersing into dark red blood energy.
However, the blood energy from the dispersed Blood Demon did not vanish completely. Instead, it slowly drifted toward the nearest of its kind, being absorbed and integrated, causing that Blood Demon to grow slightly larger and its aura to strengthen slightly.
Withered Bone quickly noticed this as well.
His expression grew even gloomier, those dark green eyes flickering rapidly in the depths of his sockets, as if he were calculating something.
The melee skeleton army could not hold back those crimson creatures. As more and more skeletons were torn apart, the Blood Demon front line pressed forward bit by bit.
The initial fifty paces were compressed to forty, then thirty, then twenty.
Those crimson claw-wings stepped over the shattered bones littering the ground, pressing toward Withered Bone with a steady, unstoppable momentum.
Withered Bone could finally sit still no longer.
He stood up from the rock, raised his hands, and chanted a rapid, low spell.
The unactivated bones on the ground trembled simultaneously, rising from beneath the surface to condense into a circular barrier of woven bone around Withered Bone, wrapping his entire body inside.
This was the exact moment Jiang Lin had been waiting for.
Withered Bone's attention was entirely focused on maintaining the barrier and commanding the remaining skeletons; this instant was the window where his defenses were at their weakest.
Instant Light Flash, first use.
His figure vanished from his original spot, appearing in the next second about one zhang away from Withered Bone's side, right at the outer edge of that bone barrier.
Withered Bone's pupils contracted sharply. He had clearly not expected his opponent to close the distance instantaneously in this manner.
Under his rushed command, the bone barrier attempted to expand outward, but it was already a beat too slow.
Jiang Lin did not stop.
Instant Light Flash, second use.
He vanished once more, this time appearing directly inside the bone barrier, so close that he could see the direction of every fine wrinkle on Withered Bone's withered face.
Withered Bone opened his mouth to say something, but it was too late.
Jiang Lin's left hand had already pressed down on his shoulder.
Ice soul power surged from his palm. The chill invaded his meridians through the shoulder joint, spreading all the way down his spine.
Withered Bone's body suddenly froze. The bone barrier condensing outside his body lost its continuous energy supply and collapsed like a sandcastle, shattered bones scattering around their feet.
Withered Bone wanted to struggle, wanted to chant a new spell, but the section of his spine frozen by the ice soul power left his lower body completely devoid of sensation.
He toppled forward like a piece of dead wood with its roots chopped off, his knees striking the ground with a dull thud.
Jiang Lin did not let go.
He held Withered Bone by the shoulder, lifted him from the ground, then turned and walked back along the passage he had come from.
Behind him, the five hundred crimson claw-wings were still battling the remaining skeleton army, shattered bones and dark red blood energy weaving into a chaotic haze within the domed space.
When he stepped out of the crack, the night was still thick.
The clouds hung low, and the river valley was pitch black.
Carrying Withered Bone, Jiang Lin walked back along the river valley to that hollowed-out area.
Withered Bone had completely lost the ability to resist, the ice soul power sealing off most of the magic essence circuits in his body.
He could only hang his head powerlessly, occasionally letting out a muffled gasp from his mouth.
Jiang Lin placed him in the center of the altar.
The moment they made contact with Withered Bone's body, the five nested layers of rune lines began to activate automatically. A dark red light surged from the base, spreading layer by layer along the guiding circuits on the ground.
The outermost binding array lit up first, fixing Withered Bone's body within an extremely small range.
The middle layer of spatial anchoring followed immediately after, its silver-white halo intertwining and overlapping with the dark red light, completely locking down his magic essence fluctuations.
Then came the inner purification binding and the sacrificial core.
Withered Bone's consciousness was still present. In the gaps between the intertwining lights, he raised those dark green eyes to look at Jiang Lin, asking in an extremely faint voice that sounded as if it were squeezed from the deepest part of his throat:
“Who... on earth are you...”
Jiang Lin did not answer him.
He squatted down, pressed his right hand onto the altar's base, and chanted the prayer he was already highly familiar with.
Threads of dark red light emerged from the surface of Withered Bone's body, wrapping around his limbs and torso like countless tiny blood vessels.
The power within his body was being extracted, transformed, and funneled into the core of the altar bit by bit.
He made one final attempt to move his finger, but the dual suppression of the ice soul power and the binding array prevented him from performing even this minuscule action.
Standing before the altar, Jiang Lin watched as the dark red light gradually enveloped Withered Bone completely.
The dark red light persisted in the hollowed-out area of the river valley for nearly fifteen minutes before it finally began to recede.
Jiang Lin stood before the altar, watching the threads of light recede layer by layer from Withered Bone's body, like the ebbing tide exposing dry flats. Withered Bone's body had completely shriveled during the sacrifice, his skin clinging tightly to his bones, presenting a grayish-white texture like dead wood weathered for many years. Those dark green eyes had dimmed completely, leaving only empty darkness in his eye sockets.
The rune lines on the altar base extinguished layer by layer. From the outer binding array to the middle spatial anchoring, then to the inner purification binding and the sacrificial core, the dark red light dimmed in turn like candles blown out by the wind. In the end, only the dark magic crystal embedded in the central array core continued to emit a faint glow, but it too quickly fell silent.
Jiang Lin withdrew his hand from the altar's base, feeling the newly surged warm current slowly settling in his meridians. The power fed back from sacrificing Withered Bone was even more robust than that of Blood Raven. After all, the opponent was a genuine 7th-Rank early stage whose realm was stable, unlike Blood Raven who had only recently broken through and had an unstable foundation. This power traveled a full circuit along his meridians before merging deep into his dantian, causing that ball of gold-red liquid magic essence to rise by another notch.
He was still some distance away from the 5th-Rank late stage, but it was much closer than before.
No wonder those who had experienced sacrificing to an evil god became so obsessed.
Compared to cultivating on his own, the power obtained from sacrificing to an evil god was truly far too rapid.
Speaking of which, why hadn't Little Black ever mentioned this to him? If it brought it up again, he might just sacrifice to it...
Wait, if he sacrificed to it, wouldn't that mean he had to pay back all the souls he owed it from before?
Calculating it this way, he would completely lose more than he gained!
Shaking his head, he pushed thoughts of that fat cat far away in the West Continent out of his mind.
Jiang Lin squatted down and used a purification reagent to clean up the remains of the altar and Withered Bone.
The pale blue reagent dripped onto the grayish-white bones, making a faint sizzling sound. Within a few breaths, they dissolved and evaporated, leaving not a single trace behind.
He walked another lap around the hollowed-out area, using the same method to clean up the rune lines and scattered stone fragments, until the entire ground returned to the appearance of ordinary rock.
Having finished all of this, he stood up, brushed the dust off his hands, and confirmed that no traceable marks had been left around before activating the teleportation array beneath his feet.
A flash of silver-white light went by, and his figure vanished from the hollowed-out area.
By the time Jiang Lin stood once again in the shadows outside the abandoned drainage outlet in the western suburbs of Shadow City, the horizon was already tinged with an extremely faint grayish-blue.
He silently returned to his lodging along the base of the city wall in the darkness, climbed through the window into his room, changed out of his dust-laden outer coat, and stuffed it deep into his spatial ring.
Sitting on the edge of the bed, he circulated a full breathing cycle, restabilizing the magic essence in his body at the disguised level of the 4th-Rank early stage.
There was still a small residue of power from Withered Bone's sacrifice that had not been fully digested, but he had already suppressed that portion deep within his meridians, preventing it from naturally dispersing and affecting his disguised aura.
As the sky outside the window gradually brightened, he heard a soft creak of a door opening from the neighboring room, followed by the familiar sound of the Big Guy walking to the well to scoop water and wash his face.
Jiang Lin sat for a moment longer before standing up and pushing open his door to walk out.
The Big Guy was squatting by the well, wiping his face with a wet cloth. Seeing Jiang Lin emerge from his room, his movements did not pause as he casually said:
“There was some movement last night.”
“How major?”
“Not very.” The Big Guy wrung out the wet cloth, draped it over the edge of the well, and stood up. “Someone from the cathedral came by before dawn. They stood at the courtyard gate for a bit, then left. They didn't knock.”
Jiang Lin nodded, walked over to the well, scooped a ladle of water, and took a sip. The water was very cold, carrying the distinct crispness of the underground.
“It was probably a routine check.” He set down the wooden ladle. “We haven't caused any trouble these past two months, so they won't keep a constant eye on us.”
The Big Guy did not reply, turning to walk back to his room.
By the afternoon of the fourth day, the gray-robed deacon sent someone to deliver a message, saying that the Lord Bishop wished to see him.
Jiang Lin followed the young man in gray robes through the afternoon streets of Shadow City, entering the side door of the black stone cathedral.
Ascending the spiral stone staircase to the third floor, the heavy wooden door was wide open. The slanted afternoon sunlight streamed through the window, casting a bright band of light across the stone floor.
The Bishop sat on a large chair against the wall, a cup of dark tea that had already gone half-cold resting by his hand.
His dark gold eyes swept over Jiang Lin as he entered, and then he nodded slightly, gesturing for him to sit on the chair by the door.
“You did a good job with the mission at the mine,” the Bishop spoke, his voice neither high nor low. “Three demons, with the leader at the 4th-Rank early stage. Being able to independently handle a threat of this level so soon after breaking through to the 4th-Rank shows that your practical combat ability is stronger than others of the same rank.”
“It was luck,” Jiang Lin lowered his head slightly. “The terrain of the mine was suitable for defeating them one by one. It wasn't a hard battle.”
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