Lu Yuan flipped to his feet and aimed Flame in his right hand at the rank 3 Grey Covenant member who was emerging from among the wooden men.
The effect of the Sealing Disc had long since worn off.
This clever fellow had recovered his transcendent abilities and was now crouching in the shadow of the wooden men, his hands pressed against the ground. His greyish-white skin was reconnecting with the roots beneath the floor.
He was attempting to retake control of the vines.
Lu Yuan pulled the trigger on his last copper-cased incendiary round.
Bang.
Orange-red flames exploded among the wooden men. The man sprang from the ground, scrambling toward a more distant cluster of vines. He wasn't hit, but his connection to the ground was severed.
Lu Yuan didn't pursue him.
The cylinder was empty.
His attention was drawn to something else.
The Grey Covenant member who had been impaled by the vines.
He was still moving.
A thick vine had entered through the top of his head, piercing his skull and half of his cervical vertebrae, suspending him in the air.
With the seal gone, his rank 3 strength flooded back into his body. He was still alive, moving in a way that defied common sense; his limbs twitched, his lips quivered, and his eyeballs rolled erratically in their sockets.
The vines were sustaining him.
Like the "fertilizer" on the walls, the branches pierced through his body, maintaining his basic life force and controlling his movements.
His body was swung by a vine.
He swung straight toward Lu Yuan.
Lu Yuan stepped aside to dodge the body itself.
But the black water followed.
A massive amount of black liquid overflowed from his mouth and eye sockets simultaneously, splashing a fan-shaped black rain along his trajectory.
The signature ability of the Grey Covenant—even in a near-death shell controlled by vines, the residual transcendent power still seeped from the body.
The black water landed on the stone floor, emitting white smoke as it corroded the surface.
A few drops splashed onto Lu Yuan’s coat. Bolen's protective inscription immediately flared, the pale gold light repelling the black water, but the brightness of the inscription dimmed by another ten percent.
It wouldn't hold for much longer.
Relying on the speed from Timekeeper · Acceleration, Lu Yuan slid out of the black water's range.
【Sanity: -5... 95/120】
Where was '9'?
Lu Yuan scanned the area.
The spore mist was too thick; he couldn't see anything beyond ten meters.
A whistling sound.
From the right.
'9's speed exploded once more. The greyish-white figure charged out from deep within the spore mist. His charred right arm had remarkably recovered for the most part, with new greyish-white skin covering the burn marks, leaving only the fingertips still charcoal black.
Lu Yuan felt the overwhelming pressure rushing toward him.
This was exactly what he had been waiting for.
He faced the direction '9' was charging from.
Timekeeper · Deprivation.
【Sanity: -80... 15/120】
An invisible ripple diffused from Lu Yuan’s body.
But '9' stopped.
His movements froze less than three meters from Lu Yuan. Time was being forcibly stripped from '9's body, starting from the surface of his skin and penetrating inward.
His greyish-white skin withered rapidly within the area covered by Deprivation. Fine cracks spread from his fingertips to his wrists, then from his wrists to his elbows.
'9's expression changed in that instant.
The curl of his lips vanished.
He looked down at his withering right hand.
Then he looked up at Lu Yuan.
There was a look in his eyes that Lu Yuan had never seen on his face before.
However, the effect of Deprivation on a rank 4 was far less potent than it had been at the Polymath Tower.
That time, it had directly killed the mentor who was being eroded by an eerie, but that was because the target was only rank 2.
'9' was a rank 4 mutation transcendent. The moment his body endured the time stripping, it began self-repairing. Beneath the withered skin, a blackish-yellow liquid seeped out, filling the cracks and resisting the erosion of Deprivation.
He was frozen for a second and a half.
Lu Yuan had only 15 Sanity points left.
Blood leaked from his nose and left eye simultaneously. The sudden consumption of 80 Sanity points caused his brain to contract violently, and the edges of his vision began to grey out.
But he didn't fall.
Because in that second and a half while '9' was frozen, the Knowledge Worm had already swum from the surface of the skin into the depths.
【Sanity: -3... 12/120】
A violent tremor traveled through the symbiotic link, then suddenly weakened.
The link hadn't broken, but as the Knowledge Worm dove into the 'sea of knowledge' within '9', it was compressed to a point where it was almost imperceptible while passing through the rank 4 transcendent's physical barrier. However, the thread remained.
This time, Lu Yuan had bet all his chips on the Knowledge Worm.
His only wager was whether the Knowledge Worm, after entering '9's body, could buy him even a few seconds of life.
The effect of Deprivation faded.
'9' regained his mobility. His withered skin became smooth again under the soaking of the blackish-yellow liquid; the cracks on his fingertips closed, and his joints became flexible once more.
'9' stood in place.
Because he felt it.
Something foreign was swimming inside him.
'9's gaze suddenly sharpened.
He looked down, staring at his own chest.
The symbiotic link transmitted intermittent images. Lu Yuan could feel it moving through '9's body at extreme speed.
In the images from the link, the Knowledge Worm took a bite out of everything it passed. Lu Yuan could feel '9's aura diminishing at a miniscule rate.
“A knowledge-derived insect?”
'9' seemed to recognize it.
His voice was low, his tone carrying a coldness Lu Yuan had never heard from him before.
“You actually have a knowledge-derived insect that wasn't locked up in that tower.”
He looked at Lu Yuan.
Lu Yuan stood five meters away, half his face smeared with blood, holding Flame with its empty cylinder.
“Die.”
'9' completely ignored the Knowledge Worm inside him and went straight for Lu Yuan.
Lu Yuan understood his intent—if the host was killed, the symbiote would naturally be expelled from the body.
'9' stepped forward.
The shell of the Grey Covenant member still hanging from the vines swung over again. Black water poured from his mouth, forming a fan-shaped black shroud in the air. Combined with '9's frontal pressure, it sealed off Lu Yuan’s path of retreat from above.
On that half-dead face, the eyes suddenly rolled, their focus landing on Lu Yuan.
The lips quivered.
“Come with me...”
The voice was squeezed out from the residual air in his throat, muffled and indistinct, but every word was audible.
Lu Yuan had no way out now.
'9' was in front. Black water was above. Vines were on both sides, and the vine wall was behind.
Sanity: 12.
If he used Stasis one more time, it would hit zero.
Unless—
Guard II.
The second time.
Lu Yuan didn't know what this meant, but the price for the second time would be even greater.
But he had no choice.
【Guard II (Temporary · Incremental): Consumes 30 points of maximum Sanity.】
【Sanity limit: 120 → 90】
【Sanity: +50... 62/90】
His maximum Sanity had been slashed from 140 to 90.
But his Sanity returned.
62 points.
Enough for one use of Stasis.
The moment the Sanity flooded in, Lu Yuan activated it.
Timekeeper · Stasis.
【Sanity: -40... 22/90】
The world froze again.
The black water hung overhead, each black droplet fixed in the air, refracting the residual light in the hall.
'9's figure solidified into a greyish-white frozen silhouette three steps away.
The vines stopped.
The suspended corpse hung in mid-air, that twisted smile still on its lips.
Lu Yuan’s vision began to blur.
22 Sanity points. Timekeeper · Acceleration was still active, dropping with every second.
The world he saw was no longer a clear image.
Color blocks.
Everything had turned into blurred blocks of color.
Pale green and black hung in the center of the hall—the vines and the black water.
A blackish-yellow block was three steps away—that was '9'.
Deep within that blackish-yellow mass, a tiny multicolored light point was swimming.
The Knowledge Worm.
It was still inside, still biting with everything it had.
Lu Yuan’s gaze shifted slightly downward.
At the edge of the color blocks, several extremely thin red threads extended from '9's body to the ground, piercing into the cracks between the stone floor slabs.
Red threads.
He had seen these before.
Lu Yuan struggled to dig through the memories in his blurred mind.
He had seen them.
But he couldn't remember where.
The thought flashed for only an instant before it was interrupted.
The outer layer of Stasis shattered.
A massive tentacle made of insects pierced through from the direction of the vine wall.
It was as thick as a man.
Grey meat-worms twisted together, forming a muscle-dense whip-like construct.
Its tip pierced through the vine wall at incredible speed, tore through the defensive line of branches '9' had set up, scattered the spore mist, and even pierced through the Stasis barrier around Lu Yuan.
Stasis was physically torn apart.
Time resumed its flow.
The black water fell. The vines began to move. '9's body started to shift.
But the massive tentacle was faster.
At the same moment Stasis shattered, it wrapped around Lu Yuan’s entire upper body, then yanked him back from the altar area with violent speed.
The back of Lu Yuan’s head hit the surface of the insect mass. The world spun for a second, and then he was pushed to the other side of the vine wall.
Lake.
Lake was no longer human at all.
When Lu Yuan had seen Lake release his true form in the pipe network before, insects had swarmed out from under his skin, but he had at least maintained a basic human outline.
Not anymore.
Before him was an agglomerate made of countless thick meat-worms.
Those Swarming Worms, which had originally been the thickness of fingers, had each swollen to the thickness of an arm. Their bodies were covered in annular rings and wriggled back and forth incessantly.
The insect bodies twisted, coiled, and meandered together, forming a rough human silhouette—but only a silhouette.
Two dark red points of light hung where the "head" would be.
Those were Lake’s eyes.
“Execution!”
Lake’s voice emerged from deep within the insect body.
The voice vibrated, every word wrapped in the squelching sounds of countless insects. it sounded muffled and manic.
Those words were directed at '9'.
In the next moment, the Swarming Worms erupted in full force.
A grey bug tide poured out from Lake’s body, its density, speed, and coverage several times greater than before.
The bug tide hugged the ceiling, the floor, and the walls, crushing forward from three directions simultaneously.
The vines that had been pressing Lu Yuan just moments ago retreated step by step before this wave of insects. Branches were gnawed through and pierced. The corrosion secreted by the insects repelled the vines with extreme speed.
The front half of the hall was swallowed by the bug tide within ten seconds.
'9's expression changed.
He didn't face the bug tide head-on. He retreated violently, returning to the center of the altar.
His hand pressed against the inscriptions on the floor.
Eerie green light flooded out from the runic grooves.
The surrounding vines began to twitch.
Every greyish-green root tissue still growing shuddered simultaneously.
Then, the siphoning began.
The "fertilizer" on the walls—those human bodies pierced by branches and barely clinging to life—were completely drained of their final nutrients at that very moment.
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