by <unknown>
Black Swirl looked like a giant beast that had fallen into a swamp and was struggling before death. Tremendous wounds pierced its body. Black flames spurted out of the cracks, mixed with the intense stench of death.
Although they were in the vacuum and under the thorough protection of their Colossi and mustard-seed combat suits, the three of them still felt creepy as if gloomy winds were blowing and ghosts were crying.
"The extraterrestrial devils must've broken out and turned Black Swirl into a devil's nest completely. Watch o—"
Before Li Yao finished 'out', Yan Liren rushed forward in the lead. Emitting radiance that was even more brilliant than the main guns of starships, he melded with his sword and stabbed deep into Black Swirl.
Li Yao and Long Yangjun looked at each other in bewilderment. They had no choice but to closely follow him and break into the warship, too.
After Infinite Fire's reckless attack, the interior of Black Swirl had turned into an inferno, with explosions and collapses everywhere. Broken limbs that had melded with steel blocked every pathway. There was not even enough room for the Colossi of the three of them to stride forward while standing straight. They had to clear a way with crystal cannons and super enormous chainswords. Not considering anything else, they created a road to the bridge through the broken walls and the twisted cabins by brute force.
As for the coordinates of the extraterrestrial devils, it was not really much trouble. Intense devilish auras and raging devils were everywhere around them. Like mists that were alive, they jumped at the three intruders desperately, only to be burnt up by the flames of spiritual energy dancing around the Colossi.
All they needed to do was march to where the devilish auras were most intense.
On their way, they ran into some lone crew members of Black Swirl.
The Immortal Cultivators who claimed to be noble had all been deeply awed by Infinite Fire's fearless collision. They were still dwelling on the explosions, and when they saw three magnificent iron giants appearing in the middle of the surging smoke and fire, they were overwhelmed by fear. Could they summon their fighting will to resist them at all?
A lot of other people had even gone completely crazy. Crouching in the twisted corners, they either laughed hysterically, shrieked while holding their heads, or stuck the limbs that had been burnt against their incomplete bodies.
It seemed that when the stimulation reached a certain level, the 'noble Immortal Cultivators' and the 'weak hominoids' were essentially the same.
Maybe, compared with the vastness of the sea of stars, the Immortal Cultivators and the hominoids were just bigger bugs and smaller bugs. There was no fundamental difference between them.
Li Yao and his companions had no time to bother with the Immortal Cultivators who had completely lost their combat ability. They simply ran forward and gradually moved away from the damage range of Infinite Fire.
The devilish auras up head grew more and more dense. Ripples that looked like black jellyfish spread in the air, with purple and red light flashing vaguely.
"Is this the legendary 'tenebrum energy'?"
Li Yao sensed the brand-new energy form spreading at the head of Black Swirl, which was entirely different from spiritual energy.
Even the most powerful spiritual energy, like the super radiation unleashed by the solar storms, could achieve destructive effects, but it was pure and did not have life or will. Human beings were free to absorb and utilize it.
The 'tenebrum energy', on the other hand, consisted of thousands of impurities that felt like the emotions of humans. They were rolling and wriggling, as if they boasted their own life and will!
Yes. Li Yao vaguely felt that when 'spiritual energy' was alive, it would become 'tenebrum energy'. Every stream of tenebrum energy contained the most intense feelings, the darkest jealousy, the most violent ambitions, and the heaviest regret. It was some sort of primitive energy life that was like unicellular algae. No wonder the demonic Cultivators who had swallowed tremendous 'tenebrum energy' would easily degrade into evil, heinous lunatics!
"Aooo!"
From the ends of pathways, behind the cabin doors, and even the ceilings, a lot of crew members that had been corrupted by the tenebrum energy lunged out.
They had all suffered heavy wounds in the explosions. Their limbs had been twisted and deformed. Even their brains were sometimes clearly visible.
But purple flames were surging deep inside their eyes, which flowed out of their eye sockets. They were no longer Immortal Cultivators but demonic Cultivators whose souls had been completely corrupted by the tenebrum energy, which made them more evil and violent!
Now that they were the accomplices of the extraterrestrial devils, Li Yao and his companions did not show any mercy. They had even blown up the devil lord who had been attached to Professor Mo Xuan. Naturally, small fries who were enlisted in a hurry were not the slightest problem for them. Within a moment, all the obstacles were obliterated together with the uncanny tenebrum energy.
However, as they got closer to the bridge, the environment went through weird changes.
Large meat balls that looked like lumps grew out of the pathways and the cabin walls. A lot of meat balls even had wet holes from which bright purple mist was being spurted intermittently.
A lot of biological tissues similar to intestines had tied up the spiritual energy tubes, too. They were shivering slightly and secreting abundant stinky mucus that dripped down nonstop.
At first, the metal color on the cabin wall was still visible, but later, such bloody tissues were everywhere to be seen. They seemed to have walked into the internal organs of a gigantic beast!
Chapter 1824: Black Satan! |
It was a highly illogical view. The extraterrestrial devils were no demons. They did not specialize in biotechnology. Besides, even the demons could hardly develop so many messy, stinky organs in such a short amount of time, which had sprawled in the entire warship like a rainforest of organs!
"Hey, did you see it?" Li Yao asked softly.
"Yes. Like a slaughterhouse with surging devilish auras," Yan Liren remarked coldly.
"Look carefully." Li Yao aimed the enormous chainsword at an organ not far away that was protruding abruptly like an enormous eyeball. "What's this? Doesn't it look like an eye?"
"An eye?" Yan Liren's voice was mixed with intense confusion. "Why do I feel that it looks more like a heart with dense veins and stripes on it? It is even cramping and beating. How does it look like an eye?"
"That's right," Long Yangjun said calmly. "From my perspective, the organ that Li Yao refers to is neither an eye nor a heart, more like a cluster of rotten intestines.
"The same organ is in three different forms in our eyes. Therefore, all of this is just an illusion. Black Swirl did not go through any unexpected change. It is just a terrible hallucination that has been injected into our minds. The extraterrestrial devils have already begun to infiltrate and attack us!"
"Yes. The extraterrestrial devils implanted the idea of 'internal organs of a space behemoth' into our heads, trying to disrupt our minds, but they cannot etch the same vivid image into the heads of the three of us simultaneously," Li Yao observed. "What we see is imagined by ourselves. Whatever 'rotten, stinky organs' look like in our minds will be displayed on our retina and perceived by the optical nerves.
"Is this some sort of 'half-step virtual space'? It's almost a combination of reality and illusion. This extraterrestrial devil that has been attached to Lu Qingchen is indeed stronger than the one inside Professor Mo Xuan!
"Now that we have seen such nauseous illusions at the same time, the waves of tenebrum energy in this place must be very strong. We are very close to the extraterrestrial devil's nest on the bridge!"
"We must defend our souls very well and be extra careful," Long Yangjun said. "Anything we see from now on could be an illusion!"
Boom! Boom! Boom!
The three of them opened full fire, clearing a path with a storm of bullets, swords,
and spiritual energy. After burning up the illusionary putrid organs, blowing up almost five cabin doors, and passing through a pathway that was full of wrinkles on the surface and looked like intestines, they found the bridge of Black Swirl right ahead of them.
The bridge had lost the solemnity, indifference, and aggressiveness of the Imperium of True Human Beings' style and become a devilish nest piled up with corpses, skeletons, and internal organs. Countless bloody, moist organs were dangling down from the cabin walls like vines. In the middle of the bleeding 'vines', a lot of enormous cocoons were hanging. Tiny heads were exposed at the tops of the cocoons, which apparently belonged to the leadership of Black Swirl and the commanders of the entire Black Wind Fleet.
There was no telling what kind of torture they had gone through in reality, but in the weird environment that was a combination of reality and illusion, they were tangled in intestines and tentacles that were full of flagella and melded with the nest.
The intestines and tentacles were even sucking the spiritual energy inside their bodies nonstop, as if they were trying to dissolve the captives' muscles, veins, nerves, and internal organs into liquid and pump them away.
Their miserable expressions and their desperate cries even made Li Yao feel as if his hair was standing up, and he could not bear it any longer although he was on the opposing side.
Countless meat tentacles that looked like biochemical nerves were connected from the cabin walls to the Colossus more than twenty meters tall at the center of the room.
The Colossus had a unique shape. There was not a head above its shoulders, making it impossible to add all kinds of honeycomb-type launchers onto it. The torso was as round as an enormous skull. Four thick arms were installed on a ring at the top of the torso and could be twisted to any angle. At the bottom of the torso was another ring, from which eight limbs that were as narrow and long as the legs of spiders extended.
The abdomen of the Colossus, which had the shape of an ugly face with slanted facial organs, was brimming with weird rune arrays.
At first glance, it was like an enormous head that had grown arms and feet. No. Not arms and feet, but twelve multipurpose limbs!
"It's Black Satan, Heiye Ming's Colossus!"
As the Sector Master of the Black Wind Fleet and the commander of the Black Wind Fleet who had intimidated five Sectors, Heiye Ming was naturally not a strengthless leader who could only command. He was also a magnificent pilot of the Colossus.
Black Satan was the most mysterious Colossus in the Black Wind Fleet. Even Heiye Lan, as Heiye Ming's own daughter, did not know much about it.
That was because, since more than a hundred years ago, occasions were rare when Heiye Ming had needed to resort to the 'Black Satan'!
At that moment, tremendous tenebrum energy surged out of the stinky organs around. The lives of the Immortal Cultivators seemed to have been sacrificed to embed their souls on the surface of Black Satan, turning into a layer of living 'reactive armor'.
Crack. Crack. Crack!
Deep inside Black Satan, enhanced by the tenebrum energy of the extraterrestrial devils, weird noises of bones being crushed echoed. The eight limbs at the bottom shrank at the same time and supported the Colossus to its feet.
For a moment, devilish fire was surging into the sky!
"Well…" Li Yao glanced at Long Yangjun and Yan Liren. "Should I say something in such a situation?"
"Hooo!"
Before he opened his mouth, the facial organs at the center of the thick torso of Black Satan emitted dazzling brilliance at the same time. The bloody mouth made of tenebrum energy opened abruptly, and black rings of light magnified nonstop and came at the three of them like a superstorm!
In the moment, all three of them saw thousands of hideous, agitated devils inside the dark rings that jumped at them like tides and infiltrated their every muscle, vein, nerve, and internal organ!
"This is a life-and-death battle," Li Yao said. "It seems that we don't have any option except to resort to our ultimate skills now. Shall we begin?"
"Yes," Long Yangjun replied. "Let's begin!"
"Such overwhelming devilish auras!"
The flames of spiritual energy from the Tartarean Skeleton were polluted by the clusters of devils and turned into dim, brown colors. Li Yao bellowed in the communication channel angrily, "The enemy is unexpectedly strong. We're screwed this time!"
"Indeed!" Long Yangjun shrieked, too. "I didn't know that the enemy still had such thorough arrangements or that they would be so unbelievably, devastatingly strong. We are truly dead for sure this time!"
"Yes. We are as doomed as anyone can ever be. We will die in this place without a grave!" Li Yao breathed heavily. "Unless a miracle happens, we can never hope to defeat it. It will stomp on us and kill us easily like an elephant stomps on a tiny ant!"
"The extraterrestrial devils are doubtlessly the sure winners of the battle!" Long Yangjun sobbed, moaned and cried. "They are much stronger than our worst nightmares. They do not need any moves or skills at all. They will crush us as long as they approach us!"
"Hey!" Yan Liren could not bear it any longer. "What's wrong with you two? Is the enemy so strong? Why do I feel that it is still acceptable? Heiye Ming is an expert in the Divinity Transformation Stage, I'll give you that, but he was heavily wounded in the war against the Covenant Alliance a hundred years ago. After catching his breath to this day, he dedicated most of his attention and computational ability to commanding the starship and the political struggles. He has also been over-exhausted in the space battle just now and is running out of strength. In terms of his ability to use a Colossus… he is at the peak of the Nascent Soul Stage at most and on the same level as us!
"Even if he has the enhancement of the extraterrestrial devils, we have the sheer advantage in numbers, too. Why should we fear him so much? Look. We have adapted to his pace and are even suppressing him. Black Satan and the extraterrestrial devil are just so-so. Our advantages are very great!"
"Mind your words!" Li Yao and Long Yangjun were both greatly shocked. While dodging the attacks of the twelve limbs of the Black Satan that looked like a gyro, they yelled at the same time. "Fellow Cultivator Yan, you can slash your sword however you want to, but you must not speak nonsense. Our enemy is obviously at such great advantage that it will only take the blink of an eye for them to kill us all. We are merely struggling before death and having our last attempt!"
"What the heck are you talking about?" Yan Liren shouted. "Ahhh!"
From the core unit of Black Satan, a crack suddenly showed up on the top, revealing circuits inside that curled like gyri. Almost a hundred black lightning bolts swooped out of the 'gyri' and hit the chest of Big Sword, Yan Liren's Colossus, blowing the twenty-meter-tall giant hundreds of meters away immediately. Yan Liren crashed through quite a few cabins and fell into a mess of crystal cables and spiritual energy tubes, unable to get on his feet for a long time.
"What—what's this about?" Yan Liren stammered.
"Did you see?" Li Yao said. "This is a very special curse that involves luck and fate and all the other mysterious functioning mechanisms of the universe. We don't know the details, but all you need to do is compliment the enemy and belittle yourself together with us!"
"Like this." Yin Yang, Long Yangjun's Colossus, turned into dozens of blurred shadows and surrounded Black Satan from all directions. The black sword and the white sword, taking advantage of the moment when Heiye Ming blew away Yan Liren with his ultimate skill, slashed forward like a fiery tornado and chopped off one of the enemy's limbs.
Meanwhile, Long Yangjun grunted, "He is so strong. I can't hold on any longer!"
"You must hang in there!"
Although a hundred orange light balls were focused around the Tartarean Skeleton, the most tremendous spiritual energy was stored in them. When the light balls turned into pillars and smashed Black Satan overwhelmingly, Li Yao roared passionately and blood-boilingly. "Although the enemy is too terribly str
ong for us to defeat him, as long as there is a one billionth chance of winning, we must hold on. A miracle will certain happen as long as we persist!"
While bombarding Black Satan crazily, making it barely possible for Heiye Ming to stand straight, the two of them shouted and cried crazily in the communication channel, praising the invincibility of the enemy and cheering each other up.
Yan Liren looked at the two Colossi that were jumping up and down like big monkeys in a daze, lost for words for a long time.
"Fellow Cultivator Yan, what are you waiting for? Give it a shot. It's very effective!" Li Yao shouted.
"…No, I refuse."
Chapter 1825: A Sword of Ten Thousand Kilometers! |
Boom!
The area in front of Li Yao and Long Yangjun suddenly became empty because Black Satan had dug a giant hole in the floor with the remaining eight limbs under the cover of the hazy smoke and dropped to the deck on the level below.
Most of the attacks from the Tartarean Skeleton and Yin Yang immediately missed their target.
The whole process took only 0.01 seconds, but it was more than enough for such a top-tier expert like Heiye Ming and such a terrifying Colossus like Black Satan.
Deafening roars echoed from the depths of the hole. Black fire sloshed out like a volcanic eruption. Even the bloody, stinky organs on the cabin walls were growing tremendous giant objects that looked like eyeballs. Hundreds of rays of horror darted at the three of them!
The three of them saw all kinds of illusions, as if they had been mired in a nightmare that they could never wake up from. Their ears were plagued with cries and screams that were utterly unbearable for normal people. Their nerves suffered burning pain, and their brain cells were as miserable as if they were soaked in vitriol.
Boom! Boom! Boom!
The entire deck on the bridge exploded. The three Colossi fell into a bottomless abyss at the same time. It was not a narrow cabin down below but looked more like a trap made of ever-wriggling organs that were spurting out acid and venomous fog. Black Satan was right at the center of the trap, waiting for the prey while controlling the tentacles made of black air.
