sinovels Chapter 982 Withered Body
Chapter 982 Withered Body
Kuishan gritted his teeth and squeezed out the words: "Don't move."
The six men stood rooted to the spot, like statues, barely breathing. The rock rhinoceros's dark red eyes slowly swept over them, its gurgling sounds growing deeper as if it were assessing whether its prey was worth leaving the carcass.
After a few breaths, it lowered its head and continued to gnaw on the corpse, ignoring them completely.
Kuishan slowly took half a step back and made a gesture—go around him.
The six moved silently forward, clinging to the rock wall on one side of the canyon. Each step landed on the hardest part of the rock edge, avoiding crushing the scattered crystal clusters. When they finally bypassed the rock-armored rhinoceros's line of sight and turned into a narrow side valley, Qingya let out a long breath and leaned against the rock wall as if he were completely exhausted.
"That thing... it's fucking huge."
"Wild adult rock rhinoceroses do have this size, but this one is far larger than normal mutations." Shadow's voice was low, his eyes thoughtful. "The color of its carapace is darker, and there are those fluorescent blue patterns. I suspect that it has lived in this area for a long time and has been affected by the bone tower harmonics, resulting in some kind of mutation."
"Mutant Rock Armor Rhinoceros..." Yun Yin slowly repeated the word, without saying anything more, but everyone understood what he didn't say—the danger level of this area far exceeded the pre-departure estimates.
The procession continued forward.
After passing through the narrow tributary, the terrain suddenly opened up ahead. A huge basin appeared before them.
The basin's topography is extremely regular—almost a perfect circle, with a diameter of several thousand feet, like a deep pit dug out of the ground by some enormous force. The bottom of the basin is covered with a thick layer of fluorescent blue crystal clusters, making the entire basin appear like a giant luminous object. And at the very center of those crystal clusters stands a tower.
Bone tower.
Even from this distance, the tower's outline remained eerily clear. It was constructed entirely of some dark gray, bony material, its surface riddled with countless holes, like a giant beehive hollowed out by countless insects. The tower spiraled upwards, its apex disappearing into a layer of dark gray, swirling clouds, its end nowhere in sight.
What Lin Qiye cared about most were the fluorescent blue patterns on the tower's surface. These patterns, like blood vessels, covered the entire tower and pulsated slowly at a very regular rhythm—a larger version of the crystal clusters he had seen before, as if the entire tower had its own heartbeat.
Lin Qiye stared at the tower, and the resonance within his body instantly became extremely strong. The vibration started from his heart, spread along his blood vessels to his limbs and bones, as if something was awakening within him, trying to establish a connection with the tower that transcended space.
He took a deep breath and forcefully suppressed the surging feeling.
"We've arrived." Kuishan stood at the edge of the basin, his gaze fixed on the dark gray bone tower in the center. His voice lacked any of the ease one would expect upon finding their target; instead, it carried a deep, oppressive weight. "That's the tower."
Ying took out the harmonic sensing stone. As soon as the sensing stone was exposed to the air above the basin, it immediately emitted a dazzling fluorescent blue light—several times brighter than when it was near the crystal clusters, like a miniature star that had been ignited.
"The harmonic concentration is far beyond the warning line." Shadow's voice was extremely grave. "We can't go any further."
Kuishan was silent for a moment, then nodded: "Record the location and source energy fluctuation data."
Ying responded and took out a recording jade slip from her backpack, beginning to quickly record the fluctuations of the surrounding source energy. Her movements were swift, clearly indicating that she had made ample preparations before setting off.
Lin Qiye stood at the edge of the basin, his gaze never leaving the bone tower.
He could feel the tower calling to him. Not through sound, not through primal energy, but through a resonance deep within his blood, a resonance he himself didn't fully understand. The call wasn't intense, yet it couldn't be ignored; it was as if an invisible thread extended from his heart, passing through the fluorescent blue light above the basin, connecting to some extremely distant location deep within the tower.
He did not respond to the call, nor did he deliberately resist it. He simply stood there quietly, feeling the pulse of the resonance, while expanding his perception to its maximum extent, observing everything around him.
Just then, his gaze sharpened slightly.
He saw something scattered at the edge of the basin, in the gaps between those fluorescent blue crystal clusters—something that didn't seem to have formed naturally.
He stepped over.
"Lin Qiye?" Kuishan's voice came from behind, "What are you doing?"
"I've found something." Lin Qiye didn't turn around. He quickly walked to the edge of the crystal cluster, squatted down, and used his hands to brush away the crystal fragments on the surface.
What was exposed was a piece of iron-gray metal.
The fragment was about the size of a palm, with jagged edges, as if it had been torn apart by some enormous force. Engraved on the surface of the fragment was a line of extremely small characters—not the characters of the original universe, but a symbol he had never seen before, distorted and bizarre in shape, like a variant of some ancient language.
He was just about to pick up the fragments to examine them closely when, before his fingers even touched the surface, a sudden sense of crisis washed over him like ice water.
Without any hesitation, he rolled his entire body sharply to the left.
A grayish-white shadow streaked past the spot where he had just been crouching, moving with incredible speed. Had he not dodged in time, that shadow streak might already be piercing the back of his head.
As Lin Qiye rolled, the black iron spear had already fallen into his hand. He touched the ground with the tip of the spear, used the force to spring up, turned around in mid-air, and locked his gaze on the direction from which the Shadow Assassin was coming.
About a hundred feet away from him, behind a huge bone spike protruding from a bone tower, a grayish-white figure slowly stood up.
The figure was draped in a tattered, dark gray cloak, the hem of which was torn into strips, revealing withered, rotting limbs beneath. His face was obscured by the hood, making his features indistinct, but his exposed hands—if they could still be called hands—had completely lost their human form. His skin was a sallow, waxy yellow, his fingers thin and claw-like, the nails several inches long, gleaming with an ominous dark green sheen. Most chillingly, wisps of fluorescent blue mist swirled between his fingers, moving like living things across his fingertips.
What he used to attack Lin Qiye was a bone spike that had broken off from the surface of the bone tower—it was now stuck in the spot where he had been crouching, the tip of the spike glowing with a fluorescent blue light, and it was half a foot deep into the ground.
"Watch out!" Shadow's voice came from behind, tinged with obvious alertness. "That's the withered form of the butler!"