The Record of Unusual Creatures - Chapter 816

Chapter 816: The Unspeakable Heart of the First Born

 

Vivian saw the ancient memory of the world in the blood crystal, but it was fragmented, and it contained some “foreign emotions” that stirred her feelings. She decided not to tell Hao Ren, because she did not want to mislead him.

She knew someone looked almost identical to her and having the same kind of power as she did. The “Vivian” who had been active on this planet was the one made the blood crystal that Beatrice carried. But it was still a mystery as to how the crystal fell onto Earth and how Beatrice got her hand on it.

The souls that had been guarding the underground city for ten thousand years were the last people of the Sun Dynasty. Among them were not only Gragon and his entire royal family but also the god of creation, elemental god, the divine officials, and knights of the three temples of nature deities as well as the chosen ones of various kingdoms and tribes. They were selected for their spiritual strength. They built this underground city together with the goddess ten thousand years ago, transcended into spiritual bodies, and maintained a massive ritual with the sole purpose of keeping the First Born asleep deep underground so that it followed a strict program to modify and protect the world.

These souls and the city together formed a giant ‘control shackle’ that hit into the ganglion of the First Born. It was the origin of the myth of the seventy-seven nails in the back of Toka. It was a pity that the lost legend would never see the light of day.

Gragon treated Vivian as a goddess, so did other souls. Vivian started to doubt herself as to who she was. She remembered what Hao Ren had told her and quickly got a grip on herself to remain calm. She pointed to the Throat of Toka and said, “Going in from here, follow the nerves to the connective tissue at the end; that’s the ‘throne.’ If I’m not mistaken, I could open that place.”

Hao Ren knew Vivian wanted to meet the ‘other her.’ He remembered the evil-spirit Vivian whom they had fought before. The things in the hollow must be similar. He quickly checked his weapons and shield. “Would we wake up the First Born if a fight broke out?” Hao Ren asked.

“Nay, as long as the ‘lullaby’ program is running,” said Vivian as she looked at Gragon, smiling and nodding. “I don’t know what will happen down there, but I think we will cross the bridge when we get there.”

Lily looked at Vivian worriedly. “You think?”

“It’s called sixth sense.” Vivian nodded with confidence. “My intuition has always been pretty accurate.”

“I’ll trust your sixth sense,” Hao Ren nodded with a smile. He took out his ‘flying car’ and ready to go into that pit. Gezer and Bonia wanted to follow, but Hao Ren stopped them. “You two have to stay behind,” he told them.

Gezer retorted. “But—”

“This time I won’t let you,” Vivian told the two sternly. “It is not only dangerous, but there is also… err, it is a matter of divinity that I have to deal with. It’s not something you should get involved.”

It worked better than dissuasion. Since it concerned the business of the Goddess, Gezer and Bonia relented. Vivian smiled and patted on Bonia’s head before she pushed Bonia and Gezer to Gragon. “Keep the ancient souls’ company. I bet they haven’t talked to people for a long time. Gragon, I’m counting on you to keep the ‘lullaby’ playing.”

The last king of the Sun Dynasty bowed and said, “I wish you all the best.”

They climbed into the flying car, which then descended slowly into the hollow of darkness. Gezer stood at the edge of the hollow and watched as the magical vehicle disappearing into the bottomless pit. Meanwhile, Bonia was at the side of Gragon, staring curiously at the soul. “You are people of the Sun Dynasty? Were there cars that fly in the sky during your time?”

“Oh, yes. We had trains that ran on tracks and lightning-driven golems. It was a long time ago,” Gragon said slowly, with a smile on his blurry face. He placed his hand on Bonia’s head though he could not touch her. “Tell us about the world on the surface. Do people still fear the spirit of nature? Do they still remember the sun?”

Meanwhile, Hao Ren and his team were still descending. They started to see a faint red light ahead.

The car camera had enhanced its exposure rate so that the passengers could monitor the surroundings better in the dark. The cave was massive, but they could see no rocks. The walls of the cave were made up of entangled roots. It was as if they were passing through the esophagus of a giant beast. It was not a new experience for Hao Ren; his two-year working experience had trained him to have the nerves of steel. He was still impressed by the sheer size of this First Born though. Snugging in a slot on the console, the MDT reported the situation outside mechanically. “Now, we are passing through the crust that is ten-kilometer thick. The tentacles of the First Born are supporting the crust from beneath.”

The red lights ahead appeared brighter now than before. After passing through the crust, they would come into the body of the First Born where various organs lived. These organs were emitting enough light so that Hao Ren and his team could see the surroundings without visual aid. The cave was wider at the bottom and had more tentacles intertwined like crotches of a tree on the walls.

The flying car finally reached the bottom and emerged from a trumpet-shaped opening into an unspeakably vast space.

It was still red everywhere. The underground cavity was so huge that it looked like an open space where the flying car appeared just like a little bug wandering in the air. There were more tentacles in the red, foggy environment. Some of them were a few meters thick, but the big ones had a diameter of several kilometers. The neurotic tentacles of the First Born were usually slender while thick tentacles were primarily responsible for hunting food and performed other jobs.

The place looked like a jungle of tentacles, an elusive nightmare, and a weird atmosphere that could have never existed in reality.

Ordinary people would go insane instantly by glancing at this distorted world. Hao Ren and his team were feeling the influence too. Lily could not help but shrink deeper into her seat. “Is this a fully grown First Born? It’s so much bigger than Zorm!” she said.

“Zorm just covered a planet, but this one…it hollowed it out!” Hao Ren was wide-mouthed. “It’s hard to tell if this is the mature form of the First Born. After all, I don’t know how to define ‘maturity’ now. Only God knows if this thing has an ultimate ‘mature’ stage. It seems it could grow and change indefinitely.”

Hessiana shrank herself in the last row. Her mind could not take what she was seeing. She was struck dumb, and her voice was shivering. “Ma… Ma’am Vivian. What the hell is this?”

“This is what we usually deal with,” Vivian replied in an indifferent voice. “Well, Hao Ren deals with it most of the time, I assist him.”

“So what things are you guys going normally?” Hessiana almost collapsed. “You can still smile in this situation?”

Hao Ren scratched his head. “I almost peed in my pant the first time I saw this thing; now I have gotten used to it. I still have a few of this thing in the lab.”

Hessiana bit her lip. She vowed not to work with this man again because apparently, this man had a massive cursed aura!

“Don’t get distracted,” said Nangong Sanba. “We should find the main ganglion.”

Hao Ren agreed with him and ignored the bizarre sight around him. He had quickly identified the nerve—the tentacle that served as a guide that could lead him straight to the central ganglion, and stepped on the accelerator and moved along it.

The surroundings flew past them as they sped ahead. It was as if they were passing through a twisting, changing nightmare, and at the end of the dream, there was a vast, beating, dark red organ that looked like a temple of the devil awaited them.

The dark red organ suddenly heightened its activity when it sensed the presence of Vivian.

Chapter 817: The Other You

 

This First Born was by far the most massive and most incredible individual Hao Ren had ever seen even though he had dealt with other First Borns many times before. The size of its organs perfectly matched the size of the creature.

A ganglion the size of a mountain… or more accurately, a cluster of ganglia appeared in front of them.

This irregularly shaped giant connective tissue had a radius of nearly two kilometers. It looked like a rotten orange connected by dozens of skinny nerves that floated in the air. There were no other biological tissues to support it. Plaques and veins glowing in red covered the surface. The red spots were still pulsating with a throbbing sound. This behemoth was alive!

As a container for the ‘brain nucleus,’ this organ was way too large for the size.

Hao Ren had a First Born sample at hand. He knew this super life could grow a planet-sized body, but its ‘brain’ would remain relatively tiny. The diameter of a brain nucleus was usually about several meters; the largest one would not exceed ten meters. After the First Born grew to a certain size, the brain nucleus would stop growing. Instead, it divided. It was a unique physiological characteristic of the First Born. The delicate nerves in this connective tissue seemed to suggest that this organ contained the brain, but it outsized all other previous research subjects Hao Ren had ever conducted. This organ was another variation.

When they came close to the organ, the red glows on the surface pulsated even more rapidly and brightly. Vivian’s brows knit together. She sensed the familiar but dangerous atmosphere. When Hao Ren stopped the car at a few dozen meters from the organ, it looked like a breathtaking mountain suspended in the red chaos.

This place was close to the center of the planet. Though the First Born was using his organs to regulate the temperature and the heat would not damage its core, it was still inhospitable for a human to get in here. Hot gases and dangerous cells of the First Born made the air unbreathable. Gravity was weak and distorted, making movement difficult in this place.

Hao Ren had to let everyone, including Hessiana and her two sidekicks, wear life-support collar and space equipment.

Hessiana felt out of her depth in this circumstance. She had given up thinking and would do whatever Hao Ren told her. However, when Hao Ren and Vivian pushed the door open and drifted towards the red ‘mountain,’ she was alarmed. “Wait a minute! Are you guys seriously thinking of going there? That would be a bad idea. Just look how menacing that thing is.”

“That’s where the ultimate secret lies.” Hao Ren nodded matter-of-coursely. “You can stay back in the car if you’re scared. The car is strong enough though it has no special armor and shield. I guess you’re not used to a low gravity environment.”

Hao Ren’s words had stirred the rebels in Hessiana. She jumped out of the car and used the propulsion equipment to propel herself towards them. “Don’t belittle me! After all, I’m Ma’am Vivian’s… Oh wait, how could I stop this thing?”

Hao Ren looked on as the little bat flew out and away in the low-gravity environment. He only shrugged his shoulders when Hessiana became desperate. “Did I not warn you? Even Vivian needed a day to learn spacewalk,” Hao Ren said.

While Hessiana and her sidekicks were learning how to use the high-tech equipment, Vivian had already floated towards the huge biological tissue. She reached out her hand and stroked the thick outer skin of the tissue. She felt a warmth in the glowing red spot.

There was a sense of nostalgia too.

“What should we do next?” Hao Ren looked at Vivian. “Shall we blow it up into pieces?”

Vivian shook her head. She bit her finger and squeezed a drop of blood onto the skin of the enormous connective tissue. “If the illusion I saw is anything to go by, this will generate enough stimulation, then—”

Before her voice trailed off, the vast tissue seemed to pull the blood drop to itself and absorbed it instantly. Almost immediately, Hao Ren heard a loud throbbing sound, which was even more potent than all the sounds that echoed in the entire space.

The mountain-like monster trembled violently; the throbbing increased in intensity as if its heart was going to explode. The red glow moved around the huge tissue, spreading, flickering, and slowly forming a vein-like meridian. Then, the part of the skin that glowed the brightest began to rise.

Everyone was nervous. Lily drew her Frostfire Claws; Nangong Sanba held up his crossbow and rune cards, while Hessiana and her sidekicks had mastered the maneuver in this space using their wings and were ready for battle. Nangong Wuyue remained unchanged though; she had been in the shape of a ball—her ultimate manifestation of fear—since the beginning and she could not get any worse than that.

“Something is coming out…” Lily looked nervously at the huge tissue that suddenly came alive. “Wait a second! It has burst! It’s punctured. There is blood!”

The large biological tissue burst. Red liquid was flowing out from the holes. However, the ‘blood’ did not float around in the air. Some power was controlling, grouping the blood and condensing it into something.

Amid a strange sound that groaned like a beast, a huge red figure emerged out of the condensed blood!

It was a huge female figure with only an upper body.

The ‘blood giant’ conneceted to the connective tissue, which served as her lower body. Erecting at a kilometer tall, she bent slightly forward and looked indifferently at the intruders who appeared like a group of tiny ants in her eyes. The ‘blood’ was flowing around on her body, slowly shaping the detailed feature of her face.

Hao Ren was not surprised at all to see Vivian’s face on the ‘blood giant.’

Such was the secret hidden in the First Born. It was the ‘evil-spirit Vivian, who was more massive, stranger, and more potent than what they had seen before.

She was part of the First Born!

“This is not the same as I imagined!” Lily already broke out in cold sweat looking at the blood giant who gazed at them with a pair of indifferent eyes. “Battie! You didn’t say there is something like this in the underground!”

“I’m just as shocked as you, all right?” Vivian said with her jaw dropped to the ground. “What I saw in the blood spar was just a person of the same size as me. I have no idea that she has grown so large for the last ten thousand years.”

The Giant of Blood, or Busting Super UR Vivian MK-II, no matter what its name was, the giant creature had noticed the intruders. Her liquid face was void of expression. She stared deadly at Hao Ren, who had no clue as to why he became her attention. His blood froze whenever he looked at the Vivian lookalike. “Do you think she is hostile?”

Before his voice trailed off, the finger of the bloody Vivian-lookalike was already coming down with an overwhelmingly powerful, negative energy!

Hao Ren quickly retreated to a safe distance and drew out his weapon. “Apparent she is hostile! Let’s take her out!”

A strange battle unfolded right in the heart of the First Born.

Chapter 818: Vivian, the Demon God

 

If you work long enough in the job, you will always meet something new, something beyond your imagination.

He had fought with the First Born, guardian giant, soldiers, and demons of the otherworlds. He had even taken the consciousness of Io head-on, but he never thought he would one day fight a bloated version of Vivian. He did not see it coming; the battle was just too weird. The blood spewing from the organ was making the giant Vivian stronger. This incomprehensible, mysterious existence was what Vivian had mentioned—her “other self.” However, she seemed to be oblivious to how it turned out this way.

The entire space was shaking, and a roar filled the air. The battle had shaken the foundation of the giant creature, and all tentacles had felt the tremor. The giant creature began to convulse uncontrollably as weirder, and more horrible things became to unfold. Countless huge tentacles reached out from all directions to the center of the battlefield, as if they wanted to lend support to the giant living body in the storm, but every movement of the Bloody Giant had caused things went further out of hand.

The huge female figure was merely lashing out her attack indifferently. She only wanted to get rid of the ‘harmful elements’ in her eyes. A bloody storm screamed and condensed around her, and she unleashed it at the intruders. The bloody storm screamed like a human, bringing with it a soul-piercing negative emotion that could be felt from a hundred meters away.

They quickly pulled one kilometer back, keeping a safe distance from the giant figure, giving them space and time to figure out the enemy. Because of the distance, the battle was in a stalemate.

Hao Ren had dodged a wave of attacks as the bloody storm blew past him. He still felt a moment of dizziness and fear despite his shield had protected him from the physical assault.

The enemy’s attack carried an equally damaging mental-attack energy. The mental attack was more challenging to deal with as it had a greater range of attack.

After barely stabilizing himself, Hao Ren quickly raised his gun and launched a counterattack. Plasma flare hit the giant female directly and blew a massive, through-and-through hole in her chest. Every time plasma flare hit the giant female and crystalized part of her body, the crystallized portion would fall off, and new blood would replenish the wound almost immediately.

“Neither her head nor her heart is her weakness,” Hao Ren yelled in desperation. “What is this thing?”

“I’m afraid she has no weakness,” the MDT said. Unlike others, it was immune to mental attacks. It had been studying the giant female figure from the beginning. “She doesn’t have a body. The fluid leaking out from the organ forms her. Unless we blow up the whole planet, she would be invincible!”

Hao Ren knew this. He attacked the connective tissue and the giant female upper body, but the ‘blood’ in the connective tissue seems to repair any wounds constantly. The organ was getting its ‘blood’ supply elsewhere. He looked around; the crisscrossing tentacles in the surroundings must be the pipes that supplied the blood. “Can we blow up those tentacles?”

“No, this would only drive it elsewhere and give it time to respawn; we would have no control over it by then.” Vivian snorted.

Lily had to keep swerving to dodge the bloody storm. Her fighting skill was useless in this circumstance. She could only yell in anger. “Battie! Do you know how to fight this thing?”

Vivian’s mind was working hard, but her eyes were on the connective tissue. “According to the scene I saw in the blood spar, the other ‘I’ had entered into it. So maybe I can also get in…”

The bloody storm suddenly stopped. Hao Ren looked at the huge female figure in the distance. The female figure suddenly raised her hands in the air, her mouth opened as if she were making a roar, but there was no sound. Ripples formed on the sea of blood around her but it was silent too. Hao Ren was stunned. He quickly warned. “Pull back! Guard your mind!”

The next second, the storm came in silence.

The giant, bloody female was screaming silently as invisible, powerful energy swept across the battlefield like a gust of wind. It was a non-physical, psychological attack. For a short moment, Hao Ren felt like his brain was undergoing ischemia before a wave of meaningless information broke into his mind. He saw distortion; the world had become a chaotic whirlpool that swallowed up people alive. For a moment, Hao Ren saw Lily attacking him, and he had wanted to fight back. But everything went away just as fast as it came. He came out from the illusion, mind control, and sensory distortion. Everything came back to normal, but the pain in his head still lingered.

The silent screaming of Vivian MK-II had stopped, but the corrosive blood mist was coming.

“If this mental attack repeats every five minutes, sooner or later one of us would go insane.” Hao Ren shook his head and then pushed away Nangong Sanba. Nangong Sanba took a longer time to recover, but this few seconds delay had almost lost his life as the blood mist almost got to him. “Lily! Take Sanba to join Hessiana. Vivian and I will find a way to go into that ‘mountain’!”

Lily shouted, “Do you want to go there? We just got out of there!”

“I trust Vivian’s intuition,” Hao Ren said as he looked up at the sky above the endless chaos. The mist covered high altitude had a large number of intertwined tentacles, which were twitching with increased intensity. “The fighting has woken up those things; we cannot afford to drag the battle any longer. Otherwise, it will spread to the surface eventually. The lullaby of the ancient souls might not be able to suppress them anymore.”

Lily looked at the huge female figure, who also looked back at her calmly. Lily could not read the emotion from the liquid face of the giant female. It was even hard to gauge if the giant woman had the same feelings and thoughts of a human. Lily knew that when it came to magic and mental realms, she was a sitting duck. She nodded hard and said, “Understood. You guys, be safe!”

Hao Ren nodded back and then lunged out with Vivian. Suddenly, Lily called out from behind again. “Battie!”

Vivian turned and looked over her shoulder. “What’s up?”

“This is your fault!” Lily yelled and waved her claws. “You must tell me what this thing is when you come back!”

Lily brought Nangong Sanba, who was a little in a daze, retreating to an ‘island’ a few kilometers away. The island was one of the few remains of the crust that the First Born had yet heterogenized. It was held in place by the tentacles. Hessiana and her men, who were injured in the battle and Nangong Wuyue were already on the island. As soon as Lily and Nangong Sanba got to the island, Nangong Wuyue would treat them accordingly.

Meanwhile, Hao Ren and Vivian were going in the opposite direction into the center of the battlefield.

The giant female figure had noticed two little ‘flying insects’ coming her way. She leaned her body slightly to pour down more attacks at the two tiny intruders, all done without any emotion on her face.

She acted like a demon god, waving an unspeakably horrific storm in the center of the battlefield. No human could perceive any emotion on her face. Vivian’s mind was in a complicated state. “How is this thing even formed?” she asked.

Hao Ren was shielding Vivian in front with his Steel Membrane Shield. As they came closer, the face of the enemy was filling his entire field of vision. He had a strange feeling. He wanted to say something to ease their nervousness, but he was lost for words. At last, he uttered, “Vivian, your face is big looking from this angle.”

Vivian laughed. “Yeah, thanks for the compliment. That’s funny.”

“I think we should give the fellow a name.” Hao Ren endured the pain in his head as he stared at the gigantic opponent, looking at ease. “Since this enemy is so special, why not we call her Vivian Mk-II?”

“What a lame name!” Vivian retorted.

“What about Vivian, the demon god?” Hao Ren looked ahead. At this distance, the giant Vivian looked even more menacing, almost giving an illusion that he was in a confrontation with a demon god. The ubiquitous bloody storm was now hitting directly on his shield, as he was only a hundred meters away from the connective tissue.

Moving became difficult.

The pain from the stings was all over his body. He noticed that the blood mist was very corrosive. It burned his skin. Flesh and blood under his skin was shimmering with a faint silver glow, which was the regeneration process of his damaged body tissue. Unfortunately, the tissue regeneration could not keep up with the corroding speed of the bloody mist.

His shield was down, but they had managed to break through the last obstacle.

Chapter 819: One into Two

 

*Boom—*

A massive fireball rose with a loud boom had lasted a large hole in the thick wall of keratin and connective tissue, from where some bodily fluid was oozing out and vapor, was rising. Hao Ren and Vivian had gone through the last obstacle and disappeared into the chaos inside the hole.

The demon-god Vivian felt a tingling sensation on her ‘foot.’ Standing at one-kilometer tall, she was startled for a while before looking down on the massive organ below her, but she saw nothing.

As if a robot losing its target, the bloody demon god stopped and went into standby mode. Meanwhile, blood began to ooze out from the surrounding tentacles to repair her wound, which Hao Ren had caused using magic, bullets, grenades and small rockets though these things had little effect on her.

More tentacles had stretched out from the chaos, making a strange hissing sound as they reached into the giant organ to repair and replace the damaged nerves and tentacles. Just like in the beginning, the living organ was held in position by the tentacles like a temple of evil. It was silent, emotionless, and seemingly devoid of rationality.

Over on the safe island some distance away, Lily and others were taking a break. During the battle, Hessiana had one of her wings broken; Turcan and Kassandra were poisoned by toxic blood, while Nangong Sanba had severe mental trauma, not forgetting that Lily had also lost a large patch of her beautiful hair. Nangong Wuyue was using an enchantment to heal them. She looked at the bloody demon god. “Looks like it has quieted down.”

“That thing isn’t capable of thinking.” Lily groaned and stroked her tail sorrily. “Otherwise, we would have been dead already. Didn’t you see that she didn’t even pursue us when I dragged Sanba away?”

“Do you think Mr. Landlord and Vivian can solve this thing?” Nangong Wuyue rolled her tail up in the shape of a question mark. “I could sense it through the water; this monster is just the tip of the iceberg, there is something bigger behind all these. She is connected to the entire planet through the tentacles. She is almost like the will of the planet.”

“I trust Mr. Landlord,” Lily replied without hesitation. “There’s nothing that Mr. Landlord couldn’t accomplish.”

Nangong Wuyue was wide-mouthed and mumbled, “Yeah, your master is the greatest man in the world. What a dog’s logic!”

Hao Ren and Vivian had come to a place where they could seize the opportunity to treat their injuries.

Hao Ren’s shirt was in tatters, exposing his severely burned skin. The blood mist was corrosive. The good news was that the wound was not fatal. A faint glow was running in the lacerations where the stinky damaged tissue began to come off as new flesh grew. Hao Ren felt not only severe pain but also light-headedness. He had lost too many body tissues, and he was weak.

Hao Ren took out a large vacuum syringe from the dimensional pocket, attached a med can on it and injected the med into his left arm, which suffered the most damage. The solution entered his self-healing system with a hiss, and his dizziness eased.

He looked at the glow that ran on his body, and for the first time, he saw his bone had a crystal-like texture in one of the deepest wounds. He shook his head with a complicated smile. “Oh gosh! Am I still a human?” he asked himself.

“You risked your life to protect me. Why didn’t you tell me that your shield was wearing out?”

Vivian’s injury was far less severe and only suffered minor scratches. She was blood-magic resistant, and Hao Ren had taken most of the hit. She treated her bruises on the skin by shrouding herself in a mist.

“I made a calculated risk,” Hao Ren shrugged his shoulders, and that aggravated the pain. “I thought the shield would hold up for at least a kilometer, but the attack was too brutal. I misjudged it.”

Vivian looked at Hao Ren with a frown. “Only if you are not immune to my magic, I can treat your injury.”

Suddenly, the MDT appeared out of nowhere. “I don’t mean to interrupt you guys, but I still need to remind you: your action was too reckless, it was not the best way!” it said to Hao Ren.

Hao Ren forced a smile. “I had no time to think,” he said.

Indeed, it was now or never. The MDT had many ‘best solutions.’ For example, bringing the Petrachelys over; returning to the surface and taking their sweet time to come out with an action plan; releasing drones to find out the composition and weaknesses of the demon-god Vivian, but he did not have the luxury of time. The activity of the bloody demon god might wake up the First Born, which could turn Inferno upside down. Hao Ren had no time to think about the best solution, he and Vivian had to act quickly.

“I mean you at least could come over by car. Though it has little self-defense capability, it could take the initial hit for you, and you don’t have to lick your wounds as you do now,” the MDT said.

“Why didn’t you tell me earlier?” Hao Ren asked.

The MDT lost its patience and shot its mouth off. “When I saw you lunged out and risked your life for her, I thought you knew what you were doing. Look at you! You’re in terrible shape now. You had freaking no idea! You were trying to impress her.”

There was a beat, and neither Hao Ren nor Vivian met the other’s gaze.

“Maybe we should first take a look around. This place is unusual,” said Vivian, breaking the awkward moment.

Hao Ren turned to look deeper into the inside and his brows knit together. “There’s a structure there.”

The interior of the organ was entirely different from what they expected; it was not wholly of biological tissues and fluid, but more like a natural building with pillars and vaults of biological tissue. The blood-like liquid was flowing in the groove at the top, but there were no pipes. It seemed some mysterious power was controlling the liquid flow.

There were many cracks on the above, through which Hao Ren could vaguely see the body of demon-god Vivian. He pulled his eyebrows together and said, “I have enough weapons to blow this place up, maybe we could destroy the body of the demon god.”

“But that doesn’t kill her,” Vivian pointed to the tentacles that extended into the organ. “Look at those things; they are interconnected. If you blow the organ up, the demon god will only move to other locations and respawn. It would be worse if it moves onto the surface; it could spell trouble for the world.”

“Hmm.” Hao Ren swung his arm, which had just recovered, a little. “Is the thing you’re looking for inside here?”

Vivian nodded and pointed to a direction. “It’s there!”

Hao Ren looked where Vivian was pointing. He was wide-eyed.

A two-meter-high blood-red crystal, bound by chains, was suspended in the center of the enormous organ quietly. Inside the crystal, there was a human figure.

Chain?

“I’m sure the First Born didn’t make this!” Hao Ren said as he checked the chain, then the crystal. “It is you. I mean it’s the evil spirit.”

The red-haired Vivian was sleeping soundly in the crystal. She looked peaceful.

“This must be true body of the bloody demon god,” Vivian said as she put her hand on the crystal. “She has become one with the First Born here and produced the great distortion. She wanted to stop all this by burying herself in the core of the planet.”

Hao Ren looked at Vivian. “Then, what’s your plan?” he asked.

Vivian smiled and said, “Eat her.”

Chapter 820: Two Into One

 

Inside the huge, weird organ, a dozen black and heavy chains tied a blood-colored crystal in the air. The blood crystal, about a person’s height, was shrouded with a thin layer of red mist. Light dots flowing out from the crystal moved along the chains into all directions, and the red-haired woman in weird dress was sleeping soundly inside the crystal.

“Eat it?” Hao Ren was shocked. “Looks like Lily’s foolhardiness has caught up with you.”

“It’s called reintegration,” Vivian waved her hand. “Do you still remember the first red-haired evil spirit that we killed on Mars, and that I absorb its power? The only way to kill this evil spirit is to absorb it. Conventional tactics just won’t work on this thing.”

Hao Ren remembered it; the thing had given them a hard time. It was Vivian that destroyed the evil spirit and absorbed its power and ability but she did not use any special means to ‘eat’ it.

So it turned out that Vivian had a natural ability to suppress this kind of ‘evil spirit’, but… could this work every time?

“We know too little about this thing. What if we fail?” Hao Ren looked at Vivian, concerned. “Obviously this evil spirit is different from the one you summoned from the magic book. She has mutated. Are you sure you can handle it?”

Vivian reached out and touched the red crystal. She slowly placed her hand on the forehead of the red-haired woman, separated by the crystal, as if she could sense the temperature of the red-haired woman inside. “I have learned from the blood spar and previous experience. There shouldn’t be a problem.”

Hao Ren’s brows knit together. “The last time you did it was when the evil spirit was weak, but this one here is much powerful and it doesn’t seem to have weakened a bit. Are you sure you won’t be influenced instead?”

“The bloody demon god might beat me hands down if fighting face-to-face but not here,” Vivian said. She smiled and pointed at the heavy and old chains. “See these? These things make her like a sitting duck on her throne, the chains are constraining her power. The bloody demon outside almost entirely relies on the lifeblood of the First Born, and as you can see, this evil spirit here couldn’t even move.”

“I can also provide some technical backup,” the MDT chimed in. “Oh of course, I’m not talking about the exploding stuff; I mean would monitor Vivian’s state of mind. If she is at any time undermined, you can immediately keep her in your dimensional pocket. The dimensional pocket of inspector is the most powerful container, as it comes with Xi Ling Celestial’s powerful encryption, nothing could penetrate it when it is closed. As for the fella in the crystal, I don’t know if things will change. I suggest that you plant some explosives around it so that when things get out of hand, if the bomb doesn’t kill her, at least will weaken her.”

Hao Ren scratched his chin and nodded slowly. Suddenly, a soft squeaky sound caught his attention.

He looked at the blood-colored crystal, fine crack had appeared the surface. Although the crack was small, it was definitely new!

The thin blood mist in the air began to drift toward the blood-colored crystal slowly as if some forces were sucking them over. The eyelids of the red-haired Vivian flickered once. Vivian took her hand off the crystal instinctively as if there was an electric shock. “Hurry up and make up your mind. The fighting seems to have weakened the seal!”

“Do as you said,” Hao Ren nodded hard. “But be careful. If anything goes wrong, I will take you into the dimensional pocket”

Vivian began to contain the red-haired Vivian with a thin blood mist. This blood mist was different from the cloudy, dark blood mist in the air; hers was clearer though difference was subtle. Hao Ren began to feel the hostile cold in the surroundings gradually subsided.

The two different blood mist crashed silently in the air. They looked similar in texture but clearly, they did not mix. The mist around the crystal spun rapidly trying to ward off Vivian’s blood mist, but as the master of the mist was still contained in the seal, the mist lost strength and dissipated. At last, Vivian began to form a spherical, blood-mist barrier shrouding the crystal.

The blood-mist barrier condensed and turned into liquid state with a series of complex runes floating on it as Vivian kept applying her magic on it.

Using her own blood as the magic ingredient, she had created a three-dimensional and complex magic circle.

She placed her hands on the magic circle and whispered, “Here we go.”

The runes on the magic circle glowed and the blood-colored crystal emitting a shrill whistle. The runes flew on the magic circle rapidly and millions of tiny light particles struck the crystal like a meteors shower. Soon, the blood-colored crystal gave way and exploded with a boom. The enormous energy released from the explosion almost caused Vivian to lose control of the magic circle. Hao Ren was behind Vivian, ready to grab her when necessary, while the MDT monitored the energy flows at the scene.

Vivian’s eyes glowed in red. She shut off her danger alertness mechanism and self-defense magic to concentrate all her powers to keep the magic circle running. She was betting on Hao Ren to keep her safe now, because she was totally exposed and vulnerable.

Her gamble paid off; the magic circle began to stabilize and the evil spirit weakened.

The light-particles began to break down the body of red-haired Vivian, who opened her eyes and woke up. Hao Ren saw it; it was a pair of eyes that he was not going to forget for the rest of his life.

Cloudy and insane; the eyes had no whites and pupils, they were dark red and filthy, devoid of human emotion and rationality, absolutely more insane than the one came out from the magic book.

Hao Ren’s mind was flooded with questions suddenly. He was wondering where this evil spirit come from, what it had done, and why it was here.

There was no answer to his questions. The evil spirit was frantic. It screamed and attacked the runes that shrouded her like a beast, hitting the thin and seemingly fragile spherical barrier with great force.

As proven earlier, Vivian was a natural nemesis of the ‘evil spirit’.

The magic circle did not budge a bit no matter what the evil spirit did. Once the magic circle was up, it was unbreakable. The evil spirit began to flag but did not back down. Seeing this, Vivian finally could not help whispering at the evil spirit, “Enough! Stop the madness and surrender gracefully.”

The evil spirit seemed to have heard Vivian. It froze and then, the intense light particles finally shattered it completely.

The magic circle had subsided but Hao Ren was still tense.

The blood-colored crystal, evil spirit, and magic-circle barrier had gone but the broken chains held the crystal was still floating around in the air. Vivian stood in the middle of all this, holding a translucent shadow, which looked like her, in her arms.

“I… have tried…” the ‘evil spirit’ whispered. The madness in her eyes had receded. “Let me go home…”

“I know. You did it.” Vivian put her hand on the head of shadow and said, “Come back now.”

The translucent shadow turned its head around and its lips moved as if it was saying something. It seemed that all this was directed at Hao Ren. The ‘evil spirit’ finally nodded and dissolved into million light dots, and then sank into Vivian’s body completely.

Then everything was over.