webnovelvip Chapter 636 Flesh and Blood Distortion
Chapter 636 Flesh and Blood Distortion
Chapter 636 Flesh and Blood Distortion
The interior of the canyon is not the open passage one might imagine.
The enormous, dark red rock walls, as if cleaved by a giant axe, soared into the clouds, blocking out most of the leaden-gray skylight, leaving only a narrow sliver of sky and casting dim, distorted patches of light.
The rock face itself is covered with huge pits and deep cracks, as if corroded by strong acid. A viscous liquid that shimmers with an eerie purplish-black fluorescent light seeps out of the cracks. This liquid gathers into small streams that meander through the uneven ground at the bottom of the valley, covered with slippery moss and twisted metal debris. It emits an even stronger sweet and fishy smell and a strong numbing sensation. Just inhaling it makes one feel a dull and strange sensation in the nerve endings.
The purple radiation mist was not evenly distributed, but rather surged and tangled at the bottom of the valley like a living thing.
Sometimes they were as thick as solidified amethyst, so thick that you couldn't see your hand in front of your face, and sometimes they became thinner, revealing an even more bizarre scene ahead: huge, twisted, like fossilized skeletons forcibly fused together with flesh and rusted metal, half-buried in black mud. The ground was covered with scorched pits of varying sizes, their edges shimmering with a dark red luster like lava. The rocks at the edges of the pits had an eerie vitrification. Tiny, shimmering dust particles floated in the air, like spores of some kind of creature, and when they came into contact with skin or armor, they would emit an extremely faint hissing sound.
The environment here is more extreme than I imagined. The suppression and repulsion of extraordinary energy is more than ten times stronger than outside. It's like being stuck in a swamp or wrapped in solidified asphalt.
Chang Lei led the way, his dark red power of greed flickering on his body like a red-hot iron. With each flicker, it struggled to push aside the viscous air and corrosive radioactive dust around him, forming a distorted shield.
But each burst of power was accompanied by a fleeting rage in his eyes and a low, muffled groan, like that of a trapped beast.
His power circulated here with extreme difficulty and sluggishness, like a rusty gear being forced to turn. Each operation consumed a great deal of energy and was accompanied by an uncomfortable feeling of his soul being scraped by the rules of the world.
"...Even the wind in this godforsaken place is thorny," Chang Lei muttered, kicking aside a massive, semi-metallic beast bone blocking his path. Bone fragments flew through the purple mist, making a dull cracking sound. "It's hard to imagine how long that girl could last here, if she's still alive."
"The fact that she's here instead of dying at the hands of the omnics proves that she's not so easily harmed." Tang Zijun followed closely behind, his main focus on sensing the faint, unique aura belonging to the stuttering girl, which was blocked by layers of filth and radiation.
"You've discovered something?" Chang Lei looked at Tang Zijun curiously.
"We have some clues, but we can't be sure."
Tang Zijun's voice pierced through the thick air, his brows furrowed with a hint of solemnity. This was not only due to the perilous environment, but also because he sensed that the aura was weak and fleeting, like a candle flickering in the wind, which could be completely swallowed up by this land of death at any moment.
"The space here... no, everything here is incredibly chaotic. I can confirm that I smell something unique, but I can't be sure if it's just a hallucination."
"You mean the environment here is misleading you? Are you sure...?" Chang Lei looked at Tang Zijun with some surprise. "You're a god, aren't you?"
"But don't you often trick me too?" Tang Zijun retorted, only to be met with an eye roll from Chang Lei.
Just then, "Roar—!"
A roar, completely unlike any known creature, filled with the grating of metal, the shrill whistling of energy, and the agony of a living being, suddenly erupted from the depths of that dark, empty cavern.
The sound was sharp and piercing, carrying a strong mental impact. It pierced through the purple mist in an instant, causing the rocks on the cliff to fall in a rustling sound.
Immediately afterwards, dozens of pairs of scarlet lights suddenly lit up in the thick, viscous purple fog around them, like malevolent eyes suddenly opening in the darkness.
These scarlet dots moved rapidly and drew closer, accompanied by the dense and ear-piercing rustling scraping sound characteristic of arthropods crawling at high speed, a sound that surged from all directions, as if the entire canyon wall had come alive.
In that instant, Tang Zijun's belt appeared around his waist, and Chang Lei was holding a white, eerie mask in his hand.
However, the anticipated fierce attack did not occur.
Only the overwhelming malice, like cold, slippery tentacles, still lingered in the surrounding air, silently licking the edges of the force field created by the two of them.
Chang Lei's tense muscles did not relax, and the dark red light flickered on his body like a red-hot branding iron.
His bloodshot eyes scanned the purple mist like those of a raging beast unable to find its target, filled with a volatile wariness. "...It sounds like an echo from a distorted spacetime. I don't sense any living things. What about you?"
"I didn't either..." Tang Zijun frowned, her eyes becoming even more profound.
He could sense that those things hadn't appeared, but they hadn't left either; they were simply lurking behind an unknown veil.
"Playing tricks..." Chang Lei curled his lip. "It's just a simple material world, without even extraordinary laws, yet it's made to look so strange."
As they were talking, Chang Lei's gaze casually swept over an inconspicuous corner of the cliff face—
"Um?"
The next moment, he abruptly stopped in his tracks.
A look of surprise flashed across his face, then he was suddenly filled with shock, his eyes filled with solemnity.
"What's wrong?" Tang Zijun noticed Chang Lei's change.
Chang Lei did not answer, but suddenly waved his hand and swept it across the cliff face. With a loud bang, the dark cliff face shattered and collapsed, with rubble falling all over the ground.
Tang Zijun's gaze immediately shifted in that direction.
It was the bottom of a rock wall covered with purple moss and slimy slime.
What appeared to be just ordinary black sandstone had been blasted in half by Chang Lei's attack, which was not an unusual sight.
But something's not right at the broken edge...
The pebbles kicked away by Chang Lei were scattered in the mud. One of the larger fragments did not have the mineral crystal texture that rocks should have. Instead, it showed a dark red fleshy texture that made people's scalp crawl. The surface of the fleshy texture was covered with fine, capillary-like purplish-black veins, which were pulsating very weakly and regularly at this moment.
Thump... Thump... Thump...
The pulse was extremely slow, yet exceptionally clear.
With each beat, the purplish-black veins would rise and fall slightly, stretching out like a heart forcibly embedded in the rock, shrunk countless times.
Even more bizarrely, along with this weak yet tenacious pulsation, the dark red fleshy cut surface seemed to be slowly, almost imperceptibly, seeping an extremely viscous liquid, shimmering with the same purplish-black fluorescence, into the scattered gravel around it.
This is not a stone at all, or rather, this stone... is becoming part of a living thing.
Chang Lei's expression became quite interesting. He had seen many unbelievable things, but a stone that was growing flesh and blood and had its own heartbeat completely overturned his understanding of "life" and "matter".
A mixture of nausea, absurdity, and a hint of indescribable dread made him instinctively take a half step back, as if the pulsating stone might suddenly jump up and bite him.
Tang Zijun frowned deeply. He squatted down, not touching it directly, but carefully observing this unusual scene.
"It's not parasitism... nor infection..." Tang Zijun's voice was low and solemn, carrying an unprecedented seriousness. "It's transformation, a deep-seated... a distortion at the level of rules..."
The stone was not being transformed into a spirit, nor was it being pieced together with flesh and blood. Instead, it was being altered and rewritten at the molecular level. Most importantly, Tang Zijun sensed something absolutely impossible—negative energy—from this stone!
He believed that Chang Lei must have sensed it as well, since the other party was more sensitive to negative energy than he was, and that was probably why Chang Lei noticed something was wrong here.
Turning her head, looking at Chang Lei's unpredictable face, Tang Zijun slowly pulled out an extremely complex smile and said softly.
"...Do you still think this is just a simple material world?"