"Mm, so can we use this to get out of here?"
"Yeah."
With Karen's current mastery of arrays, modifying the statue slightly would be enough to detonate it. The baseline buildup in the statue was already practically complete, leaving only a few minor technical adjustments.
Yet this was, after all, a century-spanning personal feud between Purr and Xiti. Given Karen's current position, deliberately detonating it and wiping out Pangxi Manor above along with all the Pangxi clansmen inside would be inappropriate. Even if those clansmen bore the Pangxi name, virtually all of them were Order priests. Not to mention, two temple elders were right up above. Setting it off would be the equivalent of getting caught red-handed.
"Then what are we waiting for?"
Little Kanna rubbed her little hands together excitedly, eager to watch a volcanic eruption and see some fireworks.
"Let's wait a little longer. There should be movement outside soon."
The two elders outside were probably even more anxious than he was down here.
Right then, Karen sensed Qianmei's call. It had returned, flying in from above the mountain cavern.
Karen and Little Kanna looked up, watching the pair of black wings descend.
Yet as it flew down, the wings seemed to brush against a few unimaginably delicate threads. Though they offered no real resistance and the wings continued to swoop down, the statue's head—which had been held high in an arrogant tilt—actually lowered along with it.
It happened with unnatural strangeness, devoid of the slightest prelude.
Karen had previously inspected the statue with the Key to the Rubik's Cube and found zero trace of external power controlling it. That meant something unusual was happening within its interior.
"Whoa, Sister Purr moved!"
Pointing at the statue, Little Kanna shouted as she stepped in front of Karen. She naturally understood this wasn't the real Purr, and she sensed the enormous danger.
Even though Karen constantly pulled her behind him, whenever an unknown threat appeared, she habitually stood in front of him.
Qianmei flew to Karen and seamlessly merged into his body, sending out ripples of joyful consciousness.
Karen didn't respond to it, as his entire focus remained fixed on the statue.
*Crack...*
The book in the statue's hands suddenly split open, and a female corpse drifted out from within. She wore a long black dress and tall leather boots, with a wand and a cowl floating beside her.
She was called a corpse because she possessed not the slightest trace of a soul aura, which was why Karen had failed to detect her presence during his initial scan with the Key to the Rubik's Cube.
The female corpse rose upright. The cowl settled over her head, her hand gripped the wand, and her eyes opened.
However, her eye sockets were hollow and devoid of pupils; after a moment, two wisps of dark-red flame flared up to serve as her "gaze."
Excluding her eyes, she was practically the mirror image of Purr's human form.
She parted her lips, her voice echoing off the surrounding rock walls:
"This is the resting place of Poer Aisenna. Those who disturb it shall become offerings."
*Poer Aisenna?*
While Karen was still pondering the connection between this female corpse and Purr, the corpse had already raised her wand. With an effortless flick, a fire dragon coalesced and lunged straight toward Karen.
"Kanna, intercept it."
"Okay!"
Little Kanna transformed once more into a bone dragon and crashed into the fire dragon. With a swipe of her dragon claws, the fire dragon was instantly severed into segments and shattered.
Normally, the strike should have ended there. But the scattered flames condensed into planes of dark-red light that encircled the bone dragon. Red light beams began firing between the facets, rapidly refracting until the bone dragon's massive form was thoroughly ensnared.
*Roar!*
Little Kanna let out a low roar. The bones across her body began shifting and realigning, with distinct changes occurring even in the finer joints. Using her skeletal framework as an array blueprint, she turned herself into one of the array's effects.
*Boom!*
A terrifying tremor radiated outward. Though Little Kanna's colossal frame was still standing right there, her "presence" vanished instantly.
This caused the red beams that had locked onto her to lose their target in a flash. Little Kanna immediately swung her tail across in a sweeping strike.
*Smash! Smash! Smash!*
Beneath the sweep of the dragon tail, the planes of light all shattered to pieces.
Such was the power of studying.
Even Karen had to admit that the "crushing coursework" Purr forced onto Little Kanna yielded remarkable results.
Against someone at Xiti's tier, she could only be suppressed; and earlier, facing those enormous dungeon creatures, her juvenile self was also at a physical disadvantage. But within an appropriate bracket of opponents, Little Kanna's bodily advantages combined with her learned techniques made her an exceptionally formidable foe.
As she grew toward adulthood, this all-around development would only produce increasingly terrifying results. After all, the peak of her potential was not merely that of a bone dragon—she carried the inheritance of the Dragon God within her.
Yet the power of the female corpse was even more marvelous. The shattered planes of light rained downward like glass shards before converging at a certain point.
Little Kanna was just about to fly up to take a swipe at the female corpse when the shards below fused into a gigantic greatsword, rocketing upward and thrusting straight toward her belly.
*Pfft!*
The greatsword pierced into the bone dragon's body, but it was quickly clamped tight by her bones. Accompanied by a screeching sound of grinding compression, the greatsword snapped.
However, the half remaining inside the bone dragon melted into a sphere, radiating an intense array aura. The magma beneath the statue's feet was drawn upward, and streaks of red magma channels were pulled straight out from within the four surrounding stone walls.
In an instant, streams of magma surging in from all directions wove into a massive spiderweb, suspending the bone dragon rigidly in midair.
*Roar!*
Little Kanna roared in anger once more, but no matter how she struggled, she couldn't break free; instead, the web only bound her tighter.
And the origin of all this had merely been a simple spell in the shape of a fire dragon, unleashed with a casual flick of the corpse's wand. Who could have anticipated that such a seemingly simple technique hid so many intricate transformations?
This represented an absolute, transcendent mastery over power. While others cut with a holy relic greatsword, you needed only the sharpness of a sheet of paper, seeking the right angle and moment to produce a comparable cutting effect.
Though Purr's strength was still far from restored, in the few instances Karen had seen her fight, he had noted that her combat style was precisely like this.
Hampered by the shackles of Progenitor Allen, she had no choice but to continuously seek changes and passive improvements in other domains.
Thus, not only did this female corpse look identical to Purr, but even her combat style was entirely the same.
Karen's figure appeared atop the bone dragon's head. He looked up.
On both sides, two gigantic hands materialized, each grabbing the spiderwebs and tearing them apart with force.
The bone dragon regained her freedom, but the severed webs transformed into a surging venom of fire that sank straight into Karen's dharma body.
Even now, that single initial spell had yet to conclude.
Karen did not panic, however. With a low snarl from the hunger addiction deep in his soul, the fire venom attempting to seep in was utterly expunged.
Only now did their first clash—or rather, the exchange of a single move—truly come to an end.
Karen spoke, asking, "Tell me, what is your relationship with Poer?"
His earlier decision to let Little Kanna strike first was also meant to deduce as much about her as possible using the Key to the Rubik's Cube.
The current deduction showed that she was indeed not a living being, but an authentic corpse. However, the components comprising this corpse were rather peculiar; its vitality did not reside in "the person" herself, but rather in the parts that made her up.
Moreover, this state differed from the awakened Daliwenluo or Count Rekar. They existed by relying on him, whereas the female corpse before him had no anchor.
To make an imperfect comparison, it was as if Richard had dropped dead on the spot, and Little Jerry had taken over his body to continue browsing the pastry shop.
The female corpse tilted her head, looking sideways at Karen as she replied:
"I am Poer."
*If you're her, then I really have seen a ghost!*
The female corpse raised her wand again. In an instant, the wand transformed into a sharp sword, and a layer of flames draped over her, coalescing into a suit of fire-attribute armor.
She seemed to have realized that relying purely on magical offensives yielded little effect against Karen.
The next moment, the corpse swooped down. Sweeping her sharp blade, she carved out an ocean of fire, erecting a potent containment barrier.
A barbed hook on one of the bone dragon's spines gently pierced into Karen's back. Almost simultaneously, the Dragon God Armor materialized over Karen's body.
*Clang!*
The corpse's blade thrust into Karen's chest, but the vanishing tip of the sword had not actually breached the armor to enter his body; rather, it was neutralized entirely.
Karen's spiritual power granted Little Kanna a virtually bottomless boost, elevating her skeletal regeneration to a terrifying level.
Seeing her strike fail, the female corpse pulled back to disengage. But from behind her, massive white bones extended outward—a barrier within a barrier was born!
When Little Kanna fought the corpse earlier, it was a novice testing out combat. Now, she moved entirely in lockstep with Karen's will. It was the same bone dragon physique, but Karen was the one at the helm.
*Boom!*
Outside, the fiery magma churned relentlessly, yet it couldn't penetrate the interior in the slightest. The female corpse was trapped within an extremely cramped space.
For now, Karen had the upper hand.
Fortunately, the female corpse's power was not at Purr's peak level. In fact, her absolute strength was far lower than her combat performance suggested.
Therefore, once all those dazzling distractions were cleared away and the fight was dragged into a contest of pure absolute strength, she was bound to fall behind.
The fire armor flared outward, holding off the crushing force of the bone barrier. Raising her blade vertically before her face, the female corpse began chanting:
"O great Progenitor Aisenna, grant me your true power. With blazing flame, incinerate all impurity!"
A phantom figure appeared behind the female corpse. She wore a dress of alternating red and blue, holding a blazing longbow in her left hand and clutching an ice blade in her right. Her eyes were closed, her expression solemn and majestic.
The sight made Karen's eyes widen involuntarily.
He recognized this progenitor phantom all too well.
In the past...
No, he was still there even now!
After he and Purr re-signed their symbiosis contract, Progenitor Allen's phantom had returned to his soul space, merely buried beneath a layer of muck.
The Scythe of War could at least brandish its shaft to assert its presence, while Progenitor Allen basically stayed buried motionless in the mire.
The phantom of Progenitor Aisenna summoned by the female corpse was, in reality, Progenitor Allen!
The only difference was that this phantom of hers was a cross-dressed version of Progenitor Allen!
At this moment, the puzzle lingering in Karen's mind was finally solved.
Purr's past could actually be split into two distinct timelines. Otherwise, the figures corresponding to each timeline simply didn't match up.
Take Bernard on Dark Moon Island and Elder Xiti, for instance.
Bernard had only inherited the position of island master after parting ways with Purr's adventure party and returning home. Yet even as island master, Bernard's status remained completely disproportionate to Xiti and Pangxi Manor.
During the adventures of the first timeline, Purr had used the identity of Poer Allen. At the time, the Allen Manor had not yet fallen into decline, making the identity perfectly suitable.
Back then, she made like-minded adventurer friends, formed her own adventure party, and immersed herself in the joys of adventuring.
However, as Purr's family faith system continuously advanced and reached Tier 9, she began seeking breakthroughs and growth in other domains. To pursue even greater thrills, her activities shifted toward exploring the mystical restricted zones of various churches.
By that point, the identity of the Allen family was no longer appropriate. Her actions could easily bring disaster upon her household; the slightest mistake could lead to the family's total annihilation, and Purr possessed an intensely deep devotion to her family.
And so, she crafted a new identity. Under this new persona, she remained a practitioner of the family faith system—that much could not be changed—but she altered the image of "Progenitor Allen."
Hanging directly above the desk in the patriarch's study back at Allen Manor was a portrait of Progenitor Allen: an armored man blazing with the extremes of ice and fire. She had turned him into a woman.
Though she was still called Poer, the surname was different, and the progenitor's appearance was different. When her enemies looked for Purr's family based on that progenitor's image, it was naturally impossible to track them down.
Back then, when the Raphael family became entangled in the Qihe case and was investigated by the Church of Order, they were eradicated overnight.
Yet Purr had engaged in a vicious feud with Xiti, and the Allen Manor remained entirely unscathed. That certainly wasn't because Xiti was magnanimous; in fact, judging from his interactions with her, Xiti was far from generous.
*No wonder Grandfather went out of his way to arrange for Purr to accompany me to Wien...*
Hiding one's identity and changing one's surname was a lifestyle Purr had mastered long ago. She had a wealth of experience in that area, one that even Diss acknowledged.
It was just that Purr had never shared these specific details with him. Of course, she wasn't hiding them intentionally; she often let slip all sorts of personal history during casual conversation without ever thinking to keep them secret. Rather, he had never sat on a stool like an obedient great-grandchild, listening to his great-great-great-great-aunt leisurely recount tales of her past.
It seemed that once they got back, he would have to demand that Purr write an autobiography.
As for their dog's autobiography, that could wait... Considering its terrifyingly divine lifespan, its paws would probably snap before it could finish writing.
Karen's thoughts flashed by in a mere instant. Across from him, having summoned the cross-dressed Allen, the female corpse's power surged. She was preparing to raise her sword and shatter Karen's bone barrier.
At the same time, the torrential resentment suppressed and amassed beneath that gigantic statue seemed to be drawn in by her, on the verge of erupting.
"Progenitor Allen..."
Rather than continuing to suppress her by force, Karen summoned the phantom of Progenitor Allen.
Within the swamp of his soul space, a humanoid mound of sludge stood up, shedding a small portion of the muck clinging to him.
Truly, having descendants who were too exceptional was not always a blessing.
In Purr's hands, he was dressed up however she pleased; in the hands of Karen, this "descendant son-in-law," he lacked even the slightest sense of presence.
Things were slightly better now, with only the hunger addiction statue standing there to suppress everything. Earlier, when Karen's soul space was running like a general store, phantoms of various deities had lined up in neat rows, banishing Progenitor Allen straight to the corner to watch the show alongside Qianmei.
Karen had initially worried whether the female corpse would fail to recognize Progenitor Allen, as she didn't seem to possess very high intelligence. Moreover, wearing an unusual disguise for too long could easily cause someone to forget their true original appearance.
Fortunately, his worries proved groundless. Upon seeing the phantom of Progenitor Allen appear, the female corpse halted her movements, lowered her sword, and dispelled the outer fiery barrier.
Karen followed suit and dismissed the bone barrier. Little Kanna separated from Karen's body and stood to the side.
The female corpse asked, "Are you my descendant?"
Little Kanna immediately clenched her fist against her chest and shouted, "The Allen family always repays its debts!"
The female corpse looked at Little Kanna, tilting her head once more as the flames in her eyes flickered erratically.
Within the limits of her rudimentary intellect, Karen's ability to wield the power of Order while simultaneously awakening the family faith system was already baffling enough. But Little Kanna was even more incomprehensible:
*Did my descendants start crossbreeding with dragons to become dragonkin?*
Karen asked, "Do you know who you are?"
"I am your ancestor."
It seemed she had no idea she was merely a puppet; she genuinely believed herself to be the original.
Little Kanna spoke up, "He sleeps in the same bed as you..."
"Kanna."
Little Kanna promptly shut her mouth.
Karen smiled gently. "Yes, Ancestor."
When dealing with a puppet of low intelligence, it was best not to provoke her or scramble her self-perception, lest she easily spiral out of control.
Karen could handle her individual strength right now, but Purr had configured her as the core of this pyre array. She was capable of manipulating the terrifying resentment pooled beneath the statue.
"Why are you here?"
"Due to an accident. I am preparing to return now. Ancestor, you may return to your slumber."
The female corpse nodded. "Alright, let us go home together."
Karen blinked. "Hm?"
Immediately after, the female corpse turned around to face her gigantic statue. Raising her hand, the statue began to lift, and the suppressed resentment beneath started to boil.
She intended to break through the seal here and leave for home.
Karen said at once, "Ancestor, Xiti has already admitted her mistake."
"What?" The female corpse turned back to look at Karen. "She admitted she was wrong?"
"Yes, she did. She knelt down and apologized, crying profusely with a face full of snot and tears."
"Oh."
The female corpse gave a flat acknowledgment and pressed her palm downward. The massive statue that had just hovered upward slowly descended once more.
"Since she admitted her mistake, I won't burn down her house."
Little Kanna's eyes widened in amazement. It was her first time seeing Sister Purr look so delightfully gullible.
How wonderful it would be if Sister Purr were this easy to fool when grading her homework.
Even Karen hadn't anticipated this. He knew the puppet wasn't very bright, but he hadn't imagined she would be coaxed so effortlessly.
The female corpse said, "Then I will dismantle this place and go home with you."
With that, a rune appeared in her palm. Under the rune's drive, cracks began spreading across the statue's surface.
Yet before the statue could be destroyed, the rune suddenly stalled, falling into chaos. Immediately following, the flames in the corpse's eyes flickered out.
Everything around them plunged into an oppressive silence.
*Heh-heh-heh...*
An eerie chuckle trickled from the corpse's lips.
The female corpse turned around slowly to face Karen again. Within those hollow eye sockets, two bizarre, glowing green pupils appeared, resembling the eyes of a serpent.
At the same time, the ground in the northwestern quarter of the sealed grounds began caving in. A gigantic python far larger than adult dragons like Augie slithered out, coiling upward.
Half of its body was bare bone, while the other half was clad in scales.
Nearby, Mormela the Siren backed away, the angel turned and retreated, and the remnants of those formerly formidable beasts all consciously stepped aside.
For it was the root cause behind the existence of this sealed ground. The Pangxi family's original purpose in constructing this place had been to seal it away—the Snake of Space, Qisas.
Inside the cavern.
Having transformed to reveal a pair of serpent eyes, the female corpse let out a series of chilling laughs before flicking her tongue to lick her lips. Purple snake scales gradually seeped out over her skin.
"Heheh, tell me, was something forgotten?"
Immediately after, the female corpse pointed a finger at Karen and demanded:
"Back when the entrances and exits were sealed shut and she couldn't leave, she made a pact with me. I helped her escape this place.
"In return, aside from leaving a puppet here to wait for the key to mature, her true self promised to find a way to coordinate a rescue for me once she returned. She even swore to write this matter into her family genealogy and ancestral precepts, vowing that even if she failed, her descendants would continue to fulfill the promise. She told me she was of the main direct line, yet also the most mediocre talent in her family.
"You are her descendant. Tell me, did you see this ancestral precept in your family's records? Has your Aisenna family been striving through the generations to rescue me?"
Karen noticed that the moment the female corpse shifted into this state, the rune had collapsed into chaos.
This meant she had lost control over the statue. In other words, only in the Poer puppet state could she detonate this place—the key was held exclusively in the puppet's hands.
Karen shrugged and answered:
"My apologies. It seems she never took you seriously at all."
Chapter 842