It felt as if, in an instant, he had plunged into icy lake water.
Amid the spinning suffocation, he lost all sensation. It seemed like a fleeting second, yet also felt as though an eternity had passed.
When Lian Cheng raised his head once more from his stupor, he saw a dim, faded world—everything shattered.
The sky was covered in pustules; the earth broke out in measles.
High in the heavens, the sun sneered and the moon wailed. They kissed, gnawed, and tore at each other above the firmament, generously showering blood that turned into cascading torrents inundating the mortal realm.
Landing upon his body, it sprouted clusters of mushrooms. As the mushrooms melted, they turned into viscous blood. Bubbles rose within the blood, swelling out from rotting flesh; when they burst, human faces emerged one after another, circling him, wailing, laughing, rising and falling like smoke.
Amid the virulence of the Disease of Immortality, the malice of Frenzied Slaughter raged unchecked.
Within the unkillable flesh, warring boughs of bone and sinew sprouted, striving to kill him, while he himself moved to slaughter yet another part of his own body.
When the final barrier was breached and the aura of the Sovereign Lord manifested from within, the three became like a maelstrom, locked in endless slaughter, rivalry, and strife.
Using his body as their battlefield.
The end of boundless transformation, the termination of boundless life, the source of boundless struggle...
The three intertwined like a kaleidoscope, casting dazzling yet nauseating phantasmal light, dragging him involuntarily into endless illusions and agony—dying, reviving, enduring relentless devastation and torment.
He roared, wailed, and screamed shrilly.
As his jaws tore open in violent retching, he spewed out one primitive, shattered blade after another. Even more edges of white bone thrust out from his mutated body, only for animated, grotesque flesh to stretch forth, engulfing the bone points and spirit blades once more as though chewing through iron and steel.
In an instant, he was torn into pieces, yet the remaining flesh persistently stitched itself back together, dragging his precarious soul back to the edge of the precipice.
"Save... save me..."
Bound to the electric chair, Lian Cheng writhed madly. Mouth after mouth grew and withered, emitting broken, fragmented noises. Tears of blood streamed from countless shattered pupils as he wailed by instinct: "Save... save..."
What answered him was a jubilation of cheers.
"It worked!"
Ji Jue threw his arms wide in thrilled congratulations: "Congratulations, Senior! You did it!"
"He's dying! He's dying!"
The impatient doctors crowded around, their hollow faces radiating ecstasy: "He's really about to die!"
"A good death! What a good death!!"
They clapped and cheered, tears of excitement streaming down as they roared with wild joy: "Hang in there! Keep going!"
"Believe in yourself! We believe in you—you can do it!"
"Just a little bit more!"
"Haha, swallowed it right down! How do you feel? How does it feel?"
Ji Jue pumped a fist in encouragement, laughing warmly: "Just a tiny bit more and you'll be dead! Senior, you absolutely must let the illness conquer you!"
"Y-You... you..."
From the depths of his purgatorial torment, mouths all over Lian Cheng's body opened, shrieking shrilly in an attempt to curse him out.
Yet the moment they opened, he spat out clot after clot of blood. When the clots hit the floor, they writhed like maggots before eventually evaporating into nothingness.
He reached out with twisted fingers, instinctively trying to grab Ji Jue.
But the distance was just too great.
Short by a single hair...
"Too bad this dosage is still a bit too conservative."
Ji Jue bent down to examine his miserable state, suddenly suggesting: "How about we go for another course of treatment?!"
"!!!"
Eyes all over Lian Cheng's body bugged out, protruding and bloodshot, writhing like insects, threatening to tear free of his flesh. His wails and shrieks grew even more piercing.
He struggled violently.
"Let's just take it a step further..."
As if performing a magic trick, Ji Jue pulled out a colossal syringe from behind his back—dozens of times larger than the previous one, as thick as an arm, brimming with glaring crimson. He said with keen eagerness:
"Let's apply it directly to the patient!"
In an instant, the doctors, their confidence soaring, lit up once more. Growing ever more ecstatic, they burst into sharp, high-pitched laughter, cackling incessantly.
Only from the electric chair came a sudden, screeching groan of twisting metal.
It was Lian Cheng struggling.
Shrieking frantically, a humanoid silhouette faintly emerged within the bloated mass of flesh, opening its mouth to roar as grotesque limbs squirmed like worms.
At that instant, on his crown where countless hairs had withered away, an emerald eye buried within the flesh suddenly snapped open, covered in blood vessels and steeped in ferocity.
Endure, endure, endure, endure, endure... He could endure no more!
To dare lay a hand on the medium of the Sovereign Lord's descent...
"You forced me into this! All of you forced me!"
Lian Cheng roared at the top of his lungs, abandoning all caution as he ripped open the final seal within his body. Mouth after mouth snapped open and shut, their voices layering into a thunderous bellow:
"All of you will die!!!"
At that moment, under the gaze of that emerald eye, the entire Chrono Ruin seemed to freeze for an instant. Everything solidified, resembling the might of the Desolate Ruins. Yet it was completely different from the Desolate Ruins.
For what had stagnated was not flesh and blood, but the elusive, unobservable spirit and will, transient as dew and lightning.
Even... the so-called soul!
An invisible ripple abruptly expanded from the movement of that eye, whipping up raging waves undetectable to the naked eye that swept across the entire Chrono Ruin in an instant.
From Lian Cheng's shattered body, the authority of a high-tier abomination manifested, enveloping everything.
In the blink of an eye, Ji Jue felt his body jolt, as though an invisible wave had washed over him. But Non-Offensive, which enveloped his body to seal out abomination infection, violently shuddered, furiously siphoning spiritus reserves from his wristwatch and deflecting every alteration directed at Ji Jue's body!
Immediately after, he felt all Sovereign Virtue aura and transformations being entirely cut off and repelled!
Within the vast Inpatient Building, beneath the shimmering light of that eye, the area had turned into a forbidden zone for the power of Sovereign Virtue, casting out all outside interference and influence.
Not just Sovereign Virtue—even the Chrono Ruin's own interference vanished completely.
Right around Ji Jue, the figures of the doctors turned insubstantial, flickering and stuttering violently like a degraded videotape, fading into untouchable phantoms.
Only the colossal tumor above their heads, undulating with countless human faces, throbbed violently at this moment, swelling anew like an engorged heart!
With the Chrono Ruin's suppression and interference gone, the Disease of Immortality ran rampant, expanding unchecked as rotten, withered flesh regenerated once more.
It was even more ravenous than before.
That bizarre eye slowly rose, embedding itself into the mass.
Instantly, the pitch-black blades thrust into it dissolved entirely, sinking into the tumor as swirling black light to accelerate Transmutation and conversion, spurring the rapid growth of the calamity fetus gestating within the Disease of Immortality!
From the void, countless murmurs and whispers rose in disarray. Indistinct yet relentless, they babbled right by the ear.
As if recounting all the profound mysteries and enigmas of the world, inexplicable truths beyond human intellect and comprehension, indescribable yet seemingly undeniable axioms...
Chanting, praise, veneration, worship.
It caused the consciousness of any listener to swiftly grow drowsy and deranged.
Flesh grew and stretched in endless proliferation, morphing into a colossal wheel of bones that encircled the tumor, revolving continuously in sacred yet gruesome fashion.
It shone with a blackish-red light.
Strands of extended flesh tendrils descended from the bone wheel, wrapping around Lian Cheng. In an instant, they helped him break free of his restraints; then, flesh-organs and bones resembling blades and swords were squeezed out from his body one after another.
The Poison of Frenzied Slaughter was completely purged.
With flesh knit back together, the unrecognizably disfigured Lian Cheng could no longer hold back. He threw his head back and laughed wildly: "Heh... hehehe... hahahahaha...
"You brought this on yourself!"
Blood-filled eyes across his face glared fixedly at Ji Jue: "You brought this on yourself!"
Amid his roar, the bone wheel expanded again, but as if maldeveloped, after swelling just a fraction, a chorus of teeth-grinding cracks sounded from within as countless fissures split across it.
Lacking sufficient incubation and nurturing, even the abomination's authority could not complete the final conversion to crack the realm and birth the fetus... A failure on the brink of success!
The hatred on Lian Cheng's face sharpened, turning ever more hideous. Only now did he clearly see the shattered, oversized syringe in Ji Jue's hand... There was no fucking Poison of Frenzied Slaughter at all—it was nothing more than a giant barrel of contaminated plasma!
He had been played for an absolute fool!
Still, it didn't matter. Even in its current state, the Sovereign Lord's medium was sufficient to overwrite the old rules and seize control of the Chrono Ruin!
Lian Cheng raised both arms in midair, looking down upon the tiny Ji Jue beneath his feet: "Now, you worthless weed, experience the sovereign might of the Lord—"
With his declaration, the bone wheel spun, and the fleshy tumor at its center throbbed violently, rising above the Inpatient Building and radiating brilliant light.
Then, under the abomination's corruption, endless blood rain poured from the heavens, splattering and drenching the entire Outpatient Building in the distance, waking all the slumbering patients.
Driving those perpetually insatiable souls into complete frenzy!
Down the empty corridors, hunched patients fell to their knees, crying out their final wails as their bodies rapidly ballooned and mutated, thoroughly transformed into thralls of the abomination!
Amid the sounds of bone and sinew distorting and growing, hungry shrieks rose in succession.
Inside the hospital rooms, the moribund monsters revitalized with frightening speed. Stripped of the physicians' suppression and control, they broke through all restraints, crashing through doors, rampaging through vacant corridors, and barging into deserted offices in wanton destruction.
They battered down the basement doors, tracking the scent of flesh amid leaking, hissing pipes, and feasted gluttonously on the delicacies of the morgue.
One crimson eye after another lit up, turning toward the chair in the center and the tightly bound cultist upon it, who was squirming in helpless tears.
They swarmed!
Amid shrill screams, blood sprayed in sheets, tearing flesh from bone, leaving only a battered walkie-talkie rolling across the floor, forgotten.
Hungry howls echoed from the formerly dormant Outpatient Building, rising in waves. The famished monsters surged, answering Lian Cheng's summons and command, bursting through layers of cages and barriers in their haste.
"Haha... hahahahaha..."
Listening to those countless ravenous cries, Lian Cheng looked as though he were enjoying sweet orchestral music, drunk on delight. His bloodshot eyes looked down upon Ji Jue:
"Do you see?"
"—I will tear you into ten thousand pieces!!!!"
Yet no one answered.
It was as though... he had zoned out.
In a moment so solemn and grim, at a pivotal juncture between life and death...
Ji Jue slowly raised his head, tilted it in confusion, and looked up at him.
As if he hadn't heard clearly.
"Sorry about that. Give me a second."
Ji Jue looked down, rummaged through the miscellaneous junk in his pockets, and produced a modified air conditioner remote. Aiming it toward the Outpatient Building behind him where the monster tide was surging, he pressed the power button.
At that instant, inside what was once the obstetrics department, the display on an old air conditioning unit buzzed as if powering on.
Yet upon an exposed live wire, a spark from a short circuit flashed.
Leaping down, it landed on the floor and caught the alcohol, spreading instantly. Flames flared and leaped upward, igniting heaps of stockpiled chemicals.
Not just obstetrics, nor even just the third floor.
The fourth, fifth, sixth floors, all the way down to the basement... in every area reachable by the spiritus spiders, every electrical appliance emitted an abnormal noise in unison.
Amid floating dust, heavy gas billowing continuously from ruptured pipes, giant oxygen cylinders unsealed in the oxygen supply room, violently humming oxygen generators still running at full throttle, gasoline pooled across the floors, and several tubular devices blinking with eerie red lights in corridors and equipment rooms...
Now, answering the call of a distant signal, they emitted a synchronized beep.
And then...
What erupted was a furious, cataclysmic roar that seemed ready to tear the entire Chrono Ruin apart!
It began as a pinpoint of flame bursting through a shattered basement window; then, crimson fire surged like a raging dragon through every aisle, corridor, and office; until finally, erupting from the bottom up like an eight-yuan lotus birthday candle, swirling, writhing flames rapidly expanded amidst piercing, deafening blasts!
Nothing but fire.
Fire erupting, fire surging, fire soaring...
Fire engulfed everything!
The blaze illuminated all!
Amid the unprecedented shockwave, countless glass shards from the Main Treatment Building blasted outward. Then, as its foundations collapsed, the massive structure cracked inch by inch, bowing like a broken-backed giant bathed in flames, hanging its head in obeisance.
Countless plumes of dust filled the air as dense smoke billowed.
Severed limbs, shattered bones, and blood truly became a downpour, raining down alongside gravel and spreading scarlet everywhere.
"Whew! That felt good!"
Facing the scorching blast wave washing over him, Ji Jue couldn't resist whistling, resting his hands on his hips. "I've been wanting to do that for ages!"
With that, he turned around and looked at the dumbstruck Lian Cheng.
"By the way, what was it you just said?"
Chapter 168