Chapter 114: The Sacrificial Inheritance II

Chapter 114: The Sacrificial Inheritance II

Slow, rhythmic applause shattered the silence of the chamber.

Lothe didn’t startle. He turned his head calmly toward the eastern archway.

Two women stood in the entrance, both clad in the vibrant, light-green silk robes of the Emerald Venom Corps.

The woman on the left—slender, with sharp eyes and a mocking curve to her painted lips—smiled widely. "My, my. You actually survived the Warden. How resilient."

Beside her stood a taller woman with an expression carved from granite. Her posture was coiled, her hand resting firmly against the shaft of a jade-green spear.

"Watch your tongue, Mie’r," the stern woman said, her voice dropping into a dangerous warning. "Veyra Serpent Commander told us not to underestimate this one."

Mie’r’s smirk thinned, but her gaze remained condescending. "He’s just an ant from a dead world, Fan’er. Why are you so nervous?"

"He permanently severed the Inscribed Slate Warden," Fan’er replied flatly, her eyes locked onto Lothe. "And Mo Ruyuan and Yue Fen were both at the Core Formation threshold. They are dead. He is standing here."

Lothe remained silent, his scholarly disguise rendering him completely devoid of hostility.

So the serious one is Fan’er, and the loud one is Mie’r.

Mie’r let out a melodic, mocking laugh. "Even if he got lucky with a trap, it doesn’t matter now. Look at him! He fell for the bait just like the rest of them."

She gestured grandly toward the floating spear.

"Human greed is such an easy thing to manipulate," Mie’r giggled, her eyes glinting with sadistic delight. "Dangle a ’Supreme Technique’ in front of a starving dog, and it will walk straight into the butcher’s pen."

She pointed toward the floor.

"The Crimson Soul Convergence Array is already primed," Mie’r continued, her tone dripping with pride. "It binds the five vital nodes together. First, it extracts their cultivation and marrow. Second, it refines those different elements through the crimson runes. And finally..."

Her finger lowered toward the center.

"...it feeds the altar beneath the spear."

Lothe’s gaze remained impassive. "And what does the altar feed?"

Mie’r tilted her head, delighted that her captive was asking questions. "The grand vessel, of course. Once the five elements are refined, the altar unlocks the lower cradle, and the final offering begins."

Fan’er’s spear shifted slightly. "Silence, Mie’r. You speak too much."

Mie’r rolled her eyes. "Why does it matter? He’s standing on the fifth node. He’s already fuel."

HUMMMMM!

The crimson-black array beneath Lothe’s boots roared to life.

A violent, magnetic suction locked onto his heels, while thin, barbed crimson threads erupted from the stone, wrapping around his ankles!

At that exact moment—

A figure floated in through the high ceiling aperture, carried by a stream of pale-green poisonous Qi.

Long silver hair. Battle robes torn at the shoulder.

Eyes closed, head hanging limp.

Lothe’s pupils dilated.

Nyren.

The unconscious Ashford daughter drifted downward, landing softly in the empty circle opposite Adrian.

The moment her boots touched the stone—

BOOOOOOM!

The pentagram locked.

Five violent geysers of crimson light erupted toward the ceiling!

Adrian. Nyren. The two unconscious scouts.

And Lothe.

The array began to drink.

Lothe’s expression remained frozen like carved stone, but inside his mind, gears turned with terrifying velocity.

The trials separated us to break our strength.

Now, the palace gathers us to harvest the harvest.

His dark eyes peeled away the layers of stone, looking past the blood, past the array, and directly into the subterranean darkness beneath the altar.

Something down there had just tasted the five converged energies.

And for the first time since entering the ruins—

A pure, primal chill ran down Lothe’s spine.

But then, he whipped his head towards the hovering spear

The ancient spear hovered silently above the stone altar.

Lothe stood several meters away, his dark eyes fixed upon its unadorned silhouette.

Something about the weapon bothered him.

It was too simple.

There were no extravagant engravings, no crackling elemental aura, and no ostentatious pressure rolling off its frame.

Yet the moment he focused his perception on it, the ambient Qi in the chamber grew unnaturally still—as if the weapon itself were drinking the very existence of everything surrounding it.

Lothe’s grip tightened around his spear.

[Supreme Armaments Technique]

Those four characters were carved directly into the silver-black metal.

Having navigated the lethal deceit of Sector One and the grotesque harvesting arrays of Sector Two, Lothe knew better than to reach out for a prize presented so cleanly.

He took a single, measured step forward.

BOOM!

The entire chamber shuddered violently.

The dormant weapon suddenly detonated with a wave of suffocating, ancient intent!

Lothe’s pupils contracted. Space twisted around him like wetted parchment, and before his boots could retreat—

SHING!

An enormous phantom spear materialized in the ceiling gloom and cleaved downward with mountain-splitting force!

Lothe reacted by pure instinct, his center of gravity dropping as he surged laterally.

BOOOOOM!

The stone floor where he had stood an instant prior was pulverized into powder, sending razor-sharp stone shards whistling past his cheek.

Lothe rolled back onto his feet, his breathing steady, his expression freezing into a mask of pure concentration.

An inheritance trial.

From the swirling cloud of gray pulverized rock, a colossal silhouette slowly coalesced.

It was an armored figure standing over two meters tall, clad in archaic black battle-plate. Long silver hair tumbled down its back, and its face was shrouded behind a visor of solid shadow. In its right hand, it held an identical three-meter spear, gripped loosely, dripping with translucent, high-density Qi.

No challenge was issued. No words were exchanged.

BOOM!

The phantom vanished from physical sight.

Lothe’s danger instincts screamed. He swept his spear up into an instinctual parry.

CLANG!!!

The kinetic collision sent him sliding backward across the stone, his boots carving twin furrows into the bedrock. His forearms shuddered down to the bone.

Fast.

Before Lothe could reset his footing, the phantom’s wrist rotated.

A straight thrust pierced through the air like lightning.

Lothe parried!

CLANG!

Another strike followed instantly!

CLANG!

Then another!

CLANG!

Three lethal thrusts occurred within the space of a single heartbeat, each strike hitting with the weight of a falling siege hammer.

Suddenly, Lothe’s soles tingled.

Beneath his boots, a faint geometric light was rapidly assembling.

An array?!

He kicked off the stone, vaulting backward into the air.

BOOM!

A spear of concentrated crimson energy erupted from the floor where he had just stood, stabbing upward like an execution spike!​