Chapter 337: The Truth of the Immortality Elixir

Kaelen’s freezing declaration had just resounded from the top of the iron cage when the entire Auction Island palace, which had been silent as a grave, suddenly exploded like a boiling oil pan splashed with cold water.

Over three thousand masked honored guests in the audience sprang to their feet in panic, shoving each other to back away. The sound of overturned tables and chairs mixed with terrified screams created a scene of unprecedented chaos.

On the presiding balcony on the second floor opposite, Grand Guildmaster Gideon, the old merchant Marcos, and the remaining ten members of the Council of Twelve Merchants all simultaneously changed color.

"It’s the two guests in VIP Room Number One!" Marcos pointed down at the tall figures of Kaelen and Sane on the stage, his voice cracking with terror: "How dare they severely injure Grand Apothecary Malakor right on our Auction Island?!"

Grand Guildmaster Gideon’s youthful face twisted violently in fury. For the past hundred years since the alliance of the Seven Autonomous Cities was founded, no one had ever dared to crash the Blood Moon Auction, much less demand to judge the Merchant Council right on his own turf!

"Men!" Gideon smashed the marble armrest of the balcony, roaring madly: "Slam shut all the main doors of the palace! Where are the Blood Blade guards and the twelve enshrined Mages? Immediately hack those two arrogant fools and that bratty leopard into a hundred pieces for me!"

Slam! Slam! Slam!

The eight massive bronze doors of the grand hall instantly crashed down, locking the exits tight.

From the underground corridors on both sides of the stage wings, over three hundred heavily armored guards wielding poison-laced broadswords swarmed out like ants from a broken nest, surrounding the central stone pedestal in three tight rings. At the same time, atop the high stone pillars around the dome, twelve mages in silver cloaks simultaneously raised their staffs; magic circles flared brilliantly in the air, preparing to rain down destruction upon the stage!

Not stopping there, Gideon thrust his hand into his robe, pulling out a blood-red jade talisman carved with a skull, and sneered viciously:

"I don’t care what kind of deities you two are, or if you’re the new masters of the Sea King Godfrey! Daring to come to my Auction Island to cause trouble, today I will bury all two thousand of those pointy-eared beasts in the third basement at the bottom of the sea along with you!"

With that, Gideon used all his strength in his five fingers to crush the jade talisman controlling the self-destruct array in the basement!

Crack!

The blood-red jade talisman shattered into tiny pieces, scattering onto the balcony floor. Gideon bared his teeth in a cruel smile, perking up his ears waiting for the earth-shattering explosion to echo from beneath the island.

One second passed. Two seconds passed. Five seconds passed.

The ground beneath the palace remained as placid as a calm autumn lake; not even a speck of dust on the stone floor trembled!

The ferocious smile on Gideon’s face froze.

"What... what is happening?!" He looked down at the pile of fragments in his palm, then frantically pulled out the second backup jade talisman and crushed it again: "Why hasn’t the self-destruct array in the basement detonated?!"

On the roof of the iron cage in the center of the stage, the little leopard cub Finnick slowly took a step forward. Even though his body size at this moment was only that of an adult cat, when those icy dark green eyes looked straight up at Gideon on the balcony, a vast, divine pressure from ancient times instantly pressed down heavily upon the entire grand hall.

"You don’t need to crush any more and tire your hand." The deep, majestic voice issuing from the little leopard cub’s mouth echoed clearly into the ears of every person in the hall: "The magic cores inside the four self-destruct stone pillars you planted in the third basement were all eaten clean by my Chloe last night. Want to use my people’s lives to threaten me? You ants don’t have the qualifications for that!"

Gideon and the merchants, hearing the little leopard cub speak human language, and realizing that the most heavily guarded secret basement had been infiltrated and neutralized by the enemy since last night, were frightened out of their wits and stumbled back two steps.

"No need to waste words on that garbage." Kaelen, standing beside him, spoke up indifferently. He lifted his right foot and stomped his boot heel lightly onto the roof of the iron cage: "Bring everyone below up here first!"

Rumble! Rumble! Rumble!

A stream of dense jade-green Divine power of Nature transmitted straight down into the earth from the sole of Kaelen’s foot, instantly resonating with the Huy?t M?c seed that Finnick had planted at the bottom of the third basement the night before!

In a split second, the expansive granite floor of the grand hall shook violently, then cracked open into dozens of massive fissures. From over fifty meters deep underground, hundreds of giant vines intertwining green and dark red surged upward, gently lifting all the iron cages in the third basement and the dozens of crystal cages out in the corridors straight up to the hall floor!

Clang! Clang! Clang!

Wherever the green vines swept past, the magic locks and iron chains carved with blood-draining runes that tightly bound the limbs of nearly two thousand Elves, as well as the Mermaid and Fox tribe maidens, all snapped into pieces of scrap iron!

"Kill them! Hurry up and kill them! Absolutely do not let those slaves escape!"

The captain of the Blood Blade guards and the twelve mercenary mages on the stone pillars screamed in panic, simultaneously launching hundreds of fireballs, wind blades, and charging forward to slash straight toward the central stage!

Sane stood with his hands clasped behind his back on the roof of the iron cage, not even bothering to lift his eyelids:

"A bunch of ants daring to show off before me."

He only nonchalantly raised his right hand, his five slender fingers flicking lightly into the void.

Boom!

A bolt of Purple Lightning as thick as a water barrel shot up from Sane’s palm to the crystal dome, instantly transforming into a massive dark purple electric net that cast straight down over all three hundred charging guards and twelve mages!

There was no struggle whatsoever. The hundreds of fireballs and wind blades, the moment they touched the Purple Lightning net, vanished like soap bubbles. In the very next second, hundreds of purple lightning branches, thin as whips, lashed straight down onto the bodies of the Merchant Council’s lackeys!

Crash! Crash! Crash!

The three hundred broadswords and twelve magic staffs simultaneously exploded into scrap iron. The guards and mages, before even touching the edge of the stage, were struck by the lightning until their entire bodies were charred black, collapsing onto the floor twitching! With just a flick of a finger, the strongest armed force of Auction Island was completely neutralized!

The nobles and merchants in the audience were so terrified their limbs went weak; many of the faint-hearted slumped to their knees under their seats, clutching their heads with both hands, not daring to breathe loudly.

Right at this moment, on the cracked black stone stage, Grand Apothecary Malakor, pinned through the shoulder to the floor by Finnick’s Huy?t M?c spear, suddenly jerked his head up. His hood had been blown back by the force of the recent blast, revealing a withered face with only a layer of dark gray membrane wrapping the skull. His sunken eyes stared at Kaelen’s green hair, Sane’s purple eyes, and the little leopard cub on the iron cage with utter terror:

"The Origin of Nature... the Purple Lightning of War... and even the Origin of Life?! Impossible! How could you unseal the Great World so quickly?!"

As the hound directly bestowed with a fragment of a remnant soul by the God of Decay to oversee the Eastern underground network branch, Malakor immediately recognized the true identities of the three uninvited guests before him! Knowing clearly that he had no way to survive today, the ultimate, vicious madness flared up in his hollow eyes:

"Hahaha... Very well! Do you think that saving those pointy-ears from the basement will ruin my Great Master’s plan?!"

Malakor laughed hoarsely like a night owl, biting off the tip of his own tongue and spitting out a mouthful of pitch-black blood carrying the entirety of the remnant soul fragment down into the blood sacrifice grooves carved into the stage floor!

Buzz!

The moment the black blood touched the stone grooves, the four walls and stone floor of the palace instantly flared up with a heavily foul, dark gray light!

"Die, all of you!" Malakor screamed madly while black blood poured out from the seven orifices on his face: "You foolish mortal ants! Did you really think there was an Immortality Elixir in this world that grants eternal youth?! Every single drop of the elixir that you fought to spend tens of thousands of gold pieces to drink over the past hundred years are all the parasitic worm eggs of my Great Master! Today, all your flesh, blood, and souls must explode to serve as food for my Master!"

"Wh... what?! Parasitic worm eggs?!"

As Malakor’s screams faded, before the entire hall could even recover their wits, a heart-rending scream of agony rang out right next to the stage:

"Aaaaaah—! My stomach! Help me!"

Everyone turned their heads in horror. The one who had just let out that scream was the eighty-four-year-old Count who had just been given the three-drop trial of the Immortality Elixir on the wooden stretcher moments ago! The old man who had been boasting of growing fifty years younger just a quarter of an hour ago was now clutching his stomach tightly, rolling on the floor, convulsing violently as if thrown into a boiling oil cauldron.

Under the terrified gazes of over three thousand people, the taut, fair skin on the old Count’s face suddenly deflated like a punctured balloon! The newly grown jet-black hair fell out in large clumps in just two breaths, while beneath the skin of his stomach and chest, three fist-sized tumors were frantically scurrying about from the inside out!

Splat!

Three dark gray parasitic worms, the length of a hand, with hundreds of bloody sharp legs, bit right through the old Count’s stomach and crawled out, opening their mouths full of sharp teeth and turning back to frantically gnaw on the host’s remaining life force and soul!

"Mon... monsters! There really are monsters in the elixir!"

The nobles sitting in the front rows, seeing that disgusting, bloody scene, were so terrified they vomited bile all over the floor.

However, the true nightmare was only just beginning!

Following the "thump thump" heartbeat from the array under the floor, those who had just drank the thirty-two vials of elixir tonight, along with over four hundred grand nobles in the audience and the Twelve Merchants on the balcony—those who had been drinking the elixir for decades—simultaneously clutched their chests and stomachs, collapsing to the floor screaming in agony!

On the presiding balcony, Gideon and Marcos rolled onto the red velvet carpet. Beneath Gideon’s youthful facial skin and Marcos’s taut skin, dozens of parasitic worms that had been fattened for decades on Elven blood simultaneously awakened, frantically tearing at their internal organs to claw their way out!

"No! Impossible! Malakor, you dared to deceive us!" Gideon screamed in despair while clawing at his own throat until it tore: "You said only the guests’ life force would be drained, why are there worms in us too?! Save me!"

"My Master needs energy, you hounds who have outlived your usefulness naturally must also lie on the dinner plate, hahaha!" Malakor lay on the stone pedestal, watching hundreds of powerful figures writhing on the ground, and laughed hysterically with relish.

On the hall floor, the streams of life force, flesh, blood, and souls devoured by the parasitic worms from the bodies of the over four hundred wealthy individuals began to turn into foul, dark red streams of gas, flowing along the stone grooves on the floor to prepare to transmit straight down into the underground network toward the White Bone Forest!