As Ren Yi and Evans retreated, the City Lord raised the hand holding the sword.
The tip of the blade sliced through the air, leaving a green trail in the dim room as he prepared to slash down.
But at that moment, an unexpected change occurred!
In God's Corpse's left hand, the Cosmos Bag—which had been tightly gripped and forcibly suppressed—moved without warning.
“Hoo...”
The tattered cloth bag suddenly swelled from within, its mouth stretching to its limit as a dark red light spilled out like lava.
This sudden resistance actually broke free from the control of God's Corpse, whose attention had been entirely focused on Sword-man.
Then, with the suicidal determination of a moth to a flame, the Cosmos Bag tightly wrapped itself around God's Corpse's right hand—the one holding the sword!
In an instant, countless thin but razor-sharp blood-colored lines frantically surfaced and ruptured across the cloth bag.
Exploding along with them was the very fabric of the Cosmos Bag.
Rip! The cloth bag tore inch by inch, revealing a pitch-black space like an abyss inside.
Wrapped in its deepest depths, the Qinggang longsword erupted with a deafening wail.
God's Corpse's brow furrowed sharply.
“How can you...”
“Heh...”
From the depths of the tearing bag, a low, aged chuckle suddenly echoed.
The voice was tired and raspy, yet it carried the lightheartedness of a heavy burden finally lifted.
“I am but a meager... storage bag.”
“The blood pact bound to my soul is far lighter than that of this proud little sword.”
“Snapping it is much easier than you think!”
The City Lord's head stared down with cold eyes.
“Do you wish to have both your body and soul obliterated?”
“If you do this, you will never be resurrected, no matter how many eras pass. You won't even have the chance to reform your consciousness!”
The tattered cloth bag bulged slightly, like an old man on his deathbed spitting in disdain.
“The next era?”
“Whoever wants to go there can go. I... am done!”
Boom!
A dark red light erupted in that instant, completely swallowing God's Corpse's entire right arm along with the Qinggang longsword.
At this moment, the artifact spirit of the Cosmos Bag poured all the power and spirituality it had accumulated over countless years into this final "storage"!
The structure of the cloth bag began to shatter from within, and the tattered fabric curled like scorched paper, peeling off and turning to ash.
Crack.
A very faint sound, as if something had snapped, suddenly echoed deep within everyone's minds.
The enslavement blood pact that had bound it for four eras, branded into the deepest part of the magic treasure's soul, was forcefully shattered by Pops at the cost of his life!
The Cosmos Bag shuddered violently and slipped free from God's Corpse's hand.
And vanishing along with it was the Qinggang longsword that had been locked tight inside its belly space.
“What is the point of this!”
Furious, the City Lord took a step forward through God's Corpse, reaching out to snatch it back into his palm.
But in the next moment, his eyes widened.
From within the ruined body of the Cosmos Bag, which was covered in black and red cracks, a blinding green sword light suddenly pierced through the fissures without warning.
In the air, Pops' final curse and mockery echoed:
“My belly... is outside the range of your God's Corpse suppression, you piece of trash.”
Boom!
The Cosmos Bag swelled to its limit in an instant, and thousands of cracks spiderwebbed across its surface.
The green light flared, blindingly bright.
A sharp, angry green arc of light, carrying madness and resentment, pierced through the cracks.
At a speed that defied any reaction time, it tore through the fragments of the Cosmos Bag, slashing diagonally upward!
Within the shredded Cosmos Bag, the Qinggang longsword re-emerged.
But the moment it appeared in the world, its blade was already densely covered with the same blinding red cracks as the Cosmos Bag.
With a crisp crack, a hideous fracture ran all the way down the spine of the blade.
Yet, this mutual-destruction strike was delivered nonetheless.
Slash!
Accompanied by a spraying line of blood, the City Lord's head—its face frozen in shock and disbelief—was cleanly severed from God's Corpse's neck by the strike!
The steel ring-like device was split in two by the sword qi, the cut as smooth as a mirror.
The head flipped twice in the air, tracing an arc beneath the dim light.
Thud, roll.
The head dropped onto the metal floor not far away, rolling several times before slowly coming to a halt.
Facing upward, the pupils within those grayish-white eyes were still spinning frantically.
God's Corpse's seemingly indestructible body instantly lost all control, its arms drooping limply.
With a heavy thud, it collapsed onto both knees.
Clang.
The longsword fell powerlessly to the ground. Its spiritual light, flickering like a candle in the wind, vanished as the blade snapped completely into two pieces.
After a brief pause, the black liquid that had retreated to the edges of the room surged forward once more like a tsunami. Ren Yi also closed in, radiating killing intent.
Although the annihilation domain of the pilotless God's Corpse remained, its threat had been greatly reduced.
However, before their killing blows could land, a hysterical, furious roar suddenly erupted from the floor!
“Damn you! Damn you! You all deserve to die!”
The solitary head lying in the pool of blood roared in madness. Sticky red fluid, mixed with a liquid leaking from the damaged mechanical components, slowly oozed from the severed neck.
The contorted, savage face looked terrifying, yet it carried a bizarre touch of the absurd.
But immediately after, the head's mouth suddenly stretched open to a highly unnatural angle.
Rip.
A small, jade-like hand—completely translucent and shining like mutton-fat jade—unexpectedly reached out from the gaping, bloody maw.
It was an infant.
It was only the size of a palm, its entire body possessing a translucent, jade-like sheen.
With fully formed features and limbs, it curled up and squeezed its way out of the City Lord's head inch by inch, like a hatchling emerging from a corpse.
It floated slowly in midair, stretching its limbs.
When it opened its eyes, there was not a shred of infantile innocence in those grayish-white pupils.
There was only the exact same madness and savagery of the City Lord.
“You dare... You actually dare to destroy my divine body...”
The voice was the same as the City Lord's from before, but it carried a strange, high-pitched childishness.
It was as if an adult's soul had been stuffed into a toddler's skin.
The infant's delicate face twisted in extreme fury, screaming breathlessly.
After a few moments, it seemed to forcefully stabilize its erratic aura.
The corners of its mouth curled upward bit by bit, revealing that hair-raising smile once more.
“Did you really think... you could kill me like this?”
Ren Yi stared intently at the jade infant hovering in midair, his mind buzzing and going completely blank.
“Nascent Soul...” he murmured.
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