Lu Yuan did not hesitate for a second, grabbing Kraus's arm.
In the next instant, the churning mass of flesh violently surged up from the bottom of the abyss, lunging toward them with unstoppable momentum.
The moment the flesh fell, Kraus gave a violent yank on his arm, and Lu Yuan's vision plunged into darkness once more.
His body was enveloped by an immense force, the howling wind and the creaking of bone armor filling his ears. He felt something brush against his back—hot, sticky, and accompanied by a sharp pang of pain. The flesh had grazed him.
In less than a breath, he felt solid ground beneath his feet once more.
Lu Yuan was thrown onto the ground, his knees slamming into a somewhat tough layer of flesh, making him knit his brows in pain. They were back in the void above.
Kraus stood beside him. A chunk of the right shoulder of his bone armor had been sheared off, exposing the flesh beneath, which was currently being covered and sealed by dark green crystals.
Kraus had also been grazed by the flesh. He glanced down to ensure his wound wasn't contaminated, then swept his gaze over Lu Yuan's back. Satisfied that Lu Yuan was unharmed, he quickly made his way upward.
The commotion of the battlefield echoed from a dozen paces away. The Blue Knight was still using her threads to grapple with the colossal entity, while purple-black flames raged fiercely.
Adrian's pitch-black wing, enveloped in an almost infinite torrent of black fire, burned frantically against the massive creature.
But Lu Yuan had no time to watch.
A rapid squirming sound echoed from the passage behind them. Dark red flesh was frantically surging from the depths of the tunnel, rushing toward him and Kraus.
The thing was giving chase.
Kraus's reaction was much faster than Lu Yuan's.
With his bone armor fully covering his body once more, he grabbed Lu Yuan by the back of his collar and hoisted him up.
With a shift of his feet, his final afterimage materialized behind him. In the next instant, his speed exploded as he bolted toward the battlefield.
The moment Kraus left, the passage behind them was completely blocked. The dark red flesh welled out of the crevices like a tidal wave.
A faint, indistinct roar emanated from within the flesh, making one's head spin.
By the time Kraus and Lu Yuan burst into the void, the state of the battlefield had drastically changed from when they left.
The colossal entity was now only sixty percent of its original size, its entire body charred black.
Suspended in midair, Adrian was enveloped in pitch-black flames. The fire clung to the beast continuously, burning it to a crisp and exposing the pitted, uneven flesh beneath.
The threads on the Blue Knight spread out like a spiderweb, almost filling the massive void. They stretched into countless arcs across the air, propelling her body at an astonishing speed.
Adrian's wings flapped continuously, pouring out endless streams of purple-black fire that enveloped more than half of the colossal entity's body.
Margaret and the attendant circled the perimeter to keep it distracted, while the Great Ascendant occasionally supplemented their efforts with a beam of light. The creature was already struggling to stand.
Yet the moment Kraus and Lu Yuan stepped into the void, a large section of the ground beneath their feet surged upward by half a foot, causing everyone to stumble.
Margaret's expression shifted drastically; she was the first to sense something.
At the same time, the colossal entity's body began to swell.
The flesh that Adrian had just burned away was now regrowing at an unnaturally rapid pace.
The charred surface was pushed apart by new, dark red flesh. Layer upon layer piled up, surging from its waist and abdomen to its chest, and all the way to its shoulders. In an instant, it returned to its original size, and its frame was still expanding.
The purple-black flames continued to burn, but the newly grown flesh was more than twice as thick as before, significantly reducing the efficiency of the fire.
Adrian frowned. The flames surrounding him suddenly flared up, and pitch-black script materialized within the fire, only to dissipate into the air a moment later.
The flames burned to a near-pure black, yet they still could not suppress the speed of its growth.
Its rate of regeneration far outstripped the speed of the burning. New flesh constantly surged from the ground, flowing up through its legs and into its body, stretching its frame outward inch by inch.
Adrian's expression finally changed.
His gaze swept past the giant beast, spotting Kraus and Lu Yuan as they rushed out of the passage, as well as the flesh flooding out behind them.
“Retreat!”
Adrian and Kraus shouted almost simultaneously.
The burning flames of Adrian's fire had struck a barrier—a power that should not exist in reality. He snapped back to his senses instantly and retreated without a moment's hesitation.
The Blue Knight had already retracted most of her threads, leaving only a single strand wrapped around the giant individual to hinder its movements as she propelled herself backward.
Margaret followed suit. The attendant withdrew his purple light net, and steam erupted from the Great Ascendant; despite being the closest to the front, he was actually the fastest to retreat.
Yet before anyone could even get close to the passage they had come from, the path was sealed off by flesh.
Dark red flesh poured from the walls around the passage, blocking the exit completely.
The same happened to the various tunnels of different sizes on the walls of the void. One by one, they were covered by flesh, which then spilled out from them and converged toward the center of the cavern.
The entire void was being filled with flesh.
The flesh on the ground had already risen to everyone's ankles. Its sticky texture clung to their calves, bringing a searing heat and a nauseating, bloody stench. An extremely unsettling aura was spreading through this mass of flesh.
The Blue Knight slashed her rapier at the flesh near her feet. Her crimson sword qi cut a deep groove, but the flesh at the bottom merged back together in the blink of an eye, sealing the trench completely.
The Great Ascendant's beam of light blasted a bowl-sized hole into the nearest wall of flesh. Before the surrounding meat could even sizzle, it was filled with fresh flesh.
With their current strength, they could not force open a new path at all.
Seeing this, Adrian spread the pitch-black wing behind his back to its absolute limit.
In the next instant, purple-black flames erupted from every single feather, raining down a torrent of fire within the void, forcibly standing between the group and the churning flesh.
The moment the flesh came into contact with the fire rain, it shriveled and charred, shrinking back a few inches. But in the blink of an eye, it surged forward again, pushing past the flames.
The sky-filling fire rain illuminated the entire void, halting the flesh falling from above and barely buying the group a few breaths of time.
Adrian's expression shifted slightly. He stopped maintaining the shape of his wing. The pitch-black wing dissolved from behind his back, turning into a flurry of feathers that shot in all directions. They reignited the dying fire rain, barely managing to hold the continuous torrent of flesh at bay.
But this would not last long; the feathers were burning away at a visible rate.
Adrian dropped back to the ground. Without that wing, the purple-black aura around him dissipated significantly. His face was ash-pale, and a trickle of blood seeped from the corner of his mouth.
He hunched over slightly, panting for a long while before barely managing to raise his head.
Kraus had already reached the others. The green light on his bone ring flashed frantically; he wanted to teleport everyone away at once.
But the green light flashed repeatedly, and the teleportation failed to trigger.
The bronze pillars in the void were still pulsing with pressure, firmly pinning him down. Furthermore, the forbidden aura pervaded the entire cavern, leaving him temporarily unable to channel his power.
Kraus's brows knitted tightly.
Just as he was about to try again, Adrian reached into his breast pocket and, with visible reluctance, pulled out an item. It was a pure white feather, its edges shimmering with an extremely faint golden halo.
He pinched it carefully between his fingertips, unable to resist taking another look. A trace of reluctance flashed in his eyes before he pressed it into his palm, closed his hands, and rubbed them together with force. White fragments drifted out from between his fingers.
【Environmental Perception: High-risk pollution source detected. Please stay away immediately.】
This warning popped up in Lu Yuan's vision the exact moment Adrian produced the feather.
In the next instant, the remaining black aura on Adrian's body vanished completely.
The power of the Fallen Angel completely receded from his body, the pitch-black flames went out, and his greyish-black hair reverted to its original white.
He knelt directly on the ground, clasped his hands together, and closed his eyes.
A prayer fell from his lips.
“The lost lamb weeps blood here, begging for Your mercy.”
His voice was not loud, yet it carried exceptionally far in this blood-scented cavern.
The sky-filling fire rain outside was dissipating at a visible rate.
The flesh would swarm them in ten breaths at most. Kraus was growing anxious.
The final afterimage behind him had already solidified to the point of being ready to launch. If they couldn't hold out any longer, he planned to sacrifice it to forcibly teleport everyone away.
The Great Ascendant silently took a few steps back.
The gears within his silver-grey pupils spun slightly. He remained silent, but he had already realized Adrian's plan.
Just moments ago, Adrian had defected to the Second Church, yet now he was calling himself a lost lamb to the Angel's Church.
Adrian continued to chant.
“O great and holy Lord Angel, Your most devout believer offers his humblest prayer to You.”
His voice was rapid and sincere, emphasizing every single word, his face flushed with a near-fanatical devotion.
Standing a few paces away, Lu Yuan and the others heard him with absolute clarity. Staring at Adrian's pale, utterly devout face, they were speechless.
However, Lu Yuan had already connected with the fragments deep in his consciousness. Although he only possessed four fragments at the moment, it was enough to channel certain powers.
Perhaps it would be enough to handle the current situation.
And the Archbishop's performance allowed Lu Yuan to set his mind at ease. He watched as the crushed feather in Adrian's palm completely dissolved into golden light halfway through the prayer.
The light erupted from his clasped palms, surging upward frantically. It pierced through the churning flesh and the ceiling of the void, plunging straight into the darkness above.
The void fell dead silent for an instant.
In that moment, all of the flesh came to a complete halt. The churning and squirming froze simultaneously. The layer of flesh rising past their calves stiffened in place, and even the approaching colossal entity froze.
For above their heads, an eye had opened out of thin air.
The golden eye was so massive it took up more than half of the ceiling. Its pupil turned slowly with a cold indifference, its surface overlaid with a layer of indescribable patterns.
The entire eyeball possessed the texture of a living entity, so sacred that none dared look directly at it. Yet the indifference within those eyes had absolutely nothing to do with humanity.
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