novelraw Chapter 188: The Only Isolated Island
Chapter 188: The Only Isolated Island
Twenty meters.
This piece of intelligence presented a grim problem to everyone.
They had to force their way out before the meat-grinder storm created by Sandstorm Devourer crushed them, break out of the shop, run through the dangerous corridor, and reach the final demolition point that carried their hopes.
Lin Jie did not hesitate any longer. He still intended to drown the battlefield, but first he had to carve a precise riverbed for his flood!
“Julian, give William the most powerful alchemy vial you have.”
“Ethan, shrink the field, protect only William.”
“William,” Lin Jie spoke as if carrying out a meticulous procedure practiced a thousand times, “burst out! Target: the largest paving stone in the center of the alley!”
Julian pulled from his breast a special waterproofed leather pouch and produced a palm-sized transparent vial made of thick crystal, containing two incompatible, sharply contrasting strange liquids.
The upper half was a molten-gold, blistering viscous substance called Hephaestus’s Oil.
The lower half was an ice-cold, ghostly blue liquid called Poseidon’s Tear.Once the bottle shattered and the energies of “fire” and “water” collided, they would erupt with terrifying force in an instant.
“Now!”
Julian threw his full strength into hurling this precious palm-sized alchemical device at the charging William.
William caught the crystal vial of simultaneous ice and fire midair and immediately understood Lin Jie’s entire plan.
“Cover me.”
William only said those three words. His thick-set body suddenly dropped, his leg muscles coiling.
“Leave it to me!”
Ethan roared, draining the remaining spiritual energy from the Deflection Malevolence Mirror, then gambled everything by compressing it all onto William’s forward path.
The pale blue spherical field, covered in cracks, instantly contracted and condensed into a cone-shaped barrier only wide enough for a single person to pass, firmly sheltering William’s front.
William moved!
This near-fifty veteran exploded with strength and speed that would shame young men.
In a suicide charge posture, bracing against that wafer-thin yet spirit-saturated cone field, he barreled through the death storm of countless sand grains like a rampaging rhinoceros, forcing his way through the whirling sand.
Pfft pfft pfft!
Hard sand continuously struck the cone field. With the sand weakened, William could barely make out the path ahead.
The field’s light dimmed at a visually noticeable rate, fissures spidering madly across it.
Blood leaked from Ethan’s mouth — a backlash of his spiritual energy being drained dry.
But William did not stop.
Three meters!
Two meters!
One meter!
Just before the cone field shattered, William’s massive body finally broke the sandstorm’s blockade and reached the center of the alley.
His vision blurred, the violent airflow pressing as if it would squeeze his eyeballs from their sockets.
But his survival instinct still found the coordinate Lin Jie had designated.
He shook the sand from his hair, then hurled the sweat-dampened ice-and-fire alchemy vial like a shot put with all his strength at the ancient stone pavement.
He immediately rolled to the side, curling up and using a nearby stone pillar to absorb the dual shock of the sandstorm and the blast.
Boom!
A thunderous explosion ripped open in the middle of the main alley.
The violent alchemical energy release formed a shockwave mixed with sand.
The stone floor, laid down centuries ago, was torn and pulverized by that raw force.
A hole more than three meters across opened in the ground.
Then, a murky river infused with dense silt, rotting algae, and the dust of ages was awakened by the blast, surging up from the bottomless underground chasm.
Splash!
It was not a trickle. It was the colossal force left behind by ancient Roman-era hydraulic engineering accumulated over centuries.
Cold and turbid, carrying the breath of life and death, the Nile River water surged, flooding the entire alley in a matter of seconds with unstoppable momentum.
The horrific sand “meat-grinder” screamed like a red-hot branding iron touching flesh when it met this enormous flowing liquid.
The sand-formed giant Ammit, whose body had been spinning at high speed, suddenly felt as if tons of lead had been poured into it, and it stalled.
Then the sand body, barely held together by countless individual grains, collapsed like a huge sand sculpture washed away by a downpour, crumbling with devastating force.
Its sacred, terrifying form disintegrated in an instant.
Countless black-and-yellow sand grains, saturated by the murky river and stripped of spiritual power, impotently sank into the rising water, ultimately becoming a thick layer of silt at the alley’s bottom.
The Sandstorm Devourer, which had raged for a full ten minutes, was undone in the most primitive way before this two-thousand-year-old river water.
“We did it!”
Ethan and Julian wept tears of joy in the water.
They were soaked and bedraggled, but they felt the enormous elation of victory.
But Lin Jie’s face did not relax. He continued to stare intently at the swirling vortex formed by the muddy river water.
He worried the fight was not over;
they had only destroyed Ammit’s physical form made of yellow sand, not its user.
Sure enough!
Just as the water was about to drown the entire alley, an anomaly reemerged.
In the very center of the alley, in that area covered by the river, an invisible spiritual force suddenly burst forth.
That force, like an invisible giant hand, forcibly pushed the surging river aside.
Amid the rising flood, a circular solitary island roughly ten meters in diameter, reconstituted from countless sand grains that had sunk to the bottom, abruptly appeared in the alley’s center.
That island seemed to possess some sacred immunity. No matter how the surrounding water surged, not a single grain on its surface could be wetted.
It was like the only sanctuary in this apocalyptic expanse of chaos and flood.
Standing silently atop that lone island were two figures. One was the mysterious veiled female proprietor, Nephthys.
Her black robe had been removed, revealing a tight hunting outfit made of ancient Egyptian linen and leather designed for combat.
Her left hand caressed the grotesque armament that constantly radiated a dark red glow, Scarab’s Sanctuary.
Beside her, at the very center of the island, floated a mass of sand shaped like a crocodile — part of the Devourer Ammit.
It was the true master of this sand sea.
Nephthys’s killing gaze pierced the murky steam and drifting dust, locking onto Lin Jie, who William was helping up from the water.
In a tone laced with venom, she said, “You blasphemous heretics...”
“How dare you drown Lord Ammit...”
“You will pay a price more agonizing than the Second Death!!”