novelraw Chapter 222: The Marvelous Use of the “Living Relic”
Chapter 222: The Marvelous Use of the “Living Relic”
The declaration Yan Xilou left behind, about grand righteousness versus minor details, was deeply imprinted in Lin Jie's mind.
Which weighs more heavily: an individual's life, or the survival of a civilization?
This question was a brutal test, forcing the thinker to stand upon the scales of history, to weigh emotions and lives that should never be weighed with cold reason.
However, reality granted Lin Jie no luxury to immerse himself in such philosophical contemplation.
Just after Yan Xilou's figure vanished, the Eternal Serpent elites, who had moments ago bowed to him with humble respect, redirected their killing intent toward the shattered remnants of the small team at the center of the cavern.
No slogans, no unnecessary communication. These warriors interpreted Yan Xilou's cruel command with action.
"Rat-a-tat-tat-tat!"
The piercing automatic fire of Mauser pistols once again tore through the cavern's silence. A dense storm of bullets, like a tempest of steel, swept toward Lin Jie and Julian's last piece of cover.
Salt chunks shattered, sending fragments flying everywhere.
"Julian, take care of William."After a brief moment of stunned disbelief, Lin Jie suppressed his inner turmoil and fury with the utmost speed.
Only cold focus remained in his eyes. Any superfluous emotion now would be a catalyst for death.
While using precise, controlled shots to suppress an enemy attempting to flank, Lin Jie roared to Julian behind him, who was administering emergency aid to William.
"Their goal is to pin us down, to buy time for Yan Xilou! We can't let them succeed!"
Julian shielded the unconscious William with his own body while raising William's Colt pistol, firing futile return shots at any enemy who tried to get closer.
The battle, reignited under the worst possible circumstances, had become a hopeless siege.
Lin Jie knew perfectly well that without William's sturdy "shield," he and Julian alone stood no chance of breaking through the blockade of this well-trained elite squad.
And a deeper despair was fermenting in the dark edges they couldn't reach.
This bloody scene, ignited by human gunfire and killing intent, its rich scent of blood and violent spiritual fluctuations, shattered the "symbiotic balance" this oasis had maintained for centuries.
To the long-starving symbiotic hyenas and Canopic Wasps, whether they were I.A.R.C. hunters or Eternal Serpent cultists, they were merely different flavors of food.
When the first hyena, unable to restrain its bloodthirsty instinct, shifted its target from the paralyzed living mummies to a cult member reloading his weapon, the very nature of the battlefield was overturned.
"Arghhh—!!"
That cult warrior only had time for a short, sharp scream before half his torso was bitten off by the hyena-like monster. The high-pressure spray of arterial blood ignited the frenzy of all the predators.
"My God! Open fire! Fire on those monsters!"
The cult's formation instantly descended into chaos. They had to divert firepower to deal with the swarms of UMA emerging from all directions, drawn by the scent of blood.
A two-sided duel had transformed in an instant into a bloody free-for-all involving everyone.
This should have been an opportunity for Lin Jie and Julian to catch their breath, even to counterattack. But reality proved more brutal than anticipated.
There were too many UMA.
They poured out from every corner of the cavern like a black tide, driven by a primal hunger for flesh, viewing every living thing as a target.
The cult elites, who moments ago held the advantage, saw their defensive line torn to shreds under the UMA onslaught.
And the "isolated island" where Lin Jie and the others were holed up naturally could not escape.
A fist-sized Canopic Wasp silently navigated around the blind spot in Lin Jie's firing arc. Its neurotoxin stinger, gleaming with a ghostly green light, aimed straight for his unprotected neck.
At the critical moment, Lin Jie had no time to react effectively. He could only rely on the enhanced perception granted by the Mental Staircase to watch death approach.
"Bang!"
A gunshot rang out. The wasp was blasted into a splatter of yellow-green pulp mid-air.
Julian, the usually frail scholar, now displayed astonishing decisiveness.
"Lin! Behind you!" he bellowed the warning, his face smeared with blood and gunpowder residue making him look like an avenger returned from hell.
But this was only a temporary reprieve.
More wasps and natron corpses had breached the defensive line the cult members had paid for with their lives, surrounding this small salt pillar stronghold.
They were plunged into a more hopeless dead end than before. Ammunition was being consumed at an alarming rate;
every shot felt like the tolling of a death knell.
"Julian, ammo report." Lin Jie asked calmly, even as he used the Serene Heart's divine trajectory to blow the head off a charging hyena.
"The Colt has one bullet left. William's Church Holy Cannon... I don't know how to use it," Julian replied, somewhat helplessly.
Lin Jie sighed.
His Serene Heart also had only three shots remaining. And there were at least ten or more UMA surrounding them.
They were running on empty.
Yan Xilou's gaze, filled with mockery and pity, surfaced once more in Lin Jie's mind.
"What you're guarding isn't some grand collective, but those insignificant, specific individuals!"
"In the face of history's truly grand torrent, how childish and laughable, how utterly insignificant!"
Was he truly wrong?
Was the ultimate outcome of this kind of stubbornness to be drowned, along with the companions he wanted to protect, by the "reality" torrent, becoming nameless, bleached bones?
No.
Absolutely not!
Just as the largest symbiotic hyena breached the final line of fire, opening its keratin-folded maw, about to desiccate them into salt sculptures with its natron mucus...
A thought flashed through Lin Jie's mind.
He remembered the words of that eccentric yet profoundly insightful father of archaeology, Professor Petrie, far away in Cairo.
"It has recognized you, young man. From this moment, you are no longer merely human. You are that ancient creature's private property on this land, a walking 'temple'!"
"Don't fight against it. That's as foolish as mortals fighting their own deity."
"Guide it. Understand it. Actively activate it! Make it understand you are not just its nest, but an extension of its will!"
Actively... activate it!
A wild idea took root in Lin Jie's mind.
Until now, he had always viewed the White Vulture's Mark on the back of his right hand as a bomb waiting to detonate, a cage slowly assimilating him.
He had suppressed and resisted it constantly, terrified of being consumed by that primal predator's savagery from the dawn of time.
But now, Lin Jie had nowhere left to turn.
Better to stake his soul and will on this gamble with an ancient Egyptian deity than to be torn apart and devoured by these hyenas and wasps!
"Julian, no matter what happens next, don't come near me!"
Lin Jie stopped looking at the hyena mere feet away and abruptly closed his eyes.
On a spiritual level, he relinquished all resistance against that will entrenched deep within his soul.
He no longer saw it as a foreign entity. Instead, he attempted to use his own tempered mental fortitude, forged through countless life-and-death struggles, to actively embrace it, nourish it, and master it!
Lin Jie poured his obsession to "protect his companions" as fuel into this mark.
If the mark's awakening at Karnak Temple had been a passive, confrontational "stress response"...
Then this time was Lin Jie, as the host, for the first time actively issuing a "king's" decree to the "deity" sharing his existence!
An indescribable tremor erupted, centered on Lin Jie's right hand.
The vulture mark, faintly glowing white, grew intensely hot the moment it received the active offering of Lin Jie's mental energy.
Pure white light shot upward, illuminating the entire dim cavern as bright as day.
Then, under Julian's horrified gaze, the impossible happened.
Two illusory wings of pure, radiant light, filled with a sacred aura and exquisite beauty, slowly unfurled from Lin Jie's arms!
Unlike the painful, physical manifestation during the passive trigger at Karnak Temple, these wing projections were not solid wings. They were a more pure, advanced materialization of spiritual power.
The light emerged from Lin Jie's flesh and bone, transforming his arms into a living grotesque armament using his mortal body as its vessel.
Lin Jie's body became a container for divine power in this moment, his will the core driving this armament.
These magnificent wings were a sacred projection originating from the sky and royal authority, also representing the UMA Upper Egyptian White Vulture's ecological status.
[White's Airspace]!
Centered on Lin Jie, it became a spiritual storm sweeping through the entire cavern!
That absolute "apex predator pressure," originating from the top of the ecological pyramid, radiated outward.
This wasn't just a simple mental impact. It proclaimed that within this airspace, the sole "king" had descended!
The symbiotic hyenas and Canopic Wasp swarms, caught in their feeding frenzy, froze in their movements the moment they came into contact with this pressure.
The brutality on the face of the hyena about to spew mucus was replaced by a primal fear etched deep into its bloodline.
Its body began to tremble uncontrollably, its throat emitting whimpers like a puppy facing a lion.
Then, as if receiving an irresistible command...
All the UMA that had been besieging them—whether the hyenas on the ground or the wasps in the air—acted as if encountering the most terrifying natural disaster.
As one, they turned and fled toward the cavern exit at speeds several times faster than their initial charge.
Retreat?
No, that wasn't a retreat. It was a rout!
A disgraceful, genetically programmed, panicked flight of an inferior creature before its superior!
Within seconds, the battlefield, which had just been filled with the sounds of chewing and shrieking, fell into a deathly silence.
Only the aftermath of the UMA's gluttony remained on the battlefield: utter devastation and several mutilated corpses.
They were members of the Eternal Serpent cult. These warriors had ultimately paid a terrible price for their arrogance and underestimation.
They had become the first course in the feast for the beasts enraged by the scent of blood.
Lin Jie's gaze swept over the bloody scene.
He saw one warrior whose lower half had been bitten off by a hyena's massive maw, his upper body still frozen in a firing stance, his face a mask of terror.
Another warrior was curled behind a salt pillar, his body intact but his chest sunken. The corpse of a Canopic Wasp with an abnormally distended abdomen lay on his cheek. This warrior had suffered the horrific fate of "live oviposition" before death.
Only a handful of survivors remained.
Each was wounded, looking with fearful eyes at the unscathed figure standing at the center of the battlefield.
They had witnessed with their own eyes how a horde of "devils" fled in panic before the majesty of that "deity."
One Eternal Serpent member, closest to Lin Jie and less severely injured, struggled to rise from the pool of blood.
It seemed he still intended to carry out the delay order.
Soon, his struggles ceased.
Because a dark, round gun barrel was aimed at the center of his forehead.
The warrior's body stiffened. He saw no pity, no anger in Lin Jie's eyes.
He only saw an indifference that looked down upon an insect.
Then he heard the last three words of his life.
"...It's over."
"Bang!"
The gunshot ended the chaos.
Only Lin Jie remained standing quietly in place. The wisp of smoke rising from the Serene Heart in his hand and the lingering halo of sacred white light around his body formed an absurd, grotesque picture.
He had actively wielded the authority of this "Living Holy Relic" for the first time.