novelraw Chapter 346: The Collapse of Eden
Chapter 346: The Collapse of Eden
As if to confirm Lin Jie's words.
The Holy Embryo suspended in the nutrient fluid suddenly opened its eyes.
They were eyes containing countless overlapping pupils, chaotic and insane.
"Gurgle..."
A stream of huge bubbles rose from the cultivation tank.
The roots of the Corpse-Scent Arum connected to the Holy Embryo began to convulse uncontrollably.
A panicked voice came from the console area.
"No! It's consuming in reverse!"
Yan Xilou rushed towards the console, trying to stabilize the situation.
"Hurry! Cut the pipelines! Inject the potions!"But he was still a step too slow, because Lin Jie was already moving.
Since the ritual had spiraled out of control, then let it collapse completely.
Lin Jie's figure transformed into a streak of black lightning, his target, the Corpse-Scent Arum·Ghost Mother that served as the energy core.
To be precise, it was its core sac, brimming with golden nectar.
"This thing, I'm taking it."
Lin Jie growled.
The [Silencer] in his hand slashed viciously towards the main artery connecting the nectar sac.
In this underground Garden of Eden bathed in red light, true destruction descended.
But this seemingly inevitable strike did not slice through the plant's epidermis and trigger a golden downpour as Lin Jie had anticipated.
Just as the blade was about to touch the dark red pipeline, a pale, slender palm, still visible even in the dim red light, pressed down on the node about to be severed.
"Clang—"
Lin Jie felt an extremely bizarre and soft, flowing counterforce transmit through the hilt of his knife. That force, with its continuous, fluid sensation, instantly neutralized and redirected all the kinetic energy and killing intent contained in his slash towards the empty space beside him.
Yan Xilou had, at some unknown moment, positioned himself there.
He had effortlessly blocked Lin Jie's fatal blow with merely his palm.
"Brother Lin."
Yan Xilou's voice remained gentle and courteous.
"This is the umbilical cord sustaining the birth of the new god, the hope for this ancient nation's next hundred years. How could you bear to sever it so brutally?"
Lin Jie used the counterforce to land steadily on a thick copper pipe at the edge of the altar.
He narrowed his eyes slightly, observing the man before him.
"Hope?" Lin Jie's short knife lowered slightly. "Hope built upon piles of human lives only leads to hell."
"And."
Lin Jie's gaze passed over Yan Xilou's shoulder, locking onto the trembling giant Corpse-Scent Arum.
"The so-called antidote is inside that thing."
"Give me that nectar sac, and I might not destroy your lab."
This was, of course, a lie.
But tactically speaking, any form of negotiation was to buy a better offensive opportunity or to find an enemy's weakness.
Yan Xilou smiled.
He turned around, elegantly extending a finger to gently tap the plant's root.
"You want this?"
He pointed at the pulsating, temptingly golden sac hanging in the center of the flower disc.
"Correct, this is the life essence refined by the Ghost Mother, the milk it uses to nourish the Holy Embryo."
"It truly possesses miraculous power capable of reshaping flesh and blood, even reversing life and death."
Yan Xilou looked back, a playful glint sparkling in his clear eyes.
"If you have the ability to take it, then by all means. But before that."
His palm suddenly slapped the thick plant stem.
That slap seemed light and without force, but it injected an immense and violent surge of spiritual nature into the monster's body through the plant's vascular bundles.
"You need to ask for its permission first."
"Good luck, Brother Lin."
After saying this, Yan Xilou lightly tapped his toes on the ground, his entire figure drifting backward, directly retreating to the suspended walkway connecting to the upper control room.
As he retreated, the Corpse-Scent Arum·Ghost Mother awakened.
The fleshy petals tightly wrapped around the pistil violently exploded outward, revealing the abyssal maw within, covered in fine barbs and oozing dark green mucus.
From the depths of that giant maw, several tubular structures with nozzle-like organs at their tips extended, aiming directly at Lin Jie standing below the altar.
"Pfft—"
Without any warning.
A high-pressure jet of liquid with a strong, pungent odor shot out from the nozzles.
The speed of the liquid was astonishing, leaving afterimages in the air.
Lin Jie's pupils contracted.
The moment the liquid sprayed, he executed an exaggerated lateral dodge to the side.
"Sizzle, sizzle, sizzle—"
That dark green water jet struck the copper pipe where Lin Jie had just stood and the alloy floor below with tremendous force.
Accompanied by a hair-raising corrosive sound, the solid brass pipe as thick as a thigh melted and snapped, while the hard alloy floor was etched into a terrifying pit half a meter deep, billowing with yellow smoke.
That was no ordinary acid.
It was a high-concentration biological digestive enzyme mixed with plant toxins and alchemical strong acid, its corrosiveness even surpassing industrial aqua regia.
If Lin Jie had been even 0.1 seconds slower just now, he probably wouldn't have even bone fragments left.
But this was only the beginning.
With the full awakening of this [Ghost Mother], the entire underground laboratory's defense system was also fully activated.
"Clack. Clack."
The sluice gates on the surrounding walls slowly rose, pushed by hydraulic rods.
Heavy, chaotic footsteps echoed from the darkness, the sound of claws scraping metal floors, and low growls from the throats of some beasts.
"Roar—"
Swarms of black shadows poured out from the passages behind those gates.
They were several beast-men transformed through the forbidden [Zao Chu] technique.
They had human torsos and limbs, but their heads and joints were stitched with organs from tigers, leopards, lizards, and even insects. Their muscles, catalyzed by alchemical potions, had swollen to the limit, bursting through their skin to reveal dark red muscle fibers underneath.
These monsters wielded crude but heavy cold weapons.
They surged like a black tide, swarming madly towards the four at the central altar along the crisscrossing walkways and stairs.
Simultaneously, the white-robed acolytes working in the lab also drew talismans and daggers from their sleeves, joining the encirclement.
This was Yan Xilou's trump card.
In this sealed Garden of Eden, he commanded a demonic army that felt no pain and feared no death.
Lin Jie glanced at the white figure standing high above, overlooking the battlefield, then quickly issued tactical commands.
"Execute Plan C!"
Lin Jie's voice remained reassuringly calm amidst the roars of the monsters.
"I'll retrieve the nectar!"
"You three hold off these grunts, buy me time!"
"Julian! That gun in your hand isn't for show! Keep Yan Xilou locked down! Don't give that bastard any chance to interfere with me, even if he starts chanting up there, you break his tongue!"
"Received!"
Julian raised his Mauser pistol wrapped with iron wire, his eyes behind the cracked lenses turning cold and ruthless.
In his rule-based vision, the white figure standing at the highest point was already pinned by a bright red crosshair.
"Come on, everyone."
Nadia drew her Parang, its blade slightly curled from previous battles. Looking at the beast-men swarming from all sides, her eyes showed not fear, but the bloodthirsty gleam unique to Dayak headhunter tribes.
"Let's send these cursed souls... home."
The flank battle erupted.
Nadia charged like an agile panther into the left flank, the most densely packed area of beast-men.
This was the only path to the altar, the zone with the greatest enemy numbers.
A wolf-headed beast-man swung his spiked club down at Nadia's head.
But Nadia's body arched backward like a flexible vine, letting the stench-laden club smash into the ground just past the tip of her nose. Then, using the force from her waist, she sprang up, her Parang transforming into a silver flash, precisely slicing open the unprotected abdomen of the werewolf.
Blood and viscera gushed out, but this didn't deter the other monsters. More beast-men roared as they charged forward.
Nadia showed no fear. She weaved and leaped among the crowd, using the massive instruments and pipes as cover, turning this laboratory into her most familiar killing jungle.
On the other side.
Evelyn faced an even more severe test than Nadia.
She was responsible for defending the right passage, where several heavy guards were pouring in.
Their skin showed an eerie bronze hue, densely painted with golden talismanic script, and they wore heavy iron lamellar armor of the Ming and Qing dynasty style, long obsolete in history.
"Too many... how can we possibly hold..."
Evelyn looked at the enemies, cold sweat beading on her forehead.
Her [Tesla Coil Glove], while immensely powerful, seemed somewhat inadequate against this number of enemies with its single-target, high-burst nature.
And her charge was limited.
She needed to find a method for wide-area clearing.
Her gaze swept rapidly over the complex equipment around her, finally settling on a machine in the corner emitting a tremendous roar.
It was an industrial generator set, a rarity in this era, improved by the German inventor Siemens.
Several thick copper busbars extended from the generator.
Evelyn's eyes lit up.
"Primitive... but it'll do."
Gritting her teeth, she charged towards the generator.
Several enemies noticed her intent, swinging large knives to intercept.
Evelyn dodged the attacks, then leaped onto the generator's base.
Evelyn took a deep breath, quickly fastened the insulated lock on her glove's wrist, and activated the "Faraday cage" protective mesh woven from fine silver wire within the lining.
Then, with her right hand clad in the thick insulated glove, she slammed it onto the completely exposed copper busbar carrying thousands of volts!
"Taste the real... Industrial Revolution!"
She activated the glove's reverse guidance mode.
Injecting the high-frequency pulse signal stored in the Leyden Jar into the magnetic field coil of this primitive generator to disrupt its voltage stabilizing coil.
"Sizzle, sizzle, sizzle— BOOM!!!"
The rotor inside the generator began to accelerate wildly due to magnetic field disruption, the voltage instantly surpassing the critical threshold.
Countless thick blue arcs, like frenzied thunder dragons, erupted from the exposed copper busbars and cables!
Centered on the generator, a twenty-meter radius became a thunderstorm zone filled with high-voltage ions.
The divine soldiers relying on their bronze skin, iron bones, and heavy armor to charge recklessly had no time to scream. Their metal armor and potion-soaked skin became the perfect conductors for the current at this moment.
The frenzied current coursed through their bodies, turning them into massive human-shaped resistors.
For a moment, the entire right flank was bathed in dazzling blue light and the smell of scorching.
"Path... cleared!"
Evelyn leaned weakly against the generator. Her glove, having borne the brunt of guiding the current, billowed black smoke, but the invisible electromagnetic shielding field had successfully kept her unharmed amidst this thunderstorm.
She had used the lab's own energy to construct an insurmountable thunderous defense line for Lin Jie.
Lin Jie had already charged into the attack range of the Corpse-Scent Arum·Ghost Mother.
This was the core, and most dangerous, area of the entire battlefield.
The demonic flower, enraged by the [White Vulture] aura emanating from Lin Jie, tracked his movement with its maw, firing pinpoint shots.
Simultaneously, over a dozen thorny vines extended from beneath the flower disc. Coordinating with the acid blockade, they tried to trap Lin Jie in place.
Lin Jie's figure darted at high speed through the gaps between the acid rain and vines.
He relied entirely on the [Black Mercury] trench coat's ability to ignore friction and inertia for evasion.
He slid across the ground, changed direction mid-air, using the whipping vines as leverage for double jumps.
Each movement left a trail of black afterimages, each dodge narrowly skimming the edge of the deadly acid.
"Distance to target... fifteen meters."
Lin Jie calculated the distance in his mind.
The Ghost Mother suddenly stopped spraying acid. Its petals abruptly closed, tightly protecting the golden yellow nectar sac at the center.
Immediately after, its root cracked open, releasing a cloud of pollen.
This mist not only obscured vision but also severely disrupted a creature's sense of balance and direction.
This was its final defensive measure.
Lin Jie charged into the mist.
His vision instantly blurred, and his brain began to experience a dizziness akin to drunkenness.
But he didn't stop.
Because he didn't need to see with his eyes.
His left wrist twitched slightly, the [Cursebreaker Vambrace] that had been on standby instantly switching to [Spiritual Sonar] mode.
In his mental imaging, the pink mist did not exist.
Only the violently pulsating spiritual core existed.
That core was ten meters ahead, protected by those thick petals.
"Julian!" Lin Jie roared.
"Here!"
Julian on the high platform immediately understood. He had been waiting for this moment.
He shifted his aim from Yan Xilou to the base of one of the giant plant's petals.
That was the joint node connecting the petal to the main stem.
"Bang!"
The Rule Gun roared.
The bullet, ignoring distance and mist interference, accurately struck the node.
"Crack!"
The petal guarding the core drooped powerlessly as the joint shattered, revealing a half-meter-wide gap leading straight to the flower's heart.
Lin Jie's feet slammed against the ground.
His entire body shot through the fleeting gap, piercing into the demonic flower's interior!
He was greeted by even more intense poisonous gas and tentacle-like fleshy sprouts.
But Lin Jie ignored it all.
His eyes were fixed only on the massive sac, brimming with golden liquid and emitting a tempting fragrance.
Inside it was William's life, the key to victory in this war.
He raised the [Silencer] in his hand, thrusting the short knife viciously into the bottom of the nectar sac, then slashed downward with all his might!