novelraw Chapter 335-1: Pilgrimage Angel (1)
Chapter 335-1: Pilgrimage Angel (1)
[…]
[You ride the Courier Mole Cricket back to Bush Cricket City…]
[As soon as the flesh membranes on both sides of the abdominal cavity open, the cold wind howls in, carrying snowflakes with it.]
[You jump down from the abdominal cavity. The thick snow reaches up to your calves. Stepping on it makes no crunching sound, nor does it feel like you are stepping on anything solid. Only the clammy, bone-chilling cold refuses to fade.]
[You scoop up a handful of snow. It is icy to the touch, its texture light as feathers, unlike ordinary snow that feels heavy and compact.]
[You once again look toward the distant ruins of the city. Pristine white snow blankets the entire underground space.]
[Scattered bricks and rubble jut out of the ruins, capped with snow and adding a mottled desolation to the white world.]
[You recall the gigantic shadow you saw when you fled Bush Cricket City last time…]
[You look up toward the vault of the vast underground space. The blizzard obscures most of your view, making it impossible to see the stone ceiling above the city.]
[And at the spot where that gigantic shadow had once floated, there is now nothing at all.][Do you wish to head toward the center of Bush Cricket City and proceed to the Emerald Sacrificial Ground?]
Lin Xun was still using the shell of the Ascended Brutalist Warden.
It was not that he was intentionally courting death, just that he wanted to test something.
He had barely spent any time in the blizzard when the hellish game sent a prompt.
[You undergo the baptism of the Pilgrimage Angel. The success rate of your next Ascension advancement has slightly increased!]
Lin Xun frowned.
“Pilgrimage Angel?”
The term sounded familiar. He quickly flipped back through the earlier text.
Nightmare Yuri had mentioned in his proclamation that the rebels had been punished by the blizzard’s baptism and that once the angel finished its pilgrimage, the blizzard would subside, and the remaining Ascended would be able to return to the city ruins and rebuild it…
The ‘angel’ in his words was clearly this Pilgrimage Angel.
“So that means it is the Pilgrimage Angel’s baptism that causes the White-Fleece Snow Season.”
“The Desire Wet Nurse’s genetic weapon comes from the Pilgrimage Angel!”
[You undergo the baptism of the Pilgrimage Angel. The success rate of your next Ascension advancement has slightly increased!]
[Please note, your baptism has reached the critical threshold. If you continue to undergo the baptism, you will fall into madness…]
To verify his theory, Lin Xun immediately switched shells.
[You possess the shell of the Desire-Bearing Greedy Wolf Star Lord!]
He stood in the blizzard for quite a while yet received no prompts from the hellish game.
Just as he had expected, the White-Fleece Snow Season was indeed targeted at aberrated ones.
Ascended beings could gain benefits from the baptism, but if the dose was too high, even a powerful Ascended like the Warden would be unable to endure it.
The Greedy Wolf Star Lord’s shell did not belong to this world and bore no life factors that the weapon could lock onto, so the White-Fleece Snow Season had no effect on the Star Lord shell.
As that thought crossed his mind, he suddenly felt a jolt of alarm.
Lin Xun had once offered up a ‘Fire-Worshipping’ shell to the Desire Wet Nurse.
If the White-Fleece Snow Season was a targeted genetic weapon, then after obtaining the Fire-Worshipping life factor, would the Desire Wet Nurse add something extra into the snowflakes?
[You possess the shell of the Fire-Worshipping Ninja Master!]
[You stand silently in the blizzard, feeling the bone-piercing cold…]
After waiting for a long time and seeing no abnormality, Lin Xun let out a long breath.
“Why am I scaring myself for no reason?”
Whether it was that the Desire Wet Nurse had not specifically targeted him or had not had time to decode the Fire-Worshipping life factor, the White-Fleece Snow Season had no side effects on the Fire-Worshipping shells either.
He switched back to the Star Lord shell and continued his exploration.
[You tread through the snow and gradually approach the city ruins…]
[As you move forward, you notice many chaotic footprints on the snow’s surface. After wandering and lingering, all the footprints eventually align and point in the same direction.]
[The footprints stretch toward the city center until they vanish at the limits of your sight.]
[You imagine and reconstruct the scene based on the footprints…]
[A group of crazed Ascended wandered here, walking aimlessly, completely unconcerned by the swirling snow.]
[Suddenly, they seemed to sense something, stopped in their tracks, turned their heads toward the city center in unison, then began walking toward whatever was calling to them from there.]
[Do you want to continue toward the center of Bush Cricket City and proceed to the Emerald Sacrificial Ground?]
Lin Xun narrowed his eyes, a faint premonition stirring within him.
Retrieving the Sacrificial Emblem would probably not be as easy as it sounded.
[You trudge on through the blizzard and gradually close in on the city center…]
[…]
[After a long march, you finally see in the distance the only intact structure standing amidst the ruins: the Emerald Sacrificial Ground.]
[The sacrificial ground, shaped like a spired church, is encircled on all sides by countless crazed Ascended beings. They wander mindlessly around it but do not enter.]
[Numerous shriveled Ascended corpses lie scattered on the ground, as though their blood and flesh have been sucked dry, weathered corpses long since turned to husks.]
[It is not the many insane Ascended that draw the most attention, but rather the enormous shadow crouched atop the sacrificial ground…]
[The terrifying creature’s two pairs of scaled wings cover the sky and blot out the light, shrouding the sacrificial ground entirely in their shadow.]
[With each beat of its wings, it stirs a piercingly cold wind. As the wings flap, countless ‘snowflakes’ shed from their scales and hairs, drifting down to form a raging blizzard.]
[You finally realize that the snowflakes of the White-Fleece Snow Season are not real snow, but the fluffy scale dust from this terrifying creature’s wings!]
[You have discovered the Ascended Pilgrimage Angel!]
[The Pilgrimage Angel, like a colossal butterfly, lowers its ferocious head. Its extremely long piercing proboscis suddenly stabs into the body of an Ascended.]
[In the blink of an eye, the Ascended has no power to resist and is sucked into a dry corpse.]
[The Pilgrimage Angel lets out a shrill, deafening screech and beats its wings again. The blizzard seems to grow even more violent…]
[Will you attack the Ascended encircling the sacrificial ground, fight a life-and-death battle with the Pilgrimage Angel, or head straight into the Emerald Sacrificial Ground?]
“Damn, what kind of Mothra knockoff is this?”
He did not know exactly how strong this far-off Pilgrimage Angel was, but the fact that it could create the White-Fleece Snow Season meant it was definitely not an easy boss to handle.
[You possess the shell of the Knowledge-Seeking Primordial Hermit!]
Previously, since Little Dragonkin’s Art of Transformation had not been fully mastered, his dragon-headed human-bodied look made things inconvenient, not suited for many situations.
Now that the Art of Transformation had improved, Little Dragonkin’s non-transformed state roughly resembled a human. Ugly, yes, but workable for exploration and PvP.
The other yokai art, the Art of Qi Divination, had also advanced.
Lin Xun took the opportunity, while the boss had yet to notice him, to test the detection skill’s effect.
He tapped the skill bar and used the Art of Qi Divination.
[You focus the power of the Dragon Embryo into your eyes and gaze into the distance…]
[A dense black smoke rises from the Pilgrimage Angel, pitch black and thick as a beacon fire…]
[The many crazed Ascended, by contrast, only emit wispy white smoke, so faint as to be almost invisible…]
The Art of Qi Divination showed different colors depending on the strength comparison between self and enemy.
White smoke meant the enemy was weaker than himself. Black smoke meant the enemy was stronger.
There was a third type, red smoke, which signified that their strength was roughly equal, around a fifty-fifty or forty-sixty split, with victory depending entirely on how things played out on the spot.
The density of the smoke indicated the gap in strength. For trash mobs like these Ascended grunts, the white smoke was extremely thin and dim, which meant they were just there to hand over experience.
The black smoke rising from the Pilgrimage Angel, on the other hand, was so thick it looked almost solid, indicating that its power far exceeded Little Dragonkin’s, at least vastly beyond his non-transformed state.
“Seriously… I was just complaining earlier that the map’s early difficulty was too easy.”
“And here we go. This hellish game immediately slaps me back down.”
After thinking it over, Lin Xun decided that a frontal confrontation was not the right approach. He needed to outsmart it.
First, he would enter the sacrificial ground and get the Sacrificial Emblem.