Chương 99: Where Is His Soul? (2/3)

Beneath its upper war-limbs and the middle pair locked around the giant rusted tongs, the Jiuli Fiend revealed its full monstrous anatomy: six actual arms arranged in three distinct pairs.

The lower pair—thicker, soot-blackened, and originally used to pump the forge's fleshly bellows—snaked under the anvil assembly with grotesque precision, clawing into the venting mechanism. Each movement sent ripples of displaced air through the chamber, disturbing the bone dust in wavering circles. The chitinous fingers scraped against corroded metal with a sound like grinding teeth, sending sparks of pale-green phosphorescence cascading into the shadows.

It seized the pressurized subterranean vent of gray-blue luminous gas and forcefully redirected the flow, sending a massive, superheated geyser of Yin-flame directly across the cavern floor. The ghostly fire roared forth with an unnatural shriek, the sound somewhere between wind through a tomb and the dying gasp of drowned men. The stone beneath the jet instantly blackened, ancient runes carved into the bedrock flaring briefly before succumbing to the overwhelming Yin energy.

How could this big and loud movement escape his observation? Shi Yan's Acoustic-Blood Tracker had screamed a warning of extreme atmospheric displacement from the very moment the entity began moving.

The mutated nerve clusters at the base of his skull throbbed with a dull, rhythmic ache, translating the shifting air pressure into a three-dimensional hazard map across his mind. Each pulse sent phantom needles of sensation down his spine, his enhanced proprioception painting a vivid picture of the threat—distance, trajectory, thermal gradient—all rendered in painful clarity behind his eyes.

The gray-blue flame did not burn like normal fire; it possessed the paradoxical nature of the netherworld.

As the flame swept across the base of the stone stairs, it rapidly drained the kinetic heat from the air. The heavy, boiling ambient moisture of the alcove was instantaneously flash-frozen. Water vapor that had hung thick as soup crystallized mid-air, forming a million tiny ice needles that tinkled like shattered glass as they fell. The temperature plummeted so violently that the very air itself seemed to crack, producing audible pops and snaps as molecular bonds seized.

A thick, jagged wall of impenetrable black Yin-sludge and petrified ice suddenly crystallized across the entryway, sealing the bottom of the stairs in an absolute, airtight barricade. The surface writhed with trapped faces—not carved, but frozen mid-scream within the substance itself, their mouths open in eternal agony. Dark veins pulsed through the ice like diseased capillaries, leaking wisps of gray vapor that hung motionless in the frigid air.

The sheer speed of the thermal drop caused the bedrock beneath Shi Yan's boots to groan and split, spiderweb fractures shooting out from the epicenter of the ice wall. Stone that had endured for millennia shrieked as internal moisture flash-froze and expanded, tearing the ancient rock apart from within. Chips of shattered stone skittered across the bone-dusted floor, trailing small clouds of pulverized calcium.

Shi Yan skidded to a halt just inches from the barricade, the freezing aura radiating from the black ice instantly layering a thin coat of frost over his iron mask. His breath—still controlled, still measured—emerged from the mask's slits as crystalline vapor that froze and fell like snow. The metal of his bracer groaned as thermal contraction warped it further, adding stress to the already-dented surface. He drove his steel-plated fist into the ice.

A dull, heavy thud echoed through the chamber, lacking any of the satisfying cracks or the crystalline shattering that usually accompanied splintering ice. No spider-web fractures appeared. No chips flew free. The surface didn't even indent—it simply absorbed the blow with the finality of a coffin lid slamming shut.

It felt denser than bedrock; breaking it by force would take minutes he did not have. It was like striking the hull of a submerged submarine. The shock of the impact traveled straight back up his radius bone, vibrating uncomfortably into his elbow socket. His knuckles throbbed beneath the gauntlet, the bones protesting the unyielding resistance.

It can even block the entrance. Despite this sudden entrapment, there was no sense of panic in his gaze; even his breathing remained steady, his chest rising and falling in measured, military-grade tactical intervals. The frost on his mask didn't fog with rapid exhalations—only the slow, deliberate rhythm of controlled respiration.

Let's see. The exit route is compromised. The alcove is now effectively a sealed vacuum chamber. His eyes narrowed behind the mask's slits, scanning the chamber with mechanical precision—calculating angles, measuring distances, cataloging every potential variable with the cold efficiency of a man who'd cleared kill-houses in Fallujah.

With the entryway blocked, the atmospheric pressure inside the cavern began to violently shift. The ambient air, thick with sulfur and heat, stirred into a rapid vortex as the Jiuli Fiend continued to exhale vast, rolling clouds of the gray corpse-gas. The weapons hanging on chains began to swing wildly, clanging against stone with discordant metallic screams. Loose bone fragments lifted from the floor, caught in the violent circulation.

There was nowhere left to run. There were no blind spots left to occupy. The mist began to rapidly expand, pooling across the floor like heavy dry ice before rising rapidly toward the ceiling, filling every cubic inch of available space. Tendrils of vapor reached upward with deliberate malice, curling around stalactites and sliding along the corroded walls like searching fingers.

The entire architectural geometry of the cavern worked against him; the sloped, concave ceiling forced the expanding vapor to roll backward, ensuring that not a single pocket of clean oxygen would remain. The chamber had become a gas chamber in the most literal sense—engineered, whether by ancient design or diabolic happenstance, for perfect atmospheric saturation.

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"The flesh runs when the chain is already drawn!" a high-pitched, screeching voice erupted from the center of the stitched apron. The sound clawed at the eardrums, somewhere between an infant's wail and metal scraping bone.

"Fleeing into the ice! Running into the stone! A rat trapped in a sunken vase! Breathe! Breathe and surrender the vessel!"

The mockingly cruel chorus overlapped with guttural, wet laughter that echoed wetly off the frozen walls. Each stitched face spoke in discord—some words delayed, others rushing ahead—creating a nauseating cacophony of overlapping malice. Dark fluid bubbled from their mouths with each syllable, dribbling down the leather apron in tarry rivulets.

The Jiuli Fiend slowly rotated its massive form to face him. The movement was deliberate, unhurried—the motion of a predator that knew its prey was already dead. The grinding of chitin against the petrified shell beneath it produced a sound like millstones crushing bone. The uninjured faces on its apron—the ones Shi Yan hadn't crushed into paste moments prior—were twisting back into broad, hideous smirks, their dead eyes leaking a triumphant, tar-like fluid that steamed as it touched the frigid air.

It slowly raised all four of its primary arms, spreading them wide in a grotesque mockery of benediction, perfectly content to let the trapped environment do the work for it. Thick chunks of iron slag and broken bone-dust fell from its massive gauntlets, clattering against the shell-anvil with dull, hollow sounds. The tongs in its middle arms hung loose now, still dripping with flakes of scraped iron from Shi Yan's bracer.

It didn't need to crush the vessel with blunt force anymore; it just needed the vessel to drown in the mist. It was no longer fighting a physical skirmish. This was an execution by suffocation. The Fiend's entire posture radiated patient, inevitable victory—the stance of an executioner who had performed this ritual a thousand times before.

Shi Yan turned his back to the frozen barricade, his eyes scanning the approaching wall of gray, wailing mist. His shoulders remained level, his stance balanced despite the damaged ribs beneath the gambeson. If fear touched him, it left no mark on his body language—no trembling hands, no backward step, no desperate glance toward the sealed exit.

The mist density is at 100%. Inhalation is unavoidable within four seconds.

After calmly calculating the spatial volume divided by the expansion rate of the vapor, he recognized the underlying nature of the threat. His fingers flexed once at his sides—the only outward sign of tension—before settling back into stillness.

The gas was not a standard biological toxin. If this were sarin gas, mustard gas, or a weaponized fungal spore, it would abide by the laws of chemistry. But this mist defied gravity. The leading edge rolled upward in defiance of thermodynamics, spreading across the ceiling before descending like a predator's net. Temperature had no influence on its behavior. Air currents couldn't disperse it.

It swirled with intentionality, harboring phantom faces that screamed in silent agony within the vaporous folds. Hollow eyes formed and dissolved in the churning gray, mouths opening in soundless shrieks before melting back into formless mist. Spectral hands reached from within the vapor, grasping at nothing before dissipating. It was a payload of highly concentrated Yin-grudge, designed explicitly to invade the mind and sever the soul from the flesh.

So logically—or supposedly—with the past history of the [Anomaly: 10] stat acting as a firewall against cognitive hazards, it could handle this.

But obviously, understanding the theory and assumption in his head and betting his actual, physical life on it in the field were two entirely different realities.

If this is a physical neurotoxin, my enhanced physiology—the 55 points anchoring my cellular structure—gives me an eighty percent chance of maintaining consciousness long enough to execute a suicide strike.

I can cross the gap, ignite the Flash Step, and put a blade through its central mass before my nervous system shuts down.

But if it is purely metaphysical... then I am about to find out exactly what an 'Empty Vessel' truly is.

Shi Yan's cold eyes hardened behind his mask. The frost on the metal had thickened now, forming delicate crystalline patterns across the yaksha's snarling features. His pupils contracted to pinpoints, focusing with absolute clarity on the approaching tide.

The next second, he adopted a heavily braced, wide-legged stance, grounding his mass firmly against the stone floor. His boots scraped bone dust as he adjusted positioning, iron studs grinding into the ancient calcium powder for maximum traction. He bent his knees slightly, adjusting his center of gravity to prevent his body from collapsing the moment the neurological shock hit. His damaged ribs protested the shift, sending sharp lances of pain through his torso that he ignored with practiced indifference.

He took one final, deep breath of the rapidly diminishing clean air, held it deep in his lungs to minimize the initial wave of internal exposure, and locked his muscular structure tight to endure whatever agonizing physical shock was about to follow. Every muscle from his calves to his neck tensed into rigid bands, his body becoming a statue of controlled defiance. His fingers curled into loose fists at his sides—ready to respond, ready to strike, ready to move the instant his mind confirmed he still could.

The gray mist rolled forward like a tidal wave and completely enveloped Shi Yan's head, washing over the dark metal of the Iron-Yaksha mask. The vapor clung to the surface with unnatural viscosity, sliding into every groove and seam like oil seeking any crack. The temperature around him plummeted further—not the clean cold of winter, but the suffocating chill of a tomb sealed for centuries.

Frost spread across his armor in visible waves, creeping down from his mask to his shoulders to his chest, coating him in a rime of death.

Across the cavern, the Jiuli Fiend lowered its massive arms, the primal tension leaking from its gargantuan frame. Its chitinous plates settled with soft clicks as it relaxed into stillness, the tongs dropping to hang loosely in its middle pair of hands.

To the creature, the battle was already decided. It had seen this exact scenario play out countless times over the miserable centuries it had been chained to this subterranean forge. The memory of each victory pulsed through its ancient consciousness—a parade of the doomed.

It had slaughtered arrogant sword immortals whose spiritual blades had shattered like glass against its shell, brilliant sect elites whose formation techniques had unraveled into useless sparks, and boastful body-refiners who thought their blazing aura could burn away the netherworld's breath. They all fell the same way. Always the same sequence: defiance, then confusion, then terror, then the empty collapse as their souls were ripped screaming from their meridians.

Their protective artifacts—wherever they wore them on their bodies, even if their ancestors' consciousness, either partially or fully, resided within those artifacts and had blessed their descendants for protection—would still flicker and die. Jade pendants that had glowed with ancestral qi for generations would crack and go dark. Blessed talismans inscribed with blood-oath protections would crumble to ash. Spirit-bound rings would shatter, releasing the trapped essence in pitiful wisps.

Even their talismans would turn to ash. And then, their eyes would roll back into their skulls as the Yin-grudge severed their arrogant souls from their precious Dantians. The moment of severance was always the same—a full-body convulsion, foam bubbling from the mouth, fingers clawing uselessly at the throat as if they could physically grasp the fleeing spirit and drag it back.

This is the Yellow Spring, the Netherworld! Even immortals must bow! The thought resonated through the Fiend's consciousness with the weight of absolute conviction, a truth carved into its essence through millennia of proven supremacy.

"Sleep, hollow thing," the Fiend rumbled, its actual voice sounding for the first time—a horrific, guttural bass that seemed to vibrate up through the bedrock rather than pass through the air. The sound bypassed the ears entirely, resonating directly in the bones, in the teeth, in the hollow spaces of the skull.

"I will strip the marrow. I will inhabit the shell. Your flesh will become my new anvil, and your silence will become my permanent home."

And I will be free from this enslavement! Hehehe… The internal laughter bubbled through its mind like tar through hot coals, thick with anticipation of liberation. So many centuries bound to this forsaken forge, feeding the furnace, crafting instruments of suffering for masters who had long since turned to dust. But this vessel—this empty, soul-bare vessel—would be its key to freedom.

It seeped mercilessly through the thin breathing slits of Shi Yan's mask, slipping past the layered boar-hide lining and the charcoal filters he had purposefully built into the mouth-guard. The physical barriers meant nothing. The mist moved with intelligence, finding every microscopic gap, exploiting every imperfection in the seal where mask met skin.

The mist possessed a chilling, semi-liquid property, flooding over his eyes, his mouth, and pouring down his throat the exact moment his lung capacity eventually forced him to inhale.