Era of Magic and Martial Arts

Chapter 677: Chapter 620: Is There Another Mask Beneath the Mask? Another Face Beneath the Face!

Finally, he stood up.

With a strange posture due to a shifted center of gravity, he stood rigidly in front of [Mask].

His head lifted upwards, cervical vertebrae making a cracking sound as two dark eye sockets stared fixedly at [Mask].

The massive hole in his chest remained open, empty inside.

His skin had completely lost moisture and elasticity, turning a dark brown like withered tree bark, tightly clinging to a jagged skeleton with deep wrinkles.

The blood vessels and fascia within had long shriveled and collapsed, unable to yield a drop of blood.

The area that once housed eyes now only had two pale spheres, like glass marbles soaked too long, embedded in the sockets.

Cracked lips slightly parted, revealing gums shrunken to a black-brown and a few yellowing remaining teeth.

A strand of viscous black liquid slowly dripped from the corner of the mouth, falling into the cavity in the chest.

The tall old man "came alive" in a manner that completely desecrated the laws of life.

But this was by no means a resurrection granted by the [Feast], nor was it a merciful redemption.

When [Mask] crushed that aging heart, strands of barely perceptible energy were absorbed by him.

They were soul fragments carrying the tall old man’s consciousness, memories, and emotions.

The essence of the "three choices one" was to dissect a complete soul into three disparate abilities and then select the most compatible part to incorporate.

What does it mean for a soul to be torn apart, devoured, and digested?

It means the soul is scattered and the consciousness thoroughly extinguished.

This is a complete, ultimate death, with no power able to restore a complete "person" from such a thorough dissipation.

What stood up now was merely the shell left by the tall old man.

What drove its actions was no longer complex commands from the brain, no longer will and emotion, but residual instinctual reactions honed over countless life-and-death struggles remaining in muscle fibers and nerve endings.

Interestingly, once the brain, the "central processor," was completely removed, those primitive reflex arcs deeply embedded in the spinal cord and surrounding nerves were instead "liberated" and "enhanced" like never before.

Transmission of nerve signals no longer needed to pass through layers of complex synaptic connections and conscious judgments, becoming extraordinarily direct and swift.

Speed, response, and pure physical destructiveness were all grotesquely enhanced.

It was like a blind man, whose lack of sight forced his hearing to become extraordinarily keen, capable of capturing subtle sounds imperceptible to ordinary people.

At this moment, the tall old man’s corpse was an unconscious "blind man," with the most basic and primitive "muscle hearing" in his body amplified to the extreme.

Simply put, the tall old man was now a zombie, and one that could perform Martial Arts.

He became dumber and stronger.

How dumb? Commanding him with more than five words might leave him completely non-responsive.

[Limit-Breaking Skill—Nirvana Breath (Active)!]

[When you kill the opponent, you can choose to let the opponent rest or let the opponent experience Nirvana.

Nirvana means the soul is extinguished and reduced to nothingness, but its remaining body shall be granted vitality beyond its life, transformed into a puppet shell obeying simple commands!]

[Ps: Nirvana is not life, it is the beginning of a walking corpse!]

Just then, deliberately light yet still clear footsteps came from the other end of the sewer tunnel.

Ma Bin’s figure emerged from the dimness, his gaze immediately captured by the resurrected corpse of the tall old man.

Even with Ma Bin’s resilient mind, accustomed to storms, a trace of undisguised astonishment momentarily flashed in his eyes.

He had witnessed the tall old man being killed and drained of blood, and also saw [Mask] reach into the cavity of his chest.

Yet seeing the corpse stand up again, he couldn’t help but feel an unparalleled shock.

Not from the resurrection itself, but from the revelation of another eerie ability from his superior.

The tremor in his heart at this moment mirrored the thoughts the tall old man had in life—did his superior have perhaps just a bit too many abilities?

Unexpectedly, he felt a sliver of inappropriate sympathy for those who once opposed, currently oppose, or will oppose [Mask].

"Possessing so many eerie, powerful, and diverse abilities..."

Ma Bin was secretly astonished, his fingers instinctively adjusting his glasses,

"Even within the organization, it’s rather rare, isn’t it? So, the superior’s position within the organization must be pretty high, maybe even higher than I imagine?"

However, exactly how high, he couldn’t guess.

Moreover, despite racking his brains, he couldn’t remember or heard of any major figure in [Destiny]’s upper echelon with the codename [Mask].

There were only two possibilities:

Either [Mask]’s confidentiality level was too high for him to know, or [Mask] was a disguise for a real big figure within the organization!

Once this idea emerged, it grew wildly like weeds in his heart.

Ma Bin’s gaze unknowingly fixated on the pale mask before him, thoughts swarming in his mind:

"Is the face beneath the mask of ’Feng Mu’ truly the real face of his superior?"

If [Mask] is the mask of Feng Mu, then might "Feng Mu" itself also be another layer of disguise?

This possibility wasn’t out of the question either!

After all, for the organization to completely substitute one identity for another’s life was no difficult task.