Free Web NovelChapter 349: Chapter 175: Undying and Indestructible, Infinite Spawning
At that point, his power on paper—while still at the Early Stage of the Gang Condensation Realm—would truly rival that of other Martial Artists at Gang Condensation Realm Perfection!
[Your skill "Crystalization" has been strengthened to the maximum level for your current realm!]
[Your skill "Shadow Scale" has been strengthened to the maximum level for your current realm!]
[Your skill "Silk Puppet" has been strengthened to the maximum level for your current realm!]
Only Furious Gaze Demon Suppression, having been acquired just recently, was not yet fully strengthened.
Lin Ye walked out of the fortress, preparing to leave.
But from outside the canyon came the chaotic, heavy thud of footsteps, mixed with the distinctive war cries of the Eight-armed Race.
He looked up to see that the members of the Eight-armed Race who had been fortunate enough to escape had now returned—and they had brought reinforcements.
A dark, oppressive mass of them, at least two or three hundred strong, had appeared. It looked as if their entire tribe had turned out.
At their head was a colossal throne of beast bones, borne by sixteen robust elites of the Eight-armed Race.
Atop the throne, an Eight-armed Race Chieftain lounged. His physique far surpassed that of his kin, his body covered in hideous scars and tribal tattoos.
With a condescending gaze, it looked down upon Lin Ye in the canyon.
"You... are the human... who killed... my brother... Kargath?"
The broken language of Great Xia came stiffly from the Chieftain’s mouth, thick with killing intent and cruelty.
Only then did Lin Ye realize the two tribes were related by blood.
He did not answer. He merely watched the dark, murderous army of the other race as a profound black light flickered in his eyes.
The next moment, something bizarre happened.
To the absolute horror of the attacking members of the Eight-armed Race, the fallen corpses on the blood-soaked battlefield beneath their feet suddenly twitched.
Then, one by one, the corpses began to rise. Dominated by a bizarre power, they staggered back to their feet in contorted poses.
Dense black filaments swarmed within their eye sockets.
One, ten, a hundred...
In the end, every single fallen member of the other races inside the canyon rose again!
A vast legion, composed of nearly three hundred of the dead, gathered silently before Lin Ye.
In terms of size alone, it was in no way smaller than the army of the Eight-armed Race!
On the throne of bones, the contempt on the Eight-armed Race Chieftain’s face instantly froze, replaced by incomprehensible confusion and apprehension.
Lin Ye’s eyes were cold, showing no trace of emotion.
He raised a hand and pointed lightly toward the Eight-armed Race army, which had descended into turmoil.
"Kill every living thing."
"Leave no survivors."
Following Lin Ye’s cold command, the Dead Legion of corpses before him let out a unified roar that shook the heavens.
The sheer force of it was terrifying.
BOOM!
The Army of the Dead surged forward like a black torrent released from a floodgate, launching a fearless charge at the Eight-armed Race army outside the canyon.
Atop the throne of bones, the Eight-armed Race Chieftain’s mind raced.
He stared at the swaying corpses of former enemies and his own kin charging toward him, and for a moment, he didn’t know how to react.
’What is this evil power!’
But his worries quickly subsided when he saw the Dead Legion engage his warriors only to be easily cut down.
He had thought the human before him was from the Witch Demon Race, merely disguised in human skin.
"So... they’re just... a mob... of useless, broken soldiers!"
The Chieftain grinned cruelly. "You think... *you* can challenge me?"
In his view, as long as these corpses controlled by some bizarre power weren’t resurrected with true Necromancy, they posed no threat.
His own forces, on the other hand, were the tribe’s most elite Warriors, every one of them a battle-hardened veteran.
The outcome of this battle was a foregone conclusion.
The war began.
As the Chieftain had expected, his Warriors recovered from their initial shock and quickly demonstrated their overwhelming combat prowess.
Sharp battle-axes and long blades tore through the puppets’ tattered bodies with ease, hacking them to pieces.
The battle devolved into a one-sided slaughter.
The Chieftain leaned back on his throne of bones, not even deigning to enter the fray himself. He simply watched with an appreciative gaze, savoring the slaughter as his kin tore the ridiculous Dead Legion to shreds.
However, less than a minute later, the smile on his face froze solid.
He discovered that the puppets—even those that had been hacked down or had half their bodies blown apart—were being pulled back to their feet by those bizarre black filaments. They rose in even more twisted, grotesque postures and threw themselves back into the fight.
They felt no pain. They feared no death.
They were... an unkillable army!
Lin Ye, watching coldly from the sidelines, also realized something. Now that his Silk Puppet skill had been fully strengthened to its maximum level...
...his puppet legion now possessed the same special power as that Mycelial Progeny from before.
As long as the milky-white Core Mycelium inside the puppets was not destroyed...
...they could be resurrected an infinite number of times, crawling up from the ground to fight again!
As the battle dragged on.
A scene unfolded that made the Chieftain’s scalp crawl.
One of his elites, after slaying three Stone Ghost Race puppets in a row, was caught in a moment of weakness. An Eight-armed Race puppet seized the opening, plunging a bone blade through his chest from behind.
The Warrior collapsed, unwilling to die, his hot blood staining the dark earth red.
But in the next second, before his incredulous eyes, black filaments, almost invisible to the naked eye, spread from the murderous puppet and silently burrowed into the body of the freshly killed elite.
The corpse twitched violently.
Then, as every member of the Eight-armed Race watched, their fallen comrade staggered back to his feet.
The same black light as the other puppets ignited in his empty eye sockets. He immediately turned and swung his blade at his former comrades.
One, two, ten...
The scales of victory began to tip in a truly bizarre fashion.
Every time one of his soldiers died, the enemy’s ranks grew by one.
A bone-deep chill shot up the Eight-armed Race Chieftain’s spine and straight to the crown of his head.
He could no longer sit calmly on his throne. He shot to his feet, his wide, bell-like eyes filled with tyranny and rage.
"ROAR!"
The Chieftain let out a deafening roar, snatched up a monstrous, three-to-four-meter-long great-axe, and leaped over the heads of his sixteen Personal Guards. He crashed into the battle like a meteorite.
He would personally crush that insignificant human!
「Half an hour later.」
Inside the canyon, the cries of battle had long since fallen silent.
The Eight-armed Race Chieftain was drenched in blood, looking like a demon god that had just climbed out of a blood pool.
He leaned on his great-axe, its blade long since chipped and blunted, his chest heaving as he gasped for breath.
His strength was undeniable. He was even a notch stronger than Chieftain Kargath of the Blood Slaughter Tribe, whom Lin Ye had previously killed in an instant.
In that half hour, he had personally torn apart over a hundred puppets. Corpses lay scattered wherever his axe had passed.
But now, as he looked around, not a single living ally remained by his side.
The entire canyon was densely packed with the dead, all of various shapes and sizes.
They had once been his kin, his most loyal Personal Guard...
And now, they all stared at him with those same empty, cold eyes.
Even an elephant can be brought down by enough ants.
Facing this unkillable, inexhaustible army of the dead that constantly consumed his own forces, even someone as powerful as him was bound to reach a point of exhaustion.
Lin Ye had not participated in the battle from start to finish.
He just stood there quietly, not even actively establishing a connection to control the puppets.
"AHHH—!!"
The Chieftain let out a roar of defiance, using his last ounce of strength to charge in Lin Ye’s direction.
However, what met him was a surging tide of his own kin, their weapons now turned against him.
Countless blades and axes fell upon him, and hot blood gushed forth.
The once-mighty king was completely overwhelmed, besieged by the very army he had built with his own hands.
「A few dozen seconds later.」
The pile of corpses stirred.
An incredibly burly figure, an Eight-armed clansman well over three meters tall, rose again from the mountain of corpses and sea of blood.
The hideous wounds on its body healed with startling speed, stitched together by black filaments. A dark, mycelial light flickered within its empty eye sockets.
This former king strode with heavy steps and stopped before Lin Ye.
Under the gaze of all the dead in the canyon, it knelt before Lin Ye and bowed its head in a gesture of submission.
"ROAR—!"
The next moment, inside the canyon, more than seven hundred undead puppets of various forms raised their arms in unison and unleashed a deafening roar.
Lin Ye’s heart stirred.
He knew that the Silk Puppet skill had undergone a fundamental transformation.
The original harsh restrictions—such as the puppets’ reduced strength, limited control range, and the inability to maintain them for long periods—were now insignificant.
Given enough time, he could, in theory, turn every member of every other race in the entire Nirvana Tower into his personal puppet army.
