Free Web NovelThe rest of the Red Tide Legion was still clearing out the remaining monsters and sporophytes on the outskirts of the Holy City, their pace of advancement intentionally slowed.
Meanwhile, Louis led a hundred Red Tide elites clad in red standard-issue armor as they were the first to step through the gates of the Holy City.
There were no streets inside the city; beneath their feet was a layer of soft, slippery pink tissue. With every step, their boot soles created a sticky pulling sensation, making a faint but unsettling sound.
The air was heavy and turbid, filled with a pungent scent of essence used to mask the smell of rotting meat and corpses constantly seeping from below.
The crimson armor of the Red Tide appeared jarring in this alien space. Nearly a hundred Extraordinary Knights advanced at standard intervals, their muzzles and polearms always pointed forward and toward the flanks. Their rhythmic footsteps were kept low, creating a dangerous sense of misalignment with the squelching of the fleshy ground.
Beneath the visors of the Red Tide Knights, their filtration canisters operated simultaneously.
The Frost Leaf Type III gas masks emitted a faint and steady hissing sound. Faint blue glows lit up in unison within the dim corridors of flesh; without them, their minds would have snapped long ago.
Suddenly, the corridor ahead shuddered, and then the fleshy wall at the end was forcibly torn open.
A golden-green torrent surged out—it was Stitch Monster Heavy Cavalry, and they were clearly much more powerful than those outside the Holy City.
They trampled over the soft ground, splashing pink slime with every step. Their roars echoed repeatedly through the corridor, sounding as if they were closing in from all directions at once.
The Red Tide formation did not retreat. Red shields were raised simultaneously, heavy tower shields interlocking to form a tight shield wall.
The shield surfaces were lowered, stocks pressed against shoulders, and polearms poked through the gaps, their blades aimed at the approaching deformed figures.
Weil stood at the very front. He drew his greatsword and thrust it backhanded into the slippery layer of pink fleshy ground beneath his feet.
As the blade sank in, the ground twitched slightly like a punctured internal organ.
"Form ranks."
In the next second, the battle qi circuits within his body lit up simultaneously.
Crimson light radiated outward from his chest like a compressed heatwave suddenly released, forming a translucent hemispherical shield around him.
The first wave of stitch monsters slammed into it.
BOOM—!!!
A dull, massive roar echoed through the corridor, and visible ripples spread across the surface of the shield.
The immense impact traveled through the ground, making even the knights in the back row feel a tremor beneath their feet.
Yet Weil did not retreat a single step. His feet seemed welded to the ground as his battle qi shield absorbed the full kinetic energy of the frontal assault.
Instead, the first few stitch monsters to hit lost their balance under the counterforce. Their bones emitted crisp cracking sounds, and like flies swatted head-on, they slid down the outside of the shield.
Weil's gaze remained calm: "Thrust."
Behind the shield, the Red Tide Knights stepped forward half a pace in unison, thrusting their spears.
The Demon-Breaking spear tips accurately pierced the most uncoordinated parts of the monsters' bodies.
The spear tips entered the flesh, and the struck stitch monsters collapsed in convulsions. Their limbs lost control, their intent to regenerate forcibly interrupted by the Demon-Breaking attribute, before being instantly consumed by flames from flamethrowers.
The line advanced steadily. Just then, a deep blue figure darted out from the side of the shield.
Sako held a greatsword, deep blue battle qi wrapping around the blade like a beast, following an irregular vibration trajectory.
An eight-armed stitch monster tried to close its arms to crush Sako in its embrace.
That thick layer of fat and muscle was enough to withstand heavy machine-gun fire.
However, Sako cut in a step before it could close, getting so close he was almost touching it.
Screech—
A horizontal sweep of the blade directly severed the monster's bottom two supporting legs, causing its massive body to lose balance and pitch forward.
Sako took the opportunity to step back and turn, his blade falling. The crookedly stitched head was split open like a ripe melon. Blood and slime splashed out, only to be instantly vaporized by the battle qi.
The surrounding Red Tide Knights followed up quickly. They couldn't slay monsters with the same ease as Sako.
They didn't seek individual kills, strictly following a three-man battle formation.
One person would block from the front to stabilize the monster's center of gravity, one would focus on severing the lower limbs to destroy its mobility, and the last would deliver the finishing blow, decapitating it or destroying its core nodes.
Before long, the battle formation centered on Weil had turned into an efficient meat grinder.
Monsters' corpses piled up on the ground layer by layer.
Severed limbs, sliced torsos, and still-twitching fragments were mixed together. The Red Tide Knights trampled over them repeatedly, squeezing out turbid and viscous juices.
But even so, the number of monsters didn't decrease at all; they continued to pour in. The fleshy walls on both sides bulged repeatedly, only to be torn open by the force within.
New stitch monsters were squeezed directly out of the architectural structure, with blood vessels and fascia still attached, as they charged forward, attempting to tear a gap with chaos.
"Hold the formation!" Weil's voice rose above the din of the battlefield. "Do not disperse!"
The crimson battle qi shield remained steadily deployed, blocking frontal impacts time and again.
Although the Red Tide Knights suffered no casualties, their advancement speed had slowed significantly.
They were forced to repeatedly clear the same spot, like moving upstream in a narrow channel constantly filling with silt.
Every step forward required double the time for clearing the area.
The monsters of this living city seemed endless. The stitch monsters were like cockroaches, crawling out from every crack in a continuous stream.
"Damn it..." Weil grit his teeth, the {N•o•v•e•l•i•g•h•t} sword hilt making a slight friction sound against his palm. "Sako! Clear the right side! Don't let them get near the Lord!"
Amidst this heated stalemate, Louis remained standing in the center of the group.
He could feel something taking shape deeper within the Holy City.
That aura made him feel instinctively repulsed, yet it precisely triggered a resonance with the primal heart.
Louis whispered to himself, "As expected... everything here is an extension from that place."
He lifted his foot and stepped forward, crossing directly beyond the edge of the shield Weil was desperately maintaining.
A very brief moment of disorder occurred in the back of the line.
"Lord Louis!"
Weil spun around, his battle qi shield fluctuating violently. "It's too dangerous ahead, let me..."
"Stay here," Louis's voice came through the protective mask, devoid of any emotional fluctuation.
He simply took that step calmly, walking out of the absolute defense zone covered by the crimson shield.
Weil's pupils constricted sharply: "My Lord—!"
Several giant stitch monsters that had been lingering at the edge of the shield immediately noticed this isolated target.
They emitted excited, piercing screeches. Three bone scythes the size of door panels, carrying a foul wind, slashed toward Louis's head from the top, left, and right blind spots simultaneously.
But Louis did not dodge. He didn't even blink, seemingly unaware of the danger.
He only slightly turned his head, and in those originally deep eyes, a flash of molten gold slit-pupil radiance instantly ignited.
It was the absolute gaze of a predator from the primal era, standing at the top of the food chain, looking down upon lower life forms.
Louis's lips moved slightly: "Begone."
Invisible ripples spread out with him as the center.
A soul-level impact descended at that moment. The three giant stitch monsters pouncing in mid-air instantly froze. Then, their bodies abruptly burst with foul-smelling green bile.
No physical attack had hit them.
It was simply that their nervous systems, unable to withstand the fear from the depths of their instincts, overloaded and burned out on their own.
Thud.
The three massive bodies fell heavily at Louis's feet like puppets with their strings cut, as if their wills had been drained away.
Louis ignored them and continued forward. With every step he took, that circle of invisible golden pressure pushed forward.
The dense, bloodthirsty pack of stitch monsters ahead acted like a group of rats encountering their natural enemy.
They emitted low, broken whimpers and scrambled to retreat to the sides.
Those who were a bit slower had their bodies disintegrate directly under the pressure, their internal organs bursting, turning into a pile of shapeless meat paste.
The once-congested corridor was forcibly split open.
A straight and wide passage took shape beneath Louis's feet.
Behind him, Weil's hand maintaining the shield froze in mid-air. That layer of crimson battle qi light seemed more redundant than ever.
He watched the figure ahead. The air around Louis swayed slightly even without a breeze, and wherever he passed, ten thousand monsters retreated.
The surrounding Red Tide Knights also stopped their movements, their hands gripping their weapons instinctively tightening, then loosening.
Sako muttered in a low voice, his words almost entirely swallowed by his helmet: "...What on earth is our Lord?"
Weil took a deep breath, forcibly suppressing the churning emotions in his chest.
"Don't stop." He restabilized the shield, his voice returning to its usual cold hardness. "Advance! Follow Lord Louis's path."
However, even though the Red Tide guards pushed forward with all their might, and even though Weil's crimson battle qi shield remained as stable as ever, the distance between them and Louis continued to widen.
It wasn't a difference in speed, but in level.
The place Louis was heading was not a battlefield they were meant to set foot on... Before entering the temple, Louis briefly paused. fгee𝑤ebɳoveɭ.cøm
Looking from afar, it was a massive structure composed of white and gold, standing at the heart of the entire city.
The towering dome still existed, but it was tightly entwined by layers of golden thorns growing in an interlocking fashion.
The thorns were slowly writhing, climbing along the originally rigorous architectural lines, precisely replicating the symmetrical aesthetics of the temple's past.
This cold and restrained religious aesthetic had not disappeared; it had merely been fully transplanted into flesh and plants.
Louis's gaze lingered on the building for a moment before moving away.
He reached out and pushed open the doors before him.
These massive white stone gates, which once weighed tens of thousands of tons, had now been completely alienated, covered by countless bones and chunks of meat.
The touch was warm to his hand, with a rhythmic pulse as if responding to the contact, as if the entire door were still performing some duty of welcome.
This sacred hall, once known for its massive white stone pillars, platinum arches, and infinitely extending dome, had completely lost the concept of architecture, collapsing instead into a massive living chamber.
It wasn't a metaphor; the entire hall was breathing.
Through the membrane, one could even see turbid golden blood flowing inside.
The liquid circulated along established pathways, with occasional shadows flashing in the depths like organ reflexes that had not yet been awakened.
Louis's gaze moved along the two sides of the hall.
The places where sacred decrees and doctrinal reliefs once hung were now completely remodeled. Most peculiar were the twenty-four shriveled corpses nailed neatly to the fleshy walls, like dolls on a store counter.
They wore robes representing authority; the gold-woven threads had long since lost their luster, yet the patterns that once symbolized power and glory could still be seen.
Countless glowing green thorns grew out from the inside of the fleshy walls, piercing their limbs and fixing the corpses firmly in mid-air.
These people had clearly been dead for many years.
Yet their facial muscles had not gone slack. freёwebnoѵel.com
Every face was frozen in the same expression: extreme pain and unsuppressable jealousy.
It was the final emotion of the failed candidates, captured in their last moments and permanently preserved by this living hall.
Louis's gaze moved past these collectibles toward the end of the hall.
That was where the white throne should have been.
Now, there was only a twisted golden tree growing from the ground.
The trunk was thick, possessing a sickly golden luster all over, as if it had been forcibly plated with a sacred shell.
Beneath the luster, countless fine thorn-like patterns spiraled up the trunk.
These thorns contracted at an extremely slow pace, their tips occasionally oozing pale green sap, as if performing some internal circulation.
In the gaps between the thorns, golden liquid could be seen flowing along fixed pathways, maintaining absolute synchronization with the neural network of the entire hall.
Eduardo was in the center of the tree. It took Louis a moment to recognize this once somewhat portly elder brother.
His lower body had disappeared; from the waist down, his body had been completely remodeled, decomposed into countless small golden thorns that grew backward into the tree trunk.
His upper body still retained a human form but appeared exceptionally fragile.
Fine golden blood vessels spread out along the direction of the thorns, like wires forcibly plugged in, interlocking with the pathways inside the tree trunk.
And the golden thorn feather crown on his head was the core of the entire Sacred Curtain Hall.
Its roots had long since pierced Eduardo's scalp and skull, digging deep into his brain and completing the final connection with the countless golden nerve fibers inside the hall.
The thorn-like wings opened and closed at an extremely slow frequency. With every pulse, the entire chamber vibrated in sync.
His eyes were open but lacked focus. What flowed from his eye sockets was not tears, but slowly oozing golden pus and blood, sliding down his cheeks.
The entire hall fell into a suffocating stillness.
There was only the throbbing of the fleshy membranes, the low hum of the nutrient fluid flowing, and the continuous, patient growing sound of that golden tree.
Louis stood there, taking it all in.
Suddenly, that golden thorn feather crown flared with light!
Blinding emerald-green poisonous light erupted from the depths of the crown, and the entire living hall contracted violently.
The twenty-four corpses on the walls snapped their eyes open!
