A brief silence enveloped the two of them once again, the only sound remaining: the slow gurgling of sewage and the faint, muffled explosions amplified by the twisting pipes, like background music from the depths of hell. Deep within their consciousness, the crimson countdown still hovered, beating coldly and mercilessly, slicing at their slim chance of survival.
98:47:19… 98:47:18…
At that moment, Xu Shuangyao's gaze stumbled over Pei Du's right hand, which was gripping her wrist tightly. The wound on that hand, left by the previous attack on the Fungus Corpse Warlord, had swelled and turned pale in the sewage, the flesh at the edges tumbling, revealing the pale tissue beneath. However, her pupils suddenly contracted, like pinpricks!
Deep within the rolled wound, beneath the pale, swollen flesh, faintly revealed a few extremely fine, dark red lines that snaked around like capillaries!
The color of the lines is deep and sticky, with an ominous, living-like texture; the winding shape is like some ancient evil totem, or like deadly mycelium veins parasitic deep in the flesh!
They are exactly the same as the cultured tissue samples in her laboratory that have been contaminated by the core of the main fungus and are undergoing irreversible mutations!
"Your hand!" Xu Shuangyao screamed in shock, her voice suddenly rising due to extreme fear, sharply cutting through the dead silence of the pipe! She suddenly broke free from Pei Du's hand, and regardless of the fact that her lower body below the waist was soaked in the freezing cold sewage, she eagerly, even a little panickedly, held up his injured right hand and brought it to her eyes. The faintly phosphorescent bacterial plaques on the pipe wall provided a limited source of light. In the dim green light, the few dark red lines were faintly visible between the pale and curled flesh, pulsating extremely weakly as if they had life, revealing a heart-pounding evil! That's not a scar, it's erosion! It's the mark of a curse!
The Crown of Thorns… the power of the Fungus Lord… To save her, to fight, Pei Du forcibly mobilized the crown's violent power. Every outburst was like drinking poison to quench thirst! That power was rapidly backfiring, frantically eroding his flesh and blood, dragging him towards an inhuman abyss!
Pei Du saw it too. He silently lowered his gaze, watching the dark red lines on his hand pulse and spread like a living thing. His face was expressionless, no fear, no anger, only a cold, almost indifferent understanding. He had long known the price. From the moment he donned the crown, or rather, from the moment he became the "carrier," this was the inevitable outcome. He hadn't expected it to come so quickly, so concretely.
Xu Shuangyao raised her head, tears bursting out without warning, mixing with the dirty water and undried blood on her face, and sliding down hotly. She looked at the crown of thorns on Pei Du's forehead, which was emitting a faint dark red light and slightly undulating as if it had life. A huge sense of guilt and overwhelming fear instantly gripped her heart, making it almost impossible for her to breathe. It was her! It was she who personally designed and created this "key" to unlock everything! It was she who dragged Pei Du into this fatal vortex from which there was no escape! It was she... who was personally accelerating his destruction! She opened her mouth, her voice broken and desperate, with a heartbreaking cry: "It's eating you... Pei Du... the crown I made... it's eating you!"
Every word was like a red-hot iron, burning into her soul.
Pei Du looked at her tear-stained face, filled with helplessness and pain. That face, always calm, rational, even distant, now revealed only despair on the verge of collapse and bottomless pain. He was silent for a few seconds, as if time had stretched out. Then, he suddenly reached out that hand, curse-marked, bloodstained, and scarred, and with his fingertips, he roughly, almost violently, wiped away the scalding tears and stained blood from her cheek. His movements were stiff, devoid of tenderness, and even carried an undeniable force, as if to erase the evidence of weakness.
"Why are you crying?" His voice was still hoarse, but strangely less cold than before, with a hint of almost cruel calmness, as if stating a natural fact, "Let it eat."
He paused, his gaze piercing the thick, impenetrable darkness of the pipes, as if transcending layers of ruins and locking onto the ultimate, terrifying being entrenched atop the throne. The corners of his mouth slowly curled up, forming an almost ferocious arc. That smile contained no warmth, only overwhelming hatred and a mad desire for mutual destruction.
"After you eat me, I'll gnaw on its bones!"
The cold declaration, swathed in the thick stench of blood and resolute madness, echoed in the filthy, icy air, like a beast's final roar at its hunter before its death. This wasn't consolation; it was a declaration of war! A primal challenge to the fate that consumed them, to the almighty Fungus Master!
Xu Shuangyao's tears faltered at this bloody declaration. She stared blankly at the burning, destructive light in Pei Du's eyes, a light that threatened to reduce him to ashes. That light pierced through the haze of despair, carrying a terrifying, all-consuming force.
At this moment of intense emotional fluctuations——
“Buzz——!!!”
An invisible, terrifying vibration, as if emanating from the deepest depths of the earth, bearing the weight of eons of sedimentary rock, penetrated the thick pipe walls without warning! It wasn't a sound, but a pure fluctuation of energy, a physical vibration! Like a sleeping ancient beast turning over in the abyss, the entire earth's crust groaned at its movement!
Boom boom boom——!!!
The entire massive maintenance pipeline twisted and trembled like a giant python! The rusted pipe walls groaned under the weight, and large chunks of flaking rust and slippery moss fell like a rainstorm, hitting the filthy water surface and splashing dirty water. The sewage violently churned and stirred, forming a chaotic vortex and surge that hit Pei Du and Xu Shuangyao's bodies, almost knocking them over! Deep in the pipe, there was a teeth-grinding sound of metal twisting and breaking!
This chapter is not finished yet, please click on the next page to continue reading the exciting content!
Continue read on readnovelmtl.com