Chapter 43
Chen Mengzhou's cold question was like a stone dropped into stagnant water, stirring not a single ripple in the eerie silence. Countless empty stares remained silent, and the corners of the "Chu Li"'s eerie smile seemed to widen a little, becoming as stiff as cracked porcelain.
"...I... am what you see..." She uttered a flat voice, carrying an inhuman echo, "...I am the... 'echo' of this place...I am the... gravekeeper of the 'wall'..."
The gravekeeper of the wall? Is he the same kind of being as the "gravekeeper" of the underground cave? Or is he something else?
Chen Mengzhou's mind was stretched to its limit. Space was completely suppressed, and his supernatural powers were stagnant. Facing this completely unknown existence and countless strange "echoes," fighting head-on was tantamount to suicide.
We must delay and find the loophole!
"Where is Chu Li?" she asked harshly, trying to get the real information.
"Chu Li..." "Chu Li"'s hollow eyes seemed to blink, and that stiff smile became somewhat... playful? "...She is the 'key'...and the 'door'...She led you here...and completed...her mission..."
A mission? What led her here and trapped her? Was this what Chu Li meant by "we'll meet again"?
Could it be that from the very beginning, Chu Li, who had given her the compass and warned her in her dreams, had already been influenced or even controlled by this thing? Or... from even earlier?
Countless suspicions and chills are intertwined.
Just as Shen Mengzhou was trying to sort out his thoughts——
Something strange happened suddenly!
At the edge of this dead space, the purple-red energy mist suddenly began to churn violently, as if being forcibly torn apart by some external force!
Immediately afterwards, a wave that was incompatible with the dead silence and abnormality of this space, full of tyranny, resentment, and a familiar energy signature, broke in brazenly!
Woohoo——!!!
An inhuman roar, mixed with countless screams of pain, exploded from the depths of the mist!
Those "echoes" that were originally "gazing" quietly, seemed to have received a huge stimulation, and all turned towards the direction where the fluctuation came from. For the first time, some kind of... restless emotion appeared in their empty eye sockets!
The strange smile on "Chu Li's" face froze instantly, replaced by a disturbed, cold anger.
"-External...interference-" "Her" flat voice was filled with sharp noises.
Boom!!!
The mist was suddenly broken!
A huge, twisted monster, forcibly spliced together from countless broken limbs and rotten flesh, rushed in like a chariot!
The monster's main body vaguely resembled a human, but it stood nearly three meters tall. On its left side was a deformed arm made of a white bone blade, while on its right were seven or eight rotting arms flailing haphazardly, belonging to different corpses! Its torso was densely packed with dozens of heads howling in agony—their faces twisted and rotten, yet Chen Mengzhou's pupils suddenly constricted!
She recognized several of them!
That's... Zhao Jun! Lin Xiaozhou! Aunt Wang! Uncle Li!
They were the "companions" who were swallowed up by the spatial turbulence in the Weeping Canyon and should have been completely destroyed!
Their heads were parasitic on the monster's torso like fruits, their eyes were just empty black holes, and their mouths were opening and closing frantically, emitting silent, extreme howls of pain!
At the core of the monster, in its chest, a huge heart, a mixture of residual blue potion and dark space energy, is beating wildly, providing terrifying energy!
It was a distorted product of the energy storm in the canyon and the defective genetic potion! It hadn't completely dissipated, but instead had fused into a terrifying, resentful entity! And... it had tracked her here?!
This monster clearly lacked any rationality, possessing only pure hatred and a desire for destruction towards all living things! As soon as it appeared, it brandished its massive bone-bladed arms, fiercely sweeping towards the restless "echoes" around it!
Swish!
Several "echoes" were instantly torn apart and dissipated into chaotic energy mist!
The head on the monster's torso let out an even more "excited" silent scream!
Its intrusion instantly broke the strange balance here!
"—— Clear——!" "Chu Li" issued a cold command, and countless "echoes" around him rushed towards the huge aggregate of resentment like a tide, fearlessly rushing towards it!
A completely unimaginable melee of monsters vs. monsters instantly broke out in this abnormal space!
The "echoes" have no physical form and attack in strange ways, capable of directly eroding energy and spirit. The resentment aggregates are terrifyingly powerful, possessing immense physical destructive power and a certain resistance to energy attacks!
The two sides fought frantically, the energy mist was turned upside down, and broken limbs and dissipated "echoes" flew everywhere!
Chen Mengzhou was stunned by this sudden change, but she instantly realized that this was an opportunity!
Whether it was that "Chu Li" or the monster that was tracking him, their attention was completely attracted by each other!
She must escape from here now!
Her eyes scanned the space rapidly, searching for a weak point or the "tunnel" she had come from. But the compass showed no reaction at this moment, and the tunnel had long since disappeared.
Just when she was extremely anxious——
Her eyes were suddenly drawn to the pulsating energy at the heart of the resentment aggregate!
The core, a mixture of defective genetic medicine, spatial turbulence energy, and countless resentments... its energy fluctuations actually produced an extremely weak but undoubted resonance with a certain frequency of the compass in her hand!
Is it because they all contain the energy of spatial turbulence? Or is it because of something else?
An extremely risky, almost crazy idea flashed through my mind in an instant!
She suddenly raised the black compass in her hand and stopped injecting energy into it. Instead, she... used all her strength to activate her spatial perception to capture, imitate, and resonate with the energy frequency of the resentful heart!
She was gambling! She was gambling! She was gambling that the monster's core energy could activate the compass again! She was gambling that the compass would tear space apart again!
This process is extremely dangerous, like dancing on the edge of a knife! The energy frequency filled with resentment is violent and chaotic, and the slightest mistake could backfire on you!
But she had no choice!
Buzz——!!!
The moment when her simulation frequency and that resentful heart reached a critical point!
The black compass in her hand suddenly burst out with an unprecedented dark light!
The pointer spun wildly, and then again - pointed at herself!
A spatial singularity that is larger and more unstable than before suddenly appears!
This time, the singularity occurred right in the center of the frantic battle, right in front of the heart of the aggregate of resentment!
"--No--!!!"
Chu Li let out a sharp, piercing, inhuman scream! He seemed to realize what Chen Mengzhou was planning to do!
But it's too late!
The huge aggregate of resentment seemed to regard the singularity that suddenly appeared in front of its heart as some kind of attack. It let out a violent roar and slashed towards the singularity with a huge bone blade!
And countless "echoes" around also surged up frantically!
At the moment when multiple forces collided violently——
Boom!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
An unspeakable horrific explosion occurred!
The spatial singularity, the core of resentment, the energy of countless "echoes"... everything was completely detonated at this moment!
A huge, all-consuming space vortex suddenly spread out!
The first to bear the brunt of the resentment let out a shrill howl, its massive body instantly torn apart and swallowed by the vortex! Those suffering heads burst like bubbles!
Countless "echoes" were like ice and snow under the sun, screaming and being sucked into the vortex, disappearing without a trace!
"Chu Li's" figure flickered violently in the explosion, becoming illusory and uncertain, and uttered an angry and unwilling scream!
The terrifying suction force spread wildly in all directions!
Chen Mengzhou was the closest and had no way to resist, and was instantly swallowed up by the destructive space vortex!
The last thing she saw in the moment before her consciousness was completely shattered was the distorted and illusory face of "Chu Li". Those empty eyes seemed to look at her... in an extremely complicated way.
Deep in those eyes, there seemed to be a hint of extreme pain, a hint of relief, and a hint of... indescribable... expectation?
Then, endless darkness and a sense of tearing engulfed everything.
I don’t know how long it took.
Chen Mengzhou suddenly opened his eyes and coughed violently, coughing up black blood mixed with residual space energy.
She found herself lying on a patch of cold, wet grass.
There was a gray sky overhead, a cold drizzle falling, and a sparse, black-leaved forest surrounding us.
The air was filled with a faint smell of humus and... the long-lost, relatively normal smell of air?
She... is back?
Back to the normal world?
She struggled to sit up and examine herself. Her injuries were even more severe, her mental strength almost exhausted, but... she was still alive.
She looked around, and soon her eyes fixed on something not far away.
There, lying a small, curled up, unconscious figure.
Wearing loose, mud-stained gray clothes.
Bare feet.
Pale face and weak breathing.
Is it... Chu Li?
The real Chu Li?
Shen Mengzhou's heart skipped a beat.
She crawled over with difficulty and carefully placed her fingers on Chu Li's neck.
A faint pulse beat could be heard.
She is still alive.
He just fell into a deep coma, with a frown on his face, as if he was in great pain.
That strange "echo", that abnormal space, and that devastating explosion...what exactly happened?
Is this Chu Li real or fake?
Chen Mengzhou looked at the pale and fragile face of the girl in his arms, his eyes complicated to the extreme.
Finally, she sighed slowly and carefully carried Chu Li on her back.
No matter what the truth is, no matter what lies ahead.
At least now, they have temporarily left that desolate place.
And all the answers may only be known when this unconscious girl wakes up.
She identified the direction, carried Chu Li on her back, and walked out of the woods step by step with difficulty.
The rain gradually got heavier.
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