Qianye used Spatial Flash once more and appeared above the creature. After which, he struck its back with the force of a falling star. East Peak pierced straight into the old sword wound and the battery of origin power sent bits of flesh flying!
The second attack produced a cringeworthy wound on the giant rhinoceros’ back. It was as big as a well and filled with crushed flesh and blood. Before the beast could even feel the pain, a pair of wings appeared behind Qianye as the Wings of Inception came to life. Soon, a feather shot out from the Twin Flowers and vanished into the wound.
A Shot of Inception entering one’s body—one could easily imagine how terrifying this was. The monster’s wound rolled outward and exploded like an erupting volcano, its contents spraying onto the ceiling of the cave. The giant rhinoceros roared furiously, stomping about until the earth cracked open. Apparently, it was in extreme pain.
A flash of madness appeared in Qianye’s eyes as he charged into the open wound and drilled into the rhino’s body. Disregarding his badly damaged body, he did his utmost to activate his blood energy and unleashed Life Plunder inside the beast.
The moment Life Plunder was activated, Qianye felt fresh blood flowing into his body like lava and filling him until he was on the verge of bursting apart.
The giant rhinoceros’ essence blood contained a terrifying amount of energy—miles apart from that of the worms—and the speed of subsequent conversion was also much slower. Yet Life Plunder was difficult to control once activated, especially since he was submerged in blood within the creature’s body. The sanguineous threads wouldn’t miss no matter in which direction they shot out.
Vast amounts of essence blood entered without restraint, forcing Qianye’s blood core to expand several times. Inch by inch, his skin began to crack open and fresh blood shot out from within. The threads of blood burst into raging flames after leaving Qianye’s body and were soon drowned out by the giant monster’s blood.
At this moment, an inexplicable pain occupied the entirety of Qianye’s consciousness. Trembling, he used his final thread of clarity to activate the Mystery Chapter of the Song Clan Ancient Scroll, in a bid to refine as much essence blood as possible. But the Mystery Chapter’s refinement rate was simply too slow, requiring a month to refine his body’s capacity of essence blood. There was no way it could make it under such circ.u.mstances.
Qianye’s blood core seemed to have noticed the danger and was pulsing frantically. The crystalline granules contained within exploded one after another, resisting the pressure of the essence blood and transforming it into auric flame blood before pumping it out of the blood core. It was just that the auric flame blood produced was ablaze—the vast amounts of origin power could only burn since they had nowhere else to go.
The auric flame blood was akin to flowing flames, igniting Qianye’s flesh and blood wherever it went. However, the tremendous vitality and energy within stimulated the flesh to grow back rapidly. The newly generated flesh was once again lit up, and then more grew back to replace it.
This cycle repeated many times until the newly generated flesh formed a resistance to the immolation. Qianye’s physical situation finally began to stabilize as the amount of fire-resistant flesh increased.
Qianye’s consciousness was drowned in agony and the load on his blood core had reached its extremes. Meanwhile, the flowing, lava-like essence blood remained endless. Qianye’s body gradually began to swell as even his ancient vampire physique couldn’t do much against this ma.s.sive instillation of essence blood.
At the juncture of life and death, the Book of Darkness appeared once more. Its cover transformed into a patch of nothingness, which duly absorbed the excess essence blood. The book was like a bottomless abyss—there was no reaction no matter how much essence blood was poured in, and it only kept on devouring the blood in silence.
The Wings of Inception was also taking in the essence blood, but its capacity was fairly limited. They became dormant after forming a new feather and could absorb no more.
With the Book of Darkness’ devouring power, the blood core managed to pull through the most dangerous phase and gradually reached an equilibrium between input and output. With the enormous pressure now past, Qianye could no longer hold on and soon lost consciousness.
Within the giant rhinoceros’ body, copious amounts of essence blood had come together to form a giant sphere of blood. In contrast to the one condensed from the worms’ blood, this one was actually tangible and substantial.
In the end, the giant rhinoceros’ legs gave way, its giant body collapsed, and the glow in its eyes also faded away.
An entire day and night pa.s.sed by before Qianye woke up from his deep sleep. He was surrounded in darkness at this moment, and his perception beyond his body was highly restrained. He instinctively wanted to breathe, but his nostrils seemed to be blocked by something, preventing him from getting even a proper breath of air.
Qianye tried moving his body. All of his senses were still there, but his entire body was immobile, seemingly bound by something.
Qianye wasn’t alarmed. He gradually tried activating his blood core in a bid to extricate himself from the current situation. He had tried moving just now and found that the force binding his body wasn’t that strong.
He was startled the moment his consciousness touched the blood core which, at this moment, had changed completely. There was now a crystal at its center, and the flesh had grown around it to form a new blood core. Its size had increased by an entire circle and now took up half his chest, pus.h.i.+ng his human heart to the side.
How was such a blood core going to operate?
The blood core reacted immediately after coming into contact with his consciousness. It pulsed slowly, filling all parts of his body with strength. Qianye’s restraints soon loosened amidst a series of cracking sounds as he struggled free from his restraint. With his freedom restored, his perception was able to expand outward once again.
He was still surrounded in darkness and a thick stench of blood rushed at his face. A sweep of his perception told him that he was still inside the giant rhinoceros’ body. The restraint around his body was a sphere of blood that had locked him inside after coagulation.
Qianye jumped upward in an attempt to break out of the rhinoceros’ body. However, this force sent his entire body shooting out like a cannonball and drilling into the ceiling. Qianye saw stars from the impact, but the dizziness subsided within moments. He then regained his freedom with a forceful struggle, at the expense of cracks extending all over the cave walls.
Qianye was startled once more. He felt that this wall was unusually brittle and seemed to shatter on touch. That was clearly not the case when he was fighting the giant rhinoceros. Even the giant creature’s all-out ram only produced a ten-meter hole, and the cave didn’t collapse at all. If the wall was that brittle, a single charge would’ve brought the rhino several hundred meters deep and the tomb would collapse.
Qianye stared blankly from the air and casually stabbed the wall, sinking East Peak into the rock, all the way to its hilt. Surprised, Qianye stabbed several times more and finally realized that there was no change to the st.u.r.dy cave wall. It was just that his strength had seen an explosive increase—the near-doubling of his power made the rock-wall feel oddly brittle, and the feather-light East Peak felt quite strange in his hands.
At the center of the cave, the giant rhinoceros’ body was still emitting a faint suppressive might as it lay collapsed on the ground. Some surviving worms were chewing on its carca.s.s, yet despite their utmost efforts to devour this ma.s.sive corpse, only a small corner of it was missing.
There were several white coc.o.o.ns beside some of the worms that contained a strong life force. The aura within the coc.o.o.n was similar to the worms’ but stronger and more violent. It would seem that these worms were undergoing mutation after ingesting the giant rhinoceros’ flesh. There were also some fist-sized worm eggs near them with golden speckles upon them, and the aura emerging from them was far superior to that of the ordinary worms.
Qianye slowly came down and stood atop the dead body. Within his range of perception, the giant rhinoceros’ flesh had lost most of its origin power and was no different from that of an ordinary wild beast. There wasn’t much essence blood left within its enormous body, either. It would seem that most of it had been wiped away by Life Plunder.
The battle the day before was indeed crazy. Only a madman would think of using the Shot of Inception to open up a path and drill into the body to use Life Plunder. Qianye was indeed mad at that point; it could be said that he was never sane since Nighteye’s departure. Even coming into the Earth Dragon’s lair was somewhat of a self-destructive move.
Ascending the Sacred Mountain was even harder than climbing the heavens. Why not just refuse him outright rather than giving him this chance?
Perhaps because he had gone through too much suffering, Qianye decided to grasp at the rare wisp of good fortune after the madness had subsided. He got through the danger of his body bursting apart and remodeled his physique and blood core in his sleep. According to the final degree of remodeling, there were different realms such as glimmer, nascent-flame, flowing-gold, and fireforged realm, each with a large gap between them. In order to reach the marquis realm, one had to be at the flowing-gold realm at the very least to withstand the tremendous power.
By the time the auric flame blood had completed its reforging, the body would reach a whole new level of strength. The vampires of ancient times were just as well known for their powerful const.i.tution and weren’t at all inferior to their arachne peers. During the remodeling process, Qianye’s flesh was killed and reborn several times, tempered in sanguineous flames. According to the memory inheritance from the River of Blood, Qianye’s level was called fireforged physique. Even by ancient vampire standards, this was one of the most powerful const.i.tutions.
At this moment, the upgrade in his blood energy had brought Qianye to the mighty count realm. After the gaps within his body were modified by the auric flame blood, he would become a virtuous count. Currently, most of Qianye’s body was already fireforged, so becoming a virtuous count was only a matter of time.
After spending some time getting used to his new body, Qianye swung his sword several times at the carca.s.s below. In the blink of an eye, what remained of the giant rhino was diced into many pieces along with the worms feasting on it.
There was nothing of value left on the giant creature’s body after having its essence blood drained by Qianye. Of course, its flesh, bones, and skin would be of extraordinary value if brought to the outside market, but Qianye had no way to move this mountainous corpse away.
But the monster did leave a priceless treasure behind—its horn. This long horn was undamaged even after clas.h.i.+ng against East Peak and even chipped the heavy sword instead. One had to know that East Peak was a divine weapon forged with the power of both the Song and Zhao clans. Even such a blade couldn’t outlast this singular horn—this went to show how extraordinary its composition was.
The horn’s base and its connecting bone were full of cracks from fighting against Qianye. Apparently, the creature’s skull was far weaker in comparison. Qianye spent half an hour to dig the entire horn out from its base, and put it away in Andruil’s s.p.a.ce.
Having obtained this horn, it could be said that his journey was now worth it, to speak nothing of that first-rate physique.