Yet the Origin Warrior, which had been ferocious half a second ago, had now turned into a rigid statue.
No matter how violently its fangs and iron pincers trembled, it could not advance even a hair's breadth farther.
That was because two chains as thick as a baby's arms had somehow wound around it in circles, locking its arms tight without anyone noticing.
The two chains were stretched taut, extending from the Origin Warrior's shoulders all the way into the depths of the dense forest.
The three White Bone Battalion elites could not make out the appearance of the chains' wielder.
Yet an image instinctively surfaced in their minds—those two chains seemed to be wrapped around an iron tower that reached the heavens, while the tower itself was rooted hundreds of arm-lengths beneath the earth.
Thus, no matter how furiously the Origin Warrior raged, roared, and struggled, the chains sank into its flesh and Liquid Metal-like substance as though they had grown teeth, showing not the slightest sign of snapping.
Suddenly, countless crimson bolts of lightning erupted from the depths of the forest, coiling around the chains as they lit up inch by inch and flooding into the Origin Warrior's arms.
Every link bore an abstruse, intricate Ancient Rune, slowly blossoming like the most resplendent flowers in the mortal world.
From the center of each "stamen" gushed flames hot enough to melt steel.
The "python" on the Origin Warrior's left arm and the "scorpion tail" on its right immediately gave off crackling, dissolving sounds like ice thrown into a wok of boiling oil.
The face that had been full of savage grins moments earlier now twisted grotesquely, revealing an expression of agony that a killing machine should never, and could never, have shown.
Even so, the Origin Warrior did not