The Two Realms Returned as One (Two Chapters Combined)

"Thud!!!"

The heartbeat from deep inside the tumor was no longer a muffled rumble. It sounded more like the desperate howl of a dying giant beast in the abyss. Each beat sent tremors through space. Thick, dark-red veins spasmed wildly across the tumor's surface, like countless leeches gorged on blood, writhing through the slime. The sound of blood flowing, "glug, glug," mingled with a sticky, teeth-aching squelch, as if organs were being squeezed. In the dead silence, it was especially grating.

"Thud! Thud! Thud!!!"

The heartbeat grew more and more violent, like a mad drummer hammering on the gates of hell with a giant mallet wrapped in human skin! Heavy waves of sound piled on top of one another, crashing through the enclosed darkness and ringing out with ghostly echoes.

"That thing is summoning them!" Xiao Ran's pupils contracted sharply. His icy, razor-sharp gaze seemed ready to pierce the filthy flesh before him. He instinctively reached into the void, trying to summon the blood-soaked Executioner's Blade—

His palm was empty.

[Warning! You are within the range of a strange tale's curse and cannot use a Cursed Object.]

The cold notification exploded in Xiao Ran's mind. His lips curled into a chilling, almost ferocious sneer, utterly devoid of warmth.

He shot forward, shattering the congealed blood beneath his feet with a single step! Wild psychic power gathered around his right fist, visible to the naked eye. Like a burning comet, it tore through the air with a shrill whistle and slammed into the tumor's bulging, crimson surface, which writhed and breathed like a living thing!

"Bang—!!!"

It wasn't the sound of flesh striking flesh. It was the roar of a sledgehammer smashing into a rotten anvil! The flesh on the tumor's surface burst apart like overripe fruit! Stinking, dark blood and