The Immortal Array's Spirit Vein Touched the Reverse Scale; the Old Farmer Cackled as Dogs Tore at Each Other

Heat continually billowed from the commander's nostrils.

His chest heaved violently, every breath accompanied by a harsh rasp that even drowned out the sounds of hauling from the surrounding ruins. Thick red veins had completely filled his eyes, leaving no white visible. His bloodshot eyeballs bulged outward, radiating a fury no normal human should possess.

The five fingers of his left hand abruptly clenched.

The commander seized Zhang Elder by his tattered hemp collar and brutally lifted the paralyzed old farmer into the air with one hand. He strode forward, his heavy black iron war boots crushing the white jade debris beneath his feet and grinding it into ghastly pale powder.

Carrying the mortal, he walked all the way to the very edge of the collapsed inner city's array core.

His steps halted. The commander lowered his head and looked into the bottomless abyss below.

The space deep within the array core was vast. Incomparable dense pale-blue spiritual energy churned violently at the bottom of the pit. Wave after wave of air surged upward, battering against the stone walls of the chasm. This immense, suffocating energy was the core source of Black Mud City's protective grand array, painstakingly accumulated strand by strand from the earth veins over centuries. Normally, the array patterns kept this spiritual energy locked down tight. Now that the great array was damaged, the unrestrained energy was spilling out wildly.

The commander's toe had barely come to rest on the rubble at the edge of the array core.

A sudden change erupted with a thunderous crash.

The black remnant stele pressed tightly against the commander's inner armor abruptly erupted with an overpowering hunger to devour, one he could not suppress at all. That hunger carried the pure nature of plunder.

The remnant stele directly bypassed the commander's control. The dark red desolate patterns on the black stone flared brilliantly. Centered on the commander's chest, an utterly tyrannical pulling force blasted straight into the enormous pit below. Completely disregarding the limits of what this body's owner could endure, the remnant stele began frantically drawing in the vast amounts of heaven and earth spiritual energy leaking from the array core.

The scene inside the deep pit changed in an instant.

The pale-blue spiritual energy visible to the naked eye was forcibly torn apart by that powerful suction. Great clouds of spiritual mist were violently stripped into countless strands of pure blue light. Defying gravity, those threads shot straight upward. They utterly ignored the commander's thick black iron inner armor and his body's defenses, piercing straight through flesh and all drilling into his chest, surging madly into the remnant stele.

On the elevated ruins not far away.

The lead array master saw everything clearly. The disgust on his face was instantly replaced by extreme shock. His expression changed drastically. The white jade array disk in his hand flashed frantically, dense array patterns emitting urgent red warning lights.

"Stop!"

The array master shouted sharply at the top of his lungs. Convinced that this was theft of the great array's source, an act of pure suicide, he immediately tried to stop it.

The commander's Adam's apple bobbed violently, but he could not utter a single word in reply.

The immense amount of pale-blue spiritual energy had barely entered the remnant stele and had not even lingered for half a breath before the ancient desolate patterns on its surface instantly crushed it apart. The laws and attributes within the immortal spiritual energy were burned away completely, directly transforming into an immeasurable amount of supreme qi and blood.

Without even a moment to buffer, that incomparably violent pure yang qi and blood thunderously poured back through the commander's chest and into his flesh.

"Crack! Crack! Crack!"

The bones throughout the commander's body erupted in a dense series of explosive cracks. Beneath his flesh, his joints shifted wildly, stretched, and reassembled. His already burly body was forcibly heightened by half a foot in an incredibly short span of time.

Ordinary flesh that had not been tempered through a thousand hammerings and a hundred refinements simply could not withstand such immense supreme power.

His flesh was forcibly stretched to its limit, splitting open inch by inch.

Countless bloody gashes burst open across his chest, back, thick thighs, and neck all at once. Scalding blood mixed with impurities from within his body sprayed wildly outward, instantly dyeing his black iron leather armor red. Blood streamed madly down through the gaps between the armor plates.

There was no guidance from any supreme cultivation art. This purely forcible infusion brought the commander an extreme agony like being carved by a thousand blades, like execution by a thousand cuts. His muscle fibers were torn apart alive, his blood vessels burst open.

"Aaargh!"

Unable to endure this inhuman torment any longer, the commander threw back his head and let out an incomparably shrill howl toward the black night sky.

Dragged by the extreme pain, he went completely mad. He frantically reached out with his left hand, riddled with bloody grooves, trying to forcibly dig the black remnant stele out from his chest.

His fingers viciously clawed at the split flesh on his chest.

The instant his fingertips touched the stone surface of the remnant stele—

"Sizzle!"

The scorching stele erupted with terrifying heat. The flesh on the commander's fingers was instantly burned black. Scorched soft flesh and grease stuck directly to the stone's surface, pulling into several strands of black sludge that could not be torn free at all.

Seeing this from the high platform, the array master naturally assumed that the commander was rebelling. A vicious killing intent flashed through his eyes.

Without hesitation, the array master activated the wildly flashing array disk in his hand, forcibly drawing upon the moisture accumulated around the ruins. The vapor rapidly condensed in midair, transforming in the blink of an eye into several thick, sharp ice spikes.

"Die!"

The array master pointed. With piercing whistles, the ice spikes shot straight toward the commander's unguarded back.

Empowered by the protective city array, the ice spikes were incredibly fast.

"Clang! Clang! Clang!"

The instant the ice spikes, capable of piercing black iron heavy armor, struck the commander's back, they produced deafening sounds of metal striking metal.

Not even a white mark was left on the split flesh of the commander's back. Instead, the thick ice spikes shattered the moment they collided, exploding into a sky full of ghastly white ice shards that fluttered down into the surrounding mud.

The commander stopped his self-mutilating attempt to tear at his chest.

He slowly turned his head.

The bones in his neck grated with a teeth-aching sound. From the extreme congestion of blood, the muscles in the commander's face had twisted into something too grotesque to look at. His eyes had turned completely scarlet.

An incomparably violent, bloodthirsty aura gushed from his body. All rationality and humanity were utterly erased in that instant, leaving behind only the most primitive urge to kill.

Within the pile of shattered jade at the edge of the array core.

Zhang Elder lay on the ground, his lower body soaking in blood.

The old farmer watched the commander turn into this neither-human-nor-ghost monstrosity, then looked at the self-important array master on the high platform.

Zhang Elder suddenly split his cracked lips in a grin, black blood spilling from his mouth and down his chin.

With his broken, wheezing throat, he used the last of his strength to laugh and scream wantonly:

"You packs of dogs think you deserve to use mortal bones to patch your array!"

His piercing mad laughter echoed over the ruins.

The commander had already lost all reason. He violently swung his grotesquely swollen arm, casually grabbed Zhang Elder, who was blocking his feet, and hurled him directly into the rotten mud beside him.

He completely abandoned his task of throwing the human stake into the deep pit to fill the array.

His black iron war boots suddenly exerted force, stomping a deep crater into the ground. Carrying a suffocating beastly aura, his huge, twisted body leaped high into the air and pounced directly at the lofty array master atop the ruins.