Time trickled by, second by second.
At some point, the Blood Year's tentacles began to show signs of weakening. Even the speed at which they swung had slowed.
Song Wen and the others all looked elated.
Clearly, their plan had succeeded.
However.
Song Wen suddenly noticed that only twenty-odd tentacles remained waving in the air. The rest had already burrowed into the ground beneath Blood Year.
Immediately afterward, Blood Year's enormous fleshball body suddenly dropped, smashing into the ground and kicking up countless shards of stone and thick clouds of dust.
The fleshball forced aside the shattered rocks on the ground and crushed its way toward the depths underground.
"Not good, it's trying to escape!" Song Wen shouted.
Before his words had faded, a wooden box suddenly appeared before Song Wen.
The box sprang open, revealing one hundred and six crystalline long nails arranged within.
With a thought from Song Wen, the long nails shot out in succession, flying straight toward the fleshball.
"Clang, clang, clang..."
More than twenty tentacles whipped about ceaselessly, sweeping up streaks of afterimages in the air, as though an afterimage shield had formed above the fleshball.
Whether it was the four chains condensed through Lan Chen and the others' formation or the one hundred and six long nails Song Wen controlled, all were blocked by the afterimage shield and could not get near the fleshball.
However, eight of the long nails actually pierced through the tentacles' skin and lodged firmly in them.
In an instant, a terrifying extreme cold surged from the long nails.
Centered on the nails, a layer of azure ice crystals rapidly spread across the tentacles' surface. Yet once it reached a radius of one zhang, it ceased spreading.
The portions of the tentacles covered in ice crystals had their flexibility and