"Do you think you'll make it out alive today?"
The words were still hanging in the air, and Kelān's thumb had already compacted the red Runes Chip.
Chip emits an extremely fine hum, with a frequency so high that only Cultivation's ears of a certain level can detect it.
Inside the three-hundred-foot-tall Golden Seated Statue, Holographic Projection System, which had been frozen in time, suddenly restarted.
The eyes of the sitting statue lit up again.
This time it was not the dramatic effect of slowly opening just now, but a direct explosion. Two golden lights shot out from the pupils, passed through the still air, and shone on Dharma Platform.
The fake Gu Changqing spoke.
But this time the voice had completely changed. It was no longer the rich and reverberating falsetto before, but a high-pitched and urgent roar.
"I am, I am the orthodox of all heavens, you guys, don't let me be deceived by this person."
The voice is trembling and the projection is flashing.
Golden Seated Statue had large mosaic-like squares on his face, one bright and one dark, and his facial features were twisted into a ball, like a broken picture struggling to reorganize.
Nezha looked at the fake face that was flashing and twisting on the seated statue, and the corner of his mouth twitched.
"This thing is too lame."
Kelān didn't release Chip's thumb, and her voice came out from under the hood, much more urgent than before.
"The system's residual energy is not enough to maintain projection, and it is automatically degrading."
She was not talking to Gu Changqing, she was talking to herself.
Gu Changqing did not turn around, his back was turned to her, listening to the stammering sounds coming from the fake statue behind him.
"I am, I am the master of the Firmament. You, the person you see is fake, fake."
The right arm of the seated statue was raised in the holographic projection, trying to make a gesture of pointing to the sky, but it got stuck halfway, and the arm twitched back and forth in mid-air, like an electric shock.
"My Lord, no, I am, I am the one."
The face in the projection was completely messed up. Gu Changqing's facial features were sometimes elongated and sometimes flattened on the seated figure. The nose went up to the forehead, the mouth was crooked to the side of the ears, and the two eyes were one big and one small, and the big one was still rotating.
Nezha stood next to Dharma Platform, Fire-Tipped Spear dropped his head to the ground and shook his head.
"Master Look, this is the version of you they made, is that true?"
Gu Changqing still didn't turn around.
"Kelān, that Chip in your hand, is it the Emergency Control Core of the projection system?"
Kelān's thumb was finally released from Chip, and the red Runes on the surface of Chip dimmed by half.
The projection on the sitting statue is still struggling, and the voice of fake Gu Changqing becomes more broken.
"You, don't believe him, he is evil, evil."
"It's the emergency core."
Kelān answered Gu Changqing's question, speaking a bit faster:
"I tried to recalibrate the projection parameters, but Main Control Unit has been frozen through your Time Law, and the underlying code is running around."
"So you didn't design this situation?"
"No, the fidelity of projection can reach 98% under normal conditions, but now it's not even 30%."
Gu Changqing finally turned around.
He looked up at the distorted fake face on the three-hundred-foot-long statue, and then looked down at Kelān.
"That's enough."
He raised his right hand and brought his index and middle fingers together.
Snap your fingers.
The sound was crisp and clear in the still air.
Three hundred feet long Golden Seated Statue started to crack from the top of the head.
It wasn't an explosion or a collapse, but like an eggshell, a thin crack appeared from the top of the hair bun. The thin crack spread downwards, bifurcated, and then bifurcated. In less than two breaths, the entire surface of the statue was covered with spider web-like cracks.
Then the outer shell of the statue peeled off piece by piece.
The golden shell falls off, revealing the contents inside.
Nezha took a step back.
The inside of the seated statue is not hollow.
A group of people were standing inside.
To be precise, not a human being.
More than thirty figures were crowded into the inner space of the seated statue. Each one was wearing clothes similar to the white-robed figure outside, but the skin exposed under the clothes was wrong.
Gray, scaly.
The scales extend from the neck to the back of the hand, arranged tightly, and glow with a layer of oily dark light under the light that comes in after the statue is broken into pieces.
Their faces are not right either.
The position of the facial features is similar to that of humans, but the proportions are different. The eyes occupy nearly half of the face area, the pupils are vertical, the nose is almost invisible, there are only two flat spiracles, and the mouth is very wide, with the corners of the mouth grinning all the way to the base of the ears.
The seated statue was completely shattered, and the golden fragments fell down with a crash, hitting Dharma Platform, bouncing up and falling again with a muffled sound.
More than thirty gray-scale creatures stood on the base of the statue, each with their necks hunched, and the fear in their vertical pupils was stronger than that of the believers outside.
One of them was the largest, with an extra circle of scales on his head, like some kind of rank mark. He was also holding a black wire connected to the projection system in his hand. The other end of the wire had been broken, and sparks were popping out.
Nezha After seeing their appearance clearly, two words popped out of his mouth.
"What the hell?"
Gu Changqing looked at the group of gray scale creatures, lowered his right hand, turned his head and said something to Nezha.
"Thaw."
"Ah?"
"The time field is lifted, allowing believers to see what they are worshiping."
Nezha reacted and raised the corners of his mouth.
Gu Changqing took back the power of his palm, and the invisible time blockade in the void spread out from the center of Dharma Platform like a lid that was lifted off.
The voice came back first.
The breathing, heartbeats, footsteps, and voices of 470 million people all rushed back in an instant, like pressing your ears into the sea.
Then there's vision.
The believers in the first row were the first to see those gray-scale creatures. Their hands were still raised in the air and their eyes were already widened.
An old man pointed at the group of things on the base of the statue, opened his mouth several times, and the sound was stuck in his throat.
"That, that, what is that?"
A young woman nearby screamed, and her voice broke the brief silence in the square.
Then it exploded.
"Monster, there is a monster inside the statue."
"Divine Statue is fake, it's full of monsters."
"We were lied to."
The crowd was like a stoned ant nest, fleeing in all directions around Dharma Platform, pushing and trampling on each other, and the whole plain was shaking with their cries.
The gray-scale creature with the most scaly head on the base of the statue finally released the broken thread in his hand. His vertical pupils swept back and forth between the chaotic crowd and Gu Changqing on Dharma Platform. His mouth opened, revealing two rows of fine canines.
It spoke.
The sound was not any human language, but a high-frequency hissing sound, like metal pieces rubbing against each other.
The system translates in Gu Changqing's mind in real time.
"Ding, target language recognition completed, race: Origin Thief Race, Great Thousand Origin Realm is a parasitic race on the periphery that makes a living by stealing Faith energy from other civilizations."
"Thief Race."
Gu Changqing read the name again.
The one with the most scales on its head should be the leader. Its vertical pupils were locked on Gu Changqing, and its hissing became more and more rapid.
The system continues to translate.
"Ding, the other party's semantics: You shouldn't have come here, the plan hasn't been completed yet, you ruined everything."
Gu Changqing looked at it, reached into his sleeve with his right hand, took out the picture of the tin dog, and unfolded it in front of it.
"Did you paint this painting?"
The leader's vertical pupils shrank into a single line.
It didn't answer, but tilted its head to look at the third floor of Dharma Platform.
Kelān is standing.
Kelān's gray cloak is still there, but the hood has been blown off by the wind.
Her face was completely exposed to the light, with gray-white skin, silver-gray pupils, and her facial features were human, but very fine scale lines could be vaguely seen on her skin, which were much lighter than those Thief Race, like a mixed race.
The leader of Thief Race hissed a long list of words to Kelān, and the system translated: Start Forbidden Artifact, there is no other way.
For the first time, a clear expression appeared on Kelān's face.
Not fear.
It's a kind of exhaustion of having the past come back again.
"No."
Her voice was very low, using human language:
"Once that thing is activated, neither you nor I can survive."
The leader ignored her.
It bent down, its scaly palms tore open a piece of floor on the base of the statue, and pulled out a black sphere as big as a fist.
The surface of the sphere is smooth, without any Runes, without any patterns, and is as black as a hole.
The moment Nezha saw the sphere, the flame underneath Wind-Fire Wheels went out.
It wasn't that it was blown out, but that the flame shrank back on its own, as if it was afraid of something.
The system's prompt tone has changed. It is no longer the usual ding sound, but a continuous rapid alarm.
"Ding ding ding, Origin-Level Forbidden Artifact was detected, the name is unknown, and the energy level exceeds the current database evaluation upper limit."
"The energy fluctuation characteristics stored inside Forbidden Artifact are highly consistent with the Great Thousand Origin Realm Origin Law."
"Warning, if Forbidden Artifact is fully activated, the damage range will cover the entire Heavenly Net Star Domain and spread to the surrounding area."
Kelān's face turned pale, three points whiter than her original gray.
She took a step towards the leader.
"Let it go."
The leader did not let go. It raised the black sphere above its head, with the figure of Gu Changqing reflected in its vertical pupils.
The hissing sound was so sharp that the system translated only the last sentence.
"Death together."
Its palms are closed to crush the sphere.
Gu Changqing stood on Dharma Platform, watching the black sphere make a low buzz in the leader's palm.
For the first time, cracks appeared on the surface of the sphere.
The light coming out of the crack is not of any color, but something that makes the retina instinctively want to close.
Nezha's Wind-Fire Wheels has been completely extinguished, and the tip of Fire-Tipped Spear's gun is dripping water, and the metal is like melted wax in front of the light.
"Master."
Nezha's voice brought real urgency for the first time.
Gu Changqing folded the picture of the tin dog and stuffed it back into his sleeve.
"Nezha, step back eight hundred feet."
"Master?"
"Retreat."
Nezha bit his back molars, Wind-Fire Wheels rekindled the fire and retreated.
There are only Gu Changqing, Kelān, and more than thirty Thief Race left on Dharma Platform.
The cracks in the black sphere in the leader's palm became denser and denser, and the buzzing sound became louder and louder. The white jade ground under Dharma Platform began to crack, and the cracks spread in all directions from just below the sphere.
Kelān stood on the third floor, looking up at the sphere that was about to shatter. Star Map stopped spinning in his silver-gray pupils.
"Mr. Gu."
Her voice passed through the hum and reached Gu Changqing's ears.
"Once that thing explodes, not only Heavenly Net Star Domain, but also the barrier from the Great Thousand Origin Realm to Myriad Worlds will be torn apart."
Gu Changqing glanced at her.
"What happens if the barrier is broken?"
Kelān's lips moved twice, and the words came out very softly.
"The door will open."
"The kind of opening that doesn't require 100 billion Vow Power?"
"No need, but the price is that once the door is opened, it can never be closed again."
Dharma Platform The air above is twisting, and the energy leaking from the black sphere has caused wrinkles visible to the naked eye to appear in the void within thirty feet.
The corners of Gu Changqing's white clothes were flying in Energy Storm, but where he stood, there was not a single crack on the ground under his feet.
He raised his right hand.
The palm of his hand faced the shattering black sphere.
A human palm was reflected in the leader's vertical pupils. There was no light or any Magic Power fluctuations on the palm.
A clean hand.
But the leader's fingers holding the sphere began to tremble uncontrollably.