Making up his mind
Lu Heng gripped the Kiss of Nightmare, its muzzle steadily aimed at the churning black mist in mid-air.
His fingertip hovered over the trigger, but he ultimately didn't pull it.
The Kiss of Nightmare's unique energy can indeed lock onto the spiritual entity, preventing bullets from penetrating and missing their mark. The impact of the close-range burst is enough to shatter a large area of the black mist body, causing real consumption of the Nightmare Eater's essence.
However, its compatibility is ultimately too poor.
Physical impacts can only tear apart the surface of the spiritual mist and shake its body, but they can never touch the spiritual core hidden deep within the black mist. They can hit it, wear it down, but they can't kill it.
Physical firearms are fundamentally flawed in their ability to kill such spiritual beings, which are born purely from negative emotions.
In comparison, the Insect Armor Sword is currently the only optimal solution.
By channeling all of one's pure spiritual power and the symbiotic energy of the Blood Taisui into the sword, the sharp blade will develop a unique spiritual cutting attribute. Only this kind of tearing damage that penetrates to the very source can truly dismantle the structure of the spiritual Aberrant and completely annihilate the Nightmare Eater.
In the blink of an eye, Lu Heng finalized all the tactics.
With a swift flick of his wrist, he retrieved Kiss of Nightmare into his Wristband's Storage Space and drew the Insect Armor Sword from his side.
The stark white blade sliced through the darkness, leaving a short, cold arc in the air.
Lu Heng's gaze was fixed on the floating black mist above his head, and his voice was extremely low. "Stand forward."
The Bone Demon let out a deep, muffled growl, its massive, hard bone body taking two steady steps forward, directly blocking Lu Heng's path. The layers of thick, interwoven bone armor and the sharp, protruding bone spikes completely obscured most of the view above, perfectly blocking the Nightmare Eater's perception and prediction from high above, creating an absolutely concealed opening for Lu Heng to accumulate energy.
Using the Bone Demon's physical body as cover, Lu Heng exhaled a long breath of turbid air, his mind completely calming down.
The dormant energy of the Blood Taisui within the blood vessels and muscles of the body suddenly awakens.
A surge of scalding heat rose from the depths of his chest, rushing rapidly along his meridians and heading straight for his brain. The warm, symbiotic energy instantly merged and intertwined with Lu Heng's own refined spiritual power. The two forces were of the same origin and resonated with each other without any repulsion.
Invisible energy spreads outwards through the pores of the skin and Blood Armor gaps in the skin's surface.
A powerful and overwhelming spiritual pressure suddenly swept through the entire hall.
Lu Heng was already proficient in the battle of mental combat, and with the Blood Taisui Sui's innate ability to restrain the erosion of the illusory mental body, the two energies intertwined layer by layer, forming a dense, domineering, and inescapable invisible giant net, which slammed down on the black mist domain that clung to the ceiling.
Buzz--
A silent, unspoken clash of minds exploded deep within the air.
The black mist, which had been churning and slowly spreading fragmented illusions, was instantly subjected to a devastating frontal impact. The outer floating mist was scattered and peeled away in large swaths, while the solidified spiritual structure inside continued to collapse and shatter.
Visibly, the Nightmare Eater's massive black mist body rapidly shrank and thinned, its volume shrinking by a significant amount, and its originally rich and abundant spiritual energy weakened by more than half.
This is a genuine and devastating blow to the very core.
Each wisp of dissipating black mist is its spiritual body, upon which it depends for survival.
But the next second, an extremely bizarre scene suddenly unfolded.
From the direction of the cell on the first floor, wisps of gray-black mist slowly rose and drifted through the deathly silent hall.
It was extreme fear, a deep-seated numbness, and a sense of despair on the verge of collapse—negative emotions that arise from utter despair.
Within the iron bars, the surviving humans had long since had their minds worn down by imprisonment and torture.
They huddled in a corner on the cold ground, afraid to look up or make a sound. Even their trembling became cautious. Their eyes were empty and lifeless, like soulless shells. A thick, impenetrable aura of despair permeated the entire prison area, continuously overflowing outwards.
This is the endless nourishment that Nightmare Eater to take root in this place.
Countless fragments of negative emotions, like fireflies returning to their nests, surged wildly towards the languishing black mist in mid-air.
The body, which had just been forcibly worn down by mental pressure, rapidly recovered, reorganized, and condensed at a speed visible to the naked eye.
Whatever disappears, it is instantly replenished.
Even after absorbing a sufficient amount of negative emotions, the concentration and condensation of the black mist became even stronger than before, and the originally weak spiritual energy steadily rose again, completely erasing all the trauma.
Lu Heng's eyes darkened, instantly discerning the fatal deadlock in this entangled battle.
Without pausing for a moment, he continuously mobilized the energy within his body, unleashing several powerful mental attacks.
Each wave of oppressive force precisely tore through large swathes of black mist, continuously suppressing the Nightmare Eater's original form, with extremely remarkable effects.
But the cycle was never broken.
After each devastating blow, the ever-present aura of despair within the cage would immediately fill all the voids, perfectly negating all the damage.
Consumed, restored.
Consume again, then restore again.
Repeatedly, in an endless closed loop.
Conventional methods of mental suppression, primal cleansing, and external force cutting are utterly ineffective against this unsolvable self-healing cycle, rendering them meaningless.
As long as the living people in the cage remain, this atmosphere of despair will not dissipate, and the Nightmare Eater will have an inexhaustible source of energy, making it impossible to be completely killed.
In the instant when the battle reached a stalemate, the symbiotic consciousness of the Blood Taisui suddenly conveyed an extremely decisive will.
It no longer follows the rhythm to provide auxiliary suppression, but directly enters an overdraft state, exhausting all the symbiotic energy it has stored.
Countless fine, transparent, and extremely tough spiritual chains instantly solidified, piercing through the air and densely binding and binding the entire black mist body in mid-air.
The Nightmare Eater, which had been churning, trying to dodge and adjust its form, suddenly encountered a strong, all-around restraint.
The black mist churned and trembled violently, its mental fluctuations becoming extremely chaotic, as it struggled and broke free with all its might.
The chains formed by the overdrawn Blood Taisui tightly locked its original structure, leaving it completely immobile.
Movement, dodging, borrowing strength, self-healing, and roaming—all escape routes are blocked.
At this moment, the Nightmare Eater became a sitting duck, unable to move in mid-air.
Ahead, the Bone Demon's body was tense, its bone spikes slightly raised, keeping a close watch on the low-level Zombie that were stirring around the corridor, preventing any external interference.
Holding the Insect Armor Sword, Lu Heng maintained a stable flow of mental energy, sustaining mental dominance throughout the arena.
His gaze slowly rose, moving downwards bit by bit from the black mist body that was tightly bound and struggling wildly.
The gaze pierced through the dim, swirling air, past the cold, hard iron bars, and finally settled firmly on the group of trembling, bewildered, and helpless people in the first-floor cages, who were continuously supplying the monster with life-sustaining energy.
Deep down, a cold, cruel, and inescapable answer surfaced completely.
To kill the Nightmare, you must first cut off its source.
In this battle for life and death, for the ownership of the World Fragment, the outcome has never been determined by the black mist hovering in mid-air.
And it breeds endless despair in people.