The situation was critical; just dealing with one Dong Yao was tricky enough; they couldn’t let other sleepwalkers interfere with the battle.
Long Ran circled around to the flanks and knocked out the archaeologists who were restricted by the paralysing orbs, dragging them all out of the battle. Luo Musheng also took the opportunity to turn the electric shock baton in his hand to its maximum, striking Dong Yao’s scythe.
The electric current, which was enough to make ordinary people lose their power of resistance instantly, was transmitted to Dong Yao’s hand along the metal chain; he was indeed paralysed for a while, but the one who was more seriously injured was Liu Jingyun.
The electric current could hurt Dong Yao, but it would likewise hurt his teammates who were bound by the chains.
“It hurts ah…” Liu Jingyun shouted angrily, “Are you trying to electrocute me? If I didn’t have the physical reinforcement, I would really be electrocuted to death!”
Luo Musheng had just considered that he wanted Liu Jingyun to sacrifice herself in order to numb Dong Yao, but he didn’t expect Dong Yao to only pause for a few seconds. This wasn’t worth the loss. He hadn’t become so insane that he wanted to electrocute Liu Jingyun dozens of times.
Liu Jingyun gritted her teeth and glared at Luo Musheng, but in her heart she didn’t really blame him; she couldn’t move her upper body now, so she could only let go of the straight blade in her hand and kicked towards Long Ran, giving him a weapon.
Even if Long Ran’s fighting skills were better than Dong Yao’s, the gap brought by the weapon was like a gap in the sky, just like how a person with a sword had a high probability of losing to a lance, and a cold weapon couldn’t surpass a hot weapon; that double-headed flying sickle wasn’t something that a straight sword could deal with.
However, Long Ran still grabbed Liu Jingyun’s sword and attacked Dong Yao’s back.
However, Dong Yao seemed to have lost the will to fight for an instant, as something else that made him crave for more filled his mind.
Reunion.
He wanted to reunite with his bride.
This was their destiny, the meaning of their birth. As long as they obtained their brides, climbed to the top of the Mount Ming Pagoda, and completed the life reversal ceremony, the “Great Being” would once again descend upon this land, bringing eternal glory to his divine kingdom.
The red pupils of Dong Yao’s eyes moved slightly.
This was an instinct that only the “grooms” could perceive. The lowly creatures in the tower weren’t qualified to complete the ceremony and even treated the bride as the most delicious tonic in the world, which was really unforgivable.
He would have done the same if the outsiders hadn’t kil-led the Yaos.
Those things were nothing more than the remnants of the “Great Being’s” handiwork.
Dong Yao narrowed his eyes, sidestepped Long Ran’s attack, and then swiftly rushed towards Zhuo Yu, picking him up in his arms.
Zhuo Yu only felt his waist being wrapped around by Dong Yao’s arms; he wanted to use his Dragon’s Wings skill, but the reaction speed of a captain level wasn’t something he could match.
Dong Yao bit into Zhuo Yu’s neck.
“Unh!!!”
The long, white neck was held in his mouth like prey; the sharp teeth of the snake pierced his skin; it didn’t hurt; instead, it was an eerie tingling sensation. Zhuo Yu suddenly felt that his whole body became cold because of this bite, and the colours of the entire Mount Ming Pagoda began to blur.
The world seemed to change in his eyes.
All the scenery faded away, leaving only the blurred outline of the heat sensation, and everything turned into the colours red, orange, and blue, which symbolised the heat inside the pagoda. Zhuo Yu could even see his body appearing dark blue, a reflection of the ice coldness.
In another blink, everything returned to its original state.
He seemed… to be able to turn on the heat sensor like snakes.
“Zhuo Yu!!!” Long Ran’s eyes instantly reddened; he threw a straight blade and plunged it straight into Dong Yao’s heart. He couldn’t hold back now, much less care about the lives of his possessed companions; he only wanted to save Zhuo Yu.
But Dong Yao still dodged the blow.
After he finished biting Zhuo Yu, he licked the corner of his mouth with his tongue and insatiably said towards Long Ran, “Competitor, you can’t win against me now.”
Luo Musheng said angrily, “This dog actually still talks!”
“We’ve all waited too long, and you, on the other hand, are luckier.” Dong Yao’s voice emitted a hissing sound as if it were a snake: “You managed to leave this place and head to the human world. Is the outside world so interesting that it made you forget who you are?”
“Long Ran!” Dong Yao’s scarlet vertical pupils widened slightly. “With the current you, are you worthy of stealing from me?”
Zhuo Yu braced his mind; he knew that Long Ran didn’t lose to this monster; it was only because the body this monster occupied was too favourable. Dong Yao was an overly powerful actor; if Long Ran was given a weapon, he might not be unable to defeat him.
A weapon?
Right!
Zhuo Yu’s eyes lit up as he summoned the system interface and found the prop he wanted in the grid space.
[Crocodile Head Monster’s Giant Axe (A): Huge logging axe, hard for ordinary humans to hold. However, if it meets the right owner, it will utilise a destructive power beyond imagination.
The right master…
Long Ran, don’t let me down!
Zhuo Yu violently summoned the giant axe; he couldn’t even grasp such a heavy weapon; it almost came off his hand. He threw it to Long Ran with all his strength before he went limp in Dong Yao’s arms.
He cast a wistful glance at Long Ran, but this glance wasn’t at Long Ran itself.
Zhuo Yu remembered Asha.
The monster that possessed Dong Yao was very resourceful, and when he saw that the situation wasn’t good, he immediately turned back to look at the black brick wall on the second level, as if there was some route up there. Dong Yao stepped on the stone bricks and quickly disappeared with Zhuo Yu in his arms.
Long Ran was, however, stunned in place.
That monster knew his name…
What in the world was going on?
Long Ran knew that he had lost a lot of memories and that they were related to this Mount Ming Pagoda. This was also the reason why he came here with Wang Dazhi. Although Wang Dazhi had long been replaced by a man wearing a mask, who took over as the leader of the martial arts clan.
Long Ran had known this a long time ago; he just didn’t feel the need to care; he had only one purpose: to come to this tower to find the mystery of his birth.
He didn’t expect to meet the person of his destiny in the archaeological team, and he didn’t expect that the first time they met was under a life-and-death crisis. In the storm, he had saved Zhuo Yu, and on the first floor, he had protected the other party.
But now he had no reason to let an unknown monster take away his fruit.
Jealousy, extreme jealousy, rose within Long Ran’s heart like never before.
He would never allow it!
And this axe…
Long Ran gripped the huge axe, and a sense of abundant power came over him, as if it were tailor-made for him.
But who was Zhuo Yu looking at with that last glance?
Who was Zhuo Yu looking at through him?!
His heart felt as if it were being burnt by a blazing fire, and his stomach churned with pain, hatred, and bitterness. He had lived for so long and experienced countless moments of life and death, but he had never experienced emotions that made it so difficult to bear.
Long Ran felt his sanity fading.
Luo Musheng quietly backed up a few steps. The teammate in front of him seemed that he wasn’t quite right.
Under Long Ran’s eyes, fine scales appeared, as if a genetic mutation had occurred. Half of his face had changed, and a sharp forked unicorn emerged from under his right forehead, resembling a ferocious dragon that preyed on people. Within half a minute, Long Ran’s body size had transformed from a human over 1.8 meters tall to an incredibly tall monster.
Luo Musheng even saw the fangs that shone coldly under that half-snake face.
Not only that, a thick and powerful snake’s tail also poked out from his waist; the pitch-black scales had a jade-like texture and looked abnormally sharp, even more terrifying than the giant python they had met in the pool.
Luo Musheng and the equally frightened Liu Jingyun looked at each other.
This guy wasn’t human and was actually the same as the monster in the Mount Ming Pagoda; the two could only sigh that their life was over.
However, Long Ran was completely uninterested in the two as he grabbed the axe and looked at the wall.
It was as if he too could see what was going on, his single red serpentine eye constantly calculating the route, and within a moment, he too was gone.
“I can only pray for Zhuo Yu now…” Luo Musheng was dumbfounded. “I hope he doesn’t get played to death.”
Liu Jingyun gave him a blank look. “You’re an actor, right? You underestimate my family’s captain too much.”
She shook the small orb in her hand, the very same space converter that Zhuo Yu had handed over to her.
“The captain can teleport to me anytime he wants to get out of there, more than that.” Liu Jingyun smiled and regained the straight sword on the ground in her hand. “He also placed a teleporter in the village; he can leave the Mount Ming Pagoda unharmed.”
Luo Musheng was truly surprised this time.
It was hard to believe that Zhuo Yu’s trepidation and desperation were all feigned by him!
What a terrifying newcomer…
“The second floor is finally safe now; we just need to do his portal; don’t go anywhere.” Although Liu Jingyun said on her lips that she wasn’t worried, she still slightly furrowed her brows, “He’ll definitely have a way.”
And Zhuo Yu, who had arrived at the third floor, finally sighed in relief.
The agitation method had worked.
From the time of the storm, he felt that Long Ran wasn’t ordinary to him, and he himself felt that Long Ran had a fatal attraction, which meant that both of them had hidden identities, and according to the hunting theory on the wall, this hidden identity definitely had something to do with the Mount Ming Pagoda.
He had been observing Long Ran; for example, when he was in the deep pool, it was clear that the giant snake was closer to Long Ran, but it prioritised attacking other people, and the yearling snakes on the first floor also bit many people, but they didn’t have any attacking thoughts towards Long Ran, including the Yaos as well, and Long Ran waded through the crowd of Yaos by himself and k-illed more than fifty of them without a single trace of injury.
Zhuo Yu thought, perhaps Long Ran was from the Mount Ming Pagoda.
Although Long Ran’s true identity wasn’t yet clear, it was enough to infer this. In addition, Dong Yao also had strange feelings and fanaticism towards him. Zhuo Yu knew that there must be a competitive relationship between them.
And Dong Yao’s words to Long Ran corroborated this.
So Zhuo Yu had been pretending to be in pain in Long Ran’s eyes. In fact, Dong Yao held him very lightly, but he showed signs of being strangled, including the last glance, which would surely make Long Ran furious.
Come after me quickly, come to me, and ask for clarification.
Only when the two fought each other would he have a chance to find out the truth, such as the monster that controlled Dong Yao, where exactly was its original body? Zhuo Yu already had an idea in his heart; he only lacked Long Ran’s help.
Zhuo Yu was looking forward to Long Ran coming quickly; even if he used Asha’s axe to split the bricks, he would be able to split into the third floor.
Dong Yao carried Zhuo Yu all the way forward, and his footsteps stopped at the end of a tunnel.
He stopped in the narrow passageway and tied Zhuo Yu up with the umbrella rope in three tries.
“Wait for me, I’ll ki-ll the competitor on the third floor.”
The cold and sticky snake letters licked across Zhuo Yu’s cheeks, and Dong Yao’s eyes revealed a slight smile before he rushed out of the exit without any hesitation.
Zhuo Yu smelt the strong fishy odour, and the place bitten by Dong Yao was once again numb and itchy.
As for the end of that passageway, warm, hot air was constantly escaping, and there seemed to be a very large number of creatures on the third level.
If the second layer was childhood, then the third layer symbolised adulthood.
Zhuo Yu had a bad prediction.
“Recombination ……”
He suddenly murmured out.
He wanted to combine with Dong Yao, Long Ran, or even the monsters in the third layer.
Sure enough, he was more than just a folklorist; his character introduction also hinted at it; since he was a child, he would have dreams of the Mount Ming Pagoda, as if he were called by this building, shouldering an unknown mission.
And his mission was to become the monster’s bride.
Zhuo Yu forcefully shook out the bizarre thoughts in his mind; he licked his teeth and realised that since more than when, his own teeth had actually become sharp and abnormal; it seemed like he had been infected by the snake venom left behind by Dong Yao.
He was mutating.
But the direction of the mutation seemed to be a bit off.
Zhuo Yu’s heartbeat accelerated, his blo-od flowed very fast, even his breathing was rapid, and his body became even stronger and more pliable, as if he were making preparations for some kind of ritual, and he had now begun to feel that Dong Yao was very palatable.
This was really…
Could this be broadcast?
Zhuo Yu lost his smile, laboriously biting off the umbrella rope with his sharp teeth, and summoned his own skill, “Dragon’s Wings.”.
His wing claws were huge and powerful, hook-like nails deeply embedded into the stone tiles, like a huge bat. He quickly crawled through the passageway; he didn’t want to miss the good show in front of him.
He couldn’t see much of the third floor, but he could see from his heat senses that it was filled with creatures that could move.
The largest of them was a giant snake with nine heads; it sensed Zhuo Yu’s presence and immediately tried to pounce; however, it was sliced off three of its heads with a scythe by Dong Yao.
There was a sound of battle inside.
Zhuo Yu used his wings to bring himself up to the wall and then hung upside down from the ceiling, watching the battle from above.
Dong Yao was a bit surprised that Zhuo Yu was able to disengage so easily, but seeing that Zhuo Yu had no intention of leaving, he instead fought even harder.
The walls were covered in bloo-d and flesh, all of which were snake-like creatures ki-lled by Dong Yao’s scythe. Zhuo Yu finally understood what it meant to be an actor who truly relied on his strength; this guy was about to massacre a layer of them.
With Zhuo Yu watching the battle, the nine-headed giant snake was also immediately energised, desperately fighting with Dong Yao, but Dong Yao had been through a hundred battles, and with only muscle memory, he could also dodge its tail strikes and entanglements. The small scythes flew and nailed its tail to the ground, while the large scythes kept harvesting the giant snake’s head.
That snake was tenacious to the extreme; every time it dropped a head, it would grow another one.
“Dream Viper! You!”
The nine-headed giant snake spat out human words, “I’ll quit, can’t I give up?!”
Dong Yao laughed coldly, “Do you think I would believe that? You’re a liar full of lies.”
The group of Yearling snakes that resided on the first floor were the guardians of the sacred tree; the one that resided on the second floor itself was able to make people return to their childhood dreams, and the fellow on the third floor was the messenger of lies.
Dong Yao didn’t want to listen to the deceitful mouths and tongues of his kind, so he was chipping away at its head moment by moment.
If an ordinary human came to the third floor, they would be centrifuged by the power of the lie and then driven to ki-ll each other by the desires of adults.
Dream Viper had done this well in advance, seizing the body of the most powerful human inside, wanting to rush to the third floor with a bang and start bonding with his bride as soon as he’d finished with the competition.
Long Ran wasn’t easy to deal with; he needed to make the most of his time.
Zhuo Yu watched the brutal battle coldly, as if he had truly become a picky, high-ranking person, to analyse from an evaluative perspective and decide which one to choose.
The system was also fanning the flames.
[Pre-quest: Follow the team into the interior of the pyramid. Achieved.]
[Mission update: Bride of the Serpent God, choose your partner and head to the topmost floor together.]
[Gambling board is open, viewers; come and choose your favourite groom~]
[Available list: Long Ran, Dream Viper, Nine-Footed Snake, Still Snake, Past Life Viper.]
[This wager will end when the bride reaches the tip of the tower.]
The audience was abuzz.
[Ah, is this broadcastable?]
[Combination? Come on, expand on it; I don’t mind.]
[This is the first big scene ever.-
[Laughing my ass off. The snake is getting a big scene!]
[It’s so hard for Zhuo Yu…]
[Snake-phobes just want to hurt themselves.]
[Hey, this is a horror movie,What happens after the bonding?]
[Dong Yao is so miserable; he’s being controlled; will he ever come to his senses?]
I always feel that nothing good will happen. It feels like this ancient civilisation believes in evil gods.
[Don’t say anything; I’ll bet on Dream Viper first; after all, Dong Yao is handsome and strong.]
[I’m dumping my family’s money to bet on Long Ran; look at how pissed off the kid is!]
[Don’t rush to bet first; the potential stocks on the upper floors haven’t appeared yet.]
TN:
This was really long so I had to cut it in half, second part will be uploaded tomorrow, I’m almost done ✌️
Thanks for the update!
Thank you for the update~