Chapter 197: The Feast

And he burned.

The energy from the statue flooded in him the moment his skin came in contact with the statue. The first thing Yang felt was a bone-deep nausea so violent he nearly wrenched himself back and severed the connection just to heave.

If tasting that bloody residue off the back of his hand in the dark had been stomach-turning, then this was beyond simple disgust. This felt like something deeply wrong was being rammed into his very soul. It felt evil on an intrinsic level.

He felt the malevolent force surge through his meridians and make towards his sea of consciousness as he instinctively tried to fight back, but his own strength paled in comparison.

He was soon rendered nothing but a helpless spectator in the corruption of his own body, watching as the evil energy spread through his sea of consciousness in a reddish-brownish haze with swirling threads of black that seemed to be extending towards his soul.

Then the bead moved.

Even weakened as it was, it refused to let the evil mist touch his soul. It seemed to come alive at the invasion of this foreign energy.

The golden webbing across his Sea of Consciousness pulsed once, brighter than it had been since the bead had reached through him to Senior Brother Fan Xiao, and extended fine threads outward toward where the physical manifestation of his soul resided, wrapping around it in layers until his soul was enclosed entirely in a thick cocoon of golden webbing.

The colored manifestations representing his emotions and thoughts were encased in it too, covered by the same golden sheath until they could not be seen.

He actually felt the difference in his own emotional state. Whereas previously he had been scared of his gamble being wrong, of being harmed by his Senior Brothers, of getting stuck in this place, now much of his strong emotions that had been driving him so far had been muted. They were still there, but it was like they were no longer in the driving seat. The cocoon sealed every gap that might have allowed the mist to touch his soul.

By now, while the bead was busy protecting his soul, the evil miasma in his sea of conscious has thickened considerably.

He saw the bead flare once more, as the concentration of mist hovering near its webbing was thinned and sucked in. Extending out its golden threads further, the webbing swept through the far reaches of his sea of consciousness, dragging in every ounce of haze until the Sea of Consciousness was practically cleared, but after facing the danger and all this hard work, the bead seemed unwilling to let go.

He felt a violent suction force snap outward from his body as more and more miasma started invading, or rather, started being siphoned into his sea of consciousness. He felt a pull back. It felt like the statue, or the source, was trying to stop the inflow of energy toward Yang's sea of consciousness, realizing that this particular victim, instead of taking the bait, was making a buffet out of it.

An agonizing strain gripped Yang as the bead and the entity engaged in a brutal tug-of-war, using him as the rope. He felt as if he was being torn apart from inside, stretched until he would burst.

As the person in whose sea of consciousness the bead resided, he was able to perceive much of the bead's feeling, if one could call it that.

Enraged was not a strong enough word. It was salivating to destroy and consume.

Dense clouds of red and black mist poured back into his mind, solidifying as the volume increased. Yang looked around the space around him where he could perceive nothing anymore except for the slight glow of the webbing.

The miasma kept fighting back, and the bead kept drawing it in, and then, as the quantity increased beyond a certain threshold, something felt different.

Yang had a feeling that, in an effort to maximize its haul, the bead stopped refining the incoming stream, choosing instead to hoard as much raw energy as possible.

This surge of unrefined power finally breached his focus. A wave of directionless, blistering fury crashed over Yang's mind, an emotion he quickly recognized wasn't his own. Despite the cocoon's protection, the sheer volume of dark energy was beginning to corrupt his sea of consciousness.

The bead seemed to perceive it as well. It reacted instantly. He watched as the webbing flared up, allowing him to see again, and simultaneously draw the energy into small pockets before forming a cocoon, similar to the one protecting his soul around them, isolating the energy in contained sections to prevent it from overwhelming his consciousness.

Yang let the mental fog disappear from his head as the sea of consciousness became visible again, though he noticed that the energy exerted seemed to have weakened the bead again, as the golden webbing looked dimmer.

Clearly there was a reason the bead preferred taking in more benign forms of energy.

The inflow of energy was still going on, but the bead seemed to have reached a balance. Only drawing in what it could reasonably control and store in the cocoons.

But the presence of these cocoons bothered Yang.

This was some evil energy. Yang really wanted the bead to work through it quickly, considering how it had affected his Senior Brothers. He wanted it consumed fast. Leaving it sequestered in his mind was a ticking time bomb.

It would be catastrophic for him if it somehow managed to take con—

THWACK

A blinding agony exploded in Yang’s shoulder. It felt as though his arm had been ripped from its socket. He was thrown away, slamming face-first into the stone wall. He groaned, blood pooling in his mouth as he slid down the wall to the floor. Shouting echoed through the chamber.

He turned himself around with the support of his remaining good arm, pressing his back against the wall as he breathed through his mouth, only to find that the situation in the real world seemed to have deteriorated.

His Senior Brothers looked more injured than when he had left them, but the insane, murderous look in their eyes was gone.

He saw them all taking a look at him to verify he was still breathing before immediately snapping their focus back to the fight.

He watched as Senior Brother Qing An shot a round metallic disk towards him, one made of several concentric rings capable of moving independently. He watched as the disk stopped a few feet above him and expanded into a protective ring of spinning plates that descended around him and radiated light in a small perimeter.

He brought his hand to his face to wipe away the wetness he felt, only to notice his hand turn red, realizing he was bleeding from his head.

He watched, bleary-eyed, as the spirits that seemed to reach for him disintegrated as soon as they touched the perimeter formed by the ring.

He looked back at the fight.

Across the chamber, his Senior Brothers were mounting a coordinated assault on the statue, fending off the horde of specters trying to drag them away from it. He looked directly at the statue's face and, to his surprise, felt nothing. Whatever power it had carried through its gaze was gone. His bead's aggressive picnic on the statue's energy reserves seemed to have broken its hypnotic hold over everyone in the chamber.

Meanwhile, their "injured" and formerly freeze-dried friend also seemed rehydrated and in good spirits. He surprisingly enough appeared to be fighting both the ghosts and his Senior Brothers with great vigor.

Wonderful. As if there weren't enough enemies to defeat in this place. They personally carried a portable one with them to stab them at the right time.

Yang needed his needles.

He reached into his storage ring and drew two silver needles. His qi was practically depleted, but he focused every remaining drop of his spiritual sense into the metal, aiming squarely at the rogue cultivator and shot them at him just as the man jerked his head back to evade Senior Brother Song Weilong's attempt to free his body from the burden of his head.

The cultivator spun, catching Yang in his sightline. A chilling, cruel smile spread across the man's face.

He didn't dodge the needles. He simply stared at the incoming projectiles and made them reverse their trajectory.

Yang cried out as his own needle drove deep into his collarbone, penetrating into the bone.

The reversal of Yang's attack seemed to make Senior Brother Weilong even more furious, as he leaped onto the cultivator using the pommel of his sword to hit him on the head. They both fell down and rolled around on the floor, wrestling like mortal men. All the while killing off the phantoms that seemed to have gone for them in between.

With the specters distracted by the brawl on the ground, Senior Brother Fan Xiao taking advantage of the situation launched himself up the pedestal. He landed squarely on the statue's shoulders and drove his sword hilt-deep into its forehead.

Golden light burst from the crown, spreading across the stone in a web of hairline fractures.

A blinding flash detonated from the statue. The sudden shockwave of energy slammed Yang hard against the pillar, and the darkness took him.

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