Chapter 155 - 154: The Graveyard Demon Expands Again

Chapter 155: Chapter 154: The Graveyard Demon Expands Again

BOOM!

A low, muffled tremor came from deep within the Graveyard Demon’s core, as if some slumbering giant beast had rolled over in its sleep.

The ground beneath Gu Su’s feet shook violently. He instinctively grabbed a nearby bone railing for support, his knuckles turning white from the force of his grip.

This tremor was different from any of the previous expansions.

There wasn’t that feeling of upward growth. Instead, it had a kind of sluggish, horizontal stretch to it, like an old tree struggling to extend its roots through barren soil.

He steadied himself and cast his gaze toward the Graveyard Demon’s lower level.

Sure enough, this time the change wasn’t upward.

The bottom-level ramparts, originally woven from ashen vines and withered bones, were expanding and extending outward at a visible rate.

The tangled plant fibers made faint tearing sounds, only to be spurred by some kind of Undead Energy to quickly heal, restructure, and fuse with the newly formed structure.

But what was most eye-catching was the new texture emerging on the ramparts’ surface.

Metal and scales.

The alloy wreckage from the Burning Gold Clan’s ship had been dismantled and digested by the Corroding Mycelium. However, it hadn’t been fully integrated into the Graveyard Demon’s flesh and bone. Instead, it had been crudely stitched onto the outside of the original ramparts.

Layers of dark gold scales, their edges as sharp as blades, glinted with a cold light under the violet sky.

The metal components between them showed a mixed hue of brass and bronze. The outlines of pipes, rivets, and gears were vaguely discernible, like defensive works cobbled together by some doomsday artisan in a moment of desperation.

From a distance, it looked as if the Graveyard Demon’s lower level had been fitted with a suit of heavy armor, or perhaps covered in the crude patches of a chronically ill patient. It possessed a rugged, grim pragmatism.

Gu Su hurried down the stairs to observe this newly formed wall up close.

He soon discovered the mechanism within it.

Hidden at the junctions between the metal and scales were switches woven from vines.

With just a small injection of Yin Qi, the thick vines would contract and retract, pulling the outer patches apart to reveal an opening large enough for a vehicle to pass through.

Once the vehicle had passed, the vines would slowly return to their original position, sealing the gap and resuming their impenetrable defensive posture.

"Quite practical." Gu Su reached out and touched the edge of a scale. A strange sensation, a mixture of metallic coldness and the warmth of living tissue, met his fingertips.

These scales were not dead things. Nourished by Yin Qi, one could even see fine, vein-like patterns writhing slowly at their edges, as if they still retained some vital characteristic bestowed upon them by the Burning Gold Clan.

However, the changes didn’t stop there.

The next moment, an even more violent tremor emanated from the Graveyard Demon’s core.

Gu Su felt as if the very ground beneath his feet was breathing.

That desire to expand, that instinct to devour, was urging the ramparts to continue extending outward.

But this time, the process was clearly much more sluggish.

Infused with Undead Energy, the original framework of the ramparts pushed outward continuously. Vines and white bones spread in all directions like a spiderweb, trying to seize and envelop more land.

But Gu Su keenly sensed that beneath this newly expanded layer of flesh was an unsettling sparseness, a hollowness.

The normal land was not being assimilated.

The rules of the Ring Moon were like an invisible shackle, firmly locking down the ownership of every inch of soil.

Gu Su could devour a fallen ship and occupy an unclaimed underground fortress, but he couldn’t sink the Graveyard Demon’s roots into the native soil of this battlefield.

The newly expanded ramparts were like a pavilion built on quicksand. They appeared whole on the outside, but lacked sufficient material for support within. The vines and bones waved futilely in the air, finding no nutrients to entwine or digest.

Gu Su silently watched this thin, expanded zone, his knuckles tapping unconsciously on the railing.

He understood the dilemma, but for now, had no solution.

Every inch of the land here belonged to the Ring Moon.

His Graveyard Demon was like a tick living in a Giant Beast’s fur. It could suck up scattered drops of blood, but it couldn’t tear open the skin and burrow into the muscle.

’After this battle, it seems I’ll need to find an instance soon to expand my territory to a proper size.’

The ship had been completely devoured, and the Graveyard Demon’s agitation gradually subsided.

In the time that followed, the battlefield fell into an eerie silence.

The beast tide was not a relentless, unending flood.

The invaders who fell from the sky also needed to regroup and catch their breath.

Gu Su estimated that defensive battles of this scale often lasted for months, with long periods of stalemate and waiting interspersed between the truly brutal clashes.

This current lull was perhaps the norm.

Once his taut nerves relaxed, exhaustion washed over him like a tide.

Gu Su leaned back on top of the ramparts, watching the battlefield outside. He felt there was nothing for him to do for the time being.

He considered returning to his tent for a short rest and temporarily handing over watch duty to his Bosses.

The moment he stood up to leave, the Graveyard Demon trembled again.

This tremor was completely different from the previous ones.

It wasn’t the excitement of expansion or the satisfaction of consumption, but a kind of... alertness, as if something had been triggered.

Gu Su snapped his head around, his gaze piercing through the ramparts toward the desolate battlefield in the distance.

About five thousand meters away, the ground was collapsing.

It wasn’t an explosion or an impact, but a deeper, almost gentle collapse.

The black-gray earth, like soft flesh that had its skeleton removed, slowly sank downward, forming a huge pit several hundred meters in diameter.

Rubble and debris from the edges tumbled down the slope with a dull roar. Dust billowed up, forming a gray-white column of smoke under the violet sky.

Gu Su’s pupils contracted sharply.

He would never mistake that location.

It was precisely where he had discovered the underground fortress, where he had ordered Bone Ash to pour the Corroding Mycelium, and where he had laid pipes to investigate.

At the time, he had only considered it an ordinary wartime stronghold. He had sent Bone Dogs to patrol, ordered the Corpse Witch to study the map, and even had a few extra cartloads of mycelium poured into the pipe openings, trying to determine if there was something more hidden deeper within.

But the scale of this collapse couldn’t be explained by a mere bunker.

"This must be an underground fortress!" he muttered, his voice slightly hoarse from urgency.

The instant the thought flashed through his mind, Gu Su leaped to his feet.

The Graveyard Demon’s tremor, the ground’s collapse, the feedback from the Corroding Mycelium.

Everything connected into a clear line of logic. The mycelium that had seeped deep into the pipes, after this period of corrosion and assimilation, had finally reached a critical point.

The massive structure hidden deep underground was being devoured, dismantled, and converted into nutrients by the Graveyard Demon.

And the devoured underground structure would, in all likelihood, be converted into the Graveyard Demon’s basement.

Gu Su’s heart raced with excitement.

He needed to run to the basement and see it for himself.

He had to know just what his Corroding Mycelium had devoured.