Chapter 244: Awe
The violent explosions continued for a while before the forbidden zone slowly returned to normal. The radiant sun finally shone on the forbidden area that had been confined for 500 years.
“Ah, light, this is the sun’s light!” The injury ridden golden dragon looked up at the bright sun in the sky and felt the warmth of the sun dappling over his body, sighing with great emotion.
Just as he was reflecting with some emotion, the power that he’d lost upon entering the forbidden area slowly began to fill his body once again. His body had been plastered to the ground when it slowly began to rise again. The natural ability of the dragons to fly had been restored.
“The strength that’s been confining the entire area has disappeared. We’ve been saved!” The cyclops’ single eye looked straight at the sun as he collapsed on the ground from his injuries. Although he appeared a bit lazy, his green face was filled with delight from the thought of being alive.
On the other side, Gilbert shook his enormous head, sending his tears from earlier flying through the air like the spring rain. His enormous body floated in the air and flew towards Han Shuo, murmuring, “I knew it, I knew you wouldn’t kill your most loyal servant!”
Han Shuo had broken his right arm, an arm as strong as iron, with his left hand. The meridians in his neck and arms had exploded, and he was lying in an ever-growing pool of his own blood, panting heavily.
“Idiot, if I hadn’t recovered quickly, you would’ve been dead without a doubt by now!” Han Shuo hectored Gilbert loudly from his listless position. Bloody froth spewed out of his mouth whenever he opened it, but he felt none of the associated pain. His now clear eyes had a few traces of warmth and touched emotions to it.
With the strange power that restrained the entire area vanished, Gilbert felt a familiar power in his body and slowly began to transform as he approached Han Shuo. When he once again stood in front of Han Shuo, he’d already changed into a haggard and worn person, reflecting what he’d just gone through.
“Heh heh, recover your body first!” Gilbert stood with his back to Han Shuo and wiped the moisture from his face, walking over easily and helping Han Shuo up from collapsed position. Gilbert silently stood behind him in support.
Han Shuo chanted out an incantation and a little skeleton with sparkling white bones and a honest and silly earth elite zombie suddenly appeared in front of Han Shuo.
The two of them focused their attention on Han Shuo when they stood in front of him. When they discovered his woeful state and that he was dripping with blood, they rushed to his two sides and reached out urgently with their hands, seeming to want to take his blood and shove it back into his body through his wounds.
Panic and anxiety filled the little skeleton’s purple eye and the earth elite zombie’s yellow eyes. They waved their arms around madly as they busied themselves, seeming to express, “Alright, alright. We’re here now, he’ll be fine now!” The two of them capered around frantically to express themselves to Han Shuo. Although their actions of trying to shove his blood back into his body through his wounds were childish and comical, this warmed Han Shuo’s heart greatly.
Suddenly, the little skeleton took to the sky and sent his bone dagger and bone spurs whirling through the air. An evil, frosty, and completely inhumane killing intent emanated from his body as the seven bone spurs pierced towards the cyclops and golden dragon like seven bloody streams of light.
At the same time, the earth elite zombie next to Han Shuo sank into the ground like he stepping into water. Shaking and rumbling then traveled from the depths of where the cyclops and golden dragon were. Sharp earth mounds then began shooting out of the ground. The cyclops standing on the ground was the first to be affected, and he began to frantically evade the attacks.
When the little skeleton and earth elite zombie had appeared out of nowhere, the cyclops and golden dragon had only flicked a glance at them, not paying too much attention to these low level dark creatures. However, when the two finally made their moves, the destruction they brought forth shocked the two creatures senseless. They were unable to believe the truth before their eyes.
The little skeleton and the earth elite zombie’s actions were as fast as a strike of lightning. By the time that Han Shuo had time to react, their attacks had almost landed on the heavily injured cyclops and golden dragon.
“Hey, damned idiot dragon, are you going to just watch the show? We helped you just now!” The golden dragon was terrified as he dodged the attacks and roared loudly.
Although the cyclops and golden dragon could now use their recovered abilities, their bodies had long since lost all their strength after the previous round of events. Add to that although the little skeleton and earth elite zombie were small, the destruction they wreaked was indeed terrifying, making the two enormous beings cry out with fear.
“Eh… my honored master, these two fellows did indeed help us just now. I think they mean us no harm now!” Gilbert thought of when the three of them defended against Han Shuo just now and couldn’t help but say to Han SHuo.
“I see. Come back then, the two of you!” Han Shuo nodded distantly and called out to the little skeleton and earth elite zombie.
The two brash dark creatures immediately withdrew their attacks when they heard Han Shuo’s order. The seven blood red bone spurs spun in a circle and reattached to the little skeleton’s spine in an exceedingly short amount of time. The various hills all sank down astonishingly, and the earth regained its smoothness again. The earth elite zombie that had disappeared from sight floated up again, slowly rising from the earth and stood on Han Shuo’s left, as if he’d never moved.
When the little skeleton and earth elite zombie discovered that Han Shuo was gravely injured, they naturally ruled Gilbert out of the running of entities that could’ve hurt their master. Therefore, the two enormous beings that had obviously weathered through an immense fight became the natural culprits. It was understandable that they hadn’t waited for Han Shuo’s orders before attacking.
To be honest, Han Shuo had a vague notion of what had happened after he’d lost his ability to reason. However, his presence had still been useful in allowing the two beings to escape the forbidden area when he’d attacked. Now that the restraints around the forbidden area had been dispelled, he didn’t know if the two of them would act maliciously towards him. He’d summoned the two fellows purely as a precaution.
The little skeleton and earth elite zombie’s sudden attack had been out of his expectations, but he then thought that the two fellows could awe the two enormous beings after a show of strength, thereby preventing them from making any moves against him. Therefore, he only stopped the little skeleton and the earth elite zombie after Gilbert had explained what had happened. This also served as a warning to the two enormous beings that they weren’t the ruler of this place just because the restraining power in the forbidden area had been dispelled.
When he faced the little skeleton’s bone spurs just now, the golden dragon had frantically tried to decrease his size in order to evade the attacks. He wiped cold sweat from his brow now and smiled at Han Shuo from afar, “Very nice to meet you, strong human! I think you’ve nothing to do with me now, so goodbye!”
The golden dragon had already transformed back into his human form after speaking and dashed outwards as if fleeing the scene. He landed in a patch of boulders after a few leaps and vanished completely from sight.
The cyclops also rumbled anxiously after the golden dragon had left, “Ahaha, I’m also very pleased to make your acquaintance. However, I still have some things at home and won’t keep chatting with you. I hope we can meet again!”
The rumbling from his voice was still hanging in the sky as the cyclops twisted his injury laden body into motion. He stumbled as he made for the far distance, praying to never bump into this crazy human again. He was simply too scary when he lost his mind!
In the span of an instant, the two heavily wounded enormous beings had fled with panic stricken expressions from their location. Han Shuo and Gilbert looked at each other, finding this extremely ludicrous.
Whether it was the cyclops or the golden dragon—both were incredibly frightening levels of existence when they were at their full peak of power. If they hadn’t met something like the Lord of the Flames, a level four creature, they would absolutely be the lords of the Dark Forest. Something like the manticore, a level one magical creature, would dash out of the way like it’d seen a ghost if it ever met a cyclops or golden dragon.
However, such a strong level of existence had left in front of them like they were fleeing from some horror. This filled Han Shuo and Gilbert’s heart with strange emotions!
Cleaning his mind of stray thoughts, Han Shuo sat down cross legged and said to Gilbert, the little skeleton, and the earth elite zombie. “I’m going to recover from my wounds now, you guys keep watch!”
The murderous aura around him formed a cocoon of black and red light, fully enclosing his body. Streaks of black and red lightning swirled around the cocoon and completely sealed Han Shuo’s presence away, not allowing even a single bit of it leak out.
The specters that’d been present in the forbidden area were strange existences formed from the souls of the strong who’d died, but had been unable to disperse into the world, and had absorbed all sorts of random powers instead.
No one knew what had happened five hundred years ago, but there were quite a few souls that had been affected by the strange power of the forbidden area, and were unable to disperse for five hundred years.
All of the lifeforms that had mistakenly barged into this forbidden area had had their powers restricted by the area. They were unable to use fighting aura or magic to hurt the specters, and the specters were unaffected by physical attacks. Therefore, death was the only way out for anything that stumbled upon this area and faced the specters.
Before these entities died, all their fear, despair, fury, unwillingness, and associated negative emotions were absorbed by the specters, making them accumulate even more energy over the years, causing the spectres to become more and more powerful.
Intruders who could only make use of their physical bodies to attack naturally couldn’t handle the specters, but Han Shuo, already in the bloodlust realm, had a natural aura and the Demonslayer Edge that was the antithesis of the specters. Therefore, when he knew the beings present were specters, he immediately used the demon infant and Demonslayer Edge to form a whirlpool, constructing a crazily devouring machine. All of the specters that had existed for five hundred years were sucked into the demon infant and the Demonslayer Edge.
In this process, the image of the giant that had floated behind Han Shuo in the air was a result of the demon infant consuming too many specters. This naturally formed image was also absorbed by Han Shuo’s body in the end.
However, although the specters had great strength, there were too many impure and random thoughts amongst them. All of the negative emotions mixed together, and their characteristics were all different. Han Shuo’s mentality in the bloodlust realm was already unstable to begin with, which caused him to almost completely lost his mind and become a bloodthirsty demon.
He’d made use of his fight with the three enormous beings to vent the random emotions plaguing him. The purest portion of the specter’s energy had been absorbed by the demon infant, and the majority of it had been too filled with negative, violent emotions and so it had been absorbed by the Demonslayer Edge inside.
The majority of the energy that he had been unable to absorb caused Han Shuo to lose reason. He’d made use of his attacks on the three enormous beings to wear away at it, and then used the final blow from the Demonslayer Edge to attack the void of black mists. The tremendous and fatal energy had actually destroyed the restraining power around the forbidden area, enabling sunlight to stream in once again.
Han Shuo had possessed the power to fight against the three strong beings previously because the Demonslayer Edge had consumed the violent and scattered energy from the specters. This kind of energy was pure destruction and not something he could control at all. This was why he’d made it all disappear through venting like how he’d done.
Therefore, this was why Han Shuo and the Demonslayer Edge had displayed power that didn’t belong to them earlier. When the Demonslayer Edge pierced through the restraints of the forbidden area, all of the destructive power had vanished, and Han Shuo and the Demonslayer Edge quickly returned to normal shortly after.
However, the two gained great benefits this time. Even though Han Shuo was still in the bloodlust realm, the pure energy within the demon infant had once again greatly increased in strength.
After absorbing some power, the Demonslayer Edge would be able to truly emit a murderous aura after a bit more refining and some fortuitous occurrences. It would really be a peerless weapon then.
Wrapped in his red and black cocoon, Han Shuo didn’t emerge for eight days. His ravaged right arm had returned to normal, and the blood vessels on his neck and arms had reformed, more durable than before. His height had also increased by a few centimeters, and his naked body was even more stocky than before. His shoulders were broad, his waist narrow, and his muscles were more evenly distributed over his body like finely chiseled granite. His eyes were clear and sinister looking, brimming with the confidence of being able to control everything.
“Honored master, you’ve finally emerged. Your poor servant has waited for such a long time!” Gilbert had a look of dejection on his face as he stood pitifully next to Han Shuo, loudly praising his glory.
Looking at Gilbert in shock, Han Shuo asked in bafflement, “What? What happened to you?”
Gilbert looked around pitifully and cast a look in his surroundings, then finally speaking to Han Shuo like he was tattling on someone. “Those two fellows not only bullied me, but also dug up someone’s grave. This is too evil!”
Han Shuo was shocked upon hearing these words, “What’s going on here?”
“You take a look at what they’ve done! They had me, the great dark dragon Gilbert, help them in digging up someone else’s grave, and actually threatened me with a knife when I wouldn’t do so. This is so evil, so shameless, and that little skeleton is too evil!” Gilbert was incredibly pitiful as he brought Han Shuo up into the air and had him take a look for himself.
When Han Shuo floated in the air and looked at Ayermika Cotton’s grave, he was stunned senseless by what he saw. He didn’t know whether to laugh or cry as he said, “Eh… those two are indeed a bit out of line!”