Chapter 151 Impurities
This thing looks too strange, can it really be a divine artifact?
Bailu swallowed, and tentatively reached out, wanting to pick it up and study it carefully. After all, it was something hotly debated on the forum, and it would be no loss even if she could only touch and see it.
“Stop your dirty hands!”
“Stop!”
“Don’t touch it!”
Three voices rang out at the same time, scaring Bailu into stopping her hand.
She didn’t intend to snatch it, and it was too stingy to even let her look.
The three people who spoke were Bati, who was agitated, the wolf leader with a cold expression, and Li Wen with a calm face.
Bati stopped Bailu because he didn’t want her to snatch the treasure, while the wolf leader’s intentions were unclear. As for Li Wen… she simply felt that there was no longer any need to fight for it.
Perhaps a series of deaths triggered some mechanism of the black stone egg. Now the vascular patterns on the surface of the stone egg were becoming more and more obvious, and the pulsation of light like a heartbeat was becoming more intense. Even Bailu could tell that something not good was about to happen.
She quickly retreated a few steps, afraid of being affected.
Taking advantage of this opportunity, the Leader of the Wolf Pack had already rushed over. Bati, blocked by Marymana, was half a beat slow and could only glare angrily, watching the Wolf Leader get the black stone egg into his hands.
However, faster than the Leader of the Wolf Pack’s claws was a sharp sword light.
Moria unleashed a sword strike from a distance, targeting not the Wolf Leader, but the black stone egg. His original intention was to knock it away, so he did not use too much force, only pursuing the fastest speed. The moment the stone egg was touched by the sword light, it indeed bounced away as expected, but the surface that looked as hard and smooth as rock cracked open with an exceptionally conspicuous seam.
Light seeped out from the crack, so everyone saw the crack.
The stone egg fell to the ground, no longer moving. The patterns on it also lost their light and gradually dimmed. Only the crack continuously expanded and split, soon spreading across the entire shell of the stone egg.
Dark, viscous liquid flowed slowly from the cracks. It looked like blood, or pus, but more likely, it resembled amniotic fluid. Although the stone egg was less than half a fist in size, it seemed to be endless inside. Countless dark viscous liquids continuously flowed out, quickly covering more than half of the warehouse.
Everyone, by unspoken agreement, chose to stay away from this unknown liquid substance. This was not due to rationality, but a behavior driven by instinct, just as animals are naturally averse to danger.
Li Wen frowned as she looked at the spreading liquid on the ground. She smelled a subtle, complex scent that was somewhat familiar to her. Perhaps it was in a mage tower in a past life, or in an alchemist’s laboratory. She vaguely remembered this scent occasionally wafting from boiling alchemical cauldrons or crucibles, faint but memorable.
She noticed that the liquid did not change when it touched sand, stones, or mud, but when it touched metal, fabric fibers, or more complex substances… such as dropped equipment from White Studio, and the corpses of agents, they all slowly lost their color.
This was not a metaphor. At least in Li Wen’s eyes, those things were indeed gradually stripped of all other colors, and soon they only presented a dismal gray-black.
It was as if they had died, not a physiological death, but the “death” of matter. Just as in alchemy, to “rebirth” base metals into gold, they must first be “killed.” What she saw now was the best description of this process.
But it was only this process.
Seeing this abnormal situation, no one dared to act rashly.
Bati stopped his futile struggle with Marymana, his expression gloomy, silent, and unpredictable. Anyone could see the anger and a hint of fear he was desperately trying to conceal.
The Leader of the Wolf Pack still had that deathly face, and no one could tell what he was thinking from his expression. However, it was certain that he had not anticipated this turn of events.
On the other side, Director Jeffrey also had no intention of slackening off. After killing the Griffin summon with a few slashes, he pretended to be exhausted and wiped his sweat, while looking at Marymana with surprise.
“Ms. Marymana, what is the situation?”
“You’re asking me?” Marymana was a bit out of breath. She had long suspected that this thing could never be the Sage Ovum Sheath, and the reason she intervened was also because of the princess’s request. “You, the director of the Disciplinary Bureau, don’t know?”
Jeffrey stiffened. He did know some inside information, but not much, after all, he was only a branch director, not the main director.
The higher-ups had simply informed him coldly that a royal warship carrying top-secret items related to the alchemy domain would be passing through Black Raven Port. As for what that top-secret item was, no one knew. He was not even allowed to approach it easily. Except for appearing on the day of the handover, the process of passage and transfer would be fully handled by the Royal Navy.
Who could have imagined that such a thing would happen?
The Royal Navy warship and its crew members who were in charge of the transportation were missing, and the so-called top-secret item had even ended up in Leicester, being fought over by a group of legal and illegal transcendents. And according to Jeffrey’s intelligence, this matter seemed to have a great relationship with some members of the royal family, which was why he did not want to get too involved in this matter.
With this thought, Jeffrey looked at Victoria.
Princess Highness now frowned slightly, as if thinking, or as if observing.
This made Jeffrey feel a sense of foreboding. Could it be that these people were really fighting over something whose origin, function, and danger level were unknown to anyone? That would be too ridiculous.
“Only three things in this world can be called ‘Sage Ovum Sheath’,” Highness Victoria said at this moment. “But this is actually a fallacy.”
She did not continue, but took a few steps back, because the liquid had already spread to her feet.
Knight Lance, who was blocking Victoria, remained unmoved, even though the liquid had already covered his iron boots. The blue and white knight’s armor faintly flowed with silver light, resisting the erosion of the liquid. But even so, the color of the knight’s armor was slowly fading, although the progress was extremely slow.
Victoria continued, her eyes showing no surprise or fear, only looking at the stone egg with extreme solemnity: “Apart from the three that are well-known… or little-known, there is one more thing or existence that can be called ‘Sage Ovum Sheath’…”
The liquid on the ground stopped spreading. The stone egg trembled slightly, and then quickly dissipated into the black viscous liquid like weathered sand and stones. After that, everyone heard the sound of hard stone or eggshell shattering, crisp and loud.
The ground covered by the liquid seemed to have become a pitch-black void, as if it could lead to another world. A hand extended from within. It looked like a human hand, but it was much larger. Its surface was covered with a layer of sticky liquid, or perhaps it was entirely composed of this strange liquid.
Soon another hand stretched out, then a head, a body, and legs…
In a short while, an extraordinarily tall humanoid existence appeared here. It was extremely similar to a human, but definitely not human. Pure black liquid covered every inch of its skin. When those liquids dripped onto the ground, they crawled back up its torso along its legs like living things. It had no other facial features, except for eyes that were as scorching hot and dazzling as a furnace.
It stood there motionless, and the liquid beneath its feet spontaneously cradled it, screaming and venting.
The ear-piercing sound echoed in everyone’s ears, and they all shouted in unison:
“It is impurity, it is redundancy, it is defilement, it is filth!”
