Chapter 144 The Sealing Ground

Piercing, eerie shrieks echoed across the dark, chaotic snowfields, and violent energy, like the wrath of nature, rapidly converged. The Nuling sensed its foundation was under threat, forcing it to prematurely interrupt its recovery to intercept these intruders. Hao Ren, meanwhile, stared in astonishment at the strange sight before him, momentarily forgetting the intensifying blizzard.

The "sealing ground" that Vivian had mentioned was a black mesa.

There was nothing particularly special about this mesa, just a flat, circular platform, several dozen feet across, with crude signs of polishing and processing—clearly Vivian's handiwork from years past. What truly caught the eye was the faint purple light membrane floating above the platform.

This light membrane was over ten meters tall and three to four meters wide, generally translucent. The scenery on the other side could be easily seen through it. It resembled an aurora that had fallen from the sky—Hao Ren guessed it was some kind of spatial rift.

Lily climbed onto the stone platform and reached out to touch the light membrane, but her hand passed right through: this spatial rift was in a dormant state, seemingly impossible to traverse.

Vivian looked up at the light membrane, then bent down to examine the stone platform she hadn't seen in over three hundred years. "I made this base. The spatial rift above was already there. I used the residual energy from the rift to build this sealing altar beneath it."

Hao Ren raised an eyebrow. "Is this spatial rift the 'gate' from three hundred years ago? Is that how the Nuling came out?"

Vivian nodded. "I don't know how it formed, but the Nuling clearly originated from here. After defeating the Nuling, I tried to send it back through the gate, but I failed—there might be something wrong with this door, it can't be activated at all. So I had no choice but to set up a seal near the gate and suppress the Nuling in this place. Look, these runes are what I left behind."

As she spoke, Vivian lightly brushed the edge of the circular base, and some dark red light immediately appeared—Leta Runes.

"Did the 'stones' you gave to those two human followers back then also come from this place?" Lily asked casually.

"They fell out of the rift after sealing the Nuling," Vivian scratched her head. "I don't know what's going on with this rift; it's clearly closed, but things did fall out of it back then. Later, I tried to go through this light membrane, but I couldn't."

Hao Ren was amused and exasperated. "So you didn't even know what the stones that fell out of the light membrane were, and you just gave them away? You're really something… didn't you think about whether ordinary people could handle something connected to supernatural powers?"

"I was broke back then," Vivian said a little aggrieved. "Besides stones I picked up on the road, I didn't have anything else to give."

"Can we not study the gate for a moment?" A shriek came from the air, and Nangong Sanba suddenly raised his hand crossbow nervously. "The energy concentration around us seems to be approaching the critical point!"

The blizzard around them was rapidly intensifying. Countless indescribable shadows swirled in the high sky, forming a new storm. Fluttering snowflakes fell from the dark night sky, as if out of nowhere, from a place where nothing should exist. Strange flashes of light also began to appear frequently around them. Hao Ren once again felt that tingling sensation, like being electrocuted, spreading across his skin: this tingling was a sign of the Nuling's approach!

A large group of dark, dense bats rapidly dispersed from Vivian's side, and a web of lightning was brewing within the bat swarm. "If I defeat the Nuling here, I can seal it again!"

In the next instant, the Nuling seemed to realize the threat and hostility of this group of people. "Tear—" A strange tearing sound, like a tsunami, assaulted them from all directions, and then countless chaotic shadows emerged from the air, twisting wildly as they charged towards the group around the platform!

Just as Hao Ren was preparing to once again unleash his full Graviton Bomb Family Pack, a pale light suddenly burst out around them—Bai Huo opened her arms, her long hair dancing without wind, and then, wherever her gaze fell, endless flames spontaneously ignited. The pale flames had no warmth whatsoever, even colder than the surrounding blizzard. However, under the white flames' erosion, rocks turned to steam, specters turned to ashes, and even the swift lightning seemed to ignite as it was touched by the flames, the fire following the lightning's path upstream, directly igniting the thunderclouds high in the sky!

The white sea of fire burned fiercely. The powerful attacks that the Nuling had summoned, almost natural phenomena, were constantly being neutralized under the erosion of this strange flame. Hao Ren stared in astonishment at Bai Huo displaying her divine power, muttering to himself, "Aren't demon hunters supposed to use crossbows…"

"Crossbows are just standard equipment; there are also demon hunters who specialize in incantations and magic," Vivian explained to Hao Ren, turning her head while releasing her bat swarm after a brief moment of surprise. "There are also those like Bai Huo: if I'm not mistaken, this is her talent ability after bloodline awakening."

Hao Ren clicked his tongue in wonder. "…How exactly did those magic emperors create these superhumans back then?"

Nangong Sanba didn't understand. "Huh?"

Hao Ren made it up as he went along. "Nothing, just telling the story of how your ancestors were pulled by another group of ancestors from the corpse of the oldest of the old ancestors."

"…Huh?"

The pale flames burned back the twisted spirits, while Vivian's bat swarm spread out a vast net of lightning, forcibly stopping the wall of blizzard that was about to form a tornado, as if she was trying to catch a storm: spurred to fight in front of the demon hunter, Vivian's momentum was also astonishing, the dazzling electric light almost reaching the level of a natural phenomenon, just like the surrounding tornado!

The shrieking never stopped. This strange sound almost pierced through people's brains. The intangible Nuling seemed to feel that this threat was fatal, and its attacks were even more violent than last time. Bai Huo's pale flames initially had the upper hand, but as more spirits appeared from the surrounding storm, the rate at which the flames could replenish themselves finally began to lag behind the gathering of the storm.

A twisted shadow suddenly broke through the wall of flames, lunging straight at Bai Huo. She was concentrating on controlling the flame that was burning to the sky at this time. By the time she reacted, the shadow had already pounced in front of her. A look of panic finally appeared on the face of this demon hunter who had always been calm and confident.

But the shadow was suddenly cut into two pieces by a streak of crimson fire when it was less than half a meter away from Bai Huo. Lily held up her claws and shouted at Bai Huo. "Don't space out!"

Bai Huo was stunned for a moment, muttering to herself as if in a daze. "Do the Others also save people?"

Just then, one rectangular block of metal after another with flashing lights suddenly flew over the fire wall, drawing arcs as they flew towards the wall of blizzard and the continuous stretch of spirit monsters. In the continuous sounds of space tearing, the Nuling's reinforcements began to be disintegrated.

Hao Ren poured out two whole crates of Graviton Bombs and distributed them to Nangong Wuyue and Becky. "Throw them as hard as you can! There's plenty!"

"You really took down this Nuling all by yourself back then?!" Lily shouted at Vivian, tearing her throat as she wielded her claws to take care of the spirit monsters that slipped through the net. "How come I think it's more powerful than all of us combined?!"

"I was much stronger back then!" Vivian replied loudly in mid-air. "Then I slept for a long time and slept away my levels!"

Looking at the almost endless storms and lights and shadows around him, Hao Ren felt that the Nuling was truly the most troublesome enemy he had ever encountered in his life. He had fought stone golems, demon hunters, werewolves and Shadowfiends, and even the First Born - but those guys were at least tangible. A shot would at least make a hole you could see, but the Nuling... he wasn't even sure what he was fighting!

He only saw endless wind and snow, intangible shadows, indescribable lights and shrieks, and the crackling electric sparks on his skin. He did everything he could to eliminate these supernatural phenomena because Vivian had said that doing so could reduce the Nuling's power, but to be honest, even Vivian, an old expert who had lived for tens of thousands of years, didn't know what the essence of the Nuling was, didn't know what kind of impact this "reduction" had on the Nuling: she only knew that she should do it, but no one knew how this was done.

No one even knew how to approach a Nuling.

"This machine detects a large-scale... field," the data terminal finally knew its duty. It had been trying to analyze the Nuling's life form. Now, in this place with the highest energy intensity, it had finally roughly found some of the thing's attributes. "Range of one kilometer... no, the range is indeterminate, similar to an electric field, the frequency is constantly changing, the energy evolution process inside this field is somewhat similar to life, this is probably the Nuling."

This was the essence of the Nuling? A... creature with field effects?

At this moment, Hao Ren suddenly felt something move on his collar. Doudou was finally unable to endure the commotion outside. The little one poked her head out and looked curiously at the outside world, and after seeing the scene outside, she exclaimed in surprise.

Then, the little mermaid, not knowing what she was thinking, suddenly began to "sing" a song.

The blizzard suddenly weakened.