Chapter 123 The Dog's Last Cannon

Flames and explosions, thunder and storms, woof woof woof and dog cannons—the lost city of Aerythos trembled violently in this earth-shattering energy collision. Walls that had stood for a thousand years crumbled like rotten wood, and grand palaces scattered like dust in the wind. This magnificent scene, unseen on Earth since the age of mythology, unfolded before them. A churning sea of blood hung inverted from the sky, while all kinds of cannon fire and energy beams surged upwards to meet it like an upside-down rainstorm. At this moment, the lost otherworld seemed to have its heaven and earth reversed.

Behind Vivian, the swarm of bats had transformed into two white-hot electrical storms. Dazzling electric vortices floated on either side of her enormous bat wings. Each vortex shuddered, unleashing two powerful arcs of electricity, each tens of meters wide and tens of kilometers long. These arcs of electricity were comparable in power to natural lightning, and they carried Vivian's unique aura, making them impossible for even the divine-tainted entity to withstand.

A brilliant fireball, resembling a small sun, suddenly exploded, creating a brief void in the center of the inverted sea of blood. As the light from the explosion gradually faded, a phantasmal figure wrapped in black-red mist slowly emerged. Hao Ren spat to the side in mid-air: "Tch—its vitality is outrageous."

Vivian's face was impassive. Hearing this, she merely said calmly, "It's already weakening noticeably."

Hao Ren nodded, staring intently at the phantasmal figure enveloped in the black-red mist.

The divine-tainted entity's frantic offensive continued unabated, but this was simply the momentum born of a lack of reason. Apart from its consistently insane battle intent, the monster was clearly nearing the end of its rope.

Its body's repair speed was slowing down, nearly two-thirds of the churning sea of blood above had evaporated into thin air, and even the black-red shockwaves it unleashed no longer possessed the terrifying destructive power they once had.

Although a divine-tainted entity was an unexpectedly powerful foe, Hao Ren was not the same as he had been before. At the very least, his calm and calculation in battle were far superior to when he first faced the evil spirit Vivian. No matter how strong the tainted entity was, it was still just a mindless madman. As long as one mastered certain techniques and employed targeted tactics, eliminating this kind of evil spirit was nothing more than a test of endurance.

Plus a little patience.

"Kill… kill… kill…"

The tainted entity's voice echoed between heaven and earth, but before its newly formed body could launch an attack, a white beam of light from the ground suddenly pierced the evil mist, blasting its body into oblivion once more.

A loud howl came from below: "Awoo, awoo-woo-woo—Woof!"

"What's that big dog saying?" Hao Ren asked, bewildered.

"That was the last cannon," Vivian said, glancing out of the corner of her eye at the giant husky jumping up and down amidst the pyramid ruins, striking poses as it signaled. "She can't fire those dog cannons very many times, and she already misfired twice…"

"Can't be helped. She's colorblind, so it's good enough that she hit anything with the remaining shots," Hao Ren said, shaking his head. He looked again toward the direction where the tainted entity Vivian was regenerating. The hazy figure had only just begun to reform, and during the process, it constantly shed ash-like black particles. A feeling of being burned out welled up within him. "It's about time to end this…"

A faint blue anti-gravity halo flashed around him, and his entire body streaked across the sky towards the evil spirit like an afterimage. Two Godslaying Swords appeared silently in his hands, the black blades shimmering with mysterious and unpredictable light like fragments of the universe.

The tainted entity saw the approaching enemy as soon as it reformed. Instinctively, it raised an arm, its eyes erupting with furious flames: "Kill…"

The black-red shockwave that always appeared out of nowhere whenever she raised her hand was a moment late in materializing, and before it could, Hao Ren had already passed by the tainted entity. The Godslaying Sword slashed through the air, and half of the entity's body, including its shoulder, was instantly annihilated.

The black-red negative energy shockwave that had just been凝聚ed also dissipated in an instant.

However, this injury, which would have been fatal to an ordinary being, did not immediately kill the monster. The tainted entity's figure merely shuddered violently, and then the half of its body began to regenerate amidst a haze of smoke. At the same time, it turned its head, glaring furiously in Hao Ren's direction, and emitted a chaotic roar that was completely impossible to decipher!

But in the instant that the tainted entity turned its head, another figure, enveloped in lightning and blood mist, charged in from its other side. Vivian's icy voice rang out: "Looking over there—the real deal is over here!"

The tainted entity barely had time to turn its head again before it saw a ball of blood-red light凝聚ing in Vivian's hand, and she slammed it down from above.

The frenzied barrage of magic (and nuclear) attacks had ended, and all that remained in mid-air was the sound of intense hand-to-hand combat. The weakened tainted entity was no match for the "real deal," let alone the fact that Vivian possessed a special power that could suppress tainted entities. The Ancient Vampire's ten thousand years of accumulated fighting skills erupted at this moment. Hao Ren saw countless afterimages flitting through the air, and the tainted entity was sent flying like a leaf in a gale, constantly battered by claw strikes and kicks. Vivian's angry voice echoed through the sky:

"Wearing my face…

"…killing and robbing and committing all sorts of atrocities!

"You only know how to destroy things, and you're not even afraid of me, the real deal!

"…ruining my reputation!

"And most importantly…

"I'm practically broke, and you're sleeping in a golden coffin! A golden coffin!!"

In a punch that broke the sound barrier, the tainted entity was blasted into pieces. Vivian's voice lingered in the air above the ancient city: "I'd be ecstatic if I could sleep in an oak coffin just once in my life, you know that!!"

On the corner of the high ground, Lori let go of her hands that had been supporting the Holy Flame Shield. Although exhausted, she couldn't help but mutter, "She sounds very resentful."

Hesperides: "...Lord Vivian has always been very resentful in this regard..."

The tainted entity's fragmented "corpse" slowly drifted down from the air. Before it could reach the ground, it burst into flames, and only a few scattered ashes floated down in front of Izhaks and his group.

"G滚" looked nervously up at the sky, afraid that the terrifying "Vivian" would凝聚 again. But this time, there was no "infinitely regenerating" monster. The chaotic energy in the sky was gradually subsiding, and the churning sea of blood was gradually becoming transparent and illusory, like dew under the sunlight, and eventually vanished into nothingness.

The enormous whirlpool of quicksand at the edge of the lost space reappeared in the sky.

Hao Ren and Vivian landed. Izhaks waved his hand to dispel the evil energy shield and nodded to the two of them: "Finally resolved."

Outside the shield, almost the entire high ground where the Great Temple stood had been plowed over by the aftermath of the battle. Not only had the solid granite ground crumbled, but even the bone layer beneath the stone slabs was riddled with holes. The droplets of blood that had fallen from the sea of blood had accumulated into rivers, leaving terrifying corrosive marks on the bone foundation beneath the city—keep in mind that the bones were those of the giant beast Aerythos, and they possessed terrifying strength and corrosion resistance, but in the face of the corrupting blood summoned by the evil spirit, it was not much more durable than stone.

The area where Izhaks and the others were located was like an island of refuge on this corrupted land.

It wasn't just the high ground where the Great Temple stood that had become like this. In fact, due to the vastness of the battlefield and the tainted entity's reckless attacks, the corrosion and collapse caused by the corrupting blood had spread to half the city. Standing at the top of the slope and looking out, almost everything in sight was smoldering and mottled, with the ground collapsing. The few remaining buildings stood forlornly on the corrupted land, their crumbling walls exhibiting bizarre, candle-melting shapes. And amidst these traces of corruption were countless scarred stone statues.

The golem legion had actually survived this man-made disaster.

However, their current state was not quite right.

The statues did not shut down with the demise of the tainted entity, but neither did they show any signs of continuing to act. They simply stood silently around the high ground, their runes flickering, yet maintaining an eerie silence.

"The tainted entity has been destroyed. What else do these 'guards' want?" Hao Ren asked, frowning.

Lily drooped her huge head beside him: "Awoo-woo-woo… Woof!"

Hao Ren casually took a spare set of clothes from his dimensional pocket and stuffed them into Lily's mouth: "Find a place where no one's around and change back before you talk! Who can understand what you're woofing about?"

"These statues have been like this since earlier," Hesperides said, pointing to the golem soldiers hundreds of meters away. "They look kind of scary."

Hao Ren frowned and looked up at the sky. Almost half of the turrets he had summoned had been destroyed in the battle, but the remaining cannons were still enough to handle a fight. Although operating so many turrets for a long time would cause a huge drain on his mental energy, he was already considering whether to take this opportunity to bombard the unresisting stone lumps.

But just as this thought surfaced in his mind, a tepid voice suddenly appeared in his mind without warning: "Hello."

Hao Ren was startled, but he didn't show it on his face. Instead, he steadied his mind and replied in his heart: "Who are you?"

"I am Aerythos."

The tepid voice answered in a slow and calm tone.

This time, Hao Ren really couldn't restrain his surprise, and when he saw the equally astonished expressions on the faces of the others around him, he knew that this mental dialogue was not limited to him alone.

Vivian steadied her mind: "Which Aerythos are you? The city? Or the giant beast from before?"

"You are now standing on my head."

Aerythos said slowly.