Void Cultivation-Chapter 250- Green Gas (6)

The moment he dodged, Grey felt the crushing sense of danger in his heart lessen, if only by a tiny margin. It wasn’t gone. Not even close.

The massive face seemed to realize it had missed its collision with him. It halted mid-charge, then began to turn around, slowly rotating to face him once more.

The tunnel of flesh was not particularly wide, yet the face was so enormous that its distorted features scraped against the ceiling as it moved. Thick folds of flesh dragged along the pulsing walls, leaving behind wet, tearing sounds that made Grey’s scalp prickle.

Its turning speed was sluggish, at least on the surface. But to Grey’s eyes, it was terrifyingly fast. Fast enough that his instincts screamed at him not to hesitate.

He didn’t have the luxury to analyze it.

If that face fully turned around, locked onto him, and collided with his body...

Grey didn’t doubt the outcome for even a second.

No... he was certain of it.

His body would explode on impact. Bone, flesh, and blood would be crushed into pulp, splattering across the walls of the tunnel like paint flung from a brush.

’No! I can’t allow that to happen! I have to get out of here, now!’

Grey’s instincts howled in his mind, forcing his body to move faster than it ever had before. His muscles screamed as he pushed himself to the limit, lungs burning as he fled through the fleshy tunnel.

The threat behind him was very real. And facing it head-on would mean instant death, assuming he even survived the first clash.

This thing...

Its power level was terrifyingly close to the Nascent Soul Transformation Realm. That was the only comparison Grey could make, and even that felt insufficient. The pressure it emitted warped his perception, making it difficult to breathe.

Run. Just run and survive.

Those words echoed endlessly in his head. Grey didn’t hesitate to obey.

As he twisted his body mid-sprint, he glanced toward the tunnel he had come from, only to feel his blood run cold.

A thick wall of flesh had sealed it shut.

The wall squirmed violently, veins bulging as though something inside was alive. Before Grey could react, the flesh ahead of him also surged and sealed itself closed, cutting off the forward path as well.

Both exits were gone.

Grey had been completely trapped.

Trapped in a narrow tunnel of living flesh.

Trapped with that massive, monstrous face.

"What in the hell is happening?!" Grey cursed for the first time since entering this tunnel and even this whole place. "What the f*ck is that thing?!"

The calm expression he had maintained until now finally shattered. Fear was written plainly across his face, unfiltered and raw.

This was the fear of facing an existence that could kill him with a casual movement, an existence whose power eclipsed his own so completely that resistance felt meaningless.

Even when he had stood before the terrifying presence behind the sealed door, he had never felt fear like this.

Because now, the threat was immediate.

Grey’s clothes were soaked through with sweat as it poured from his body uncontrollably.

The head had finally finished turning.

An eerie, twisted smile stretched across its face, far too wide to be natural. Its pitch-black eyes glimmered with a malicious light as they locked onto Grey.

The moment their gazes met, Grey’s mind trembled violently.

This was the natural suppression, the instinctive terror a being from a lower realm felt when facing one from a far higher existence. His thoughts slowed, his spiritual energy stagnated, and his body felt unbearably heavy.

The massive face opened its mouth.

Only a single word thundered through the tunnel.

"FOOD!!!"

The sound shook the walls, causing the flesh around them to ripple violently. Immediately after, the creature burst into manic laughter and charged toward Grey, its enormous form filling the tunnel completely.

Grey reacted without thinking.

He rushed backward and swung the purple scythe with all his strength, slashing toward the wall of flesh behind him in a desperate attempt to break free.

But even the scythe, once overflowing with sinister intent and bloodthirsty malice, trembled.

The moment it sensed the massive head, its violent aura collapsed.

To the sentient spirit within the scythe, this existence was no different from a god. Something that could crush it like an insect.

For the first time ever, fear appeared on its face.

Its usual malevolent grin vanished completely, replaced by wide, trembling eyes. Its voice shook as it spoke, no, as it stuttered.

"You—You maniac! Are you insane?!" the sentient spirit screamed. "Why is there a Broken Divine here?! Why are you fighting a Broken Divine?! Have you completely lost your mind?!"

This was the first time the spirit had spoken since Grey obtained the scythe. 𝓯𝓻𝒆𝙚𝒘𝓮𝙗𝓷𝒐𝓿𝙚𝒍.𝙘𝓸𝙢

From the very beginning, it had acted dull, barely sentient, as if it possessed only fragmentary intelligence. But now, faced with true death, it could no longer stay silent.

Even against its will, terror forced its voice out.

Grey was momentarily shocked when he heard the spirit speak.

But he didn’t have time to dwell on it.

One word had pierced straight through his mind.

"Broken Divine?!" Grey demanded through his divine sense, his thoughts crashing directly into the spirit’s consciousness.

The spirit froze.

Then it let out a hollow, self-mocking laugh.

"Haha... you don’t even know what a Broken Divine is, yet you dared to provoke one," it said bitterly. "We’re dead. Completely dead. And I had just revived."

Grey ignored its despair.

"What is a Broken Divine?!" he demanded again.

Their mental exchange occurred almost instantaneously. To the outside world, not even a fraction of a second passed between each sentence.

The spirit sighed.

"Since we’re going to die anyway, I’ll tell you a little," it said. All six of its eyes opened wide, filled with ridicule toward Grey and itself alike.

"When a creature wishes to ascend and become a divine being, it can choose one of two paths. The first is to undergo the sacrificial tribulation of the heavens."

"The second..."

Its voice grew grim.

"...is known as the Broken Sacrifice."

"The chances of surviving a Broken Sacrifice are unimaginably small. And worse, every creature’s sacrifice is different."

"However, in the end, only one out of every ten creatures manages to survive this type of sacrifice and step into divinity," the sentient spirit continued. "And even then, they are not true divine beings."

"They only possess pseudo-divinity."

"To become a genuine divine creature, they must still undergo a smaller stage of the true Sacrificial Tribulation. Only after surviving that final refinement can they truly ascend."

The spirit paused briefly before its tone darkened.

"This head before us... is a Broken Divine creature. However, its refinement is incomplete. It is still in the middle of the process."

"What’s worse," it added grimly, "its cultivation level is abysmally low. Because of that, the divinity it attempted to seize has overwhelmed its mind and instincts completely."

"In simple terms..." the spirit sneered, "...it has power it cannot control."

The sentient spirit then let out another broken laugh.

If Grey could see its expression at this moment, he would notice the faint mockery hidden within its six eyes... along with an unmistakable unwillingness to die.

"You just had to provoke it, didn’t you?" the spirit said bitterly. "Now we’ll both die here, without meaning, without legacy, without even a proper ending."

It laughed again.

This time, the laughter was more erratic. More unstable. The sound echoed strangely inside Grey’s mind, carrying a trace of madness that made his scalp tingle.

Yet despite the chaos in its voice, Grey did not question the truth of its words.

He knew they were real.

Why?

Because this sentient spirit had once been a divine creature itself.

Back when it was still alive, it had been injured and later became incomparably weak, so weak that it hovered constantly on the brink of death. Had it not been discovered, it would have perished without anyone ever knowing of its existence.

Then Bao found it.

Bao refined its body.

Bao refined its soul.

And in the end, the creature was transformed into this purple scythe.

The sentient spirit before him was nothing more, and nothing less, than the remnants of that being.

How could it not understand divinity?

How could it not recognize a Broken Divine?

And as for why Grey didn’t suspect deception, there was no reason for the spirit to lie. At most, it was withholding information. Not fabricating it.

After the initial surge of panic passed, Grey forced himself to calm down. His breathing steadied, his thoughts sharpened, and his fear was compressed into something cold and focused.

Then he asked calmly,

"So... what do we do?"

The sentient spirit stopped laughing.

When it answered, its voice was solemn.

"There’s nothing we can do," it said flatly. "Even incomplete divinity is still divinity. It cannot be resisted by mortals."

"We will surely die! Unless you possess an item capable of suppressing gods themselves."

It paused briefly before adding in a gloomy tone,

"Do you?"

At this point, there was no reason to hide the truth. Death was already looming over both of them.

"An item that can suppress a god...?" Grey repeated inwardly.

His thoughts churned violently.

Of course he didn’t have something like that.

If he did, the entire cultivation world would already be in chaos. An item capable of suppressing even a fragment of divinity would be priceless beyond imagination.

Countless experts would fight over it.

Some would find ingenious ways to refine it into something even more terrifying. Others might use it as a stepping stone toward divinity itself.

Its applications were limitless.

’I obviously don’t have something like that...’

’But...’

Grey’s thoughts abruptly halted.

His mind drifted toward the purple crystal shards embedded deep within his chest.

From the very first day he had awakened in this world, the purple crystal had been there.

It had fallen from the heavens.

It had landed beside him.

It was the very first object he had ever touched in this world.

It healed his shattered body.

It sealed his shadow.

It was because of the purple crystal that he comprehended his sword art so quickly. Because of it, he was able to manipulate the shadow and accumulate corrosive substance.

From day one, it had accompanied him.

Over time, his body had changed. His aura had mutated because of it. The purple phantom... The purple moon.

All of them were influenced by the crystal’s presence, inheriting its suppressive aura.

At first, it had been an external object. But after so long...

It had fused with him. It had become his.

It could even be said that Grey’s entire life trajectory had been shaped by the purple crystal.

’So maybe...’ Grey thought slowly. ’I don’t need an item that suppresses gods...’

’...when I already carry something that suppresses all lifeforms with its mere aura.’

’Purple crystal.’

Grey roared inwardly as he surged every drop of spiritual power he possessed into the crystal embedded within his chest.

Immediately, a violent burst of purple light erupted from his body.

His insides were flooded with violet radiance, as though molten crystal flowed through his veins. Even his hair began to shift, strands gaining a faint purple hue as they fluttered unnaturally.

His eyes ignited.

A dim violet glow spilled from his pupils, painting the fleshy tunnel and the monstrous face within it, in his color.

Purple.