bioinnovel Chapter 365 Awakening at the Bottom of the Well
Chapter 365 Awakening at the Bottom of the Well
When the second wave of extraterrestrial gods rushed onto the ramparts, Nezha was already standing at the forefront.
The fire-wheeled vehicle, its flames extinguished, crunched as it stepped on the broken bricks.
The Fire-Tipped Spear was held horizontally in front of him, its tip still covered with the ash marrow of the previous wave of extraterrestrial gods, not yet completely dry.
He stared at the new wave of figures emerging from the dark red mist ahead, then turned his head and called out to those behind him.
"Qingfeng, how many of yours are still able to move?"
Qingfeng pulled the broken sword out of an empty, insect-shaped shell.
The strip of cloth on his right hand was soaked with blood and dripping down. He shook the blood off his hand and glanced back at what was behind him.
"I have thirty left on this road. Half of them are injured."
Is that enough?
"Enough." Qingfeng bit down hard on the loosened knot of the cloth strip between his thumb and forefinger, and gripped the broken sword firmly again. "It has to be enough, even if it's not enough."
Nezha grinned and turned back to face the outside of the battlements.
The second wave of extraterrestrial gods is different from the first wave.
The first wave consisted of consumables; they charged fiercely but fought individually.
The second wave of formations was clearly more organized. The front row was uniformly armed with shields, the shields were inlaid with barbs, and the back row hid behind the shields weaving causal runes. The light of the runes leaked out from the gaps in the shields, turning the entire charging line into a dark green.
There were also guerrillas flanking the front line, creeping along the base of the city wall, and you could already hear the sound of their claws scraping against the bricks.
"Gongsun Bao!" Nezha shouted.
Gongsun Bao's broken sword was still stuck in the empty shell of the previous wave of extraterrestrial gods.
He loosened his grip on the sword hilt, picked up a fragment of a bone shield dropped by an extraterrestrial god from the ground, and weighed it in his hand.
Too light. Throw it away. Then pick up a city brick from beside his feet. Half of the brick was cracked, and a wisp of white light from the Heavenly Dao Repairing Technique was embedded in the corner of the remaining half.
"I see it." Gongsun Bao glanced at both sides of the city wall. "I'll handle the flanking maneuver. You hold the front."
Nezha nodded. He took a step forward and stood on the outermost cracked brick of the crenellation.
The cracked bricks loosened beneath his feet, crumbling at the edges.
He didn't look down; the tip of his gun was pointed directly at the center of the charging line ahead, and he shouted something.
"Archery battalion, give me two volleys. Don't worry about casualties, just keep them pinned down."
The archers of the archery battalion drew iron arrows from their quivers.
The gold patterns on the arrowheads had been mostly worn away in the previous barrage of arrows, leaving only enough to barely cover two more volleys.
The battalion commander glanced at the stock in the quiver and replied, "We can only give you two rounds. After that, we'll have to use plain arrowheads."
Two rounds are enough.
The first arrow was released.
A hundred arrows struck the shield formation in front of the extraterrestrial gods, the golden patterns on the arrowheads exploding and shattering a layer of the causal teeth on the shields.
The shield array was jolted back a step by the impact.
The second round followed immediately, with arrows piercing the gap between the shield formation and the back row. Two arrows pierced the fingers of the extraterrestrial god who was weaving runes in the back row, shattering the runes he was weaving halfway.
The extraterrestrial god's finger was pierced by an arrowhead, and causal fluid gushed from the wound, splashing onto its companion beside it and disrupting its spell-making rhythm.
"Their rhythm is off."
Yang Jian leaned against a pillar on the city tower with his third eye closed.
Laozi's talisman array had burned down to just three remaining floating white lights, barely covering the vertical mark on his forehead.
He didn't have the ability to see into the sky, but he could still hear every change in rhythm on the battlefield.
"Three runes in the back row are broken. There is a gap in the middle of the front line."
"Where?" Nezha asked.
"Behind the fourth shield from the left. The shield-bearer's wrist was pierced by an arrow, the shield tilted, and the rear guard was a beat too slow to cover."
Nezha moved at the very moment Yang Jian reported his location.
He stepped on the broken bricks at the edge of the wall and was launched out, his fiery wheels leaving two streaks of sparks as they scraped the ground.
The Fire-Tipped Spear slanted and pierced the crooked shield, its tip striking the throat of the extraterrestrial god who was filling in at the back.
The spear tip pierced the armor of law at the throat and emerged from the back of the neck.
The causal core of the extraterrestrial god was pierced by the spear tip, and his entire body began to crack from the throat, with gray marrow spraying onto Nezha's shoulder.
Nezha put away his gun.
The spear swept across, striking the tilted shield of the shield-wielding deity and knocking it from its grasp.
The extraterrestrial god, now exposed without the shield wall, was three feet directly in front of Nezha.
Nezha didn't give it time to re-condense its law armor. The spear tip thrust straight into its chest, then twisted its wrist and pulled out the spear.
The causal core of the extraterrestrial god exploded, its empty shell falling onto the edge of the stack, shattering into fragments of the law.
"The gap has been filled." Nezha shook off the ash from the tip of his spear and retreated to the inside of the crenellation.
The frontal assault line collapsed in a chain reaction after Nezha's thrust.
The three extraterrestrial gods, having lost the protection of the shield wall, were simultaneously impaled by the archers in the back row.
The gold-patterned remnants on the arrowheads drove directly into their joints, pinning them in place. The infantry battalion's swordsmen swarmed forward and hacked them to pieces.
But the pressure on the flanks suddenly increased at the same moment. The guerrillas who had crept in along the base of the city wall had already climbed over the crenellations.
These soldiers are not humanoid; they are alien shells pieced together by laws.
Some have six spider legs, each ending in a hook.
Some of the torsos were just a churning mass of causal fluid, with a dozen or so eyeballs floating on the surface.
Others have no fixed form, but are just a constantly changing dark red mist, from which tentacles formed of causal fluid extend.
After scaling the ramparts, they did not launch a frontal assault, but instead dispersed, forming groups of three or four, specifically targeting areas where the remaining soldiers were clustered together.
Gongsun Bao led thirty men from the infantry battalion to hold the outermost position on the flank.
His broken sword was only a small part left, and the distance he could slash was too short to strike before the Spider-Leg Extraterrestrial God could get close.
He simply tucked the broken sword into his waistband, picked up two city bricks with his bare hands, smashed one against the head of the spider-legged extraterrestrial god, and smashed the other against its leg joint.
The head was pried open by the spider legs, the joint was smashed, and the thinnest joint of the spider legs cracked, with causal fluid oozing out from the crack.
The spider-legged alien god's body tilted, and Gongsun Bao seized the opportunity to pull out a dagger and stab it into the gap in its abdominal carapace.
The dagger was covered with the white light left over from the Heavenly Dao Repairing Technique. The blade pierced through the armor of the laws and tore a gash horizontally in its abdominal cavity.
The Spider-Legs Extraterrestrial God shrank into a ball, its six legs twitching and retracting, its empty eye sockets fixed on Gongsun Bao.
Gongsun Bao drew his knife and plunged it into its eye socket.
The tip of the knife stirred it. The body of the spider-legged extraterrestrial god collapsed into a pile of gray empty shells.
"Next." Gongsun Bao drew his dagger.
But there are too many extraterrestrial gods on the flanks.
Seven of his thirty infantrymen had fallen within five minutes.
One of them, with the tentacles of causal fluid wrapped around its neck, its skin corroded to the point that its trachea was exposed, was still chopping with an axe. As it cut off the tentacles, it couldn't support itself and knelt down on one knee.
One of them, pinned to the city wall with his shoulder blade pierced by spider legs and claws, was spitting blood from his mouth and reaching for a knife that had fallen to the ground.
Gongsun Bao glanced back, gritted his teeth, and continued to push forward.
On the front lines, Qingfeng's right leg was slashed by barbed bone spurs, leaving a wound over a foot long that stretched from his knee down to his calf.
He knelt on one knee on the edge of the wall, stubbornly holding on so he wouldn't fall. His broken sword was stuck in a crack in the brickwork for support, and he was half-hanging on the hilt.
Two shield-wielding extraterrestrial gods were charging towards him side by side, the causal teeth on their shields spinning rapidly, and the distance between them was less than five steps.
Qingfeng pulled the broken sword out of the crack in the bricks. Unable to stand, he knelt down and pushed the broken sword forward.
The broken sword pierced the ankle joint of the shield-wielding extraterrestrial god, penetrating the law armor from the side of the ankle, with the tip of the sword protruding from the inside.
The god from beyond the realm lost his footing, causing his shield to tilt. Qingfeng's shoulder was sliced off by the spinning causal teeth, and he was pulled down.
Qingfeng seized the moment of the fall and slid in from under the crooked shield. He reversed his grip on the broken sword and slashed upwards, the blade cutting into the law gap in the jaw of the extraterrestrial god, piercing through the skull cavity and the causal core.
The extraterrestrial god shattered on his body.
Ash marrow was poured all over Qingfeng's head and face. Qingfeng propped himself up with his sword, knelt on the ground and looked around. He was the only one left by the shield.
Qingfeng's left sleeve was soaked with gray marrow and wrapped around the sword hilt, dripping gray liquid.
He used the broken sword to support himself, preventing his knees from buckling.
"I can still hold on. Don't worry about me, keep attacking head-on." His voice wasn't loud, just loud enough for Nezha to hear.
Nezha didn't turn around, but his knuckles turned white as he gripped the spear. He didn't have any extra troops to spare for the flanks.
The archers had already used up all the arrowheads with gold patterns. The remaining plain iron arrows, without any magical enhancement, couldn't even leave a scratch on the surface of the outer divine shield.
The infantry battalion suffered nearly a third of its casualties, and each of those who were still standing had at least three wounds.
Gongsun Bao's broken sword was completely shattered inside the abdomen of the spider-legged extraterrestrial god, and he picked up an axe from the ground.
It's unclear who dropped it; the axe handle still has the original owner's blood on it, and the blood hasn't dried yet.
Gongsun Bao weighed the axe in his hand and looked up at the churning dark red mist in front of him.
Tentacles emerged one after another from the fog, wrapping around the ankle of a wounded soldier buried among the broken bricks of the city wall, dragging him deeper into the fog.
The wounded soldier had a foot-long gash in his chest, his ribs were turned outwards, and he had lost his knife. He was desperately trying to steady himself by gripping the brick seam at the edge of the wall, but his knuckles were stuck in the seam and shattered, leaving him a bloody mess.
"Let go! Let me go!" Gongsun Bao roared and charged forward.
He stepped over the two extraterrestrial god shells and swung his axe to cleave off the tentacle.
The causal liquid spurting from the severed whiskers splashed onto his face, burning off half of his eyebrow.
With his eyes closed, he pulled the wounded soldier back with one hand, threw him into the arms of the infantryman behind him, and then swung his axe back into the deeper fog.
"This path is cleared out now!" Gongsun Bao roared hoarsely at the newly arriving fog. "Who's coming for the next leg? My axe isn't even dull yet!"
A thunderous roar erupted from the city wall.
The wounded soldiers tapped the city bricks with the hilts of their swords, while the soldiers who could still stand patted their chests.
The dull clanging of metal broke through a thin layer of dark red mist, disrupting the rhythm of the extraterrestrial gods' new round of rune-making on the front line by half a beat.
Yang Jian closed his eyes and said, "The rhythm is off again. We can still hold on for one more round."
"More than one wave." Sun Wukong's voice came down from the rooftop.
He remained crouched at the highest point without moving.
He didn't make a move from beginning to end. The golden cudgel was held horizontally across his knees, his eyes fixed on the direction where Su Fan disappeared.
After the dark red mist swallowed Su Fan's figure, the monkey didn't blink. Now he suddenly spoke, his voice very low.
"I, Old Sun, can feel it. That well is moving."
Yang Jian opened his eyes and looked at Sun Wukong. "What does it mean that the well is moving?"
"Deep underground, the well itself is also a living thing. I, Old Sun, rolled around in the Great Calamity, and the aftershocks of the Chaotic Great Calamity are still dancing in my mind. The aftershocks of the Great Calamity in my mind resonate with the movement of that well, and the resonance frequency is getting faster and faster."
Yang Jian paused for a moment, then asked, "What happens when resonance reaches its limit?"
"Once the resonance is synchronized, the well will bring up what's inside. It's not an extraterrestrial god, but the primordial cause and effect sealed at the bottom of the well 30,000 years ago, which even the man in black robes doesn't know about."
The Primordial Celestial Venerable opened his eyes wide on the spine.
The last glimmer of light on the whisk went out the moment he spoke. The whisk's strands turned completely gray.
His Dao heart was still listening, and he heard the resonance that Sun Wukong had mentioned.
"If the original cause and effect is released, the density of laws in the entire extraterritorial territory will be resaturated in a very short time."
"At that time, what will flood into the territory will no longer be expendable objects that you can fight with your physical bodies, but the ancient gods who have fully realized the laws of nature."
"The primordial Heavenly Dao has leaked to a critical point. If it is impacted again, the star map of the heavens will not just extinguish a few stars, but all of them will fall."
Nezha's expression changed slightly upon hearing this, but he quickly regained his cold and stern demeanor, pulling the Fire-Tipped Spear out of the city bricks and spinning it halfway around.
"Then don't let it flip."
He slung the fire-tipped spear over his shoulder.
"The eldest brother is chopping inside the well, and we're carrying it outside. Before everything in the well is brought up, not a single brick from the South Heavenly Gate can be missing."
The human warrior propped himself up from the edge of the crenellation.
He had no legs, his face was covered in dried ash, and his lips were swollen and cracked. He tapped the city bricks with the back of his broken sword.
"I just said you can fight even by crawling on your hands. Now I'll say it again."
His voice was as rough as sandpaper.
"Even if I only have teeth left, I can still bite down on a knife and fight."
Qingfeng leaned against the wall, wiping the ash from his face, and gripped the broken sword tightly again.
"Then let's fight."
More extraterrestrial gods emerged from the dark red mist.
The third wave. Their steps as they emerged from the fog were so orderly and subdued that the sound of their footsteps shook the shattered bricks and stones on the city wall.
The front row consisted entirely of heavily armored aliens, their bodies covered with bone spikes and rune shields. The runes in the back row were so dense that they were no longer woven into a shape, but instead gathered into two dark green halos that hung in mid-air and slowly spread out.
Sun Wukong stood up from the roof ridge.
He picked up the golden cudgel from his knees, its tip touching the glazed tiles on the roof ridge. His monkey eyes reflected two halos within the dark red mist.
"I, Old Sun, haven't made a move yet."
He flicked the golden cudgel upwards, and the cudgel grew longer, becoming a thick iron rod that hung horizontally in mid-air.
"The aftershocks of the Great Calamity are still pressing down on my spiritual realm. They've been pressing down for so long, but they can't be suppressed anymore. Aren't the extraterrestrial territories supposed to be able to suppress all primordial laws? The Great Calamity is a chaotic law, and it can't suppress it."
Upon hearing this, Yang Jian straightened up, leaning against the wall. "Great Sage, are you going to release him now?"
"You have no choice but to release it, you can't withstand the third wave."
Sun Wukong looked down at Nezha, at Qingfeng, at the human warriors, at Gongsun Bao and the remaining ten thousand soldiers, and grinned.
"You guys withstood two waves, that's tough enough. For the third wave, I, Old Sun, will take the hit for you."
He raised the golden cudgel above his head.
As the staff trembled, the aftershocks of the great calamity were released from the depths of the spiritual platform.
White arcs of electricity danced on the rod, growing denser and brighter.
The aftershocks of the great calamity collided with the dark red laws of the outer territories, causing ripples of law to explode at the tip of the rod.
Ripples struck the outer edge of the city wall, causing a crack to appear in the bricks.
Sun Wukong stood at the edge of the crevice, his back to the South Heavenly Gate, facing the charging regular army from beyond the realm.
"In my life, I, Old Sun, have fought against heavenly soldiers and generals, demons and evil spirits, and gods and Buddhas from other lands."
"The thing I'm fighting today is neither within the Three Realms nor within the Five Elements. It's hard to say whether my name will remain in the Primordial World after this battle. But I've never cared about names."
The golden cudgel slammed down.
It crashed onto the dark red ground of the outer territory. The aftershocks of the cataclysm spread out along the ground, and white arcs of electricity wove a net, locking the lower halves of the third wave of outer gods in place.
The knee joints of the heavily armored extraterrestrial gods were jammed by arcs of electricity, rendering them completely immobile. They held up their shields, the runes on the shields still spinning, but the shields couldn't be pushed up, and the people couldn't rush forward.
The rune chains in the rear halo were like a stuck winch, unable to condense a single new rune.
Nezha stared at the charging line that was blocked by the aftershocks of the great calamity, and stuck his Fire-Tipped Spear into the ground.
"Bow!" he roared.
The archer battalion commander roared back, "White arrowheads, no gold markings!"
"A blank board is fine. Nail the hole." Nezha pointed with the tip of his spear.
The white iron arrow pierced the eye sockets of the front-row extraterrestrial gods, then emerged from the back of their heads and burrowed into the necks of the back-row extraterrestrial gods.
Strands of gray law liquid curled out from the torn edges of the armor on the whiteboard arrow.
The white light remaining from the primordial will embedded itself in the wound, and the body of the extraterrestrial god disintegrated layer by layer within the golden and white interwoven light net.
The ground of the remaining city wall of Nantianmen was trembling dully under the influence of the aftershocks of the great calamity.
The vibrations penetrated the city bricks, the foundation, and the shallow, chaotic layer below, which had been transformed into an external realm, spreading farther and farther, deeper and deeper.
There is a well deep underground.
The well walls were made of stacked dark red causal crystals, and the well opening hung upside down in the center of the cavity. Dark red well water churned silently at the bottom of the well.
When the vibration reached this point, the well water rippled for the first time.
At the deepest part of the well, a consciousness sealed for 30,000 years was stirred by the aftershocks of the great calamity and the white light.
It didn't open its eyes; it had no eyes to open. But it was awake.
At the edge of the well, Su Fan tightened his grip on the axe handle.
He lowered his head and looked at the well water slowly spreading at his feet.
The white light, blue light, and golden patterns on the Pangu axe blade were simultaneously aimed at the bottom of the well.