Chapter 179: Destructive Application

Human physiology made it impossible to look directly at the thing—the light, even through closed eyelids, stabbed the retinas, stubbornly seeping through the gaps of the lids, trying to liquefy the vitreous humor into the same white, viscous acidic fluid.

Yet it emitted no heat; the skin it illuminated felt only a chilling coolness, like the touch of a marine mollusk, carrying an unknown mechanism that subtly intoxicated the mind.

The tentacles that had approached the target rose together, detaching from the main body—a motion that generated a thin, color-shifting mist around it, appearing to eyes with blurred visual projection as a robed angel upon a holy throne, opening a hundred arms and a thousand fingers in embrace.

And that powder that burned mucous membranes scattered like flames, searing countless microscopic needle-points into every single neuron.

Approaching it drowned human sight, smell, and touch in incomprehensible stimuli, while fungal crevices echoed with layered chants.

"So anyone who faces it directly may never again enjoy a choir," Kraft closed his eyes, holding his breath, observing within his mental organ the thing unfit for mortal senses.

Even within the range of mental perception, he could not grasp its full form—long, trailing tentacles stretched behind into invisible distances, along which star-like fungal buds sprouted. In destroying everything it touched, it simultaneously spread and cultivated new fungal colonies.

He sidestepped one sweeping tentacle, and more limbs converged like sea anemones hunting, among them distributed fungal spirits under thread-like control, and swollen air sacs brimming, ready to exhale.

He no longer paid attention to those things—he turned inward, triggering a dangerously risky act.

The stone embedded between the muscles and bones of his left arm activated, becoming as lively as before, and after its shattering, the vibrations it produced in his senses were even more intense than ever.

The push toward the manifest plane was amplified by mental force, rapidly intensifying—the familiar trend of dimensional transition emerged once more.

To achieve a successful transition, the correct choice now would be to consciously control the speed, keeping it within the bounds of conscious control—like riding a bicycle down a rocky slope, needing to intermittently squeeze the brakes to avoid being thrown clear.

Within a span of ten to twenty seconds, or at most half a minute, the body could transition relatively smoothly into another plane.

But completing this process now was impossible. The fungal spirits, having invaded the crawling creature's shell and thus acquired some of its abilities, clearly sensed this too—in less than ten seconds, countless tentacles would seize the prey before them.

Though their simple minds could not comprehend this behavior, it did not prevent them from merging into the host body, becoming part of it. Nor did they bother calculating whether chasing a target smaller than the tiniest tentacle was worth the effort.

But Kraft did not seek escape into the manifest plane. He did not choose to control speed—he pushed further into the trend of the two worlds drawing near, accelerating the reverse fall toward the extreme limit of his control.

The two worlds drew rapidly closer, causing subtle sensory disorientation—parts of space flickered between a dim realm of coiled tentacles and flourishing fungi, and then abruptly shifted to an empty, dust-choked old house.

This was a sign of imminent transit Shikong —the fungal spirits vaguely sensed the shifting environment and hesitated over the prey now within reach.

The mental organ added one final surge at the critical threshold—everything in his senses lost control, snapping shut, overlapping, "colliding" together in a manner beyond conventional spatial concepts.

It was an uncontrollable transformation, spreading from the point of ignition across the entire sensory range of his mental organ in near-instantaneous time. Kraft felt himself at the heart of the storm; the embedded object within his arm hummed with ecstatic vibration, transmitting through his body like clashing blades or ringing tuning forks.

He could "see" countless identical dim stony particles seeping from beneath his skin, coalescing into tiny hexagonal crystals, filling the fractures left by shattered prisms, replacing human tissue—like accelerated mineral growth, reconstructing a certain form.

Yet this was merely the most insignificant part of the changes his action had triggered. This artificially induced dimensional chaos was manifesting the intended—and even exceeding—destructive power.

The surrounding space froze for an instant, then, as in the accidental incident at Comfort Harbor, appeared with overlapping afterimages, softening like melting oil paintings—the result of corresponding parts of the two worlds superimposing chaotically.

The mottled, scaled tentacles froze before his nose—first blurred, then their colors stretched horizontally, as if slowly and irresistibly smeared open by a palette knife.

…

Kup awoke atop the church bell tower, his mind still lingering with the chaotic nausea of his first dimensional transit and the shock of witnessing the celestial body whose form he could no longer recall.

He fumbled to his feet, pulling his foot away from Ma Ding's hand, and leaned out the window to look down.

Sunlight bathed the village surrounded by sparse woods and the ornate road—others had completed their perimeter duties and gathered inside the church; the outdoors stood empty. They had indeed returned, but they saw no trace of Kraft.

He leaned half his body out the window, scanning the entire village, and noticed a smudge he could not erase from his vision.

It was a circular patch at the village's edge—initially mistaken for heat distortion, but its distortion persisted abruptly, radiating an indescribable cold, eerie quality, like a turbid vortex on clear seawater, stirred by some unseen force below.

Landscapes merged with things both familiar yet utterly alien, accompanied by vividly colored fragments and filamentous strands materializing and falling, mixed with terrifying shards resembling wounds and bone fragments, and the white light that had pursued him during his escape.

That light, too, was supple and twisted, passing through unstable gaps, carrying a universally empathizable sensation from the luminous source—a multiplicity of hysterical, rending agony, piercing deep into the spirit, stabbing the soul.

Kup could not help turning his head away from the sensation, trying to comprehend what was happening—but found nothing.

When he looked again, the changes in that area had subsided. Ma Ding had awakened beside him, clutching his head in pain.

In a building where candle wax had melted into long, dripping strands like a feast's grease, a familiar figure stood rigid at the center of chaos.

"To hell with it—come down with me!" Kup kicked open the bell tower exit and tumbled down the stairs, sprinting at full speed out of the church toward that place.