Chapter 381: Collapse

Krap rolled with the bundle, seized the chance to pull out the box, and used his body to shield the act of opening it.

He wasn’t sure if this act meant anything at all—or if it was just like covering his ears while stealing a bell—perhaps his supposedly hidden actions had already been fully reflected on the scales without any blind spots.

The moment his fingers touched the arrowhead, the scaled thing seemed to sense something, abruptly breaking its previously calm and unhurried rhythm of attack, striking at an unexpected instant.

As a large creature combining flight and crawling traits, it possessed none of the heft befitting its size, nor the posture matching its motion—its form drifted erratically.

Its flapping wings, unlike those of birds, offered no lift and instead propelled its sinuous body straight toward them.

It needed no acceleration, no adherence to logic—it simply leapt from the blank space of thought, following a predetermined path, as if the moment it was perceived, the mind’s assumption instantly became its route map.

It was not consciousness anticipating the attack, but consciousness itself fabricating the permitted path for it.

From the side and from behind, its silhouette shifted unpredictably, assuming disjointed postures in motion, like a scrambled picture book reassembled—piecing together its various angles along a single trajectory.

The more one tried to find patterns within it, the more one was misled by its aberrant behavior, falling into the illusion of erratic speed—while death arrived in an instant.

Hundreds of mirror scales unfolded before Krap; he held his breath. He saw himself frantically dodging, raising his hammer to block; he saw himself searching for clues; he saw himself accepting the stone tablet, reading the carved parables.

It was the inversion of cognition—every thought, every speculation, widened the path for its arrival.

The dragon does not exist; the dragon is everywhere—it watches them in every pair of eyes seeking its presence, watching themselves.

A counterintuitive concept crashed into his mind; he suddenly understood something—and understood nothing at all. The incomprehensible information froze his thoughts, paralyzed his body, even made him forget how to control his limbs.

A moment before impact, Yin Feng suddenly sensed it and shoved him away with all her strength. His body, as if stripped of weight, slid diagonally, narrowly avoiding the oncoming strike. His internal organs were tugged by inertia, nearly torn from their positions.

A dull, internal ache made his stomach want to vomit itself out—he had narrowly escaped.

Yin Feng grabbed him by the collar and yanked him off the ground. Unable to touch the opponent, she still judged the situation from the vivid, intangible performance—and the sudden halt of evasion spoke volumes.

Fortunately, Krap had shaken off his daze; his left hand clenched into a fist, pinning the arrowhead’s tip outward between his fingers.

“Is there a way?”

“Not certain.”

The arrowhead felt much as he’d imagined—light, as if a slight force might snap it; the edge, perhaps due to material strength, had not been sharpened to a fine point, yet still bore numerous nicks.

This arrowhead had been reused many times, finally falling into Church hands, carefully cast into pure silver—whether its purpose was preservation or sealing remained unknown.

Though visibly weathered and aged, its appearance was worse than a beginner’s practice piece; yet held in hand, its presence was overwhelming, as if something uncontainable radiated from it, piercing skin and bone, blinding even without direct gaze.

But others did not feel it so strongly; Yin Feng glanced at it curiously, then turned her attention back to guarding against the invisible.

If, in its perception, this arrowhead shone just as brightly, then their attack was no surprise—what was strange was why it hadn’t taken or destroyed it.

Disgust? Fear? Or some other reason?

He would know soon enough.

Scales scraped, air currents flapped, tiny mirrored surfaces opened and closed, crawling along the edges of sensation and thought, hiding within the folds of cognition.

Like a snake, it extended its forked sensory organs, sniffing every minute fluctuation of the target’s consciousness.

Anyone who had witnessed intracranial surgery would remember the convoluted mass of tissue; Krap was no exception. Now, that memory twisted into a profoundly eerie illusion—as if a smooth, elongated thing had slipped into the folds of cognition, licking fresh thoughts deep within the cortex.

Amid terror sufficient to drive any ordinary person mad in an instant, he gripped his weapon, astonished by his own miraculous endurance.

This steel object had once shattered the shells of heretics; the leather grip still bore fungal stains; the cold, steady weight of metal seemed to seep through his skin into his body.

His fingers loosened slightly, letting the hammer slide down with gravity until it rested beneath the head; he rotated his wrist to press the haft against his forearm, holding it horizontally across his chest and abdomen to guard vital points.

As with every prior attack, the thing breached his perception—and the next instant appeared in his right visual blind spot.

Krap sidestepped, avoiding the full force; most of the impact missed, but what remained struck the combined defense of hammer haft and ulna, still forcing him back half a step.

A continuous, low, fine scraping sound echoed; the metal trembled faintly, fine scratches weaving into a net.

Perhaps even beings manifesting through cognition were bound by it; even so, this creature had not fully escaped inertia’s chains, unable to turn swiftly enough in high-speed motion—passing by, it switched from offense to defense in an instant.

Aiming at what seemed to be the right wing, Krap raised the arrowhead and thrust forward.

He braced for injury—the dull tip might fail to pierce, the recoil might damage his already ill-suited grip, tearing his webbed fingers, fracturing his palm bones.

But the actual feedback differed entirely from his imagination.

It felt like a needle piercing a tough tendon—slight resistance, then a hollow sensation—and the arrowhead sank fully into it, remaining embedded in the creature’s body.

A faint hiss drifted through the air; the creature’s movement was slightly disrupted, as if unbalanced for a moment.

Given how hard its motion already was to judge, whether this moment of imbalance truly occurred remained debatable.

One thing was certain: the arrowhead worked—he had wounded it. A flicker of excitement and hope ignited in his chest, cooling faster than blood leaving the vessel.

It emitted another rustling symphony of scales, flapped its wings—the arrowhead lodged in the membrane, like an aberrant reverse scale.

One arrowhead was too small; even for humans, its threat was limited. Even if it harmed it more easily, it was merely a light wound, causing little impact on its movement.

No, there was still an effect—it seemed provoked, moving faster, clearer in perception, more aggressive. Scales fluttered, mirror reflections shattered, each one flashing the face of someone nearby in turn.

“Tell my master this: my prediction was wrong—this thing has substance.” Krap realized he had done all he could.

An unexpected calm rose from within; fear stirred at the base of his mind, but faintly. He even had the spare thought to recall Wendeng Harbor, to recall that sea—where the seabed never lacked the most venomous, treacherous reefs, the most cunning, ferocious creatures.

The world was ultimately the ocean; any calm on its surface was but a fleeting illusion.

“Relay everything that happened here exactly—my master will make his judgment…”

He prepared to urge Yin Feng to leave immediately—at least to carry away valuable information. But before the words left his mouth, his peripheral vision caught her attention drifting away from him.

Their gazes converged on a single point.

The scaled, winged creature glided through the air, winding like a shadow through trees.

“You mean this thing?”