Chapter 69: 68. Ascension

68. Ascension

"Wen Three, Wen Four!"

"Why are you still in the cellar?!"

Zhou Chang looked at the two figures curled up in the corner, and seeing their faces covered in knife wounds and burn scars, he immediately recognized who they were.

At this moment, the Grass-Headed Dragon Wraith was still slowly drifting upward.

One head after another flew spinning out of the collapsing rice grave, attaching themselves behind the Grass-Headed Dragon Wraith's form, making this dragon-snake of human-head spirit-tablets 'grow' longer and longer.

The Grass-Headed Dragon Wraith's tail was connected to that chain of imperial edict, which was being constantly corroded by copper coins.

The other end of the imperial edict chain was buried deep within the headless body of Wen Yongsheng, where a massive amount of offering-thoughts had gathered.

As the Grass-Headed Dragon Wraith dragged Wen Yongsheng's headless body upward toward the top of the wine cellar, the spring at the bottom of the cellar gushed out even more wine, which surged like rivers and seas, flooding layer upon layer of cellar pools from the bottom up!

The corpses in the cellar pools floated on the wine sea, rising with it!

The tangled offering-thoughts gathered within Wen Yongsheng's headless body, turning it into a mottled orb of light. The various colored lights cast onto the wine sea, making the surface of that corpse-strewn sea display a gorgeous, enchanting palette!

Wen Three and Wen Four, who had buried their heads deep, suddenly heard Zhou Chang's shout. They raised their heads at the same time and saw the strange figure before them, draped in a python robe, all skin and bones—

The two scarred men recognized Zhou Chang's voice, but could not connect the skin-and-bones, sunken-eyed person before them with Zhou Chang!

Wen Four's expression was hesitant.

Wen Three said hesitantly, "The... the door was sealed from outside by Steward Qian...

We couldn't push it open, we can't leave..."

Looking at the thick wooden door beside them, despair welled up in the eyes of Wen Three and Wen Four—they knew something terrifying was happening in the wine cellar, but they couldn't escape!

"Boom!"

The moment Wen Three finished speaking, the strange figure in the python robe walked straight up to the wooden door beside him and kicked out violently—

With a tremendous crash, the finger-thick wooden door was kicked straight through, leaving a transparent hole!

Zhou Chang reached his hand through the hole and pulled open the door bolt behind the wooden door.

He withdrew his hand and pushed the door—

The dim daylight outside poured in, falling upon his emaciated frame.

"I didn't deliver a letter for you two to your mother—go explain it to her yourselves." Zhou Chang suddenly lowered his gaze, looked at the dumbfounded Wen Three and Wen Four, and said with a grin.

"You—you—you—" Wen Four heard those words from the skin-and-bones man, gave a start, and suddenly realized.

This person was that Zhou Chang buried in the bottommost cellar pool!

He had even thrown a small knife to this person earlier!

"Go!"

Zhou Chang quickly turned his head, glanced behind him, then spread his ten fingers and, like grabbing little chicks, seized Wen Three and Wen Four by their collars and tossed them out of the wine cellar!

Wen Four stumbled to his feet and turned to look back—

At the wine cellar entrance, Zhou Chang's emaciated figure was already gone.

Only his stern voice rang out from inside the cellar: "Cover your ears, don't listen! Don't listen to anything! It might just save your lives!"

Cover your ears, and you can save your life?

Wen Four instinctively followed Zhou Chang's instructions and clamped his hands tightly over his ears.

He turned to look at Wen Three, who tore a few wads of cotton from his tattered clothes, stuffed them into his ears, and handed him two more wads.

"Run!"

Once Wen Four had also stuffed cotton into his ears, Wen Three mouthed something to him and took off running outside first!

Wen Four hurried after him!

Inside the wine cellar.

The Grass-Headed Dragon Wraith's body—one head connected to one spirit-tablet—passed section by section beside Zhou Chang.

Wild offering-energy clung to the 'dragon body,' making the mycelia around the Grass-Headed Dragon Wraith grow ever denser.

Those pale faces, each connected to a different spirit-tablet, kept their eyes tightly shut, their lips moving, broadcasting sound in all directions—and along with it, the Grass-Headed Dragon Wraith's death omen:

"You... do you have an official rank?"

Zhou Chang tried to tear apart the Grass-Headed Dragon Wraith's body, but when he reached out and his five fingers grabbed at the heads and tablets connected along the dragon body, he only caught wisps of intangible offering-energy.

That offering-energy vanished clean from between his fingers in the blink of an eye.

The Grass-Headed Dragon Wraith was completely unharmed, still slowly wriggling, swaggering past Zhou Chang!

"How does one kill a worldly god?!"

Zhou Chang's pupils trembled.

From Li Xiamei, he had learned how to silence a thought-demon.

—As long as one cracked the thought-demon's killing pattern, a thought-demon could be caged like pigs or dogs!

But now, facing a worldly god—Zhou Chang vaguely remembered Zhou Sanji or Yang Rui once saying that a divine banner was eternal and indestructible, so a worldly god formed by attachment to a divine banner could never be killed!

Impossible to kill!

Impossible to grasp!

This was a worldly god!

Zhou Chang drew in a deep breath, then held it.

He raised his eyes and stared at the Grass-Headed Dragon Wraith's tail—that chain of golden light condensed from imperial edict, dragging Wen Yongsheng's headless body brimming with offering-thoughts, swaying unsteadily behind, following the Grass-Headed Dragon Wraith, about to sweep past Zhou Chang.

As the Grass-Headed Dragon Wraith unconsciously chanted the secret spell and true words related to the Heavenly King of Treasures, the golden light chain was already covered in square-holed copper coins.

Coin after coin kept eating into the imperial edict, rusting the chain links, bringing the chain to the verge of snapping.

When this chain snapped, the Grass-Headed Dragon Wraith could indeed 'fly free as a bird in the sky,' but the offering-thought aggregate connected to the chain would also plummet completely into the mortal world, and the tangled offering-thoughts would flood Qingyi Town—

When the time comes, how many uncanny creatures will sprout in this crop field that the Heavenly King of Treasures has claimed in Green Garment Town?

All those uncanny creatures will be food for Zhou Chang's corpse!

Now, Zhou Chang attempts to make that Gluttony Thought Aggregate detach ahead of time—

This headless body of Wen Yongsheng, sinking forever in the spring at the bottom of the cellar pool, the people outside will never discover its existence, and from now on this wine cellar will be sealed away forever—then perhaps it could live in peace with the people outside.

If this Gluttony Thought Aggregate had not been carried out of the wine cellar by the Grass-Headed Dragon-Chang and brought into the crowd, perhaps every outcome would have been entirely different.

But Zhou Chang had no handy tool, no effective method—he did not have the slightest confidence of pulling it off.

"Shwaa!"

Clusters of Iron-Thought Silk wrapped around Zhou Chang's hands; following his will, they kept twisting and tangling, forming jagged, saw-toothed blades.

Zhou Chang lowered his eyelids, doing his best not to observe the Gluttony Thought Aggregate dangling from the Grass-Headed Dragon-Chang's tail—the moment his gaze met that headless corpse, the terrifying Gluttony Thought would instantly plunge him into all manner of inescapable hallucinations!

He listened to the sound of the golden-light chains swaying, and when that sound rang right beside his ear, the saw-toothed sickle blade in his hand suddenly latched on!

"Chira! Chira! Chira!"

Zhou Chang madly sawed at that golden-light chain!

He could feel that chain, under the cutting of the sickle blade formed by Iron-Thought Silk, splitting open with cracks—the cracks growing ever wider, until finally one entire link was sawed clean through—

The whole golden-light chain snapped into two pieces because of that single link!

That headless body of the Gluttony Thought Aggregate seemed to have fallen along with it into the wine sea of the cellar, which was madly rising!

Zhou Chang's heart eased—

He lowered his hands and cast his gaze down at the ever-rising wine sea.

In the wine sea floated many headless corpses, but among all those headless corpses, not a single one was that Gluttony Thought Aggregate.

Zhou Chang turned his head to look outside the wine cellar—

The Grass-Headed Dragon-Chang, dragging the headless corpse behind it by the golden-light chain, drifted and swayed, floating out of the dim inner chamber…

Zhou Chang's attempt had not worked in the slightest.