Chapter 278: The Price of the Alternative

The downpour continued.

Bone fragments swirling across the sky mixed with viscous black gel, raining down a disgusting hail on this rainy night.

"God" now only remains a shattered husk.

Ouyang Feng's bone armor that once covered his entire body had crumbled into powder, half of his body a blur of flesh and blood, his left arm vanished, and the once haughty expression on his face was now full of shock.

He looked like a wing‑clipped bird‑man falling from the clouds, teetering atop the ruins.

"It's over."

A cold, indifferent voice pierced the rain.

Below, the man in a black Windcoat slowly raised his right hand.

With his movement, the towering Shadow Demon behind him, dozens of meters tall, simultaneously lifted its jet‑black arm.

It was a massive hand made of pure darkness, fingers splayed, with a chilling ghostly aura coiling around the tips.

There was no fancy technique.

Just a grab.

The Shadow Demon's giant hand ignored spatial distance, wielding an unreasonable brute force, and seized Ouyang Feng in midair!

Crack—!

The crisp sound of bone shattering rang especially clear in the rainy night.

"Aaaah—!!"

A harrowing scream tore through the sky.

Ouyang Feng struggled; the Bone Spike behind him grew wildly, trying to pierce the black hand that bound him. Yet before absolute power, those spikes—capable of piercing steel plates—were as fragile as toothpicks, snapped off the moment they emerged.

"Give it to me, come down."

Jiang Yuan's palm yanked down forcefully.

Boom!

The Shadow Demon's giant hand, like swatting a fly, slammed the man who boasted himself as a New God hard onto the mud‑slick, rubble‑strewn ground!

The earth itself trembled.

Dust rose, and fragments of stone splintered.

At the center of the several‑meter‑deep pit, Ouyang Feng curled like a dead dog, black blood mixed with shredded organs spurting from his mouth.

He tried to rise.

But a foot clad in combat boots stamped heavily on the back of his head.

Jiang Yuan looked down from his height, gazing at him.

A guttural "gurgle" sounded from Ouyang Feng's throat; his eyes fixed on Jiang Yuan, filled with venomous resentment and unwillingness.

He didn't understand.

He clearly possessed a Wish Bottle.

Why did he still lose?

And lose so disgracefully!

At that moment, a heart‑pounding hum rang out.

The surrounding flesh‑and‑bone walls mutated from Tongzi Lou, though stripped of Core control, still writhed wildly on instinct. Countless tentacles, like rabid dogs without a handler, began indiscriminately attacking everything nearby, trying to devour more flesh to mend themselves.

"It's noisy."

Not far away, the man in a haute‑couture suit frowned.

Chen Shao, one hand in his pocket, let his scarlet left eye flicker slightly, scanning the surrounding twitching megastructures.

Boom—!!!

An indescribable terrifying pressure descended from the heavens!

Within a hundred‑meter radius, the air was compressed by this force, emitting a booming crack.

The blood‑fleshed tentacles brandishing claws, and the bone walls still proliferating, were in that instant held down by an invisible hand of a god.

Pop—crackle!

The dense explosions merged into a roar.

The mutated structures, towering dozens of meters, were brutally crushed under this psychic pressure!

Concrete shattered, Reinforced Steel Bar twisted, flesh turned to mud.

The Bone City, which had been trying to strike back, turned into a flat wasteland within three seconds.

After completing all this, Chen Shao didn't even miss a breath. He disdainfully brushed a speck of dust from his suit cuff, then walked gracefully to the edge of the pit.

He glanced at Ouyang Feng, trampled under Jiang Yuan's foot, and his brow furrowed deeper.

"Really ugly."

Chen Shao gave his assessment, "Is this the evolution you chase? Turning yourself into this inhuman, un‑ghostly monster?"

Ouyang Feng's body trembled.

It was anger pushed to the extreme by humiliation.

He is the pride of the heavens!

He was once the ace of the Federation Investigation Bureau!

How could he be trampled so by these two aberrations!

"I... haven't lost yet..."

A hoarse roar forced out of Ouyang Feng's distorted mouth.

His only remaining right hand clutched tightly the porcelain‑white bottle.

Wish Bottle.

That was his last hope.

"I haven't lost yet!!"

Ouyang Feng screamed hysterically, raising the bottle high, his blood‑stained fingers rubbing the bottle frantically, "Give me power! I want to kill them! No matter the cost! Give me power ah ah ah!!"

He was praying.

Praying to a weird thing.

Jiang Yuan didn't stop him, just coldly watched the scene, even moving his foot a little to give him space to perform.

Chen Shao let out a snort, the look of someone seeing an idiot.

The porcelain bottle trembled slightly in Ouyang Feng's hand.

The abyss that was originally pitch‑black like ink at the bottle's mouth suddenly flashed a strange red light.

Joy burst in Ouyang Feng's eyes.

"Hahaha! I heard it! It heard me!"

He laughed wildly, the expression on his shattered face twisted to the extreme, "You're done! I'll tear you apart limb from limb! I'll devour this city completely!!"

The red light grew brighter.

A cold, ancient, malicious aura surged from the bottle's mouth, instantly enveloping Ouyang Feng's whole body.

However.

The next second.

Ouyang Feng's manic grin froze.

Because that power did not flow into his body to strengthen him; instead... it was like a greedy maw biting his soul!

A scarlet slip of paper slowly oozed out of the bottle's mouth.

On it was a single line of crooked characters, as if freshly written in blood:

【Determination: current situation insufficient to pay the price, switching to realized form.】

"What... what?"

Ouyang Feng widened his eyes, pupils contracting sharply.

Before he could react, countless tiny, blood‑vessel‑like flesh buds appeared on his hand.

These flesh buds raced up his arm wildly!

Splurt! Splurt!

That was the sound of flesh being pierced.

"Ahhhhh!"

Those flesh buds drilled into his skin, his veins, his bone marrow.

Gloop. Gloop.

A horrifying swallowing sound rang out.

That was him being "eaten".

"Idiot."

Chen Shao shook his head, mockery filling his demon eye, "You borrowed from a loan shark and can't pay the interest—what did you think the consequence would be?"

The Wish Bottle's rules are fair.

The bigger your wish, the higher the price.

Ouyang Feng wished to become a god; the price is three million lives.

But he failed.

The "Bone City" capable of devouring a city, which Jiang Yuan and Chen Shao had jointly collapsed, lacked enough sacrifices.

Since the sacrifices were insufficient...

Then we'll use the wisher himself to make up the difference!

"No......"

Ouyang Feng was afraid.

At this moment, all his ambition, pride, and madness collapsed under the soul‑devouring agony.

He reached out toward Jiang Yuan, as if seeking help, yet also longing, and perhaps regretting.

Jiang Yuan watched the hand reaching for him, already withered like dry wood.

Once upon a time.

That hand told him what responsibility was, what protection meant.

Once upon a time.

This man stood before him, wielding that "Death Dragon" to slash countless weird things.

But now.

Jiang Yuan saw only a fawning, begging stray dog.

"Captain Ouyang, sorry."

Jiang Yuan's voice was soft, soft as a raindrop falling into a puddle, "When you swung your blade at the innocent, when you sacrificed the whole city for power......"

"That Ouyang Feng is already dead."

Jiang Yuan turned away, no longer looking at him.

The black windcoat flapped in the rain.

"Now you're just a gambler who hasn't paid his debts."

"No!!!!"

Ouyang Feng let out his final despairing wail.

That sound was so mournful it seemed impossible for a human to produce.

Immediately after.

A bone‑rubbing sound that made the scalp tingle rang out.

Ouyang Feng's body began to wither and collapse at a speed visible to the naked eye.

His flesh was frantically drawn out, his skin turned into grayish dead husk, and his eyeballs burst from dehydration.

But he did not die.

Or rather, the Wish Bottle would not let him die so easily.

It was squeezing out his last value.

Since it cannot kill three million people, it will become a tool that can.

Like the original Human Skin Paper.

Clack clack clack clack—!

Ouyang Feng's spine suddenly began to grow backward, piercing his withered back skin, emerging like a white poisonous snake.

His skull began to melt, his jawbone elongated, merging with the spine.

His limbs fractured, twisted, reversed, finally becoming a Weird hand‑guard‑like structure.

Just a few short seconds.

That once stormed the heavens as the Federation's ace had completely vanished.

In its place.

was a knife floating in midair......

a long knife made entirely of pallid bone.

Its blade was slender and slightly curved, covered with fine red lines like veins, those lines still pulsed faintly, as if living blood flowed within.

The hilt was a twisted human spine, and the guard a skull reduced countless times in size.

That was Ouyang Feng's skull.

Its mouth was gaping, as if silently roaring, the hollow eye sockets radiated endless resentment and unwillingness.

An extremely fierce aura emanated from this Bone Knife.

Just a glance made the eyes ache, as if even the line of sight were being cut.

Rain that fell on the blade instantly vaporized into a red Blood Mist.