Chapter 503

Ling Xinyu did not hesitate.

The action of her floating up from beside Lin Zhi was so light that even the surface of the black water did not ripple; but immediately afterward, her entire spirit body shattered into tens of thousands of azure light points.

Those light points did not spread outward.

Instead, they all surged toward Lin Fan's back.

Su Ming's pupils contracted to pinpricks; he wanted to shout "Stop her," his mouth opened, but his vocal cords were choked by the backlash of the time marrow worm—a mouthful of blood surged up from his throat, blocking all sound.

It's too late.

The azure light points pierced Lin Fan's back, spine, and limbs, merging into every inch of his flesh along his blood vessels and meridians. Lin Fan's body arched violently, veins bulging on his back, his bones emitting a series of sharp cracks.

His right eye's azure hue swelled wildly.

His left eye—the one that should have been human—ignited with scarlet fire.

The two colors burned simultaneously in Lin Fan's eye sockets, colliding and churning into an indescribable terrifying vortex.

Liang Wen's hand trembled.

It wasn't fear; it was his body making a judgment in place of his mind.

He had fought in Bone City, endured an S‑Class Anomaly Domain, and swung his blade before Ouyang Feng's wager of three million lives. He considered himself immune to fear.

But now.

The thing surging from Lin Fan's body made the hairs on the back of his neck stand up one by one.

Black water surged up from beneath Lin Fan's feet.

It wasn't the slow, seeping spread from before; the entire ground's black liquid shot up to ten, twenty, thirty meters in a fraction of a second—

The ceiling of the experimental chamber had already shattered. The black water column punched straight through the upper floor, wrapping concrete debris and steel rebar framework as it thrust upward.

That was no longer liquid.

It was a solid.

A black wave tens of meters high rose, its surface rippling with dense azure patterns—each pattern a vein of Ling Xinyu's resentful energy. Within the wave's interior, a girl's faint face could be seen—features blurred, only her eye sockets blazing with two clusters of blue flame.

Dual‑core resonance.

It wasn't a simple additive stacking as before.

It was an exponential qualitative change produced after the two souls fully meshed together.

Lin Fan spoke. His voice shifted two registers, male and female overlapping to form an eerie harmony.

"Move aside."

The two words hit the ground. The black water wave crashed down.

Su Ming crushed the blood foam in his mouth, the time marrow worm inside him frenziedly flipped, pushing his time‑deceleration field to maximum output. Silvery‑gray time lines burst from his eyes, compressing the flow of space within three meters ahead to 0.1.

The wave's front struck the deceleration field.

It slowed.

The black water was stretched into filaments by the time deceleration, its crests deformed and elongated, like a tsunami played in slow motion.

But it only held for half a second.

Azure netherflame erupted from within the black water, flowing upstream along the time lines and igniting the deceleration construct Su Ming had woven with his psychic power at its base.

It wasn't destruction.

It was contamination.

The time field was riddled with seven or eight holes burned by hellfire, its deceleration effect jumping from 0.1 straight back to 0.8—almost none.

Su Ming grunted, the wave's aftershock hurling him backward; his back slammed into the corridor wall, breaking two ribs. Blood filled his mouth faster than he could swallow, streaming down his chin in a line.

Liang Wen didn't have time to save Su Ming.

Because Lin Fan's blade had already arrived.

One strike.

A casually swung strike.

There was no fancy technique—just raise the blade and sweep.

The black water surge, wrapped in hellfire, followed the blade's arc and slammed outward, its width covering the entire corridor. Liang Wen raised his black‑flame knife to block, instinctively wanting to shout a chuunibyou line for courage—

"My black—"

He didn't finish.

At the instant the blades clashed, Liang Wen felt he wasn't dueling a person but being hit head‑on by a high‑speed train.

The flames on the black‑flame knife were smothered by hellfire; the blade sang with metal overload. Liang Wen's tiger mouth split, his feet gouged two deep grooves in the ground, and he slid backward over twenty meters, knife and all.

Then came a "bang."

A load‑bearing wall.

It was one of the few remaining load‑bearing walls on the third underground level.

Liang Wen's back was half‑embedded in the wall, rubble and dust raining down from above. His black‑flame knife remained clenched in his hand, but the blade now showed a web‑like crack.

He twisted the corner of his mouth, trying to smile, only to realize his jaw had dislocated when he moved it.

"...... fuck."

He dragged out a long, muffled whine, sounding almost like a spoiled child.

Su Ming half‑kneeled at the far end of the corridor, using his good hand to switch on the communicator. He no longer had the strength to formulate words, and into the microphone he uttered only five words.

"We can't hold it. Hurry......"

No reply had come through the communicator yet.

Lu Yu moved.

He had been leaning against the wall since earlier, taking no part, like an outsider. The hellfire‑burned wound on his left shoulder still smoked blue, and his left arm hung limp, useless.

But his right hand always pressed on that vortex on his chest.

After Lin Fan slapped Su Ming and Liang Wen away with one blow, he did not immediately pursue. He turned his head, his dual-colored peculiar pupils calmly settling on Lu Yu. Black Water coiled around his ankles, flowing slowly, carrying a certain arbiter's composure.

Lu Yu met that gaze.

His mouth corner didn't curl, and the depths of his eyes lacked the previous calm of strategizing. In its place was something akin to what a beast cornered to death would have.

Unconvinced.

Extreme unconvinced.

Before his rebirth, he had survived over a decade in the apocalypse, slaughtered who-knows-how-many S-class Anomaly Domains, even defeated the followers of a god—Sai Men. His survival never relied on luck or talent.

It was absolute control.

He controlled the Rules, controlled the situation, controlled every bit of his power output.

But today.

Not to mention he had his arm cut off by Lin Fan, now even two Core Captains blocking in front couldn't withstand the opponent's casual slash.

Lu Yu's teeth clenched.

Mental power poured into the black core at his chest.

It wasn't a regular infusion. It was shoving all reserves in at once. The rational voice in his mind warned—overload, the core can't withstand—

He ignored it.

The Taotie Core received this violent mental power, its spin speed surged, emitting a humming tremor. The sound filled the entire experimental chamber, even the shattered glass shards jumped on the floor.

Then.

There was no then.

The vortex did not expand into the "Xingtian" form as he commanded; it turned half a circle and jammed, like a misaligned gear engine, emitting a piercing metallic friction sound.

Lu Yu's complexion changed.

First time changing color.

Not pain. It was panic. Like when a precision instrument suddenly fails, the operator instinctively presses the start button three times with no response—that kind of panic.

The black core disobeyed.

The next second, the feedback from his chest left him no time even to panic.

Pain.

Not the pain of injury. It was a burning harm that welled up from deep in the marrow, from within the cell nuclei, turning outward. The edge of the black core churned out countless tiny flesh sprouts—blood-threaded, mucous-laden flesh sprouts—sprouting one by one from the vortex's edge, piercing his skin and clothing.

Boom.

Another lump.

This time it wasn't a flesh sprout. It was an eyeball.

Alive. The pupil still turning.

It squeezed out from the flesh seam on Lu Yu's chest, round and smooth, embedded in a mass of soft tissue, rolling around once, as if surveying the surroundings.

Lu Yu lowered his head to look at the thing sprouting from his chest, his pupil color black to the core.

He tried to suppress it with mental power.

No use.

Like using a palm to block a dam's flood.

More flesh sprouts burst through the skin, spreading along his chest toward the abdomen. The tip of each sprout twitched and grasped disorderly, instinctively trying to grab something.

He couldn't hold back, letting out his first anguished scream since his rebirth.

Not that he was tough and didn't cry out. It was his throat itself screaming. That level of pain had bypassed the jurisdiction of willpower and directly taken over the vocal cords.

Lu Yu's knees hit the ground. As he braced his hands on the floor, the devouring vortex in his right palm also began to tremble.

Immediately after—the flesh sprouts began to eat things.

Not picky.

Eat anything.

The nearest scrap of alloy was entangled by three flesh sprouts; the alloy surface showed corrosion-pit-like marks of consumption, and three seconds later it was dragged into the mass of flesh in Lu Yu's chest.

Then came a bracket of experimental equipment.

Then after that, half an operation table.

Lu Yu lay on the ground, his body uncontrollably gasping heavily; those flesh sprouts extended from his chest and abdomen, their scavenging range ever expanding. With each thing swallowed, the black core's spin increased by a notch, and the emitted hum grew sharper by a degree.

He struggled to lift his head, the veins on his forehead bulging one by one.

His lips moved, trying to say something, but only indistinct air and broken breaths came from his throat.

Lin Fan watched this scene, his grip on the knife not loosening.

But his steps stopped.

Not hesitation. He was judging—whether this thing could still be considered the previous "Lu Yu".

At the other end of the corridor, Su Ming also saw it. He leaned against the wall and slowly rose, his gaze complex.

No one noticed.

In the infirmary of Qiu Ce Yuan, a desk lamp was lit.

Chu Che sat before the desk, the lenses of his Gold Thread Glasses reflecting the screen's cold light. The editor's interface hovered before his eyes, above which Lu Yu's power-level curve was soaring at an almost vertical angle.

It had already surpassed the threshold line of regular S-class.

Still rising.

Chu Che raised his hand, index and middle fingers together, pushing the frame up his nose bridge. The fingertip motion was unhurried, like appraising a set of experimental data that met expectations.

"Core spin overload at 307%, bodily transformation progress—"

He paused, the corner of his mouth slightly curving into an arc.

"91%. Almost there."

The eyes behind the lenses showed no emotion. Warm and gentle, that was his usual expression when facing the operating table.

The curve on the screen was still rising.

Inside the experiment chamber.

Lu Yu jerked his head around.

That movement was not human. The angle his cervical spine turned exceeded 120 degrees, and the flesh at his neck twisted into an unnatural crease.

A pair of bloodshot eyes — not just two, the newly sprouted eyeballs on his chest also turned simultaneously toward the same direction — locking firmly onto Lin Fan not far away.

Granulation tissue burst out.

Dozens of them. They shot out from Lu Yu's chest, ribcage, and back, from every skin fissure corroded by the black core, carrying mucus and blood foam, lunging toward Lin Fan.

Their speed was more than three times faster than when it had previously devoured the remains.

Lin Fan raised his blade.