Chapter 512: Blood and Flesh Holy Sound

Abandoned heavy industrial zone, No. 3 smelting workshop.

Rusted steel beams crisscross overhead, broken conveyor belts hang down, forming an emptied skeleton. The air reeks of iron rust and some kind of rotten sweet stench.

Jiang Yuan stood in the shadow of the workshop entrance, silent.

He raised his hand, making a downward pressing gesture.

Behind him, the five vanguard team members crouched low, spreading out against the abandoned machine tools. No one spoke, even their breathing was suppressed to the minimum.

Deep in the workshop, dozens of figures in gray robes circled a rusted smelting furnace, kneeling on the ground, murmuring indistinct prayers.

Gospel Church.

Jiang Yuan's knuckles twitched; a black poker card slid out from his card bag and was pinched between his fingers.

"Target confirmed." He issued the command with the lowest airflow from his throat, "Cleanse, leave no survivors."

As his words fell, the shadow beneath his feet came alive.

That was no ordinary shadow. Jet-black shadow rose from the ground, coalescing into more than a dozen faceless humanoid shapes, which silently lunged at the group of gray-robed believers.

Before the first believer could react, his throat was seized by a shadow hand, and he was dragged into the blackness beneath the ground without even a scream escaping.

Chaos erupted.

The gray-robed believers screamed and rose to their feet; some began to mutate, bulges swelling under their skin—signs of aberration.

Jiang Yuan flicked his wrist.

Four poker cards flew from his hand, tracing low arcs, piercing the four heads that had just swollen.

Precise. Cold. No superfluous motion.

On the battlefield, he had never been the nervous, stammering youth.

Gunshots, howls, and the muffled thuds of his shadow troops rending flesh blended together. The vanguard members coordinated with his shadow servants, pressing the front line inch by inch deeper into the workshop.

In less than three minutes, over half of the gray-robed believers had fallen.

Too smooth.

A chill ran up Jiang Yuan's neck.

He stopped.

The remaining dozen or so believers did not flee.

They ceased struggling, ceased mutating, and in unison turned around, their faces showing a weird, almost joyful expression.

"Praise......"

The leading believer spread his arms and lifted his head.

"Praise descends......"

Jiang Yuan's pupils constricted.

"Scatter!" he roared, "Don't let them gather together!"

Too late.

Those dozen or so believers simultaneously detonated themselves.

It was not an ordinary self-destruct. Their bodies burst from within, blood, flesh, bones, and viscera spewing out, yet instead of scattering, they were drawn by an invisible force, gathering, coiling, and rising toward the furnace.

Blood and flesh piled and shaped in midair, sprouting countless mouths of various sizes.

Those mouths opened and closed, emitting uneven hums.

At first it was low, like someone blowing air near the ear.

Then those hums coalesced into a melody.

A...... hymn.

The crew member beside Jiang Yuan, Lao Zhou, was the first to be affected.

His protective earplugs buzzed and failed; he clapped his hands over his ears, and a non-human gurgle welled up from his throat.

The next second, Lao Zhou's hand began to melt.

Not from fire; his flesh was collapsing, oozing, flowing downward from the fingertips, dripping inch by inch.

"Cap... Captain..." Lao Zhou lifted his head; half his face had already turned into a red-and-white mush, exposing the bone beneath.

Jiang Yuan's throat tightened.

Another team member collapsed. Young female member Xiao Lin didn't even have time to shout before her whole body went limp, seeping into the ground cracks.

That hymn continued to sound.

The construct of piled blood and flesh fully formed above the furnace, having no fixed outline, only layers upon layers of mouths eternally chanting.

Zhun S Ji, Rule System.

Jiang Yuan ran through the name circled in red on the briefing in his mind.

Blood and Flesh Holy Sound.

The rule is simple: as soon as one hears its hymn, the flesh begins to melt and assimilate immediately.

His own ears began to buzz; the skin on his neck and the back of his hand felt an itch and pain as if countless ants were gnawing at them.

He lowered his head and glanced.

The skin on the back of his hand was blistering and splitting, a bloody gash tearing open.

We can't stay here.

Nor can we let the others remain here.

Jiang Yuan turned around; behind him, three team members remained, each undergoing varying degrees of metamorphosis but still able to move.

"Withdraw." He gritted his teeth, each word tugging at the split flesh on his face, "Get out, don't look back."

"Captain, what about you——"

"Shut up!"

Jiang Yuan didn't waste any more words. He raised his hand, mobilizing the power of the Shadow Ghost within his body.

Massive black shadows surged from the ground, raising a high Shadow Wall in the center of the workshop, separating that flesh-and-blood creation and its hymn on the inner side.

At the same time, another wave of shadow troops turned into countless hands, lifting the three team members and forcefully pushing them toward the workshop Exit.

"Captain!"

"This is an order!" Jiang Yuan turned and shouted.

The three team members were shoved by shadow hands, stumbling and crashing out of the workshop's main doors.

With that door's slam, Jiang Yuan's Shadow Wall also folded together.

He sealed himself, together with that flesh-and-blood hymn, within this rules field.

The hymn did not stop.

Even the Shadow Wall couldn't help. Rules don't obey physics. That hum pierced straight into his mind, bypassing ears, bypassing all defenses, landing on his soul.

Jiang Yuan's body began to collapse completely.

Skin peeled off in large sheets, exposing the muscles and fascia beneath. Blood dripped down from his chin. His vision started to blur, and one leg could no longer exert force.

The countless mouths on that creation sang even more joyously, celebrating another tribute about to be obtained.

Jiang Yuan knelt on one knee.

The pain was so fierce it threatened to shatter his consciousness into fragments.

He gasped, watching his hands dissolve, watching the last few unused Poker Cards between his fingers.

Ordinary means were useless.

Physical attacks couldn't reach the Core of that creation. The hymn was a rule; it couldn't be blocked or evaded.

What else could he do?

Jiang Yuan closed his eyes.

The outside world—melting pain, deafening hymn, iron‑rust stench—was all sealed beyond his eyelids.

He let his consciousness sink downward.

It sank into the darkness inside his body.

Shadow Ghost Abyss.

This was the source of his power, and also a cage. Inside it were all the Weird resentments he had swallowed over the years.

When consciousness fell in, countless eyes opened in the darkness.

The Spider Humanoid's, The Butcher's, Rain Night Butcher's… those things he had personally subdued, suppressed, devoured, all turned into vague Fierce Ghost shadows, surging from all directions.

They roared, they shrieked, and lunged at him.

Countless resentments coiled around his soul, burrowing in, biting, trying to completely devour the will of this "human host", turning guest into master.

This was the opportunity they had waited for a long time.

Jiang Yuan stood in that ink‑blackness, his soul's form being gnawed, gradually becoming transparent.

He didn't dodge.

He even smiled slightly.

That smile held no fear, only a near‑mad stubbornness.

"Nice try."

He opened his eyes—opened them in the spiritual world.

"I am the hunter."

He swung a fist at the first Fierce Ghost shadow that pounced.

"You are not our vessel."

That punch had no technique, no flourish.

It was simply a person, using the hardest, most direct will, smashing those things that tried to devour him.

He recalled the day he first picked up a Poker Card.

He recalled the sentence Wei Gong had said: "A new direction for human evolution."

He recalled the seniors who fell behind him, dying to protect the human defensive line.

He recalled Lao Zhou and Xiao Lin, who had just turned into a pool of blood.

He could not fall.

What he needed to guard was still behind him.

Second punch, third punch, tenth punch.

Jiang Yuan, in the spiritual Abyss, directly clashed with all resentment shadows.

His soul was torn open again and again, each wound re‑coagulating.

Those Fierce Ghost shadows began to retreat.

For the first time, they saw on this human host something they could never possess even after death—

The living breath that refused to accept fate.

In the deepest part of the Abyss, the darkness that formed the origin of the Shadow Ghost quivered violently.

It emitted a long, sharp wail.

Then, within that wail, a low growl of submission mixed in.

In reality.

Jiang Yuan knelt in the rules field of the flesh-and-blood hymn, his whole body reduced to a blood‑soaked outline.

His eyelids moved.

In the next beat, his eyes suddenly opened.

The pupils that originally belonged to a human were swallowed by an extreme darkness from within, leaving not a speck of white.

The flesh and blood around him that were in the process of dissolving and collapsing came to a halt.

Immediately after, together with the Shadow Wall that wrapped around him, it burst outward in all directions.