Chapter 375: Devour, and Be Devoured
Moon Fairy realized the vast gap in their strengths in an instant. Even half-stuck, the Nian that had devoured the Primordial Guards was leagues beyond him.
With a vicious tear, the Nian entwined the four-tailed Moon Fairy and retracted its tongue, swallowing him whole. The beast's cavernous maw snapped shut, cleaving Moon Fairy into two as blood splattered in a gruesome spectacle.
"Delicious!" the Nian roared, its laughter echoing as it devoured the bifurcated Moon Fairy, sending him tumbling through its gullet into the abyss of its stomach, a pit of blood and gastric juices, where death loomed and life's spark dimmed.
Amidst this grisly scene, Moon Fairy, now reduced to a torso, crashed into the Nian's stomach, a vile chamber soaked in the blood of countless corpses, engorged from its recent feast and littered with undigested remnants of the Primordial Guards.
"Shit" Moon Fairy cursed under his breath, caught off guard by the overwhelming force. Any other would have perished by now, but not him, for he was endowed with the Divine Desolation Physique.
Within the putrid pool of blood, the half-bodied Moon Fairy's eyes snapped open with a fierce resolve. He knew the Nian would break free within a day, unstoppable by any. The reinforcements from the Primordial Ruins would not arrive in time. Should the Nian escape, it would ravage the lands in its frenzied quest for power, devouring all in its path...
"Not on my watch, beast!" Moon Fairy gritted his teeth, dragging his half-corpse through the acidic depths of the beast's stomach.
With a ferocious roar, he unleashed God Devourer, a swirling vortex of white that clamped down on the Nian's stomach walls, a malevolent technique birthed from the Will of Divine Desolation.
In the belly of the Nian, Moon Fairy, with a wild grin, tore off a chunk of the beast's flesh and gobbled it down. "Might as well be beef stew!" he chuckled to himself, feeling the surge of vast power from the bite, courtesy of the Seed of Creation within. Despite losing half his body, his spirit soared.
The Nian, in its final struggle to break free, never anticipated its own insides turning against it. Writhing in sudden agony, it convulsed, trapped by the pain.
Moon Fairy, now a mere snack it had swallowed, was fighting back, a twist the Nian hadn't foreseen. In response, the beast's innards transformed, sprouting dozens of serpentine vessels, each biting and tearing at Moon Fairy with ferocity, intending to reduce him to pulp.
Yet, even as Yun Xiao, connected to Moon Fairy from afar, felt the echo of this torment, a plan formed.
"Hold fast," Blue Star urged, "The Divine Desolation Physique isn't so easily vanquished. You've absorbed some of the Seed of Creation; redirect that power into its veins. Use its body as your own. If you succeed, its self-destruction is assured!"
Moon Fairy, reduced to a formless essence within the Immortal Asylum, latched onto the Nian's lifeline. In this bizarre feast of mutual consumption, he was at a disadvantage due to the sheer size difference. "If I can't outeat you, I'll become an unwelcome guest within you!" he roared, channeling the force of the Will of Divine Desolation into the Nian, shrinking as he consumed more of its flesh, a parasite turning the predator's body against itself.
In the end, the Nian devoured Moon Fairy quicker, grinding him into nothing but a memory and a smear inside its gullet. With a roar of victory that shook the heavens, it reared its head, veins bulging like serpents on its neck, smirking at the folly of its prey.
Like a monstrous newborn, it clawed at its prison walls, bones crunching, flesh twisting, desperate to break free from its aeons-old chains. The pain of endless captivity wasnt for the faint-hearted.
Energized by its meal, the Nian's struggles intensified, causing the Immortal Asylum to quake, stirring the otherworldly denizens from their slumber and adding an eerie tension to the air.
Just as freedom seemed within its grasp, its strength ebbed away in an instant, its head crashing down in a bloody heap. "What's going on!?" it blinked in disbelief, gazing at its suddenly feeble form.
It wasn't just a loss of strength but a complete betrayal of its own body. As it tried to claw its way out once more, its legs jerked backward, dragging its bulk away, leaving nothing but its head peeking out.
"Dammit!" The Nian was flabbergasted, its body rebelling like a horse refusing the bit. It made one last desperate lunge for freedom, only to be yanked back again, as if by an invisible lasso, leaving it floundering and utterly bamboozled by its own rebellious flesh.
So close, yet so far! In a fit of rage, the Nian roared, its face a twisted mask of fury. It felt something strange withina network of moon-white veins sprouting inside, weaving through its flesh like a new system, tugging at its muscles and bones alongside its original sinews.
These eerie, pale tendrils reminded the Nian of Moon Fairy, who it had just devoured.
"Impossible!" it thought, thrashing wildly to escape. Yet, those moon-white veins pulled back, contorting its body into a grotesque form, its organs twisted, bones and muscles torn asunder without yielding any escape.
Driven to the brink of madness, the Nian's mouth moved involuntarily, uttering in a voice not its own.
"How do I taste? It was the voice of the very Moon Fairy it had consumed.
In an instant, the Nian's face contorted again as it bellowed, "What in the hell are you?" The thought of something growing inside, wresting control alongside its own, was enough to chill any creature to the bone.
Such a bewildering turn of events left even the Nian, with all its worldly experience, utterly dumbfounded.
"What I was before doesn't matter," came Moon Fairy's voice once more, chilling in its calmness. "From this day forward, I am you."
With a roar of defiance, the Nian clawed at its own flesh in a desperate bid to extract the moon-white veins that had ensnared its very insides, entangling organs and bones in a cruel embrace. The more it pulled, the more it entangled itself, its own roars of agony echoing its torment.
"Face it, you're not getting out of this jam with me around. You might as well be back in the womb, getting ready for a do-over," Moon Fairy taunted with a chilling laugh.
The Nian howled, struggling against its own body, a gruesome sight of blood and broken bones. It was a battle on two fronts, against both the external world and its own rebellious flesh.
"Why bother?" Moon Fairy mused, watching the Nian's futile efforts.
"You'd understand why if you were locked up for a lifetime," the Nian retorted through its howls, dragging its battered form forward, slowly adapting to Moon Fairy's sabotage.
It seemed Moon Fairy's last-ditch effort only slowed the Nian's escape, hinting that a final resolution would require the true presence from the Primordial Ruins.
This whole ordeal could be summed up in two wordsutterly terrifying.
Back on the colorful divine ark, Yun Xiao was catching his breath, drenched in cold sweat, as the ark trembled slightly.
Then, a voice broke through, "Come out, we've arrived at the Primordial Ruins."
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