The red eyes fixed on the whale while two other pairs emerged from the shadows. Alm and Bruno advanced with laughter, entering the underground cavern, while Ruri remained standing at the entrance, her gaze concentrated.
A heavy silence enveloped the cavern, only the steps of the whale echoing until they stopped and turned towards the back. There, they spotted a gigantic body covered in runes, as if sealed; its thin skin resembled that of a mummy. Without a doubt, that was the true body of the ancestral cerberus.
Noticing the lack of response from the soul at the back of the cavern, Bruno observed the demonic diagram pulsating above the mummified body and sensed a strange connection between the diagram and the body. He also felt a subtle and almost extinct life force flowing from the diagram to the body.
After a few moments, Alm spoke, realizing the situation more clearly. ’Inside the body is the same infernal rune that we have. It is strangely linked to the demonic diagram.’
’Is he using the energy drawn from demons by the demonic diagram to sustain his body’s life? How did a mortal achieve this?’ Bruno concluded, astonished.
Alm then focused on the diagram and was stunned. ’This... there’s clearly a bit of the strange laws of the underworld there! We have to figure out how he did this; it could be a valuable clue on how to use this infernal rune.’
Bruno snorted and turned to the three pairs of red eyes watching them. "Why the hell aren’t you saying anything?"
The whale took a step forward in their direction, its eyebrows furrowing as it noticed the three pairs of eyes trembling in panic. They knew a bit about cerberuses; all those pure ones possessed three souls and three separate cores in the body. It should be something extremely powerful. However, as if the heavens tried to be fair, only one of the heads was born with real intelligence, while the others were like irrational beasts. This single head commanded the body and the others and interacted with the world.
As they approached, advancing deeper into the cavern, they clearly sensed something at the back, and their eyes gleamed. Then, they nodded, activating the Yin and Yang tattoos.
Bruno became slightly excited. ’It’s there! They couldn’t activate the storage seal as expected. Come back to my arms, my baby.’
With a crash, the earth wall violently cracked open, and something as heavy as a mountain emerged, floating quickly into the whale’s hands: it was its second bone club.
This second bone club was specially made for them, with a storage seal to deposit their Qi and a bit of the laws of the earth for emergencies.
They had a complete understanding of this seal and knew all its details. When they had to hand it over to the late patriarch, they quickly thought of something that could be useful. They said they needed to remove their mark on the weapon; then, they deactivated the storage seal, preventing it from being opened and keeping their things in it.
With this, they could activate their Qi and open it again when they were close to retrieve the weapon. It was a precautionary measure in case the patriarch tried to use it against them. In the end, it wasn’t necessary.
They held the gigantic bone club, and the floor of the cavern began to crack under its weight. The whale’s eyes quickly became furious as it looked at that bone full of red runes and smelled the strong scent of blood impregnated in it.
"You bastards; you contaminated my baby," said Bruno, feeling disgust for the macabre refinement art that involved the death of thousands of innocents.
The whale snorted heavily. The two tattoos on its fists pulsed, lighting up, and, in the next second, all the runes evaporated. When everything was clear, Bruno gently stroked that bone, and it returned to the spatial inventory.
Witnessing everything, the eyes in the background trembled violently with fear, and a roar echoed.
"WHO ARE YOU!?"
Those astonished words shouted in amazement echoed throughout the cavern, making the whale turn confusedly toward the source of the sound.
"Hm? Ah! You’re living just as a soul and can sense me, I see," said the whale, and its eyes gleamed. Soon, a subtle soul power manifested, causing an immediate reaction in the eyes.
"It seems the legends that you went to the divine realm were true; not even the patriarch had true knowledge of it in his memories," Bruno affirmed after confirming the assumption. "If you’ve been there, you’ve seen powerful souls, I don’t need to say anything."
"How... how did you manipulate that seal from another universe?" The voice sounded rapidly.
The whale’s eyes jumped, surprised, then focused tensely, and those eyes, in response, trembled even more. "I did. How do you know it came from another Universe?"
"You made... that infinitely powerful soul, and all those abnormalities... you came from another universe?!" The voice sounded astonished.
Alm and Bruno became even more serious, and the whale roared.
"ANSWER MY QUESTION!" Their entire soul power manifested, pressing that soul in front of them incisively.
"I am... I am the guardian hound of the underworld!" The voice said, trembling a bit. "My glorious bloodline allows me to interact with that sacred place. And the underworld is connected to all the laws of all universes, and all universes converge there."
Alm and Bruno were even more startled by those words, and with their silence, the voice continued.
"I can’t go to the underworld; but with my connection, I’ve already sensed something similar to that seal coming from there."
’The runic seal is a mystical blend of various different Daos, creating something completely unique and new... but... even the dwarves had knowledge of the forging god, who is someone from another universe. They also claimed that he had many disciples,’ Bruno analyzed coldly. (Chapter 191)
’If the underworld is connected to all universes, then it’s possible that the runic seal exists there. That explains a lot, especially how the forging god spread his knowledge to other universes,’ Alm concluded.
Bruno and Alm took a deep breath, focusing on the figure ahead with a bloodthirsty determination. "Yes, we come from another Universe. It seems you know a lot... great. We came before just to eliminate you; however, the knowledge of an ancestor is not disposable."
Eyes froze as they felt the dense nefarious intent. Then, as a reflex, the entire presence of that soul dissipated.
All the QI within the cavern stirred. A smell of decay enveloped the surroundings, mixed with earth and dust. At the same time, a bone-rattling echoed, accompanied by a dense infernal power.
The whale saw, from the back, the giant mummified Cerberus rising, activating all the little life left in the body in a desperate attempt to survive. Its bones creaked and popped, echoing the resurrection of an ancestral force.
In a soul confrontation, the Cerberus couldn’t win, so it didn’t try. Its only option was to use its almost-dead body. Despite its entire physique being destroyed, with only bones and skin remaining, its cultivation at the sixth level of Elemental Condensation was enough to deal with the whale. Or at least, that’s what it imagined.
The entire core was empty, without QI, but it possessed its infernal rune that held the power of infernal laws accumulated for millennia.
However, when it tried to move this power, the entire mummy petrified. Then, only its eyes moved forward in total disbelief.
Its gaze found something almost at the entrance of the cave that it had completely forgotten to consider: a human girl standing and looking at it. On her forehead, a rune was activated, seeming to eclipse all the light in the world. In her eyes, a subtle golden glow could be seen.
"My infernal rune..." He murmured, and then the soul suddenly recalled an ancient vision. Something he saw only once, far away in the divine realm, and that remained etched in him forever.
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"This should only exist in the divine world... impossible... an Empyrean!" He exclaimed, stunned.
Ruri simply activated her hero rune to control the infernal laws and prevent the Cerberus from using them. If this Cerberus had the QI from his cultivation to use, everything would be different, but with only the infernal laws, the power of the hero rune could completely dominate him.
This was something useful that she was already well familiar with and could use on her own. Unfortunately, she could only keep it active for a minute, and there was a significant QI consumption, along with the psychological strain it brought. However, it was already much more than she managed to use against the sea beasts in the small beach town; a result of her remarkable psychological growth, not cultivation. (Chapter 160)
The whale’s eyes lit up with excitement. With a simple movement, the mummy collapsed. In the next instant, that soul was inside the mental sea of Alm and Bruno. As it was a soul, it would be much simpler to read all its memories this way.
It was when the Cerberus soul saw the two looking at him that his consciousness seemed to jump. Alm and Bruno noticed this reaction and felt strange; there was no fear?
Then, the Cerberus seemed to draw some strange conclusions and turned his gaze back, remaining focused and trembling in the direction of Alm and Bruno.