Chapter 856: Chapter 96: Desireless
In that instant, a myriad of images flashed through Sun Hang’s mind, but the resurrected blade whip clearly lacked such complex brain activity. After breaking free, it roared and charged at Sun Hang—like Qi Delie, it had devolved into a beast that acted solely on instinct... No, to be precise, it was even less than a beast; at least beasts feel fear and would choose to flee when encountering an unbeatable enemy.
But the blade whip wouldn’t. Like Ling Xiao, it had lost all emotions, fear included.
The blade whip, now weaponless, used its fingers like claws, slashing at Sun Hang’s face and throat. With a flash of silver light, the head of the blade whip was instantly severed from its body, tumbling more than ten meters away.
The headless body stood frozen for a moment, twitched a few times, and then fell to the ground with a thud.
"Let’s go," Sun Hang said to the Candle Dragon and Xue Yue.
But they hadn’t taken more than a few steps when movement sounded from behind them once more.
Turning back, Sun Hang saw the headless body of the blade whip crawling on all fours to its severed head. It picked up the head and pressed it onto the neck.
A multitude of muscle fibers sprang from the neck’s wound, reattaching the head to the body.
The blade whip, after "reattaching" its head, turned its gaze back toward Sun Hang and his group.
"Ignore it, let’s keep moving," Sun Hang said.
He didn’t want to waste too much time on the blade whip—due to its dying wish, it had become an immortal monster, continuously resurrecting under the influence of "desire," regardless of how it was killed.
With no eerie entity involved, to destroy it entirely, its body would have to be crushed and burned at the molecular level. Sun Hang could accomplish that, but he didn’t want to waste time and energy on such a harmless creature—it simply wasn’t worth it.
The spear embedded in the ground began to shake violently, and with a crisp sound, an invisible force lifted it into the air.
The next second, the spear transformed mid-air into a set of highly intricate shackles, quickly wrapping around the blade whip’s body.
The blade whip struggled desperately to break free of the shackles, but the invisible force easily pressed it against the wall. Then, dozens of long spikes attached to the shackles plunged deeply into the wall, pinning the blade whip firmly in place.
Sun Hang cast one last glance at the blade whip—these shackles were beyond what the creature could break free from with its own strength. To escape, it would have to destroy its own body structure as before to liberate itself from the shackles. Therefore, Sun Hang had designed the shackles to be extremely complex. The blade whip would probably have to dismantle itself into dozens of pieces to break free...
This "dismantling" process would take at least a few hours, enough time for Sun Hang and his group to make a round trip inside the mine.
After shaking off the blade whip, Sun Hang easily located the airtight door that had appeared in his memory, leading the Candle Dragon and Xue Yue into the metallic tunnel.
At the tunnel’s exit lay three skeletonized corpses. These must have been the three mercenaries killed by Qi Delie. Unlike the blade whip, they didn’t have the chance to feel a dying "wish not to die," and thus weren’t resurrected by eerie powers.
Sun Hang merely glanced at these three corpses before shifting his gaze to the very center of the rock-layer cavity.
It was empty; he saw nothing.
"Hmm?" Sun Hang turned to look at the Candle Dragon, who now stood as if immobilized, breathing more and more rapidly.
White frost spread from his feet, subtly extending toward Sun Hang and Xue Yue.
"Xue Yue!" Sun Hang activated emotion vision, instantly seeing a shadow behind the Candle Dragon grow into a gigantic demon-like figure, towering over a dozen meters, glaring menacingly at him, "Absorb Candle Dragon’s negative emotions!"
"Okay!" Xue Yue immediately responded—she was not influenced by the "desire," saving Sun Hang the trouble of initiating Plan B.
In Sun Hang’s plan, he had devised two strategies. Plan A was to use Xue Yue’s ability to absorb the negative emotions of both himself and the Candle Dragon, thereby controlling the "desire"; Plan B would be necessary if even Xue Yue was affected by the "desire," leaving Sun Hang with no option but to execute the final stratagem: escape.
Xue Yue took a deep breath, and an invisible force enveloped the towering shadow resembling a demon. The shadow deflated like a burst balloon, transforming into a swirling black vortex that entered Xue Yue’s body.
The shadow hadn’t fully developed facial features; all Sun Hang could see was a large, gaping maw, silently roaring in fury. The personified shadow of negative emotions was unwilling to succumb to its fate of being devoured but could not resist against Xue Yue, its natural adversary, without even a chance to fight back.
"Did this shadow formed from negative emotions somehow develop self-awareness?" Sun Hang pondered, "Or did this so-called self-awareness stem from the Candle Dragon’s negative persona?"
