Chapter 215 The Needle In Chest
Chapter 215 The Needle In Chest
A hidden, needle-thin blade, completely black and dripping with a thick, viscous green liquid, shot out from a spring-loaded mechanism strapped to his right forearm.
I tried to twist away. My mind gave the order, but my broken, exhausted body simply refused to move fast enough.
The razor-sharp black needle slashed cleanly across my right thigh.
It didn't cut deep. It barely broke the skin, slicing through my torn hemp trousers and drawing a single, thin red line of blood.
For a fraction of a second, I felt nothing.
Then, the world completely stopped.
It didn't feel like fire. It didn't feel like the freezing ice of the Soul-Rot poison already sitting in my chest.
It felt like someone had driven a rusted, jagged iron spike directly through my soul.
A horrifying, absolute paralysis seized my entire body. I collapsed onto the mahogany floor, hitting the wood like a dropped stone. I couldn't brace my fall. My face smashed against the bloody boards.
A blinding, flashing red alarm completely hijacked my vision. The system text didn't just hover; it violently vibrated, accompanied by a deafening, high-pitched siren ringing directly in the center of my skull.
\[CRITICAL ALERT.\]
\[Foreign Contaminant Detected: Abyssal Blood-Venom.\]
\[Toxin Classification: Lethal Demonic Accelerant.\]
I stared at the wood inches from my eye. I couldn't blink. I couldn't breathe. My lungs were completely locked.
The new venom surged through my veins with terrifying, predatory speed. It found the freezing Soul-Rot poison already festering in my chest and merged with it. The two Demonic toxins violently reacted, creating a highly corrosive, boiling sludge that flooded directly into my newly formed Foundation Establishment core.
My Qi, the delicate, golden energy I had nearly died to cultivate, began to literally rot.
I could feel it dying. It was a physical sensation of profound, absolute emptiness. The golden light inside my core turned a sickly, bruised purple, then shattered entirely, dissolving into black mist.
My mouth fell open, but I couldn't scream. A thick, dark foam bubbled past my lips, spilling onto the stage.
Vane lay a few feet away, laughing. It was a wet, broken, gargling sound, blood pouring down his chin.
"You don't kill," Vane wheezed, his completely black eyes staring at me with absolute, victorious malice. "That is your weakness. You leave the snake its fangs, and you wonder why you get bitten. Your Foundation is gone. You are dead."
The heavy, metallic clanking of armor shook the stage.
The remaining eighty guards, having finally overcome their shock at seeing a Demonic Elder beaten to the floor, surged forward. They completely surrounded us. A wall of rusted iron, hooked sabers, and cruel, scarred faces enclosed the stage.
I lay in the puddle of my own dark foam, my vision tunneling into a narrow, dark circle. The pain was entirely gone, replaced by a terrifying, hollow cold that promised an absolute end.
A shadow fell over me.
Baek Jin-Woo stood over my paralyzed body.
He didn't look at the Demonic Elder. He didn't look at the eighty guards closing the circle. He looked down at me, his dark eyes taking in the black foam bubbling from my lips and the horrific, unnatural stillness of my limbs.
"Mu-Kang," Jin-Woo whispered. His voice broke, completely shattering under the weight of sheer, absolute terror.
He dropped to his knees, grabbing my shoulder. His hands were shaking violently. He pressed two fingers against my neck. His eyes widened. He could feel my pulse rapidly slowing, the rotting poison consuming my heart beat by beat.
"Kill them!" a guard captain roared from the edge of the circle. "Take their heads for the town lords!"
Dozens of sabers were raised high into the smoky air, catching the flickering light of the crystal chandeliers.
Jin-Woo didn't stand up to fight them. He stayed on his knees beside me.
He reached into his torn, blood-soaked blue robes. He pulled out a small, tightly sealed ceramic vial. It was the only thing he had left of his Orthodox past—a high-grade, pure Yang energy pill meant to treat fatal battlefield wounds.
He didn't hesitate. He crushed the ceramic vial in his bare hand, ignoring the shards of pottery cutting his palm. He forced my jaw open and shoved the pure, glowing white powder directly down my throat.
The Yang energy hit my stomach like a falling sun.
It didn't cure the poison. It couldn't. The Demonic venom was too potent, too deeply embedded in my ruined core. But the violent clash of pure Yang and absolute Yin inside my body shocked my heart into a massive, brutal contraction.
My lungs violently unlocked.
I gasped, sucking in a massive breath of ash and smoke, coughing violently as the black foam sprayed across Jin-Woo’s robes. I could move my right arm. The paralysis was broken, but the rot remained.
"Can you stand?" Jin-Woo demanded, grabbing the back of my tunic.
"Yes," I lied, my voice a wet, ragged gurgle.
He hauled me to my feet. My legs felt like wet paper, completely devoid of any Qi or strength. I leaned heavily against him, gripping my iron chain with a trembling hand.
The guards closed in, perfectly synchronized. They were ten feet away. Eight feet.
"They locked the doors," I wheezed, staring at the solid wall of iron armor. "We have nowhere to go."
Jin-Woo gripped his straight sword. The deep blue Qi coating the steel didn't look clean anymore. It looked chaotic, desperate, and heavily tinged with the red of his own blood.
He looked back at the terrified villagers huddled near the velvet curtains. Then, he looked up at the massive, blazing crystal chandelier hanging directly over the center of the audience, suspended by a thick iron chain hooked into the cavern ceiling.
Jin-Woo’s eyes hardened into absolute, cold steel.
"If there are no doors," Jin-Woo stated, his voice ringing with a terrifying, unyielding resolve. "Then we make one."
He didn't swing at the guards. He aimed his blade straight up.