NOVEL WEB Chapter 9: Chapter 9: The Judge's Wrath: Demon-Slaying Sword Unleashed, No Survivors!
Annihilation incarnate loomed!
Light and Darkness! The Verdict-Crimson Filament versus the Abyssal Malice Claw!
At the fatal instant where needle met thread, infinitely close to my brow—they collided!
*BOOM!!!!*
No mere physical detonation—this was obliteration at the level of cosmic law!
The entire spacetime domain, frozen by sanguine radiance!
Detonated as if seeded with a billion microscopic singularity bombs!
At the point of contact, a nucleus of absolute darkness coalesced—a devouring void!
Then—
An indescribable torrent of annihilating force erupted!
Time! Space! Light! Sound! All physical laws! Shattered! Twisted! Pulverized! Reduced to primordial chaos!
Vision fragmented under the assault of blinding light/dark energy pulses!
The instant the pure Judgment-Crimson light clashed with the condensed Death-Black curse-claw—
The world didn't illuminate. It plunged into absolute, primordial darkness!
Not light extinguished—perception itself was excised!
As if an unseen fist crushed my eyeballs; vision drowned in absolute ink.
Hearing suffered a more violent assault the next millisecond!
The erupting torrent from the annihilation core held no conventional roar!
Instead—a frequency beyond human hearing—like billions of metal shards scraping at hypersonic speeds, stretched, twisted, torn into dissonant strings! It pierced my skull! Savagely grinding, shredding auditory nerves! Agony like having my thoughts flayed by invisible saws!
My body! Hurled into the primal singularity of the universe's birth! Within absolute chaotic energy turbulence! Every cell shrieked! Every nerve fiber pulverized by the data-storm! My soul felt rent by countless unseen hands! My spiritual anchor strained under transdimensional force—teetering on dissolution!
One thought remained:
Finished… Utterly annihilated… Not even ash will linger…
As consciousness teetered on the brink of dissolution, plunging toward eternal nothingness—
*HUM—!*
A surge of alien cognition—viscous, icy, reeking of decayed vegetation and stagnant sediment—forced its way through the near-shattered "Audial Phantasmagoria Headset · Modified Type One"! It flooded the dregs of my awareness!
Not sound—raw psychic data-pulses!
A voice! Bai Xiaochang (Vice-Commander, White Impermanence Second Platoon), frantic, distorted thoughts exploded:
[Can't hold! Lady Meng Po! Judge's wrath… Sword… Sword manifests!!!]
[Lock confirmed… Karmic anchor… Tearing… It's the Yang Plane coordinate embedded by that Life-Registry fragment years ago!! Pointing HERE!! Pointing to THIS FLESH VESSEL!!]
[Emergency Protocol!! Execute!! We cover the retreat!!]
[Only hope! Ingest it! Ingest that thrashing Karmic Origin-Spirit! Use her as a Soul-Shield of Mortal Essence! Block the Demon-Slaying Sword's first soul-scouring lock! Only then can the False-Death Pill trigger! Endure, My Lord…!]
*CRACK!*
The psychic data struck like chaotic lightning!
Ingest?! Ingest what?!
Karmic Origin-Spirit?!
Who?!
*"AIIIIEEEEEEEE—!!!"*
A shriek—inhuman, piercing enough to rend the Nine Nether Hells—erupted!
From my own throat! From my very core!
The sound wasn't human—more like the ultimate cry of a tormented wraith in the abyss of despair!
Simultaneously—
A plume of tangible black mist—viscous, icy, saturated with boundless resentment, defiance, struggle, and an infinite, violated fury—erupted violently from my solar plexus! It tore through cloth and flesh unimpeded—a tidal wave of ink!
The mist coalesced!
Less than twenty centimeters before me! Almost touching my nose!
Instantaneously solidified!
Manifested!!!
A feminine form! Sculpted from purest, condensed rancor!
Hair writhed like a nest of venomous serpents, obscuring most of her face!
Clad in tattered, rag-like white garments (vaguely ancient feminine attire)!
She (It) hovered, slender feet clear of the ground!
The face was the horror!
The right side, partially visible through the hair!
On paper-white skin!
Delicate, wriggling, blood-crimson threads—like living filaments—were deeply embedded! Carving a grotesque, twisted… cross?! As if forcibly sutured!
This crimson cross-seal! Now glowed like a branding iron! Emitting blinding scarlet light amidst the black mist! Violently trembling! On the verge of shattering—releasing world-consuming malevolence!
The "Karmic Origin-Spirit" Bai Xiaochang meant?!
That "female ghost"?! Ye Xiaomu?!
Forced into visibility by the Demon-Slaying Sword?! And my only fleeting chance at survival… was to devour this vengeful specter?!
The sheer absurdity and terror of the thought threatened to shatter my psyche!
Above!
The annihilating light/dark core hadn't vanished! Merely stalled by Sister Meng's condensed Death-Black curse-claw—briefly halting the world-ending crimson filament's descent!
In the absolute darkness!
Only through the psychic data-feed and spiritual sight could I "see"!
Sister Meng's spine-straight silhouette, engulfed in a churning vortex of Death-Black resentment!
Her left claw clamped the solidified tip of the terrifying crimson filament! The scarlet line, glowing like superheated chainmail, clashed violently with her obsidian talons! Silent shrieks of energy streamed forth!
At the junction of crimson and black—countless chaotic sparks, like primordial particle jets, sprayed violently! Tearing and annihilating the surrounding frozen blood-light!
She… she truly blocked it?!
But the annihilating pressure!
Merely delayed by a fraction!
That pure crimson line! Embodied the supreme, irrevocable, karma-severing power of the Demon-Slaying Sword!
Temporarily impeded!
Like an enraged apocalypse-dragon!
It emitted deeper, more terrifying vibrations!
Gathering force! Adjusting trajectory!
Preparing the next strike—one that would pierce everything!
Death's countdown didn't pause—it accelerated!
No time!
*THUD—CRUNCH!*
A heavy impact, like a drumbeat on thick iron, echoed! Sister Meng's shadow, straining against the crimson line, lurched violently!
Her supporting Death-Black domain shrank drastically!
Before me—the half-manifested, crimson-cross-sealed, agonized specter Ye Xiaomu! Her spectral edges were now touched by the annihilating blood-light! The rancor-mist composing her form melted like wax under boiling oil! Sizzling evaporation! A silent, soul-rending shriek only spiritual sense could perceive!
Ingest her!
Bai Xiaochang's data flashed desperately in my fading consciousness!
Ingest! Use the Soul-Shield! Trigger the False-Death Pill!
Instinct crushed fear! Survival surged like a volcano! Screw it! Anything to block that world-ending strike! INGEST!
As the crimson filament above coalesced into an even more terrifying point of destruction—poised for the final blow!
As Ye Xiaomu's shrieking specter neared dissolution under the blood-light!
I opened my mouth! Not a shout—a guttural roar from the abyss!
Towards that face inches away—a mask of writhing black hair and a crimson-cross-distorted visage!
I lunged! A savage bite!
Not physical—a soul-level devouring!
*GLURK—!!!*
No sensation of flesh tearing!
Instead—an inhalation of infinitely cold, viscous liquid soul-stuff—a vortex of resentment and despair!
The instant it entered—like billions of nitric acid-dipped needles! Piercing throat, esophagus! Scorching! Corroding! Excruciating! Numbing!
Cold! Malice! Curses! Defiance! Liquid soul-matter forged from condensed negativity! Like boiling aqua regia! Surging downward! Scorching organs! Piercing the soul's core!
Soul-deep agony—worse than dismemberment! As if every atom was injected with vile poison! Thoughts shredded by wailing, shrieking resentment! Every cell screamed in rejection!
*"Urgh… BLARGH—!"* Blood sprayed earlier on the phone hadn't dried! A larger gout of blood—tainted with soul-annihilation grey-black vapor and fragmented spirit residue—erupted uncontrollably! Vision drowned in crimson mist!
"Success?!" flashed a thought!
*HUM! HUM! HUM!!!*
Above!
The briefly stalled world-ending filament! Seemingly finished gathering force and correcting its path!
Like a bowstring drawn to breaking!
Energy condensed to its limit!
Detonated anew!
With absolute, annihilating finality!
Thicker! Denser! Overflowing with killing intent!
Transformed into a spacetime-piercing Spear of Crimson Damnation!
Aimed at me—now wrapped in Ye Xiaomu's thrashing, agonized "Soul-Shield of Mortal Essence"!
Aimed at Sister Meng below—straining against the previous strike's backlash, perhaps at her limit!
The ultimate execution descended!!!
This time!
Judgment arrived!
Unstoppable!
*"Hhh… hhh…"* I gasped like a stranded fish, convulsing from soul-agony and rejection, reduced to mindless twitching. I looked up in despair at the annihilating crimson spear.
That spear… bearing the supreme, karma-stripping authority of judgment! It pierced Ye Xiaomu's shield—a shield writhing in agony yet clinging desperately!
Ye Xiaomu's silent shriek ceased abruptly upon penetration!
Layer after layer of intangible soul-shield peeled, dissolved, vaporized!
The spear-tip!
Cold! Clear!
Pierced the skin of my forehead!!!
Annihilation! The next instant!
As soul-shattering terror drowned reason—
Sudden change!
*CRACK—!*
A faint sound—like crystal shattering under ultimate pressure!
From my trouser pocket!
The photo stuck to my leg—the one of Master and Zhong Kui, bearing the tattered blood-talisman!
On the photo!
Within Zhong Kui's eyes—pools of wrathful, abyssal judgment!
An ancient, near-vanished trace of crimson thread flared! Like a forcibly rekindled memory!
This thread! Fine as spider silk! Negligible against the annihilating spear!
Yet upon its appearance!
The world-ending spear-tip aimed at my brow! Twitched violently! Its karma-severing trajectory was forcibly tugged! Disrupted!
*SCHLICK!*
The spear pierced the final layer of soul-shield! Plunged deep into my brow!
AGONY!!!
Not the pain of pierced bone—but the soul-scorching torment of a white-hot poker twisting within!
My soul's anchor tore! Consciousness drained like a punctured waterskin! Vision burned pure white!
Yet—
Not utterly annihilated?!
Tugged by the ancient crimson thread in Zhong Kui's photo!
This soul-executing strike!
Though it struck!
Its intended effect—"absolute, causality-erasing obliteration"—was drastically weakened, distorted!
More like a white-hot, curse-laden needle! Piercing soul-defenses! Injecting lethal "venom"!
The soul-venom spread violently within my consciousness core! Devouring! Dissolving! Yet a sliver of awareness remained! Like meat twitching on a butcher's block!
Then—
A shard of icy, exhausted, yet relieved psychic data (Bai Xiaochang) forced its way through the headset's static:
[Venom… Venom injected… First lock complete… Soul fractured but alive… Causality False-Death Law triggered… Now! Lady Meng Po! False-Death Pill! Spirit-Sealed Coffin! NOW!!]
False-Death Pill?! The thing Master said was under the ashes in the urn?!
This thought—a drowning man's last straw!
*KER-THOOOOOM!!!!*
A sound heavier, more visceral, more rending than all prior collisions!
Not from above!
From… below!
From the very cement earth beneath this blood-lit hellscape!!!
The ground heaved like overburdened cardboard!
Cement cracked into spiderwebs!
An object!
A rectangular slab—radiating cold fiercer than millennia-old glacial cores… a massive bronze coffin lid?!
Exuding an entombing, spacetime-freezing aura of absolute extinction!
Like a primordial beast slumbering in hell's deepest pit awakening! Shattering the barrier between realms!
From the sundered earth!
Rising upward!
With irresistible, pure physical force!
Slammed! Collided! Rammed! Against the Judgment Spear embedded in my brow—still leaking soul-venom!
*KRA-KOOM—!!!*
An indescribable impact!
Law against law!
Energy annihilating energy!
Space tore into charred vacuum folds!
The instant the annihilating spear struck the bronze lid—
The condensed destruction-light burst like liquid across the cold bronze! Attempting to corrode! Devour!
But the ancient bronze surface! Faded kui-patterns writhed to life! Flowing with icy, deathly grey light! Forcibly solidifying! Freezing! Sealing the annihilating energy!
Stalemate!
The blood-light writhed like a frozen fire-serpent!
The bronze lid groaned under strain! Surface charring, cracking rapidly!
Yet it! Through sheer physical force!
Actually!
Truly! Truly! Truly!
Managed to lift the world-ending spear embedded in my brow!!!
*BOOM!!!*
Chain reaction!
The spear's main body, disrupted by this purely physical, upward force (however fleeting)!
Its trajectory through my soul was forcibly skewed! The venom-injection severed by a minuscule, chaotic disconnect!
That infinitesimal disconnect!
*Hum… Hum…*
A strange sensation bloomed from my soul's depths!
Not lessened pain…
Something more fundamental…
As if within the torn soul-wound, something ancient, nearly forgotten… was forcibly "awakened" by the venom's sting and the severed connection?!
Like dust blown from the deepest layer of the soul!
A mark…
Vastly blurred… Immeasurably distant…
Branded upon the primal spirit itself! Not a memory of Ye Thirteen's current life…
A burning, twisted… incomplete rune?… resembling "冥" (Underworld) or "敕" (Imperial Decree)… like a violently torn contract sigil…
Emanating a wisp of aura… ancient… detached… yet carrying indescribable, supreme authority…
The instant this aura manifested!
The injected soul-venom!
Like encountering its nemesis! Was forcibly repelled! Frozen solid! Instantly! At the edge of my torn soul! Forming a tiny, isolating rime of ice!!
The venom… temporarily sealed at the soul-wound's edge?!
Simultaneous with the venom's freezing!
Within my reeling consciousness!
A voice—cold, dead, like meltwater from eternal glaciers—no longer psychic pulses! Clear! Distinct! Whispered directly into my ear through the mangled, near-defunct headset!
Sister Meng!
Her voice held no rage, languor, mockery—only endless eon-weary exhaustion and the suppressed fury of a volcano:
"Nether Law manifests… Death Coffin clears the path… Spirit hides in Ninefold Darkness… ARISE—COFFIN! FERRY! OBLIVION! RIVER!"
As her final words pierced the frozen air like ice-daggers!
The massive bronze coffin lid, lifted slightly askew above the sundered earth—
Slid violently aside!
A soul-freezing, absolute current of entropic stillness blasted forth!
The coffin yawned open!
Within—
Not corpses or bones!
Boundless, starfield-solidified… pure black void!! As if connecting to the universe's ultimate emptiness!
Before I could react—
Irresistible suction erupted from the coffin's maw!
Like a black hole!
My body! Along with the venom-laden spear still embedded in my brow, locked in struggle with the bronze lid!
Instantly!
Engulfed by the terrifying pull!
Like a leaf in a hurricane!
Violently dragged! Towards the coffin's all-devouring, pure black void of extinction!!!