RBCT Chapter 1001 Aftermath
Chapter 1001 Aftermath
"Yes." Mr. Xun nodded. "Although the ancient beast is currently awakening, its consciousness is still in a state of semi-consciousness, instinctively releasing its giant claws and strange beasts to clear threats from its body. It is not fully awake yet, so although our space for movement is compressed, it is not completely locked down. However, once the altar is forcibly closed, it will be like someone has stabbed it hard in the head. The pain and anger will make it fully awake in a very short time. At that time, not only the four of us, but the entire arena may be destroyed along with it."
Mo Yuan's face turned ashen.
"What should we do? We can't shut down the altar, and we don't know where the seven sealing array eyes are. Are we just supposed to sit here and wait for the ancient beast to fully awaken?"
"The altar must be closed, but not abruptly." Mr. Xun's gaze fell on the crystallized remains in the center of the altar. "The Soul Summoner has been able to maintain resonance for so many years because of his remaining wisp of divine soul. If we can first erase that wisp of soul, making the active end of the resonance connection disappear, and then repair and adjust the runes on the altar, changing it from resonance amplification back to sealing suppression, then cutting off the resonance will not stimulate the ancient beast—because for the ancient beast, it's not that something is churning in its head and then suddenly disappears, but rather that the thing that has been churning for so many years has stopped operating on its own. It might be confused for a while, and then continue to sleep."
"I can try to repair and adjust the runes. Although I've never seen these rune systems before, all runes follow the basic laws of source energy circulation. Give me some time, and I should be able to find a way to adjust them..."
As soon as Mr. Xun finished speaking, a very faint cracking sound suddenly rang out in the hall.
The sound was very faint, like a thin piece of ice cracking in the palm of one's hand, but the nerves of the four people present were already stretched to the limit, and they reacted almost simultaneously—Mo Yuan held his knife horizontally in front of him, A Jiu crossed her two daggers to protect her chest, Lin Qiye raised the tip of his spear slightly in the direction of the sound, and Mr. Xun reflexively activated a spare defensive talisman in his hand.
The cracking sound came from the altar.
On the altar's base, a black bone plate covered in twisted runes suddenly developed a crack. The crack was extremely fine, like a hair embedded in the bone, but it was slowly extending at a visible rate, producing a crisp sound like thin ice shattering with each inch it extended. The runes along the crack gradually dimmed, and the faint, fluorescent blue light that had flowed within them extinguished one after another, like a candle flame being extinguished.
Then, the second bone plate developed a crack. Then came the third.
The cracks spread slowly, but not randomly—they spread from the outer edge of the altar toward the center in a specific order, as if executing a program pre-programmed over a long period of time.
"The altar is self-destructing." Mr. Xun's expression changed completely, his voice filled with the panic of a formation master seeing their life's work destroyed. "It's not external destruction, it's the internal structure disintegrating on its own—the Soul Summoner set up this altar with the conditions for self-destruction pre-programmed. It might be sensing the approach of outsiders, or the ancient beast's awakening reaching a certain threshold, or perhaps... someone has already been here."
"Someone's already been here?" A-Jiu's voice suddenly rose. "You mean, before us, someone entered this hall and triggered some mechanism on the altar?"
"Not before us." Mr. Xun's gaze was fixed on the crystallized half-body remains in the center of the altar, his voice low and hoarse. "It was a long time ago. That person's appearance triggered some kind of early warning mechanism on the altar, but the altar did not immediately self-destruct because that person did not fully trigger the conditions. This self-destruction program was delayed—delayed by at least several hundred years. And now, the countdown has just reached its end."
Before the words were even finished, the black bone plate at the center of the altar trembled violently. The cracks covering the altar's surface converged simultaneously in the final instant, unleashing a blinding fluorescent blue light that illuminated the entire hall as if it were daytime. Within the light, the black bone plate at the altar's base began to crumble piece by piece, turning into countless tiny bone fragments and fluorescent blue dust that drifted in all directions.
At the heart of the altar, the crystallized half-body remains, which had maintained its posture for countless years, finally began to change—the clasped crystallized hands slowly loosened.
The moment the remains released their grip, an extremely condensed beam of fluorescent blue light shot into the sky from the center of the altar, striking the translucent blue crystalline membrane of the hall's dome and creating ripples. The beam of light did not pierce the dome, but instead spread outwards along the crystalline membrane, guided by it to flow into the massive skeletal pillars supporting the dome, and then back down through the pillars, forming a complete energy loop.
The fluorescent blue light of the entire hall suddenly intensified several times over at this moment. The crystal clusters that were originally embedded in the bone pillars and dome seemed to be injected with new energy and began to pulsate in an extremely regular rhythm—a rhythm that was exactly the same as the beating frequency of the ancient beast's heart.
"The All-Heavens Soul-Guiding Array," Master Xun murmured, his voice filled with an almost obsessive awe, which quickly turned into deep fear. "The essence of this altar is not sacrifice—it is a soul-guiding array. The one who summons the soul did not sacrifice himself to the ancient beast; he refined his own soul into a catalyst to draw some higher being from an unknown, distant realm. The All-Heavens Soul-Guiding Array is a great array that has been lost for countless millennia. Once the array's foundation is destroyed, the aftershocks will be enough to affect the entire Canggu Mountain Range."
"What is the aftermath?" Mo Yuan asked sternly.
"Energy release. The dark energy accumulated over countless millennia by the entire altar will be released all at once in a short period of time. We cannot withstand the impact of this energy head-on; we must find a shelter—"
Before Mr. Xun could finish speaking, the ground beneath his feet suddenly trembled violently. This tremor was completely different from the rhythmic tremors caused by the ancient beast's heartbeat—it was more intense and chaotic, as if countless forces were exploding simultaneously deep underground. Cracks appeared on the translucent gray keratin layer on the hall floor as the tremor caused dark red fluid to gush out from the cracks as high-pressure fountains, splashing onto the cave walls with a sizzling, corrosive sound.
Mr. Xun was interrupted halfway through his sentence because the ground beneath his feet suddenly trembled—this tremor was more violent than any of the previous ones, completely arrhythmic, pure and violent, as if the entire mountain range had been grabbed and violently shaken by an invisible giant hand.