Chapter 94: The Unsolvable Lamp Lady
Inside the secret chamber, Su Xiao put down the diagnostic sheet. On it, there were three clues.
1. The Dynasty and the Sun Church were guarding a secret, which was the cause of the beast transformation disease.
2. The origin of Patient No. 72.
3. Patient No. 5, the seventh-stage beast transformer, was actually the old knight he had met a few times before.
Su Xiao hadn't expected this. Only a few obscure clues confirmed it. First, the old knight's height—over three meters tall, not something an ordinary person could have. Second, the old knight's vitality.
When he first saw the old knight facing the Nightmare King one-on-one, Su Xiao noticed the old knight was injured. But back then, the old knight had been hit by a [Blazing Sun's Wrath · Apollo].
Now it seemed that before being bombed by Apollo, the old knight was already injured. Then he got hit by Apollo, and afterward suffered a surprise attack from Zuiyasi.
After being corroded by ancient god energy for so long, the old knight was still in a severely wounded state. Yet in this condition, he managed to snatch the [Scroll Fragment] from the Blazing Sun Monarch.
No matter how he looked at it, the old knight shouldn't have lasted this long. With all this intel, Su Xiao still hadn't realized the old knight was a seventh-stage beast transformer. Partly his own mistake, partly because he was misled by the Trace King in Room No. 5. The Trace King in Room No. 5 was who he had believed to be the seventh-stage beast transformer all along.
As for the secret the Dynasty and Sun Church were hiding, there were no leads yet. Su Xiao even wondered if everyone in the know was already dead.
Finally, Patient No. 72 was the Lamp Lady. As Su Xiao had guessed before, the Lamp Lady was indeed a joint creation of the Sun Church and the castle doctors.
From her figure, even if she wasn't a beauty before, she was at least a killer from behind. Now she had been transformed into a monster guarding the depths of the nightmare.
The Lamp Lady was undoubtedly a pitiful person, but Su Xiao felt no sympathy. Given the current situation, within this nightmare, the Lamp Lady was invincible in one-on-one combat.
The main purpose of creating the Lamp Lady was to prevent the old knight from returning to the castle ward to seize the Painter's Blood. In other words, with the nightmare castle ward's scene buff, the Lamp Lady could go toe-to-toe with the beast-transformed old knight.
If Su Xiao ranked the major bosses of this world by combat power, it would be:
Sun Bird · Taihakak (located in the Sand World) → Old Knight (beast-transformed, anywhere) → Lamp Lady (inside Nightmare Castle Ward) → Donkey Bro (Blazing Flame Lord) → Blazing Sun Monarch (Blazing Sun Monarch and Donkey Bro are not the same person; Donkey Bro is the Blazing Sun Monarch's ancestor) → Nightmare King.
From this, it was clear that going head-to-head with the Lamp Lady was very unwise. This was evident from Zuiyasi's earlier actions—he had no intention of fighting the Lamp Lady and immediately played dead, which was very smart.
The Lamp Lady had one most unsolvable trait: Pain Split. Attacking her would cause her to split into "same-phase individuals," meaning another Lamp Lady.
The split Lamp Lady still had the Pain Split trait. If a sustained large-area ability was used, you'd be facing a group of Lamp Ladies, and then the Lamp Lady's turbid light would be unavoidable.
During this process, the Lamp Lady had a main body. Her main body would devour the "same-phase individuals," enhancing her Pain Split ability for a certain period.
Suppose the Lamp Lady devoured one "same-phase individual." Then the Pain Split trait would become: each time she took damage or pain, she would split into two "same-phase individuals."
According to the castle doctors' statistics, the Lamp Lady's Pain Split could stack up to 10. That meant attacking the Lamp Lady's main body once would cause it to split into 10 "same-phase individuals."
Besides this, the Lamp Lady in the nightmare had another trait: after her main body was killed, as long as there were "same-phase individuals" she had split off, her origin would transfer, turning that "same-phase individual" into the new main body.
This was a vicious cycle. To kill the Lamp Lady, you had to attack her, which caused splits. Attacking the splits caused more splits. Attacking the splits of splits caused the splits of splits to split. It was an incredibly disgusting, endless matryoshka doll.
Want to catch the thief by catching the king first, only attacking the Lamp Lady's main body and ignoring the splits? First, that would cause a huge number of splits to appear. The splits were easy to kill, but their attack power wasn't weak. Ignoring them would come at a terrible cost.
Even if you kept attacking the Lamp Lady's main body and killed it, as long as there were splits, the Lamp Lady's origin would enter a split's body, turning it into the main body.
All of this was limited to the nightmare castle ward. Outside this nightmare, the Lamp Lady didn't have the "Pain Split" ability.
Su Xiao checked his sanity value. It was now 129/215 points. He had to inject a sedative in 5 minutes and 50 seconds.
The Lamp Lady was still waiting outside. Su Xiao had less than six minutes to create a method to deal with her. This seemed impossible, but with enough known intel, bold speculation and practice might not make it completely hopeless.
Su Xiao took out various items and placed them on the desk. After pressing the timer, he began working.
……
Inside the Unknown Painting World.
Cotton-like burning ash floated in the sky. With less than an hour of sunlight each day, a layer of gloom hung over the place.
This was where the ancient city was located. The ancient city had another name: the Last Refuge. It was the least affected area in the Painting World by the disaster. But now, this last paradise had also fallen.
A sun stained blood-red hung high in the sky. The edge of this sun showed a ring of black. This black was deep and heavy.
The sun was almost blackened, indicating that the beast disaster in the ancient city had reached an extremely severe level. This place was no paradise. The beast disaster, which should have descended gradually, was suppressed by the special environment here and suddenly erupted one day, causing the ancient city to fall in a short time.
At the center of the ancient city, the buildings had disappeared. No, not disappeared—they were filled in. The corpses of beast transformers piled up, burying the buildings and forming a giant corpse mound over a hundred meters high. From a distance, it looked like a black mountain, even taller than the ancient city's outer walls.
On top of this horrifying corpse mountain sat a figure in worn-out armor. It was the old knight.
The lower part of the old knight's helmet was broken, revealing a beard that hadn't been trimmed in a long time, now somewhat matted. This messy beard was tied with a thin red string. Long ago, when the old knight returned to the ancient city, a little girl saw his messy, untrimmed beard. She untied the red string from her hair and helped him tie his beard. Now, the knot was very loose, and the red string's color had faded with time. The words: "Knight grandpa, you have to come back," the old knight still remembered.
"Doctor, in the end, I... lost to the beast."
The old knight stood up from the corpse mountain, his brown-yellow pupils looking at the sky.
A drop of black liquid fell, as if dripping from the sun, or appearing out of nowhere. It landed on the old knight's shoulder, seeped through the pitted, worn armor, and entered his blood.
……
Main Painting World · Castle Second Floor · Sanctuary Hall, Room No. 5.
The room was less than ten square meters. A faint light shone from above. A gaunt, skeletal old man in tattered clothes sat on a stone platform. He was like a withered dead tree. The golden crown on his head was dim and lusterless. The brilliance of gold was covered by stains, becoming subdued.
This was a Trace King. Not powerful, but crucial to this world.
Under the light from above, the castle Trace King's eyes opened. They were completely black, with nothing but darkness.
"Oh? Having cut out your own heart, you finally understand the meaning of your existence, beast."
The castle Trace King stood up and walked forward. After pushing open the door, he followed the stairs, passed through the corridor, and reached the reception hall on the castle's first floor. An easel and canvas stood by the wall. The Young Miss, sitting on a high stool, held a brush with her thumb, index, and middle fingers, ignoring the Trace King passing by.
The castle Trace King came to a wall with four paintings. He stopped before the third painting, which was sealed with chains. He slowly raised his hand and pressed it against the chains.
"Where do you think you're going? That's where you should be." The Young Miss pointed her brush at the fourth inner painting. Her cold voice continued: "Once, you were the only Trace King who chose to flee, the escaped Lushuman."
Hearing the Young Miss's words, Trace King · Lushuman turned his head to look at her. Seeing that the Young Miss was not yet the true Painter, he entered the third inner painting.
……
Nightmare Castle Ward, Deep Secret Chamber.
Su Xiao screwed the bottom cover of a lantern shut. After repeatedly confirming the array inside was correct and the energy pathways were stable, he took out a sedative and injected it. His sanity value quickly recovered, fully restoring in 5 seconds. This cleared his mind a lot, no longer as groggy as before. The feeling of being eroded by madness was unpleasant.
Su Xiao picked up the lantern and walked toward the secret chamber's exit. He held the lantern in his right hand and grasped the mechanism lever to open the door with his left. He was about to face the Lamp Lady.