Chapter 694: Inside Si Fang Palace
"Clap! Clap!" The black-shirted player clapped his hands in midair, and not far from them, two black-armored figures who had just gotten up and were about to attack stumbled and fell flat on their faces again. He looked at where Xu Huo was standing. "Our goal is achieved. Time to retreat!"
Xu Huo was wearing an invisibility cloak. The black-shirted player and Yi Pei couldn't see his form, but they could track his position by the sound of his movements. However, the next second, his voice came from ahead. "Since we're already here, of course we have to go in and take a look!"
The main gate of Si Fang Palace hadn't been blasted open. He guessed that time-space items were being used inside the palace, because the new energy weapon had failed under the influence of time-space items. The power of that last strike clearly hadn't reached the original intensity of the energy cannon. That meant the time-space items inside, while affecting the cannon's power, weren't strong enough to completely neutralize it...
There might be a turning point in this instance!
Although the main gate of Si Fang Palace hadn't been breached, cracks had appeared on it. The scattered black-armored figures regrouped in front of the gate. Xu Huo unleashed a few more bursts of fire, but as expected, Si Fang Palace wouldn't burn. The black-armored figures, whose clothes and skin were on fire, showed no fear of the flames.
The black-armored figures blocked the way one by one, forcefully pushing him away from Si Fang Palace. Bullets rained down from ahead like a storm. Xu Huo rapidly shifted positions, sweeping aside the black-armored figures in front of him with a single sword strike. Then he silenced his movements, bypassed the black-armored figures, and charged toward the gate.
"Boom!" A curtain of sword light appeared in front of the gate. After the light faded, it had actually created a crack in the door!
But by then, his invisibility suit was useless. The black-armored figures quickly fell back to defend. They didn't need to lock onto a target at all; they simply bombarded the empty space in front of the gate indiscriminately!
Just then, a surge of air fluctuation came from behind, and all the black-armored figures briefly experienced a delay in their actions!
The black-shirted player glanced at Yi Pei in shock. The latter ran off without looking back. "I can only hold it for a few seconds!"
In reality, Yi Pei had even exaggerated the interference effect of the item. At most, two seconds passed before the black-armored figures returned to normal. Those that had been entirely focused on the main gate of Si Fang Palace suddenly turned their heads, their skinless, eyeless faces staring at them.
A gap had opened in the main gate of Si Fang Palace. Yi Pei and the other player had created an opportunity, but they didn't know if Xu Huo had managed to get inside. They could only help this much!
"Go!" the black-shirted player shouted. Not just the two of them, but several other players who had rushed over from a distance all turned and fled.
Successfully snatching the large drum might reduce some of the mental interference, but the black-armored figures were their biggest threat at the moment. To survive, they had to escape from the black-armored figures!
The black-armored figures near Si Fang Palace split into two groups. One group turned to chase Yi Pei and the other players, while the other group remained stationed outside the gate. They didn't enter Si Fang Palace but stood guard at their original positions as if nothing had happened.
If not for the wreckage on the ground, the burning corpses and houses near and far, and the people screaming in the flames, it would have seemed like time had returned to the beginning of the ritual.
Xu Huo stood on the nearly pitch-black first floor. Looking up, he could see a massive eye sculpture directly ahead. Crimson light poured out from within the palace. Staring at it for just two or three seconds, the giant eye would writhe and come to life.
The enormous eyeball rolled left and right, finally fixing its gaze on the person standing below. A beam of red light shot out from the pupil, shining directly on him.
Bathed in the crimson light, Xu Huo seemed involuntarily to open his eyes wider, then took off his invisibility cloak.
The giant eye turned to the left, and he also looked to the left.
The giant eye turned left again, and he looked left once more.
A wet, squelching sound came from the angrily trembling eyeball. Xu Huo saw that the direction the giant eye was hinting for him to go was completely devoid of light. In the depths, something seemed to be watching him, pulling him to enter.
"Do you hear any sound?" Xu Huo turned back to look at the giant eye.
The constantly rotating eye quieted down. Gradually, faint, indistinct voices replaced the sound of the eyeball moving, echoing through every corner of the palace.
As the voices grew louder, the motionless eyeball suddenly trembled violently. The red light on it vanished abruptly, and the eyeball returned to its previous inanimate state. With the red light fading, the first floor of Si Fang Palace reverted to its earlier darkness.
Although it was hard to see clearly, it wasn't as completely black as the direction the eye had hinted for him to go.
On the first floor of Si Fang Palace, besides the main hall enshrining the giant eye, there were corridors about five or six meters wide on both sides. Without turning off the "Orb of Murmurs," Xu Huo raised a lighting item and headed to the right, opposite the direction the giant eye had suggested.
Two minutes later, he came across an identical corridor before a turn. He paused briefly and knocked on a window. The next second, a dark red light seeped in from outside, and the entire corridor seemed instantly soaked in blood. Eyes opened one after another on the walls and ceiling. Moving eyeballs stared at him from different angles and positions, and the red light grew heavier!
Feeling an unprecedented pressure, Xu Huo immediately opened a door in front of him and went from the first floor to the second floor of the palace.
His externalized spiritual realm normally wasn't enough to cover such a large area, but he knew upon entering that Si Fang Palace was also a place for exerting mental power. That meant while the instance boss was using mental interference to control him here, he could also take the opportunity to open his own spiritual realm.
But the moment he opened it, he felt a sharp pain in his brain, and he immediately understood that his evolution level couldn't match the instance boss's. He couldn't stay here long.
Of course, he wasn't about to leave just like that.
Putting on the diamond gloves, he poured a mixture of pollutants and pathogens into his hand and, as he walked, smeared it on various parts of Si Fang Palace.
But to his surprise, Si Fang Palace seemed to have a suppressive effect on the pollutants. Within just a few seconds, the liquid he applied shrank, dried up, and solidified into something like a thin film.
"Ha..." A heavy, rasping breath came from the end of the corridor. Before Xu Huo could turn around, he felt a gust of wind rushing at him. He jerked his head to the side, and a massive axe grazed his shoulder, plowing a trench into the floor!
"Straight line distance!" He broke into a run. The moment he left, the spot where he had been standing was torn apart by something like a tentacle. At the far end of the corridor from which the tentacle had come, a colossal figure seemed to loom, with several eyes glaring sideways!
Xu Huo only glanced at it before frowning. The monster didn't reveal its full form, but each of its human-head-sized eyeballs was packed with countless tiny human eyes. The most bizarre part was that those tiny eyes could still move and see!
He immediately threw the invisibility cloak back over himself and turned to run forward.
"Gulp!" With his first step, an eye grew out of the floor beneath his feet, staring fixedly at him!
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(Chapter End)