# 403
**Chapter 403 – Petrification**
The Snake Woman stared at her empty hands, then at the three familiar boxes in front of Lin Qiye, her expression frozen in disbelief.
Those couldn’t possibly be…
No,
Impossible!
When did he…?
Lin Qiye, as if reading her thoughts, spoke calmly, “Curious how I pulled it off?”
He turned the three boxes around. On the corner of each was a faint, crude array mark—small, uneven at the edges, looking like it had been scratched in with something sharp.
“When it comes to tactics and schemes, you two are still way out of your league,” Lin Qiye said flatly.
Long before Lin Qiye and An Qingyu confirmed the Church of the Ancient Gods’ involvement, they had guessed the duo’s confidence in targeting the [Phoenix] Squad came from these three mysterious black boxes. So when they devised their plan, priority one was neutralizing whatever threat the boxes might pose.
Lin Qiye’s side had no edge in strength, terrain, or time. All they could exploit was the gap in timing and information between them and the Church pair—plus the fact that everyone still wore masks.
Thus, while passing a certain building, Lin Qiye summoned Li Yifei from the psychiatric hospital, had him throw on Lin Qiye’s coat and mask, and keep playing “Sun Wukong” so the two Church members stayed relaxed. Meanwhile, Lin Qiye himself used transformation magic to become a rat, slipped into the swarm, and performed a classic golden-cicada shell game.
An Qingyu had been stunned, but Lin Qiye fobbed it off as “summoning magic,” keeping the Asylum of the Gods hidden.
Of course, the Church pair could hardly be blamed—who could imagine that one of the five who entered the fog would suddenly become six, while the original “one” could erase his presence and vanish into a blind spot?
The moment Rat-Lin Qiye shed his shell, he scurried to where the two Church members were and quietly etched his own summoning arrays onto the three black boxes, then slipped away again—removing the danger while keeping them complacent, buying his side more time.
What followed was straightforward: seeing Baili Pangpang and the others grouped up, the Snake Woman struck, while the sand-controller chased the “bait.” Using that window, Lin Qiye located the hidden [Bell Cranel] and killed him outright.
A race against the clock—every step calculated by Lin Qiye and An Qingyu.
Baili Pangpang gawked at the black boxes, eyes shining with worship. He didn’t quite get what Lin Qiye had done, but it sure sounded awesome…
Lin Qiye lifted his hand from the boxes and regarded the ashen Snake Woman. “Kill her.”
He had no intention of wasting the boxes on her. If they held weapons lethal enough to threaten a special squad, using them on a cornered snake would be reckless—those boxes had a bigger role to play.
“Hehehehe…”
Mad Cao Yuan was a tireless war machine, wrapped in terrifying bale-fire, charging the Snake Woman again and again.
With her teleport range restricted to this tiny zone, her mobility plummeted. She could still flicker away with her snake-eyes, but wherever she landed, two other attackers were already in range.
The former cat-and-mouse queen now became the helpless mole in a brutal whack-a-mole game…
Cao Yuan was clearly having the time of his life—Lin Qiye could hear his maniacal grin grow several decibels louder.
Under the relentless assault, wounds multiplied across the Snake Woman; her swaps slowed. When she blinked near Lin Qiye again, the Straight Blade overhead flashed, lightning crackling as it slashed down!
The edge sliced her shoulder; lightning flooded her body, paralyzing her instantly.
Lin Qiye reverse-summoned to her side; a second Straight Blade pierced her heart. Utter darkness devoured her organs, her face contorting in agony as she shrieked.
“Damn you—damn you all!!” she screamed. “If I die, you’ll die with me!”
Before Lin Qiye could strike again, she pressed both hands to her eye-sockets and gouged out two gleaming yellow serpent eyes.
Blood poured from the empty holes. Cackling, she raised the eyes overhead. Every snake-eye carved on the surrounding walls sprang to life, glowing eerily, pupils twitching and swiveling as if searching.
In the next instant, thousands of petrifying eyes locked onto Lin Qiye and the others.
Gray spread across their skin—rapid stoneification.
“Not good!” Lin Qiye frowned, spinning the Cube of Chaos to scramble the walls.
But the cube needed time. Before it could shift everything, cracks spider-webbed across the walls.
He turned: Molly had driven her katana into the floor. One hand clutched her blood-soaked abdomen, face deathly pale, but the other gripped the hilt, channeling every shred of mental energy into [Universal Tremor].
Crack-crack-crack—!!
BOOM—!!
The floor beneath them shattered, gravity yanking the slab downward!
With the twenty-second and twenty-third floors already twisted free by the cube and floating in the night sky, there was no twenty-first floor below—only empty air.
Wind howled past their cheeks; weightlessness seized them. Molly, at her limit, eyelids drooping, began to plummet head-first.
“Molly!!”
Baili Pangpang yelled. A golden burst shot from his chest, becoming a flying sword. He stepped on it and dived after her!