Returning to the Mysterious Era
Chapter 435 - Southern Dipper Disciple

Chapter 435 - Southern Dipper Disciple

Two swirling auras kept erupting in the chamber, turning the surrounding air thick as glue. Currents of air rushed out the open doorway as if desperately fleeing. The Evil Mother's figure gradually expanded, sending a massive wave of heat rolling through the air around her. Meanwhile, her limbs grew more slender and more graceful.

The black patterns on her skin gleamed like stars, writhing like countless weaving serpents, causing one's vision to blur. At last, they took on the appearance of mysterious runes, forming a suit of tight black armor. Its deadly aura left no doubt as to its formidable power.

"You... you..." A pleasant, enchanting voice rang out. The Evil Mother was attempting to speak, revealing that she was not an ignorant beast but had considerable intelligence. This was simply her first time possessing a body so her speech was quite awkward.

Cassius furrowed his brow slightly, feeling his Qi accumulate in his arms. He examined her from top to bottom. She possessed the face of a human female, with remarkably flawless features. She appeared even more alluring than Claire the Siren, and her blood-red pupils added a hint of depravity.

Her crimson lips, seemingly dripping blood, parted to reveal shark-like serrations beneath. "You... your aura... aura is not human... We... don't have to be enemies... can... can cooperate..."

Surprisingly, the Evil Mother extended a friendly overture toward Cassius, not assuming a combat stance but fixing her ruby eyes upon him. "We... we cooperate... eat humans together. You take four, I take six..."

Her words were succinct and forceful, imbued with a blunt sincerity. Though she was so earnest, Cassius seethed in fury. He wondered why people kept misunderstanding him. It had happened during his third time-travel at Black Rain Manor, the fourth time-travel of revenge, and now as well. He had lost track of how many believed him less human and more monster.

At present, however, the one doubting and slandering him was not even human—it was a dark creature! Cassius felt like the world was almost conspiring against him.

A surge of rage rushed from his chest to his mind, throbbing in his torso like a war drum. His two hearts began pounding twice, thrice, four times faster than before. The muscles across his arms and back swelled slightly while the blood in his bluish-black veins raced, transporting power all over his body.

Noticing his rising intent to kill, the Evil Mother looked puzzled and spoke, "Four not enough? Then make it five. All right, let's eat humans equally. Half each..."

"Hah? You're crazy! You dare stand before a human like me, offering a deal to feast on humans and slander me, a pure-blooded human, as a monster? I'll tear you to shreds!" Cassius thundered.

His Golem Qi burst forth wildly, as though a black waterfall was falling over him from above. When the inky torrent cleared, a looming figure more than three meters tall appeared before the Evil Mother. It towered, immense and imposing, its muscles resembling forged steel.

Cassius spread his arms slightly, revealing jagged protrusions on his shoulders that resembled armor plates, apparently formed by an exoskeleton. His skin gleamed with a metallic sheen, like a gruesome and weighty set of armor. A series of sharp bone spines ran down his spine, extending from the neck to the coccyx, jutting out to form a conical tail. Sparks crackled where its tip skimmed the ground. It was his Golem form, the full-power outburst of his body and Covert Martial Arts.

The Evil Mother was a highly perilous opponent. But she had never encountered such a singular dark creature, imbued with an almost regal presence. Cassius, who practiced Golem Covert Martial Arts, had a similar life magnetic field as the Dark Ultimate Form, the Golem. Its essence stood at a lofty peak, nearly atop the entire food chain.

Once unleashed, his aura could typically overpower most low-level dark creatures and suppress many of the higher tier. Yet now, in Golem form, he still failed to affect the Evil Mother. Both sides' lethal auras seemed evenly matched in that chamber, each occupying half the domain.

He had undergone five time-travels in total, but this was the mightiest dark creature he had ever encountered. It was far stronger than even the Dead Blood Amalgamation of the Blood Spirit Society's president. Therefore, he intended to fight with everything he had.

Boom!

He sprang forward, leaving a dent more than ten centimeters deep in the steel floor. Cassius rocketed forward like a tank as the bluish-black muscles on his upper body swelled. The entire room quaked, gusts slamming against the walls.

Crash!

The Evil Mother also acted in that same instant. Though she was confused about why another apex predator like Cassius was not willing to communicate nor contain his rage, she had no choice but to fight with full force.

A totem of a slender bird on her body lit up. Instantly, a sense of speed and agility infused her body. Then another totem flashed! This time, it resembled a beast formed of blood. A torrent of blood gushed out of the pores of her arms, shaping a heavy shield in front of her to block Cassius's punch.

Bang!

The looming black figure shattered the blood shield on impact. However, his fist missed its target by a hair's breadth, slamming into the steel wall behind her and causing the entire room to quake fiercely.

The metal barrier shrieked as spiderweb cracks fanned out in every direction. The center of the impact had a hole roughly half the size of a human body. Beyond that hole lay earth that had likewise been compacted by the force, producing a cavity nearly ten meters across.

Cassius withdrew his arm expressionlessly. For the first time, he showed a hint of caution. Inhaling deeply, his massive chest expanded.

Whoosh.

A cutting gale swiftly cut across the chamber. Cassius traversed more than ten meters in a heartbeat, appearing before the retreating Evil Mother like a phantom. His five fingers tore through the air, dragging an obsidian torrent of Qi in a savage downward blow!

Boom!

The ground trembled and the air rippled, but the Evil Mother thrust two palms behind her. At first, they remained slender and fair near her torso. However, the farther they extended, the more they swelled and hardened.

After extending over a meter, they transformed into grotesquely twisted, root-like fists of bulging muscle that collided with Cassius's own fists. Both opposing forces clashed like raging currents. It looked like a stalemate but the base of the Evil Mother's two arms had begun to crack, sending droplets of blood pattering onto her back.

She took the opportunity to counterattack, launching another four arms in unison with a thundering smash that violently compressed the air. They landed squarely upon Cassius's chest one after another, striking him near his heart.

Cassius neither dodged nor defended, choosing to withstand the hits head-on. The muscles of his upper body rippled like waves from the impacts. Strength blazed in his legs as he pushed forward. His overwhelming might shattered the Evil Mother's momentum. She hurtled backward, colliding violently against another steel wall. Cassius swallowed the blood gathering in his mouth and pressed forward, the room's atmosphere wrenching in the wake of his assault.

He tore through the wall the Evil Mother had crashed through, sending massive sheets of metal scattering outward. Amid the chaos, the two silhouettes, one chasing and one pursuing, blasted into the corridor, sounding like tanks rumbling in a chase.

Meanwhile, Zhu Hun was left behind in the corner, dying from the battle's aftershocks. His perpetually brooding face bore a wry smile. Just what monster had this experimental accident unleashed? Even combining his strength with Yang Yan might not have been enough for that Evil Mother.

More terrifying still was that a mysterious outsider was now utterly subduing her, having just vanquished four skilled combat artists working together minutes prior. In such a state of chaos, only their leader Xiadu personally intervening could restore order and return the test site to its original state.

However, that was likely impossible. The leader was an elusive figure, and not even Zhu Hun knew where he might be or if he was sealed away in slumber. Meanwhile, Cassius and the Evil Mother were already battling here.

He himself was so badly wounded that even standing and fleeing like a normal person would be difficult without some time to recover. Zhu Hun could only hope those two monstrosities would destroy each other, so he might somehow escape in one piece.

Inside the test site, the two figures repeatedly crashed and rebounded off each other. Their strength was already immense enough that a single punch could set the entire corridor trembling, yet their speed remained terrifying. Two black afterimages shot through the rectangular corridor and bounced off corners like beams of light. They left a fractured floor in their wake, and the walls riddled with fist-shaped craters.

Cassius unleashed his combat techniques to the fullest, turning every part of his body into a weapon. Knees, elbows, kicks, grapples, punches—countless Combat Techniques merged seamlessly, producing a frightening synergy. His fist techniques became more refined, each strike harnessing the maximum strength in his body.

However, the Evil Mother was no weaker. Her now six arms gave her a numerical advantage in limbs, and she was adorned with dozens of differently functioning totems that fused into a perfect combat system. Two or three totems lit up with every punch she threw, greatly enhancing that single blow by doubling her fist's size, boosting her speed beyond supersonic, hardening her arms, or unleashing scorching heat from her palms. An array of powers, all at her disposal.

It differed utterly from the shamans Cassius once knew. During his fourth time-travel, he had once faced two shamans claiming to hail from the Ten Thousand Mountains, each bearing a weapon totem—one a spear, the other a shield.

At that point, Cassius had only practiced Wind Elephant Covert Martial Arts, and it had been a harsh struggle. He had even been forced into a partial dark creature form. This showed how just one totem could endow a shaman with formidable might, to say nothing of the six-armed Evil Mother with dozens of totems she could deploy simultaneously.

From what he'd observed, she could also strip away and assimilate other totems, so she not only possessed immense strength now but also vast potential for growth. If her totems exceeded a hundred, or even several hundred...

At that point, it would be uncertain who was hunting whom... Given that the fight had begun, Cassius's first thought was to kill her and turn the test site into her grave.

Whoosh!!!

His fingers speared forward like a lance. His index and middle finger joined to form a crimson, blood-tinged tip that impaled one of her arms outright!

She shrieked, and the edges of her remaining five arms turned metallic black, striking forth like spring-loaded blades. Cassius had no choice but to pull back slightly.

The Evil Mother retreated swiftly, her totems flashing as she tried to regrow and heal her arm. However, potent Death's Fang Force now coursed through her, hindering the rate at which her flesh could mend.

A rasping sound of teeth grinding emanated from her severed limb, awkward and stilted. Clearly, she had lost that arm for now. This was the result of Cassius's recent efforts to enhance his acupoints, elevating Death's Fang Force to its third stage. His destructive energy could erode dark creatures at the level of top-tier combat artists, nullifying their immortality.

Of course, he could also deploy the fused power of his platinum sacred marks, which offered especially tremendous might. Though, that method wasn't entirely stable and remained in a testing phase. In a peak-level battle like this, any instability could be lethal. Until he comprehended the fusion technique thoroughly or reached a desperate crisis, he would not invoke the sacred marks.

Swoosh! Swoosh!

They raced into the hall near the transformation pool, one in pursuit and the other fleeing.

Cassius catapulted forward and unleashed a punch! The Evil Mother's feet scraped two long scorch marks on the ground, forcing her back several meters before she finally crashed against a wall and steadied herself.

Cassius's gaze grew ever more dangerous. This Evil Mother was far too resilient, worthy of her apex dark creature status. She enjoyed a wide margin of error in a life-and-death struggle.

He stepped forward slightly, foot hitting the ground with an audible thump.

Buzz, buzz, buzz...

Suddenly, the once-grayed vortex above the transformation pool began to stir. It slowly started to rotate again and turn transparent. The emerging scene inside was distinct: a sky still dark and land like a black swamp. On the ground, two figures—one looming like a mountain while the other frail and small—stood locked in a long confrontation, their totems clashing with scarlet energy.

The bronze colossus lifted its gaze straight toward the mirror. Totems separated and drifted away from it, traversing and emerging within the test site via the tablet. The instant the totems materialized, they flew straight into the Evil Mother's body. In an instant, the totems doubled, granting the Evil Mother a total of one hundred totems!

She threw a punch, sucking the hall's air inward in a reverse current, unleashing a massive sonic boom on Cassius.

In that critical moment... Screech!

A colossal crimson falcon appeared behind him, its beak and fist aligning. The Southern Dipper Red Falcon Fist erupted with full force, channeling all his power into one fierce strike!

The two forces clashed at breakneck speed, churning the air wildly. A hundred totems exploded simultaneously, forcing Cassius’s feet to carve deep tracks into the floor. Murderous light flashed in his eyes. He was about to use his ultimate move in those cramped quarters, or activate his sacred marks to unleash the fused power.

Suddenly, he heard another shriek as piercing as metal splintering stone, echoing near his ear. In the mirror, that withered old man confronting the bronze colossus abruptly lifted his head. His hawk-like eyes seemed to pierce through the distance, settling with enigmatic meaning upon Cassius who was fighting for his life.

"A Southern Dipper disciple?!"

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