Mental backlash! Her subconscious, stimulated by the slave imprint, actually projected the last fragment of will belonging to “Zheng Xiyun” by relying on the remnants of her Daydream Nightmare ability!
She tried to use this familiar voice and emotion to shake Ling Chen’s cold will!
Ling Chen’s movements did not pause in the slightest! His fingertips even moved a fraction faster! His Soul Jade Physique, like the strongest dam, instantly crushed this sudden mental interference!
His past life experiences had already made him immune to such mental temptations and attacks! Any wavering meant death!
“Quiet.” A cold thought, like a judgment guillotine, directly slammed into Zheng Xiyun’s chaotic mental core!
Pfft!
His fingertips pierced Zheng Xiyun’s glabella without any obstruction! The dark purple energy, like the most overbearing long blade, instantly invaded!
Ling Chen’s will, like an invisible carving knife, began to forcefully embed the blood-colored, prismatic crystal into her Sea of Consciousness along the most fundamental Veins of her mental core!
“Ugh ah ah ah—!!!”
Inside the life support pod, Zheng Xiyun’s body violently jolted, like a live fish thrown into boiling oil!
Her originally stiff body erupted with unimaginable terrifying strength!
The sturdy polymer pod wall was struck by her, emitting a dull thud! Her throat let out a non-human, shrill scream, mixed with extreme pain, frantic struggle, and instinctive fear!
The sound penetrated the life support pod’s soundproofing and echoed within the secret room, like the wailing of a vengeful spirit, shaking the dust off the server racks in the corner!
Her eyes snapped open! The charred hollows in her eye sockets disappeared, replaced by two wildly spinning, turbid grayish-white vortices, like muddy pools into which huge stones had been thrown!
At the center of the vortex, a point of crimson light, like the pupil of a dying beast, “stared” fixedly at Ling Chen! A violent, chaotic mental storm, filled with the desire to destroy everything, like an out-of-control nuclear reactor, frantically brewed and erupted within her body!
Boom!!!
The invisible mental impact, like a tangible tsunami, slammed fiercely against Ling Chen’s wall of consciousness! His Soul Jade Physique groaned under the immense pressure!
Ling Chen grunted, his body shaking violently, a trickle of blood oozing from the corner of his mouth, dripping onto her glabella. The finger he used to touch her glabella trembled violently, the dark purple light at his fingertip flickering madly, like a lighthouse struggling in raging waves!
He felt as if countless red-hot steel needles were simultaneously piercing his head; the sharp pain almost tore his consciousness apart!
But Ling Chen’s eyes remained cold as he softly intoned.
“Submit!”
Ling Chen’s will, like a cold iron hammer, repeatedly struck Zheng Xiyun’s chaotic mental core! The patterns of the slave imprint extended and outlined with difficulty on the mental plane, attempting to bring that violent power into a framework of control!
But Zheng Xiyun’s resistance far exceeded expectations! She was not just a Corpse Ghoul!
She was a special variant fused with the Daydream Nightmare ability! Her mental core had already been twisted and shattered during the mutation, yet due to the characteristics of her ability, it was filled with unimaginable resilience and chaos!
Ling Chen’s slave imprint was like carving on cracked glass; every cut could trigger a complete collapse! What was even more terrifying was that the Corpse Ghoul’s instinctive bloodthirsty will within her body had completely awakened under the stimulation of the mental storm! It mixed with the chaotic mental power of the Daydream Nightmare, forming an even more violent, more primitive, and more untamable destructive energy!
This energy frantically impacted Ling Chen’s slave imprint patterns, attempting to completely tear and devour them!
“Roar—!!!”
Zheng Xiyun’s shriek transformed into a pure, bestial roar! Her body twisted and slammed frantically within the life support pod! Her fingernails scraped against the pod wall, producing a harsh, grating sound!
A strong, blood-soaked aura, carrying mental pollution, emanated from her body! The life support pod’s polymer wall began to show tiny, spiderweb-like cracks under the violent impacts! The buzzing of the neural inhibitor device suddenly escalated, and the brainwave activity data on the screen instantly surged into the dangerous red zone!
Ling Chen’s face grew paler and paler.
The energy within his body was being rapidly depleted! The wound on his right arm had reopened due to excessive exertion, and blood dripped from his fingertips onto Zheng Xiyun’s forehead, where it was instantly evaporated by her violent mental power!
The wing scar on his back felt like a lit fuse, the burning pain penetrating deep into his bones! The pressure on his Soul Jade Physique had reached its limit!
He could clearly feel that the slave imprint’s patterns, under the opponent’s violent counterattack, were like a candle in the wind, threatening to break at any moment!
“Not enough… power… not enough…” A cold thought flashed in the depths of his consciousness.
He had underestimated the chaotic state and resistance intensity of Zheng Xiyun’s mental core!
In his current state, the success rate of forcefully completing the slave imprint… was less than thirty percent!
There were two outcomes after a failed enslavement: self-destruction! The mental core collapses, causing the physical body to explode into fragments! Or, death, leaving a relatively complete body and crystal core!
Gamble? Or give up?
Give up? It meant all his efforts would be in vain! It meant a highly potent mutated ability user would completely lose control or be destroyed! It meant his severely injured body would have wasted its last reserves for nothing!
It meant he might forever lose a powerful helper!
In the depths of Ling Chen’s eyes, that boulder-like coldness suddenly ignited with a hint of madness!
The memories of a reborn person told him that in desperation, one must fight to survive! How many times in his previous life had he carved out a sliver of hope from certain death, relying on this ruthless determination to push himself to the brink!
He abruptly withdrew the finger he had placed on Zheng Xiyun’s glabella! At the moment her mental storm lost its suppression and was about to fully erupt!
His right hand, stained with his own blood, spread its five fingers and pressed firmly against his left chest, over his heart!
Pfft!
His fingertips pierced his skin and flesh! The intense pain made his vision go black!
But he did not stop! His five fingers, like iron hooks, fiercely clawed within his chest cavity! A gush of blood immediately spurted out; this heart blood contained the last primordial power of his life. The moment it was extracted, he felt his vision darken, and all strength seemed to be instantly drained from his body. His heart felt as if an invisible hand had gripped it tightly, almost stopping its beating!
But he endured, pressing that scorching, dark purple, arc-flashing heart essence blood, like his last chip, fiercely onto the mental node at Zheng Xiyun’s glabella, which had just been pierced by the slave imprint and had not yet closed!
“With blood as the guide! Soul as the fuel! Thunder as the covenant—!” Ling Chen’s voice sounded as if from the netherworld, carrying the resolve of a desperate gamble!
Boom—!!!
It was like pressing a red-hot branding iron into ice water! A violent energy conflict instantly erupted!
Zheng Xiyun’s body suddenly arched! As if pierced by a high-voltage current!
The grayish-white mental vortex was instantly stained with an eerie dark purple! She let out an unprecedented, agonizing shriek, as if her soul was being torn apart! The entire life support pod vibrated violently, and the sturdy polymer pod wall made a grating “crack” sound, with spiderweb-like cracks instantly spreading across the entire pod!
The tubes connected to the pod shook violently from the impact of the chaotic energy, even sparking tiny electric arcs! The adjacent control panel screen was instantly covered by blinding red alarms, and all physiological indicators frantically jumped, eventually turning into a chaotic static!
Ling Chen was also struck hard! The loss of that heart essence blood felt like the last shred of life being drained from him!
He felt as if a piece of his soul had been torn away! He spat out a large mouthful of blood mixed with internal organ fragments! His body, as if all its bones had been removed, flew backward heavily, slamming against the cold alloy wall! It made a dull thud! His vision completely plunged into darkness!
The wall of will constructed by his Soul Jade Physique, under that momentary sacrifice and impact, was covered in cracks like fragile glass, teetering on the verge of collapse!
The violent impact caused the wound on his back to completely rupture, and blood gushed out like a spring, instantly staining the cold wall.
The secret room fell into dead silence.
Only Zheng Xiyun’s body within the life support pod was still faintly twitching.
At her glabella, a complex and sinister imprinted pattern, formed by intertwined dark purple lightning patterns and blood-colored Veins, was emitting a faint glow, slowly seeping deep into her skin. The grayish-white vortices in her eye sockets completely dissipated, leaving only two lifeless, glass-bead-like black holes.
The violent mental storm had subsided, and the bloodthirsty Corpse Ghoul instinct was also dormant.
She lay there quietly, unmoving. Her breathing… had stopped. Her heartbeat… had vanished.
It failed.
But it was the second outcome.
Ling Chen struggled to prop himself up from the cold corner of the wall; every movement was accompanied by the groaning of bones rubbing and the sharp pain of displaced internal organs.
He wiped away the bloodstains from the corner of his mouth; his deep, dark eyes showed no remorse or frustration, only a cold, precise calculation and evaluation, like a sophisticated instrument.
Failure was expected; to be able to leave behind a complete exotic crystal and a five-blood-patterned corpse was already the best outcome at the moment.
He staggered to the cracked life support pod and opened the hatch. Zheng Xiyun’s body was cold and stiff, her skin a lifeless grayish-white. The freshly formed imprint on her glabella was now like a lifeless tattoo, without any energy fluctuations.
He reached out, his fingertips carrying a faint electric arc, and gently touched the imprint on Zheng Xiyun’s glabella. A very faint mental power probed inward.
Her mental core… was completely silent. Like a hard drive that had been completely formatted and burned out. The Daydream Nightmare’s ability fluctuations… had disappeared.
The Corpse Ghoul’s life activity… was completely annihilated.
Only deep within her chest cavity, a very faint, yet exceptionally pure, translucent, ice-crystal-like, deep blue light was radiating a faint, heart-pounding energy fluctuation through her skin. That light was pure and profound, as if a miniature starry sky was sealed within it, containing vast mental energy and pure life essence.
Exotic Crystal!
A masterless exotic crystal containing the pure essence of a mental ability and part of the Corpse Ghoul’s life essence… Its quality was already comparable to that of the Four-Eyed Ghost Tiger’s exotic crystal.
The corner of Ling Chen’s mouth slowly curled into a cold arc. Although the enslavement failed, the value of this crystal core… far exceeded expectations!
It would be excellent fuel for repairing his own injuries, stabilizing his Soul Jade Physique, and even further stimulating the origin of his Thunder Wings!
He no longer hesitated, his five fingers like hooks, with his last remaining strength, fiercely plunged into Zheng Xiyun’s cold chest!
Pfft!
There was no gush of blood, only a cold sensation. His fingertips touched a hard, cold crystal, like a ten-thousand-year-old profound ice. He dug hard!
A pigeon-egg-sized, prismatic crystal core, glowing with a deep, ethereal blue light, and with countless tiny star dust slowly swirling within, was dug out by him!
Ling Chen held the ice-cold, yet immensely energetic, deep blue crystal core, feeling the incomparably pure mental energy and life essence within it. In the depths of his eyes, that dark purple lightning glow, like a shark smelling blood, slowly brightened again.
He dragged his broken body to the corner of the secret room and slowly sat down, leaning against the cold server rack. He pressed the deep blue crystal core tightly against his left chest, over his heart—where the wound he had just dug out with his own hands was still slowly bleeding.