NOVEL NEXT Chapter 437: Making Their Stand
The group quickly gathered at the chamber's center, their breathing ragged as they cast nervous glances toward the entrances. From this new vantage point, they saw there were more paths. Two additional corridors stretched from the chamber, narrow and ominous, each promising either salvation or doom.
"Could those be the way forward?" one of the senior disciples whispered.
"Maybe," another answered grimly. "Or maybe they're traps. If we choose wrong now, we'll only waste the little time we've gained."
The weight of uncertainty pressed down on them all. They could not afford to risk it. Not with their pursuers so close.
"There's no time," Han Yu said, his voice steady despite the pounding of his heart. "We defend here."
There was no argument.
His clarity, his decisiveness in the face of chaos, anchored them all. Immediately, the disciples scattered, pulling talismans from their pouches and laying down defensive arrays. Pale light flared across the floor as barriers took shape, translucent walls shimmering into existence around the chamber's center.
A few of them placed talismans at the corridors themselves, weaving them into crude but effective traps. Fire symbols shimmered faintly on the stone, threads of lightning crackled along etched seals, and icy mist curled from paper talismans pressed into the floor.
It was a desperate defense, hastily constructed, but it was all they could manage.
They had barely finished setting the first layers when the sound of footsteps erupted from the corridors.
The Mist Eye Sect had arrived.
Figures spilled into the chamber from multiple entrances, their robes swirling as their auras flared. Just as the Twin Leaf Peak disciples had feared, the enemy had split their forces to chase them, and now they were scattered, entering from every side.
Han Yu's eyes narrowed. The worst-case scenario had come to pass. Just minutes ago, they had been divided in the corridors. Now the Mist Eye Sect had mirrored that tactic, scattering themselves to block all escape.
The disciples of the Mist Eye Sect sneered as they gathered, their numbers still overwhelming despite being spread out. The faint glow of the defensive barriers only seemed to amuse them, their confidence radiating as they prepared to strike.
"Ready yourselves," one of the senior Twin Leaf Peak disciples said, raising her sword.
But before the first clash could begin, the ground beneath them shuddered.
A low rumble echoed through the chamber, so deep it seemed to rise from the bones of the earth itself. Dust sifted down from the ceiling. The floor vibrated violently, throwing some disciples off balance.
Then, with a sound like grinding stone, the floor began to move.
Lines split across the chamber as the ancient mechanisms of the repository awakened. Blocks of stone sank and rose, reshaping the very ground beneath their feet. From the cracks in the floor, structures emerged—dark altars of black stone, carved with runes that glowed faintly with a sinister light.
The air grew heavy, thick with an ancient pressure that pressed against their chests and made it hard to breathe. The chamber itself seemed to shift from an empty space into a place of ritual and trial.
The Mist Eye Sect disciples hesitated, their eyes flickering warily toward the rising altars.
Han Yu felt a chill crawl down his spine as he stared at the runes. He did not know what they meant, but his instincts screamed danger.
Whatever was awakening here, it would not distinguish friend from foe.
The chamber rumbled with a low, menacing hum as the runes etched into the altars flared brighter, casting an eerie light across the stone walls.
Both the Twin Leaf Peak disciples and the Mist Eye Sect disciples instinctively drew closer to their own groups, their eyes darting between the rising structures and each other.
Nobody trusted the altars. Nobody trusted what this place would throw at them.
Han Yu narrowed his eyes, his senses taut as bowstrings.
The oppressive energy flowing from the altars was not like any array he had seen before. This was older, cruder, yet terrifyingly efficient. It reminded him of the viciousness of battlefield arrays designed not for subtlety but for slaughter that he had read about before.
He flicked his gaze across the Mist Eye Sect disciples.
He saw it clearly: a few of them bore fresh injuries. Faint burns across their robes, blood along their arms, limps disguised beneath forced confidence. His Bolt God Fist had done its job, though not as much as he would have liked.
He cursed inwardly.
His blow had been aimed to scatter their formation and crush their strongest, but even at full force, the Peak Core Condensation disciples had managed to block, evade, or at least weather the attack.
He had hoped for broken bones or shattered meridians, but what he had gained was only bruises and shallow cuts. Enough to weaken them. Not enough to cripple.
The real success of that earlier exchange had not been the blow. It had been the distraction. The smoke pills.
Han Yu's lips tightened. The Mist Eye Sect disciples had believed the pills were poison, giving him those vital moments to unleash his Soul Needle strikes. The memory of their brief panic replayed in his mind, and he knew it had been the right call.
The pills themselves were nothing. Neither poison, nor illusions. Just ordinary smoke pills, simple concoctions he had perfected back in his earlier experiments with distractions. Their only true quality was the ability to blur vision and faintly dull spirit sense, enough to conceal movements for the precious moments he needed.
He thought briefly of his other concoctions: the hallucinogenic pills, the explosive pills.
He dismissed them quickly.
Illusions would do little against cultivators of such strength; their wills and defenses were too firm to fall for mere tricks. Not to mention the Mist Eye Sect was known for their own illusions so would be able to resist it better.
Explosions though… Han Yu's jaw clenched.
In a chamber like this, with walls and ceiling so tightly bound by ancient arrays, the explosions might collapse everything. It would be just as likely to bury his own group alive as it would their enemies.