Chapter Seventy-Five: Mandala Thorn Blossom

This time, Cold Sky did not dodge or pick off his foe with selective strikes as before. Instead, he met the ox-headed beast head-on. Three-colored light flickered in his eyes, allowing him to clearly read the trajectory of the beast’s punch.

As he hurtled forward, he stamped hard on the ground and surged ahead with a burst of speed, closing in on the ox-headed beast in an instant. He faced its left chest, let his upper body drop low until his head nearly brushed the ground, and sent his right leg scything upward like a scorpion’s stinger at the creature’s face.

The smooth sole struck squarely, and the force of the kick was amplified by a violent flare of three-colored true qi. With a muffled metallic crash, the ox-headed beast’s entire skull exploded apart. Shards with a cold metallic sheen sprayed in all directions.

Two curved horns, one after the other, plunged into the hard stone floor.

With one kick, Cold Sky shattered the beast’s head, then twisted his body in place in a single motion, slipping past its enormous frame. Planting his hands on the ground, he inverted himself and spun like a top. His two legs, wrapped in three-colored divine energy, swept out in a broad, level arc and flashed past the beast’s lower body like a gale.

The headless giant thudded to the ground with a thunderous crash, shaking the earth. Cold Sky sprang upward, and even in midair he remained upside down. One palm shot down toward the spine in the beast’s back.

A crisp crack of metal breaking rang out, and the ox-headed beast’s entire waist caved inward. Cold Sky kept one hand pressed against its back, hanging inverted in the air. Seeing that the strike had worked, he sent a hidden surge of force through his palm and leapt away, landing on the ground beside it.

“Boss, what kind of profound art are you cultivating? Your body is absurdly tough!” Judas stared, wide-eyed, having never seen such a brutal style of combat.

Cold Sky exhaled a mouthful of turbid breath and said indifferently, “Something I created myself.”

Judas went rigid at once. Rubbing his nose, he looked at the fallen ox-headed beast and sighed. “It should be a low-grade puppet beast, but even so, its durability isn’t something an ordinary martial artist can break.”

“How much do you know about puppet beasts?” Cold Sky asked casually.

As soon as he spoke, a creaking friction sound of winding springs came from within the beast’s body. Both Cold Sky and Judas changed color, unable to tell whether the puppet beast still retained fighting power.

The next moment, clangorous sounds erupted from the towering body of the ox-headed beast. One after another, tiny black openings snapped open densely across it, all of them aimed at Cold Sky.

A storm of silver needles burst forth, each one gleaming with a chilling light. In a single volley they formed a wall of needles that reached him in an instant. Cold Sky’s pupils contracted, and with a flash of crimson light he vanished from the spot.

A scarlet sphere hovered in midair. Countless silver needles slammed into its surface, whereupon the crimson glow expanded outward. An air of desolation and weight rolled forth, grinding the needles to dust.

Three volleys later, the barrage finally ceased.

Red light flashed again, and Cold Sky emerged from the infernal realm. He stared at the ox-headed beast’s cold, headless frame, vigilance rising to its peak. That earlier strike had let him taste death’s breath, so he had not dared take it head-on and had instead hidden within the infernal realm.

After waiting a long while without any further reaction, he finally relaxed, thinking it was over for good.

Then, with a booming crash, he instantly flickered far away.

The towering body of the ox-headed beast exploded completely. Its parts were blown apart and scattered across the ground. Only then did Cold Sky let out the breath he had been holding.

Looking at the metal fragments strewn everywhere, he recalled that he had originally intended to collect the beast’s body and study it later, to see what mysteries lay within this artificially forged puppet. But now that plan had come to nothing.

“It looks like whoever forged this puppet beast never intended for it to be taken and studied by others,” Judas said, reading the change in Cold Sky’s expression and guessing his thoughts. “That’s why they set up this self-destruct mechanism as a final safeguard.”

In the dim void, a shaft of light descended and enveloped the center of the round platform. A teleportation formation that could fit only one person appeared.

Cold Sky cast one last glance at the broken limbs scattered on the ground. With a trace of regret, he stepped into the formation. Light flickered, and he dissolved into specks of starlight that vanished into the void.

After Cold Sky and the teleportation array disappeared, the round platform, together with the ox-headed beast’s remains and this strange space, shrank like a dream into a single point until it turned to nothingness, as though it had never existed at all.

When he saw a sea of flowers before him, Cold Sky thought he had wandered into someone’s back garden. But the place was far too vast for that. It was a hillside blanketed with flowers of every color, their stems thick as trunks and their green leaves fan-shaped and enormous, overlapping in layers to cast a dense gloom.

“What kind of flowers are these? They’re far too big.”

Cold Sky stood within the flower core of a giant blossom. Beneath his feet drifted a faint, pleasing fragrance that instantly refreshed the mind.

He drew a deep breath. The fragrance surged into his thoughts, leaving him feeling light all over.

“No…”

He snapped awake at once, and by circulating his technique he forced the fragrant air he had inhaled straight back out of his body.

A tightness gripped his feet, accompanied by the sound of liquid squelching. Looking down, he saw that somewhere along the way, a huge mouth lined with densely packed fangs had appeared at the center of the flower core, slowly opening as it swallowed at his feet.

Cold Sky faintly made out a dark green tongue slick with mucus, licking the soles of his boots. Nauseated, he sent a burst of true qi shooting from the bottom of his feet. A shrill cry rang from within the flower’s core.

Dark green fluid gushed out, splashing across Cold Sky’s boot. Suppressing his revulsion, he stamped down hard with his right foot and sprang high into the air, escaping the flower’s maw. With his fingers together, he slashed out a three-foot qi blade and brought it down in a single stroke.

The round, table-sized blossom, together with the monstrous mouth at its center, was cleaved cleanly in two by the blade of qi, and the flower stem toppled apart to either side.

Dark green liquid sprayed everywhere. Cold Sky made several rapid steps through the air and shifted several yards sideways before landing on the ground.

Seeing the flesh-eating flower split in half on the ground, Cold Sky remained on guard against any movement from the surrounding blossoms. Rustling sounds arose all around him. Several nearby flowers bent their stems downward, their cores opening wide with mouths dripping mucus. They used their dark green tongues to roll up the two halves of the fallen blossom, stuffed them into their mouths, chewed a few times, and swallowed them.

“That works too?”

Cold Sky watched the flesh-eating flowers devour their own kind to the last scrap. He even saw that after finishing their companion, they licked their lips in a strangely human manner.

This change made him suspect that these flowers possessed some form of intelligence.

The rustling continued without end. Thick vines, each as wide as an arm, slithered along the surface of the ground toward Cold Sky’s position.

“Boss, these flowers seem pretty troublesome too. I really don’t understand why the master of Azure Sea Jade Heaven bothered making all this. If he didn’t want people to enter, wouldn’t a mere wave of his hand have been enough with his abilities?”

Judas sat cross-legged on the talisman pattern, peering through Cold Sky’s brow at the countless flowers outside, speaking in utter bewilderment.

In the blink of an eye, the area around Cold Sky was surrounded by thorn-covered vines. Sharp cries rose and fell throughout the sea of flowers. He could sense that every giant blossom in the entire expanse had swayed together like a wave.

Hundreds of vines, like a mass of tentacles, extended and coiled toward Cold Sky’s body. Wrapped in three-colored divine energy, he stared at the encroaching vines and did not dodge, because there was simply nowhere to dodge to.

Ever since entering the ancient realm, he had been using the three-colored divine armor to protect himself. The golden aura nurtured by his glazed golden body no longer gave him any sense of safety. The main reason was that the people and beasts he had encountered one after another were all far too dangerous, so he had no choice but to bring out his hidden trump card for defense.

The reason he did not evade the vines was that, as far as the eye could see, everything apart from the towering flower stems was already choked with dense tendrils.

These vines were in fact the branches of the flesh-eating flowers. In one corner of the sea of flowers stood a single blossom as tall as a tower, its solitary stem several yards thick. The giant flower itself was like a parasol, shading a vast area beneath it into deep gloom.

These giant blossoms had a famed origin. In antiquity, they were cultivated by certain female deities to form flower-sea arrays, preventing ferocious beasts from entering and disturbing their cultivation.

This kind of giant flower with a gaping mouth had a very lovely name: Thorned Datura. Among demonic plants, it was one of the more formidable and troublesome kinds. A single specimen was nothing to fear, but once it formed a sea of flowers, it became a true nightmare.

As long as a flower sea existed, the rebirth speed of Thorned Datura was almost comparable to the regeneration of a godly being’s limbs. Whenever one thorn flower died in the sea, it would be devoured by its companions, then converted and transferred through the energy of countless flowers, and very soon it would grow again.

The roots of these thorn flowers were interconnected, and all the nourishment drawn from the sea of flowers would be continuously funneled into the body of the flower queen to nurture her transformation and advancement. With each transformation, every ordinary thorn flower would follow her lead and evolve into a higher-grade thorn flower.

Today, the flower queen had issued an order to all the flowers: seize and devour everything edible, because she was about to transform. This advancement would turn her into a true demon flower. By then, she would have the chance to assume human form and absorb the energy of heaven and earth to condense a demon core.

Yet within a radius of hundreds of miles, all living things had already been devoured by the thorn flowers, leaving no nourishment whatsoever for the flower queen. It was just then that the flower queen, already furious, sensed the rich energy contained in Cold Sky’s body.

At once it commanded its countless subjects to devour this human and convert his energy back to itself.

Thus so many vines stretched out—to capture Cold Sky first, then have the thorn flowers divide and consume him, converting his energy and delivering it to the flower queen.

With the energy contained within Cold Sky’s body, the flower queen would finally be able to break through the last threshold. She had been waiting for this day for far too long, and now that opportunity had finally arrived, how could she possibly give it up so easily?