Chapter 91: Slaying and Strengthening (19/26)

Seeing the mercury that had just turned to vapor fall back into the pool of quicksilver, Ou Xiaolu and the Red Queen were both stunned.

The White Queen looked a little embarrassed. “It’s just a simple restoration spell. It was originally meant to restore things that had been dropped or smashed.”

Seeing the boss fall back into the pool, Ou Xiaolu did not want to drag this out any longer. He sprang forward with a burst of light-footed skill and brought his sword down straight at the boss’s head.

At the same time, the Red Queen hurled another surge of magic into the magma pool, further driving the conversion of mercury into magma.

The boss, having fallen back into the pool, had no choice but to change again. Her plan to carry the mercury out in vapor had failed; now her only option was to absorb as much mercury into her own body as possible before it all turned into magma.

Once again, the boss’s appearance changed. If she had earlier looked like a liquid robot modeled after Xiaoyou, then now she looked like a T-800 with Xiaoyou’s face.

Most importantly, she had already absorbed all the mercury she could. There was no outside source to replenish her. In order to survive, she attacked at once, charging toward Xiaoyou like a tank.

Ou Xiaolu reacted even faster than the boss. He grabbed Xiaoyou, forcefully used a substitution technique to block the blow, and then sent Xiaoyou to the White Queen.

“Protect her.”

Then Ou Xiaolu faced the boss head-on, tangling her with the longsword in his hand, and from time to time releasing sharks and whirlpools to attack her as well.

This time, the sharks finally had an effect. Although the boss still bit and then recovered almost immediately, it was obvious that her body was shrinking little by little.

Ou Xiaolu estimated that if this went on, after four or five more bites, the mercury forming the boss’s body would be gone completely.

Ou Xiaolu could see it, and naturally the boss could also calculate how long her body would last. If she could not seize Xiaoyou’s body, then after four or five more rounds her true form would be exposed.

At the thought of this, the boss grew anxious as well. But Xiaoyou was very well protected by the White Queen, and the boss had no way to break through.

The Red Queen was there preparing a new magma spell. If the boss charged over, her body might be transformed as well.

At last, an idea surfaced in the boss’s mind. She could tell that Ou Xiaolu’s body and soul were not fully in harmony. That was a new opening for her.

When Ou Xiaolu charged at her again, the boss suddenly seized the opportunity and rushed straight to him. She took the sword strike squarely on her body, then transformed into a mass of mercury and wrapped herself around Ou Xiaolu’s face.

Ou Xiaolu had not expected the boss to choose him as her target for possession. In truth, this was the worst possible choice, because Ou Xiaolu was only borrowing Bus’s body.

His true body was a player, supported behind the scenes by the Across the Worlds Game system.

The instant the boss clung to his face, Ou Xiaolu activated time stop and prepared to see what could be done to finish off this boss.

But the moment he opened the game interface, a prompt appeared.

“External intrusion detected. Remove?”

Seeing the message, Ou Xiaolu could not help but smile. He had been prepared to fight for a long time; what kind of situation was this? Had someone come all this way just to deliver him a kill?

While thinking this, he instructed the game system to clear the invading boss.

Before time stop ended, Ou Xiaolu saw a streak of blue light shoot out from his eyes, running along the boss’s mercury body and blasting straight in one direction.

Ou Xiaolu remembered that direction, and only then did he release time stop.

The instant the freeze lifted, the boss that had been lunging at Ou Xiaolu collapsed back into a pool of mercury on the ground.

Ou Xiaolu ignored the mercury on the floor. With a leap, he rushed to a corner of the room and drove his sword hard into the wall below.

The moment the blade went in, Ou Xiaolu’s hair stood on end. He felt an immense power surge through the sword and into his body, setting every fiber of him ablaze.

At first, he was still trying to absorb that power, but he quickly realized it was far too strong, so strong that he could no longer control it. If this continued, he himself might gain some benefit, but this avatar would certainly be blown apart by the excess.

Without hesitation, Ou Xiaolu took a deep breath and forcibly diverted the surplus power into the Purple Mansion Manual. It worked much the same as spending experience to light up the dots in the manual. After passing through Ou Xiaolu’s own conversion, the power was forcibly absorbed by the Purple Mansion Manual.

Before long, two more layers of purple defense appeared around him. These newly added layers had changed again: the third layer looked like a curtain of light, far more solid than the earlier purple mist and the purple dao robe on Ou Xiaolu’s body.

This should have been an enhanced defense specialized against all kinds of light-based and magical attacks.

The final layer was a belt of purple current, centered on Ou Xiaolu and extending three meters across. That current could envelop him at any moment, or take any shape at will.

Then all four layers of defense from the purple gauze robe on Ou Xiaolu’s body emerged in full, slowly shifting from pale purple to deep purple, and finally from deep purple into an invisible presence.

At the same time, the color of Ou Xiaolu’s body began to change. It turned purple, layers upon layers of lightning appeared over him, and in the end he actually became, like the mages of this world, a purple blur moving at extreme speed.

This was precisely the ability known as Purple Thunder Sky Escape, which could be mastered at level five of the Purple Mansion Manual.

After the purple, lightning-wreathed blur darted back and forth across the room three times, Ou Xiaolu finally stopped using Purple Thunder Sky Escape. He lowered his head and looked at the longsword in his hand, only to find that a crystal the size of a human head had been pierced through it.

The tremendous power he had just absorbed had been coming from that crystal. It seemed that this was the true body of the world’s consciousness.

He glanced back at the mercury on the ground, which could no longer gather into a human shape, and shouted in delight, “We did it!”

“What are you talking about?” the Red Queen, who was still preparing her next spell, said in annoyance. “How is it already done? My super, super ultimate move isn’t even ready yet.”

Ou Xiaolu paid no attention to the Red Queen’s stubborn pride. He pulled the crystal off the sword and immediately received its corresponding properties.

[Heart of the Spirit Vein, special card, 1139.2 grams, special material. Originally a fragment of a spirit vein. Collect 5000 grams to fuse into a spirit vein. If ground into powder, each gram can be used to create three bottles of Mysterious Potion, 400-combat-power version.]

Looking at the Heart of the Spirit Vein, looking at the Purple Mansion Manual that had been forcibly raised to level six, and looking at the blue and purple light that was slowly appearing on the ground, Ou Xiaolu could not help but burst out laughing.