New concept of the mysterious way to ascend to immortality

Chapter 77 [Space Severance], the difficulty continues to increase...

Catching another rat, Yuan Zhu ignored its struggle and launched a holy light blast with his bare hands.

He raised his right hand, the holy light condensing in his palm like a blazing flashlight, illuminating every corner of the room. He pressed forward, the blazing holy light sweeping across the villa like a flame, thoroughly cleansing and disinfecting every inch of space.

Every time he pushed open a door, he would sprinkle the burned "holy protein powder" on the ground, draw a rune, and then light it up to mark the room as completely purified. In this way, he swept through most of the rooms on the first floor in one go.

The lingering cold aura grew weaker and weaker, and several attempts to disrupt his mind were unsuccessful. It seemed the evil spirit had run out of tricks.

However, when he stepped onto the stairs, a new twist occurred.

Originally, Yuan Zhu thought the evil spirits in the haunted house were only capable of this, powerless against the holy light, and his tense state of mind gradually relaxed. But when he had walked halfway up the stairs, the spatial perception gift granted by the [Holy Seal] keenly detected the drastic spatial changes taking place within the haunted house.

The entire villa resembled a scrambled Rubik's Cube. The space, twisted by invisible forces, bent, dislocated, and then pieced together again. The once straight staircase had somehow become spiral; while ascending to the second floor, it felt like heading down to the basement.

Once on the second floor, the supposedly straight corridor forked to the left and right, extending far beyond the villa's intended length. One door, two doors... Looking around, it seemed like this corridor contained over 20 rooms. But how could this be possible?

Before he could make a choice, a thick, cold aura emanated from behind the first closed door on his left. It was as if the evil spirit of the haunted house was inside this bedroom, awaiting his arrival.

"Tsk! Are you inviting me?" Yuan Zhu sneered, pulled out a claw hammer from his waist, and clenched the 5.0 (rat) in his other hand. He kicked the door open with one foot, and the loud noise echoed in the corridor.

The door was forced open, revealing the scene inside—an absurdly large dance studio, its walls covered in floor-to-ceiling mirrors. In the center, however, cabinets filled with books, sundries, dolls... and a piano in the corner. No matter how you looked at it, it looked like several rooms, each with its own distinct functions, joined together.

"Could it be that the evil spirit in this haunted house possesses spatial abilities?" Yuan Zhu was shocked, thinking that this was beyond the capabilities of an ordinary cleaning company. It wasn't that he was afraid of the evil spirit within the house, but rather that he felt the current situation was far beyond the capabilities of an ordinary cleaner.

"Which ordinary cleaner can handle the evil spirit pollution at the level of 'interference and distortion of space'? How much salary should I be paid for this task?" Yuan Zhu cursed in his heart.

"Cluck, cluck, cluck..." A strange sound rang out in the room, like an invitation, but also like a provocation.

He didn't hesitate. The moment he stepped in, the dizzy feeling of time and space being reversed became more pronounced. Suddenly, the sound of piano music echoed in his ears, drowning out the sound of the blade piercing the air.

He suddenly shuddered and dodged sideways. He saw a short dark figure rush out from behind him, stabbing him in the back with a kitchen knife.

boom!
A barrier of light erupted, perfectly deflecting the knife's direction. Yuan Zhu then whipped the shadow sideways with a kick, sending it flying like a soccer ball, slamming it hard against the wall. He felt something hard hitting his shin, and only then could he see clearly: it was a doll in a princess dress.

brush!brush!brush!
Wooden dolls, weapons in hand, surrounded him, swiftly and nimbly swooping in, stabbing and slashing with their weapons. Their wooden faces were covered in a film of flesh and blood, remnants of capillaries and patches of green, gray, and orange mold, a deeply unpleasant sight.

Yuan Zhu increased the intensity of his Holy Light output, isolating himself from the outside world. He launched a series of side kicks, sending each approaching doll flying. Meanwhile, he gripped the No. 5.0 Rat tightly in his left hand, straining to squeeze the Holy Light from it. With his right hand, the claw hammer blazed with bloodshot eyes as he smashed it forward.

boom!
With a loud bang, the metal hammer head smashed the doll's skull. The wooden skull cracked, revealing a foul-smelling, blackened brain structure inside. Yuan Zhu's face changed drastically when he saw it!
"What the hell is this?"

Someone had actually placed brain tissue inside the puppets' heads, and it was severely contaminated and distorted. These puppets provided absolutely no nutrients at all, their wooden skulls acting more like a kind of culture medium, allowing them to breed black bacteria that crawled over the grooves of the unknown brains, looking incredibly sinister.

"This is definitely not some ordinary haunted house. Someone created and trained these disgusting puppets here!" Yuan Zhu cursed inwardly. What kind of job did this idiotic boss assign me? Is this the kind of money I can earn?
Boom boom boom!
The output of holy light increased again, and the claw hammer in Yuan Zhu's hand burst out with blood light and holy light at the same time, smashing the doll in front of him and the weapon in his hand.

boom!
The puppet exploded and fell to the ground, sending a large amount of diseased flesh and blood and black smoke splattering out from its interior. But before it could get close, it was burned back by the holy light surrounding him, turning into black smoke that rose upwards.

One after another, the sick dolls lunged at him fearlessly, nimble as monkeys. Yuan Zhu blew open a dry-cell battery in one hand and scattered the burnt-out, crushed protein powder forward, blocking the black smoke from their mouths. With his other hand, he swung his weapon wildly, blasting puppet after puppet with high-speed and precision. His claw hammer, combined with the [Sanctuary] Seal, allowed him to deliver a series of pseudo-dimensional critical strikes.

Each hit added an extra layer of force field damage, completely smashing the fragile wooden dolls apart. Blood, flesh, and moldy diseased tissue splattered from their skulls and wooden bodies, clinging to the floor, walls, and cabinets... spewing black spores, filling the room with a foul smell.

Yuan Zhu was forced to increase his holy light output and activate [Shelter] to prevent himself from inhaling harmful gases. At the same time, he used blazing light to burn the black dust in the air.

His continuous smashing of puppets one after another also angered the evil spirit hidden in the shadows. While the opponent increased the intensity of the puppets' death, it also released a wave of soul-shattering screams, shocking his spirit.

Not only that, the spatial structure of the room was distorted again, and the entire space-time seemed to be rolled up and turned over like a towel, forming an invisible Möbius strip, locking him in the center of space, with nowhere to escape.

The elf suddenly screamed, "Boss! Be careful! The space-time structure here is abnormal! The space is about to break apart. Hide quickly!"

【Shelter】Full power on!
Without her warning, Yuan Zhu could sense the dramatic changes in the spatial structure of the room. It was essentially breaking off half of the space and then joining it with the other half, temporarily stabilizing both sides with a special space-time loop.

At this moment, Yuan Zhu was firmly locked in by this powerful and profound spatial structure. When the elf warned him, the other party had already withdrawn the stabilizing structure, causing the two different spaces to break apart on Yuan Zhu's body, forming a spatial severing effect, cutting him into two pieces.

"Nima's!"

Yuan Zhu tried desperately to dodge, but that higher-dimensional perspective remained locked onto him. The moment he stepped into this haunted house, into this room specially prepared for him, he had already been firmly locked into this power. No matter how he tried to evade or save himself, he could not escape the lock of this heavy spatial dimension.

"Gan!"

At this critical juncture, he activated the spatial seal, [Shelter], to its maximum power, hoping to use space to counter space. Ignoring the Holy Light's burning and draining of his life force, he built a thick layer of [Force Barrier] on his body, confronting the instantly converging and slashing [Space Severance] head-on.

Click, click, click... snap!

The piercing sound of the holy light force field shattering continued to ring out. The 'pseudo-space field' that enveloped his body was too poorly heated and too low in purity to even forge the [Holy Seal]. It was completely unable to withstand the sudden interruption of the real space.

At the critical moment, Yuan Zhu used the properties of [Shelter] to disperse, deflect and transfer damage, forcibly cutting the space that locked his body and transferring it to his right arm wrapped in a thick layer of "Holy Light Force Field", thus escaping the fate of being cut in half.

Click!

He watched as space converged, half the room vanishing from sight. A sharp pain shot through his arm, and blood and holy light erupted simultaneously, illuminating the unfamiliar room. Half his arm, along with half the house, vanished. At the same moment, the other half of an unfamiliar bedroom, complete with its neatly severed bed and dresser, appeared before him.

"Hiss...Ci'ao!"

In excruciating pain, Yuan Zhu stared at his vanished forearm, completely enraged. Abandoning his immature [Holy Light], he activated [Tiger Demon Stance] with malice filled in his heart.

The holy light that erupted from his eyes quickly died down. The holy light that had been eyeing the Shadow Uniform eagerly retreated into the stigmata, doing its utmost to reduce its presence.

[Deformed Spiritual Root] awakened and erupted, the shadows on the floor of the room boiled and rolled violently, the shadow silhouette under Yuan Zhu's feet emerged from the ground and wrapped up the real body in a counterattack, the upright figure twisted and deformed violently, stretched into a burly black tiger.

The tiger demon's right front paw was severed at the elbow. From the severed arm, a large amount of asphalt-like, sticky shadow gushed out, quickly taking shape and solidifying into a brand new shadow tiger claw. Encased in a pale, hideous exoskeleton armor, it appeared remarkably coordinated, not affecting the tiger demon's movements in the slightest.

"Roar……!"

The tiger demon roared at the invisible, malicious gaze, tearing through the room with its heavy claws, severing the walls and floor, exposing the space next door. Simultaneously, countless shadowy hands emerged from beneath its feet, tearing the remaining puppets into pieces and dragging the fragments into the shadows.

More and more shadows emerged from the shadows beneath the Tiger Demon, spreading in all directions, anti-gravity creeping along the walls toward the ceiling. He wanted to draw endless amounts of shadow pollution, wrapping and refining this haunted house, demonizing everything, destroying everything, forcing out that power, to torture it mercilessly, destroy it, and retaliate against it! He wanted to vent his rage.

The skeletal snake tail behind the tiger demon suddenly jumped out and tightly wrapped around the tiger demon's neck, urging his boss to calm down: "Boss, calm down! Calm down! Your broken arm is still emitting holy light. I can sense its location, it's in that direction! A gentleman's revenge is never too late. Don't act on impulse and be blinded by hatred. The most urgent thing is to take back your arm. The power of shadow can only temporarily construct a prosthesis, and your human body is still disabled!" "Damn it! My arm."

Upon hearing this, Yuan Zhu instantly sobered up, thinking of his missing forearm. His dark golden pupils were bloodshot. After a moment's hesitation, he paused his revenge and turned to look in the direction indicated by the snake's tail.

"Boss, simply breaking through the wall won't work. This haunted house has messed up the order of the rooms, forming a maze. Use the [Claw] now! Cut there!"

Without hesitation, Yuan Zhu chose to follow the elf's advice and activate his magical power [Claw]. This time, his skeletal tiger claws were wrapped with a familiar layer of "spatial fluctuations", which were similar to the pseudo-spatial fluctuations of [Shelter], but even more powerful and sharper.

"This..." When did my [claws] become so ferocious?
"It's [The Universe in the Belly]! I superimposed the magical power of space on top of [Claw]!"

The elf excitedly explained that since Yuan Zhu branded [Sanctuary], the biggest benefit was not [Holy Light], but [Boss Template].

The Tiger Demon already possesses its own spatial talent, [Snake Demon], a truly existing, exclusive space. However, it lacks the native data support of the Duling, making it difficult to fully utilize. With [Shelter], the Boss Template gains a spatial formula suitable for the Duling.

Now, after debugging by Little Tail, it is entirely possible to superimpose the spatial attributes of [The Universe in the Belly] on the [Claws], swing them out, and perform space cutting.

【Sky-Splitting Claw】——Bang!

Following instinct, the tiger demon swung its claws at the wall, directly tearing open the flimsy spatial fault and revealing another unfamiliar empty room.

Its body transformed into a pitch-black silhouette, burrowing into the spatial rift. When the invisible malevolence reacted and attempted to close the spatial rift and sever the tiger demon, it only intercepted a pool of active "shadow-tainted slime."

Yuan Zhu himself had already entered the empty room: "Where's my arm?"

"This is a transfer station. Change direction and try again! Come on, boss!"

"Roar!"

The evil tiger roared, shadows erupted, and the skeleton's heavy claws dragged four spatial slashes, tearing the space, drawing a crack in the air, and blasting the spatial maze inside the haunted house.

Boom!

A gaping hole opened in space, revealing an unfamiliar study. A severed arm, radiating a rich holy light and sealed with thick holy light crystals, lay quietly on the dusty floor, continuously radiating a divine light, resembling an unknown holy relic.

The snake's tail swung, extending to about ten meters, and drilled into the hole. It bit its own broken arm and was about to return to its original body.

At this moment, the distorted vibrations of time and space were once again transmitted from the interior space, and that inescapable sense of being locked in came over him. This haunted house once again launched a spatial severance attack on him.

Unlike the underdeveloped [Shelter], the Shadow Tiger Demon's body erupted with endless shadow power. With [The Universe in the Belly] + [Claws] running at full power, a set of skeleton armor was quickly constructed on the Tiger Demon's dark body, and the interior was fully borrowed from the microscopic space structure of [Shelter].

Before the holy seal was cast, Xiao Latiao first applied the essence of [Shelter] to the microscopic structure of [Claw (Exoskeleton)].

clack clack...

The space slashed again, landing heavily on the Tiger Demon's chest and abdomen, attempting to cleave it in two. The spatial scene before and behind him switched again, but the pressure of the dual time and space fell on the Tiger Demon, which was firmly withstood by its exoskeleton armor. No matter how hard the spatial slasher exerted, it could not shake this exoskeleton with its superimposed spatial properties.

In essence, this is a struggle between the [Space Severance] inside the haunted house and the [World in the Belly] of the tiger demon.

"Get the hell out of here! You rat hiding in the gutter, if you're brave enough, come out and fight me head-on!"

The tiger demon roared, and a hellish storm blew up from the ground, releasing the "death energy of the underworld" that it had absorbed last time. It swept through the multiple spaces that its body was crossing at this moment, and devoured a part of the invisible gloomy aura.

Although he didn't know the true nature of the "evil spirit," his Yellow Springs Death Qi was a natural counter to it. If it didn't flee, he even thought he could use his [Ghost] to capture and refine it.
Compared to the immature [Holy Light], this [Shadow] is the natural nemesis of evil spirits.

"Boss, don't be impulsive. Calm down first and put your arm back quickly before anything else!" said the elf anxiously.

"Damn it, I've suffered a huge loss this time. This is definitely not the difficulty a cleaner should face!" The Tiger Demon cursed indignantly, manipulating the shadow to form an arm and taking over his broken holy light arm.

As soon as his shadow touched the arm, it triggered a counterattack from the 'Holy Light Crystal' surrounding it. The power of Holy Light crazily squeezed the vitality of the severed arm, transforming it into Holy Light, which attacked and destroyed the shadow pollution.

"Oh damn! Why is this arm so stupid?" The tiger demon rolled his eyes and had to cancel the [Boss Template], suppress the shadow pollution again, and take over the arm in a human posture.

The madly killing Holy Light finally calmed down and waited for its master's command. Yuan Zhu looked at the broken part of his right hand. The blood recovery ability of the previous Tiger Demon Form did not regenerate the broken arm, but instead caused the broken part to grow and heal rapidly.

How to connect this?

The elf offered a timely suggestion: "Don't panic, boss! Put it back together quickly! Don't be afraid of the wound healing. Transfer the stigmata to the cross-section of the broken arm, then burn it violently, releasing blazing holy light, and splice the broken arm back together. Use heat welding technology to allow the holy light to melt the broken limb at high temperature and reattach it!"

"Is it reliable? This isn't metal welding!" He had seen various heat welding processes in the steam factory, but using it on an arm? Would he need to sprinkle some borax on it?
Xiao La Tiao: "Trust me! Holy Light has the power to heal. As long as I put my arms together, I can use the [Boss Template] to restore health and repair the details."

Yuan Zhu had no choice. While grabbing the broken arm with his left hand, he controlled the newly generated [Holy Mark] at the broken surface with his right arm, squeezing his life overdraft potential once again, and a dazzling holy light burst out from his right arm.

He then reattached his severed right arm. Under the intense heat and pain, the severed limb seemed to literally melt, beginning to fuse together again. Even the sense of his lost five fingers reappeared in his mind. He tried to move his fingers, and sure enough, his right hand raised a middle finger.

He finally let out a sigh of relief. "Damn, I was so scared just now. I thought I was going to be disabled. This [Holy Light] is really good."

Even the power of shadow couldn't regenerate severed limbs, but the Holy Light welded them back together.

The holy light dissipated, and Yuan Zhu looked at his right arm again.

A simple comparison of the left and right hands revealed no shortening, and the stigmata remained as flexible as before the injury. The stigmata had returned to the right wrist. However, where the stigmata had been severed, a circular scar now appeared. This scar was even more exaggerated than the scars on the wrists of both hands and feet.

Yuan Zhu was so sad that he wanted to cry. The wound must be quite severe. Will it affect his future partner-hunting?

"Don't cry, boss! Scars are a man's badge of honor! You're incredibly handsome! So manly! Far from being ugly, your scar is unique and cool. It's bound to become a trend in the future."

"Tsk, you flatterer!" Yuan Zhu snorted arrogantly, and then his eyes turned gloomy. "This mission is too difficult. From now on, I can only use [Tiger Demon Form] to clean up."

Thinking of the impossible, yet irresistible, spatial severance, Yuan Zhu's heart surged with venomous malice. Even the Holy Light, still operating in human form, dimmed. His malice and shifting mindset caused the Holy Light to shift once again, becoming stronger and more aggressive.

The holy light receded, and the shadow beneath his feet surged again, like a boiling sea of black oil, gushing out across the room, dyeing everything pitch black...

(End of this chapter)