The Ancestral Legacy Begins in the Wild West

Chapter 177 The Secret Sword of the Paris Catacombs

Before the first ghoul could even turn around, the blade had already sliced ​​into its neck from the side and emerged from the other side.

The severed head flew into the air, and the remaining body took two more steps forward before collapsing.

The second mouth had barely opened its gaping maw when the blade swept across, slicing through its teeth, and the upper half of its face, along with its skull, flew off.

Zhang Chang'an moved through the ghoul horde as if it were empty, instantly wiping out several that were about to advance. Then, he gripped the hilt of his sword horizontally with one hand and pushed hard on the end of the hilt with the other.

"The true mind of heaven—a chain of ignorance!"

"Pfft pfft pfft!"

Bingzi Jiaolin shot out like an arrow, his immense strength causing the blade to instantly shatter most of the bodies of several more ghouls. This allowed him to advance further into the passage.

Soon, with a final thrust, Bingzi Jiaolin's blade pierced the chest of the first creature, penetrating its ribcage, and then, with undiminished momentum, plunged directly into the abdomen of the second creature.

The two ghouls were strung together, and then, after he raised his hand to change the trajectory of the blade, they were instantly pinned to the wall with a snap.

"call----"

Only then did he get a clear look at what this area looked like.

The space here is very small. Although he will go deeper into the lab, the surrounding passageways are much smaller than he imagined. They are even narrower than the corridors in the laboratory.

Above his head was a low, rammed-earth arch, easily reachable by hand, covered with cracks and claw marks.

The ground beneath their feet was rammed earth, uneven and pitted, covered with ghoul footprints and dried black bloodstains.

On the surrounding walls, rammed earth and other materials appeared alternately, with occasional dark, sunken pits leading to unknown destinations. Even the ceiling and floor had clods of earth falling from the edges.

Ghouls were scattered everywhere. Some were trapped under collapsed walls and stones, with only half of their bodies sticking out, still struggling, their claws digging trenches in the ground.

Some hung upside down in the ceiling pits, their grayish-white pupils staring intently at him. Many more lurked in the shadows, their bodies hunched over, emitting low growls from their throats.

Zhang Chang'an roughly counted about a dozen in this narrow passage.

But compared to the monsters he had already slain, what truly captivated his gaze were the surrounding walls.

He nailed the ghouls to the walls, which were on either side of him and were not entirely made of rammed earth.

Especially as you go deeper and deeper into the passage, you see that the walls here are made of bones!

White bones piled up across the entire wall. Skulls, ribs, leg bones, spines, all stacked together densely.

Some were broken, while others retained their original shape, piled together with rammed earth and mortar, layer upon layer, from the ground all the way to the vault.

Black, dried-out material, aged for countless years, was embedded in the gaps between the bones, reflecting a dull light in the firelight.

The ghoul pinned to the wall was still struggling, its claws digging at the bones, tearing off a few pieces that fell to the ground with a hollow, dry sound.

For a moment, Zhang Chang'an's gaze was reflected in the eye sockets of countless skulls, and many ghouls with missing flesh and bones were mixed among these countless corpses.

He glanced around and felt that the boundary between the mangled skeletons and the ghouls had suddenly become blurred. He suddenly couldn't tell how many monsters were around him.

The pages of the family genealogy were revealed at this moment, through the changes in the protruding bones on the wall.

"You have discovered a historical secret: the catacombs of Paris."

The Catacombs of Paris, also known as the Skull Tomb, originated in the Middle Ages. Parisians began exhuming skeletons from cemeteries in various districts and relocating them to abandoned underground quarries to address the shortage of burial space.

This practice has continued for decades, with millions of skeletons being transported underground and piled up along the sides of the tunnels, forming this city of the dead with mountains of bones.

Today, the network of tunnels beneath Paris stretches for hundreds of kilometers, most of which is not open to the public. Only a very few entrances are controlled by the royal family, the Alchemist Society, or the cathedrals.

The mysterious laboratory beneath the Bastille was converted from a section of the Grand Catacombs of Paris. De La Motte sealed off most of it and transformed it into an alchemical laboratory.

But there are always some weak points that cannot stop the evil forces that breed in the dark corners of the cemetery.

Spacetime Fragments +200.

"9

Zhang Chang'an pulled the knife out of the wall, and the two mutilated ghouls immediately slid down the wall, twitched twice on the ground, and then stopped moving.

He stepped back, and Bingzi Jiaolin stood in front of him, the tip of his blade sweeping across the tomb chamber filled with white bones.

The ghouls that were still alive were crouching in the corners, hanging from the ceiling, or wedged in the cracks in the walls, their grayish-white pupils all staring at him, low growls rumbling in their throats. For a moment, none of them moved.

"The Catacombs of Paris —" Zhang Chang'an knew about this place, after all, he had researched a lot of information before. These things were considered a landmark of Paris, especially in the era before the Eiffel Tower existed.

Notre Dame Cathedral is above ground, but the catacombs are the most famous underground site.

But even though the laboratory was also underground, he had never thought that the two could be connected.

While the catacombs of Paris are indeed very large, they do have a defined area, primarily located beneath the future 14th arrondissement of Paris.

"So this means that in this timeline, more people died in Paris, so the expansion was made even larger?"

Before Zhang Chang'an could think any further, Bingzi Jiaolin instantly drew an arc of light in the darkness. Before the sound of the blade cutting through the air could be heard, he had already crashed into the middle of the ghouls.

The blade swept across from the left front, and a ghoul that had just darted out from a dark corner had half its jaw sliced ​​off before it could even open its mouth.

Black blood gushed from the broken jawbone, and the mutilated body fell backward, immediately followed by a kick that sent it crashing into the wall and smashing half a pile of bones.

He didn't stop walking, turned the knife hilt in his palm, and stabbed it behind him with his backhand.

"Pfft!" A ghoul had somehow emerged from the dark cave above and pounced within an arm's length of his back.

The knife tip pierced its throat, instantly penetrating its cervical vertebrae and shattering a claw that was about to touch its back.

"puff!"

As he flung the corpse aside, he slowly raised his hand and altered the exoskeleton plates on his body—

Behind him, what was originally just a mechanical exoskeleton structure the thickness of a cervical vertebra had clearly expanded into a carapace-like shape, covering most of his back, just as he was about to be attacked.

At this moment, after he made the adjustments, the large steel armor structure slowly returned to its original spinal shape.

"Click click click—" The mechanical structure slowly returned to its original state, but in its place was his hand. The hand armor, which originally had gaps and defects for the sake of lightness and flexibility, suddenly became exceptionally complete and heavy.

It was as if the armor itself had begun to grow.

"Bang!" His punch, accelerated by the weight of the armor, instantly shattered half of a ghoul's body.

>