Chapter 1298: Extortion
Having been swallowed by the small lizard, Lin Yun had to drop other thoughts, and consider how to escape.
The iron warship entered the small lizard's stomach through its esophagus, and the insides pressed the warship and twisted it as if it were a marshmallow. It was greatly deformed. The acid in the stomach quickly corroded the warship as well.
In only a few seconds, the warship's shell had been shaved off by almost six meters. Considering the speed, the warship and everything in it would be melted within three seconds!
Lin Yun took out the dragon staff, and the illusions of a purple dragon and an enormous wheel appeared. The Book of Death, the Book of Ten Thousand Mantras, and the Ten Thousand Spell Wheel were all summoned.
"Damn it, Merlin. What's this place? Oh, sh*t. Are we inside a beast's stomach?"
Enderfa's three faces were all frightened after he appeared. Observing from the command room, it was easy to see that the seemingly soft flesh was squeezing and deforming the iron warship, which was being corroded too.
Ignoring Enderfa's scream, Lin Yun opened the Book of Death, and copied a spell from the Sage Chapter, namely Torrent of Fire Elements. He then activated the spell.
A fiery vortex that was more than 30 meters in diameter was unleashed. Terrifying red elemental fire erupted from the vortex like a flood.
The Torrent of Fire Elements, which was as powerful as a level-9 spell, was connected to a river of flames in the plane of elemental fire. The fire was made of elements of higher levels, and could even burn Heaven Rank experts.
Lin Yun solemnly released the embodiment of fire elements again, protecting himself from the elemental fire. The Element Chapter and the All-Encompassing Chapter both enhanced him significantly.
Countless fiery runes appeared. Lin Yun opened more and more fiery gates, and stuffed all his mana in them, making them more powerful than ever.
Underneath his feet, the illusion of an ancient scale appeared. The Book of Ten Thousand Mantras and the Ten Thousand Spell Wheel were placed on the two sides of the scale.
The Book of Ten Thousand Mantras opened a fiery gate that was dozens of meters high. Unending flames were erupting. More spells were hopping in the world of the Book of Ten Thousand Mantras, invoking more flames.
Enderfa knew that it wasn't time for jokes. He controlled the Ten Thousand Spell Wheel, and invoked fiery gates. Countless red and golden elemental flames were invoked.
Whatever was left of the warship was instantly filled up by elemental fire. The 100 fiery gates gathered into an enormous ball. The flames they caused could burn everything within 100 kilometers to the ground.
However, those flames were just fuel.
There were already more than 30 kinds of advanced flames in the Book of Ten Thousand Mantras. Each of them was a threat to those in the Heaven Rank.
With the more advanced elemental fire as fuel, the special flames erupting from the Book of Ten Thousand Mantras spread quickly. Endless flames competed with each other, and swallowed each other in the range. They were squeezed and melted into a pure black fire.
The pure black fire turned the world of fire black immediately. Everything within a radius of 200 meters was black. More and more flames were rising, but their scale didn't expand. Those flames were squeezed and compressed until they occupied the space like thick sticky oil.
The remnant of the warship was melting into iron fluid. The pure black fire was sliding down the esophagus, causing burns on the flesh that had squeezed and deformed the iron warship.
In the shadow of the hideous planet, the small lizard screamed in pain and writhed. It wagged its tail, and easily broke apart a mountain that was thousands of meters tall.
However, a few seconds later, when the fireball landed in the small lizard's stomach, it finally calmed down again and lay there still.
The illusionary wheel behind Lin Yun was continuously spouting fiery runes. More than 100 fiery gates had been invoked, but more were underway.
All the fiery gates overlapped each other at the center of the enormous black fireball. Infinite elemental fire was summoned as its fuel.
Feeling that the black fire had already been compressed to the limit, Lin Yun wasn't relaxed at all. He was still summoning and casting spells crazily.
His understanding of spatial laws was insufficient for him to deal with the small world. If he were to use that, he would definitely die miserably.
If the small lizard spat him out, he would die too. The best approach was to burn this immature lizard from inside its body.
This beast, which had almost reached level 45, could easily kill him. The lower the level, the greater the gap between human beings and such beasts would be. Only those at the peak of the Heaven Rank could expect to fight and defeat such beasts.
Agalon, for example, was only a level higher than the big lizard, but he completely suppressed it. However, to deal with the small lizard, at least a level-46 mage was required, and they might not be able to kill this lizard.
The compressed fireball finally hit the bottom of the small lizard's stomach. Instantly, the black fire, which had been compressed so hard that it could not flow, exploded and expanded to 2,000 meters in diameter.
This small lizard's stomach seemed to have been expanded by spatial power, and was at least six kilometers in diameter. The expanding flames, boosted by even more flames behind them, rose quickly. The small lizard seemed to have realized it, and emitted an ocean of acid in its stomach.
The black acid sprayed and extinguished the black fire on the surface. A lot of the acid was vaporized in the process.
Lin Yun's fire had been compressed to the limits, and it was a mixture of more than 30 kinds of special fire. It was not to be extinguished by the acid.
The flames from the 500 fiery gates, with the level-9 fiery gate at the core, had enhanced each other, making it impossible to put out the rampant black fire.
The black fireball grew bigger and bigger. In only a dozen minutes, the black fire had filled up the small lizard's stomach, but more flames were erupting.
The acid generated in the stomach evaporated the moment it appeared. The small lizard's stomach changed its color and became dry. It looked like blackened land in the middle of a drought, with cracks everywhere.
In the outside world, the small lizard writhed in pain, and tried to spit out what was in its stomach, but its stomach was already dry, and didn't have enough elastic force. The only things it spouted out was the black fire, which began to burn its esophagus and mouth…
Struggling crazily for several minutes, the small lizard seemed to be losing its rationality. It flashed and disappeared into the void.
Inside the lizard's body, the black fire was still spreading crazily. A dozen minutes later, the lizard's stomach was burnt into ashes. Without its restraints, the fire spread crazily in the lizard's body 10 times faster than before.
Lin Yun cast spells crazily, and summoned more than 1,000 fiery gates. Without the level-9 fiery gate acting as the core, the 1,000 fiery gates would've collapsed a long time earlier.
There was no telling how long it had been, but the power of the law of balance was gone, and the Purple Dragon Avatar expired too. All that he could see and feel was the destructive black fire.
He didn't know what was going on in the outside world, but he could tell that the lizard was still struggling desperately, although it was losing its strength.
After a while, he couldn't feel the lizard's struggle anymore. It seemed to be completely dead. He wandered inside the lizard's body, only to find that its flesh, bones, and internal organs had all been burnt up. Even its brains had been reduced to ashes too.
Where its heart used to be, he discovered a thousand-facet crystal that was the size of a human head. The silver crystal was revolving slowly. It had 1024 facets in total. The spatial power that covered the crystal prevented the black fire from consuming it.
Lin Yun reached for the crystal, only to find that he couldn't touch it at all. He hesitated for a moment, and then spouted a few spatial runes. Finally, he was able to hold the crystal.
The crystal contained a horrifying amount of spatial power and law pieces. This was the small lizard's Heart Core, which was part of some special void beasts. Any creature with the Heart Core carried special abilities.
It was impossible for any human being to make use of the crystal without processing it first. The best solution was to throw it to the lake of mana in his Demiplane, and use it as nutrition for the tree of the Floating Fruit. The Heart Core of such void beasts was a perfect nutrient for the Floating Fruit tree.
Not only would it increase the Floating Fruit tree's odds of survival and reduce its time of growth, but it could also make the fruit dozens of times more powerful than normal. The fruit would contain a larger number of spatial law pieces too.
Lin Yun flew out of the small lizard's mouth. Black fire was still erupting from the lizard's mouth and eyes. Its body had been burnt into ashes, but its shell was left behind. The black protective shell wasn't ruined at all after being scorched by the black fire. Instead, it was compressed and consolidated in the appearance of a behemoth.
Looking at the black shell, Lin Yun shook his head. This thing was already destroyed in the burning. There was no point studying it.
However, Lin Yun had acquired a Heart Core. He was satisfied.
Floating in the dim void and looking around, Lin Yun became solemn.
He had known that when the small lizard struggled so desperately, it couldn't have stayed where it was. After so many days of crazy struggling, it was possible that he might be hundreds of millions of kilometers away…
If the small lizard had been flashing, it might have traveled light years during these days.
In the boundless void without any frame of reference, the deviation could be unimaginably huge even when one set off a few kilometers away from the expected direction. Not to mention that he might have flashed to this place directly.
It meant that he had become completely lost in the boundless void.
The only star he could see was a fireball which seemed to be five meters in diameter. It was burning probably 100,000,000 kilometers away. There were also two desolate planets that were spinning around the star. Lin Yun saw nothing familiar.
He couldn't even navigate by observing the rays of the star. He had no idea where he was exactly, and it was impossible for him to return to the original location.
He could only return to Noscent with the coordinates he had fixated in advance through the Natural Demiplane.
After he used such a method, the coordinates of the Natural Demiplane would be unstable, and couldn't be used in a long time. Until the coordinates of the Natural Demiplane became stable, nobody except Lin Yun could access it.
Lin Yun looked at the lizard-shaped shell, which was still spouting black flames. He opened the Book of Ten Thousand Mantras, and swallowed those black flames.
Those flames were the combination of more than 30 kinds of special flames. They were so extraordinarily powerful that even this void beast had been burnt.
After swallowing the flames, Lin Yun flew in a random direction. He accelerated and simply let his body drift in the void.
In order to return to Noscent with the Natural Demiplane as a bridge, he had to find a safe place first, or any enemy might destroy the mark he left after he entered the Natural Demiplane. Then, he would be completely lost.
Only by crumbling the mark on his own could he control the power of the blast so that the Natural Demiplane wouldn't tremble and the spatial coordinates wouldn't deviate.
Lin Yun floated for more than 40 minutes. Then, a fuzzy shadow suddenly appeared next to the shell that the small lizard left behind, and then penetrated it. A few minutes later, the shadow crawled out and circled around the shell, causing ripples in space. In the end, the shadow was completely gone.
A minute later, Lin Yun, whose body was moving rapidly, narrowed his eyes, and spouted a few spatial runes that were added to the surface of his shield.
The next second, the space ahead of him was slightly twisted, and a shadow appeared out of nowhere, and hit the shield brutally.
The runes on the surface of the shield jumped crazily. The spatial runes turned into silver light, and melted into the shield. Ripples spread out, and Lin Yun had to stop in the middle of the flight.
The shadow was knocked aside heavily.
The shadow rolled thousands of meters in the void before it finally regained balance. Then, even though the shadow remained still, Lin Yun felt that it was gazing at him with undisguised greed and maliciousness.
Immediately, the shadow transformed into Lin Yun's size, but remained in the form of the dark shadow. After the transformation, the shadow disappeared again.
Lin Yun frowned. After seeing that it could make use of spatial power, he realized that it had surely detected the small lizard's dying struggle, and how it died a moment earlier.
Therefore, it had certainly come here for the small lizard's Heart Core. Since it didn't find the lizard's Heart Core, it chased Lin Yun down as there couldn't be a third living creature within a radius of a billion kilometers.
The creature was only on level 2 in the Heaven Rank, yet it was quite weird, and had a transformation ability, which made Lin Yun realize what it was.
It was a Void Owl, one of the very tiny void creatures. It could detect the death of any void beast from a long distance away. Then, it would flash through space and arrive.
It didn't have a body, and was just a soul entity. It was terrifyingly good at the usage of space, yet it was as weak as a rat compared to the void beasts.
As a matter of fact, the Void Owl was indeed a rat among the void beasts. It didn't have any ability other than its expertise in running. It could easily travel through space and wander in the shadows. It could even easily detect places where spatial frequency overlapped for traveling.
The Void Owl was gone. Then, it reappeared underneath Lin Yun's feet. Spatial waves flashed and overlapped with those around Lin Yun. Immediately, it disappeared in the void along with Lin Yun.
Lin Yun's expression changed. The world around him became a twisted world of colors, as if it were an abstract painting. All that he could see was the twisted light and the swirls.
The Void Owl assumed Lin Yun's appearance, and flashed among the swirls of light. Lin Yun could vividly sense its taunts.
Lin Yun spouted out a fiery rune, but it didn't work at all. No spells were condensed at all.
He tried three times, but was unable to cast any spell. Seeing that, the Void Owl boldly reached within 100 meters of Lin Yun, and continued laughing at him.
Lin Yun could even receive the information that it sent. It was threatening him to submit the small lizard's Heart Core, or he would be stranded here until he died…
To be continued