The Central Control Room was dark; He Ao could only rely on his own vision and the faint light of the monitor to observe the dry corpse.
The corpse had a ferocious expression, staring intently at the mirror in front of it, as if there was some kind of enemy inside that provoked its anger.
He Ao, carrying the bone sword, carefully approached.
He didn’t walk directly up to the dry corpse but instead threw the bone sword from a distance, aiming it at the mirror in front of the corpse.
Accompanied by a soft noise, the mirror shattered on cue, countless tiny fragments scattering down.
This mirror did not exhibit any oddities.
The bone sword pierced into the wall behind the mirror, lodging itself there.
He Ao inched closer, then cautiously pulled out the bone sword from the wall.
The presence within the mirror seemed to have long since departed.
He Ao turned around and looked at the dry corpse kneeling on the ground.
From the front, one could see a slender, pointed metal object held between the hands the corpse used to strangle itself.
He Ao tentatively moved closer to the corpse, which showed no reaction.
Therefore, he grasped the metal object, attempting to pull it out.
However, the moment he touched the metal object, a surge of twisted, manic obsession violently rushed into his mind.
He even became rigid for a moment, his brain momentarily blanking out.
In an instant, he saw a pitch-black sky and a dim city in his field of vision.
The lifeless streets were piled high with bodies like mountains, distorted and terrifying monsters roamed between the buildings.
And when he noticed those bodies, they suddenly opened their eyes and looked at him.
A multitude of warped screams exploded in his head, their agony, their sorrow, their fierce desire to live, surged into He Ao’s soul in that instant.
He Ao’s movements froze in place, including his hand grasping the silver metal.
At that moment, from the shattered mirror fragments, streams of dim, dark Qi slowly flew out, coalescing into a chaotic transparent shadow in mid-air. It stood directly opposite He Ao, contorting its limbs, mimicking He Ao’s posture.
Soon, it adjusted its body to match He Ao’s movements—like it too held a sword in one hand and was pinching something with the other.
Then, it released the pinching gesture with that hand, and the rigid-bodied He Ao also slowly let go of the silver metal object.
Subsequently, he moved that hand slowly to his neck and strangled himself.
He Ao followed suit and placed the corresponding hand at his neck, strangling himself.
The shadow seemed pleased with its handiwork, lifting its other hand—the one pretending to hold a sword.
He Ao also lifted the hand holding the bone sword.
The shadow opened its hand, letting go of the ’sword’ in its grasp.
He Ao opened his hand as well, the bone sword slipping slightly from his grip.
The shadow continued to raise its hand.
He Ao also continued to raise his hand, then violently pushed down, seizing the bone sword in midair with a backhanded grip, forcefully rising to his feet, leaping over the Dry Corpse, with a flash of pure white sword light, imbued with a mysterious aura.
Under the illumination of this brilliance, the entire ’body’ of the shadow was sliced from right waist to left shoulder, diagonally cleaved into two halves.
The shadow tried to struggle, its bisected body trying to stitch itself back together, but where the bone sword had passed, a vast aura was spreading, eroding its body bit by bit like tide water eroding sand.
Soon, the pitch-black shadow vanished and shattered under this erosion.
He Ao retracted the bone sword.
The two strands of ’Qi’ he had just recovered, one was used up again, as he had guessed, ’Qi’ also possessed strong lethality against those seemingly intangible entities like the shadow.
As for his stiffness just now, it was actually a deliberate act to lure the shadow out, even though the recent contamination was strong, rivaling the level of the God of Knowledge, it was still within He Ao’s tolerance.
When unsure if any danger lurks in the shadows, feigning a controllable flaw to set a trap and turn passivity into initiative is actually a good method.
However, He Ao was surprised that the shadow seemed somewhat weak and apparently lacked intelligence.
Even though the Dry Corpse before him was already dead, He Ao could still sense the strong presence of a superior Transcendent, who was at least at the peak of C-level, or possibly even B-level.
An aberration that could kill such a high-level being couldn’t possibly be so weak.
Yet everything that had just occurred logically indicated that the aberration was indeed weak, otherwise, it wouldn’t have waited for him to become ’stiff’ before attempting a sneak attack.
If it really were strong, it would have acted when He Ao first made contact with the mirror.
To force an explanation, He Ao could think of two possibilities, one being that the shadow was inherently weak, and this powerful being had just capsized in the gutter, the other being that the shadow was strong, but its ’main body’ had already ’left’, leaving only part of its residual shadow behind.
He Ao shook his head, as he had too little information to make a distinction.
Remaining vigilant, he reached out again to touch the silver metal object, this time grasping the metal and slowly pulling it outwards.
As he pulled the metallic object, the Dry Corpse’s body wobbled slightly, leaning forward; the gaze that had been fixed on the shattered mirror behind seemed to turn towards He Ao.
He Ao looked back at this gaze that spanned hundreds of years and paused in his actions, whispering softly, "Humanity has not perished."
Then he reached out and yanked the silver object out,
The kneeling Dry Corpse wobbled slightly, as if nodding gently,
Subsequently, accompanied by a soft ’pop’, the powerful corpse that had persisted for hundreds of years shattered suddenly, turning into pulverized dust.
And at the very center of this dust, a magic wand of about seventy centimeters long, with its top set with three grey jewels, was revealed.
This magic wand seemed to have been always beneath the Dry Corpse, merging with the body as it dried, and it only showed its form as the Dry Corpse crumbled.
Faint grey light emerged from the dust created by the shattering Dry Corpse, merging into the wand; the three grey stones set on top lit up one after the other until all of them glowed with a radiant light, and only then did the light infusing the wand slowly dissipate.
The wand, which had seemed to be made from some kind of wood, now revealed a jade-like crystalline luster; grey light flowed along mysterious patterns on its body, eventually converging into the three grey stones at the top.
This must be the Transcendent item formed from the Talent Sequences within the Dry Corpse being.
In truth, the attraction that the Dry Corpse being exerted on He Ao was not the pull he had constantly felt towards his Super Memory, but rather, towards another Talent Sequence within him.
Talent Sequence 40: Magician
The Talent Sequence on the Dry Corpse being should be related to the Magician, so the Transcendent item formed after its death should be related to the Magician as well.
He Ao squatted down, stretching out his hand to touch the wand.
A name instantly surged into his mind,