Wait, How Did My Digital Girlfriend Become a Sword Immortal? Chapter 742: Encountering Emperor Jiang Again
Previously on Wait, How Did My Digital Girlfriend Become a Sword Immortal?...
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“Heh heh~”
From deep within the coffin, a raspy and eerie chuckle echoed out.
The sense of familiarity intensified, making Chen Huaian furrow his brow in unease.
“Does my sword please you still?!”
Boom—!!!
An unseen power slammed into the massive coffin cover, ripping it apart with a grinding metallic wail before it exploded skyward.
The lid somersaulted into the surrounding shadows, crashing with a muffled roar like distant thunder that shook the whole Demon Sealing Pagoda faintly.
A ghostly white hand, chilled by the frost spilling from the coffin, abruptly extended from the side!
Its slender, bony fingers ended in jagged black claws, clutching the frozen edge of the coffin in an iron grip.
Soon, a matching pale hand emerged beside it.
With a push from both arms, a rigid, towering form gradually raised its torso from the coffin's gloomy depths.
A frayed black emperor's gown draped over the body, which looked as if sculpted from icy jade.
The fierce dragon patterns stitched into the robe had faded into ruin long ago.
Slowly, the head rose, revealing a face…
Chen Huaian could never erase it from his memory.
That very visage had nearly ended his life before—only saved by a charm obtained from the Electronic Girlfriend system.
Otherwise, weeds on his tomb would tower five zhang high by now!
The entity in the coffin donned the emperor's crown and dragon attire.
Within his sunken sockets flickered two eerie green spectral fires.
Right in the middle of his brow pierced a soul-sealing nail.
It was none other than Corpse Emperor Jiang.
Yet, unlike the Corpse Emperor Jiang he'd faced before in Tianfu District, this version of Emperor Jiang brimmed with far greater might.
Maybe the nail embedded in his forehead played a role?
The earlier Emperor Jiang sported nails across his features, giving off a strange, twisted style.
But now, just one nail marked his brow.
Did that signal Emperor Jiang's full strength unleashed?
Chen Huaian wondered silently.
Corpse Emperor Jiang rose unhurriedly and climbed from the enormous coffin.
Thud, thud, thud—!
Each footfall landed with weight, leaving a fragile sheet of ice on the floor.
A wave of chilling decay and dense corpse energy surged into the pagoda like a relentless flood, overwhelming the bottom level of the Demon Sealing Pagoda—its intensity dwarfing the prior dragon and tiger remnants by leagues.
Emperor Jiang lifted his eyes, those piercing spectral orbs gleaming with regal dominance as they fixed on Chen Huaian.
Deliberately, he raised his right arm.
Hum—!
An ancient-style longsword, its edge shimmering with faint icy glow, materialized quietly in his grasp.
Chen Huaian eyed the blade.
Well, talk about fate.
It turned out to be his secondary sword—the River Sinker.
Though he rarely wielded the River Sinker with affection.
He reserved it mainly for masking his true self.
“Does my sword please you still?!”
Emperor Jiang's voice rasped once more, resembling frigid gales from the nine Nethers howling over skeletal remains.
Chen Huaian reflexively scanned his Storage Ring with Divine Sense—inside, the River Sinker he'd claimed from Emperor Jiang’s avatar six months prior was losing its luster at an alarming rate.
Rust spots rapidly spread across the blade, its spirit glow fading away, transforming into worthless junk in mere moments.
However, the sword gripped by Emperor Jiang throbbed with vivid crimson radiance, as though it had devoured vast amounts of energy.
The edge vibrated, radiating a savage menace.
Fine then.
This encounter pitted him against the authentic, unyielding original.
Even the River Sinker that had yielded to him got overtaken.
Recalling Corpse Emperor Jiang's past, Chen Huaian noted the man had been a formidable ruler in life and now showed sentience—perhaps dialogue could bridge them.
“Corpse Emperor Jiang!” Chen Huaian clenched the Black Scales Sword tighter, angling its point upward as he declared icily, “I am the Dragon Soul inheritor, pursuing signs of Fierce Beasts and auspicious beasts, carrying out Ancestral Dragon’s mission! You…”
“Mission? Hahaha!” Emperor Jiang's sudden burst of laughter interrupted Chen Huaian sharply.
That cackle resembled a screeching night bird, piercing and unhinged.
It carried biting sarcasm and disdain… along with a subtle, hidden trace of grief.
“Dragon Soul inheritor? Absurd! Worthless!
The mission you pursue amounts to a grand farce!”
His ghostly green eyes bored into Chen Huaian, every word stabbing like frozen needles into marrow: “You cannot triumph! You will never triumph!
In the end…
You will merely, like those skeletons scattered beneath you—
Turn into a speck of ash within this eternal loop.
A total… absolute flop!”
While Corpse Emperor Jiang uttered these words, Chen Huaian's sight grew hazy.
The pitch-black void of the Demon Sealing Pagoda, the crumbling stone surfaces, the fallen dragon and tiger bodies… every detail warped and melted away like ink sketches tossed into scalding water, colors peeling in jagged flakes.
A gust laden with blood and the reek of decay assaulted his senses abruptly.
The ground underfoot shifted from chill stone.
To blood-drenched, clinging mire of deep crimson.
Chen Huaian surveyed the area, and dread gripped his chest tightly.
The spot where the Demon Sealing Pagoda once rose now stood empty.
He found himself amid an infinite, barren field of slaughter.
Overhead loomed a slate-gray sky, pressing down with suffocating weight.
Everywhere stretched wrecked arms, fractured shields, and heaps of remains.
Some human, others from demonic creatures, and plenty mangled beyond recognition.
Bleached skeletons blanketed the earth, reaching toward the murky skyline.
Tattered standards whipped in the wailing breeze, their shreds snapping harshly. Several dark crows roosted on skull mounds, cocking heads and gazing with crimson eyes at the lone intruder below.
Corpses piled high across the terrain, and death's foul odor saturated the atmosphere.
Emperor Jiang's form appeared soundlessly upon a summit of myriad colossal bones.
Wielding the crimson-glowing River Sinker, he lorded over this realm of demise like its unchallenged ruler, peering down at the interloper. His pale green stare cut through the swirling corpse fog, pinning Chen Huaian with icy precision.
Chen Huaian gripped his sword firmer, his fingers paling under the strain.
Cangyun Realm experts at the Void Fusion Realm could craft personal micro-realms; during fights, dragging a foe into one's micro-realm granted a decisive edge. Earth Star Ascenders in their so-called Void Shattering realm merely shaped a Domain, which paled far short of a micro-realm.
Escaping a Domain differed greatly from fleeing a micro-realm.
The simpler option needed no explanation.
He perceived this space as neither Domain nor micro-realm.
Rather, some in-between realm…
How to put it?
This formed a partial world tied to Corpse Emperor Jiang.
Corpse Emperor Jiang wielded immense power.
Yet beyond that, Chen Huaian fixated on Jiang's recent words.
Why did the foe insist Ancestral Dragon’s scheme was mere folly?
Chen Huaian locked eyes on Emperor Jiang perched over the bone pile.
His words sliced the battlefield's eerie hush: “Why?”
The grim, frozen smirk on Emperor Jiang's lips curled inward slightly.
His icy, detached tone rang like a tolling dirge: “Because—”
He gradually hoisted the River Sinker aloft, its tip aimed straight at Chen Huaian.
“Now, you will die!”
…