The King of Curses

Chapter 336 Invasion of the Ruins
It's common knowledge in the world of curse masters that both An Zhizhen and Yi Qingyan are connected to the same male curse master. And as the fame and influence of these two top-tier female curse masters grow, this news will become increasingly widespread.

Wan Dugu was certainly not someone who enjoyed gossiping about men and women. After briefly describing the relationship between the three, he looked at Kurong with great interest, observing his reaction.

Is there anything wrong with what I said?

Ku Rong did not answer; but Wan Dugu could already glean some information from the silence.

“I’m actually quite interested in this man,” he said. “I got beaten up pretty badly by those two sisters. The more I fear them, the more interested I become in the man behind them. You can understand that, right?”

"...They've already left. Aren't you planning to run away anymore?"

The gears on the bronze mask turned slightly, and his tone remained stiff, almost mocking.

This time, Wan Dugu wasn't angry; he just shrugged.

"It depends on whether you need my help. After all, we are still allies."

*
Song Yutang and Jiang Yunmei were in the room looking at Chen Jiu, who was unconscious.

Do you think she can pull through?

The girl's "clairvoyance" penetrated the room and saw that one end of the huge, illusory outline originating from afar was connected to the little girl's body on the bed, showing no sign of breaking off.

"...The hope is slim."

She shook her head.

"Well."

Song Yutang sighed. In front of her friends, she didn't care about saving face. She lazily slumped down and rested her arms on the table.

"I feel...very conflicted."

Once Chen Jiu merges with Meng Huafan's consciousness, he will be treated as an object to be dealt with.

She was willing to obey Cen Dongsheng's orders unconditionally, but she wanted to avoid making choices that could affect her emotions as much as possible.

The two girls shared the same opinion. After all, they were rare good people who retained normal values.

"If only the problem at hand could be simpler and more straightforward, like defeating the bad guys and saving the good guys."

"If everything in the world were as you say, things would be much easier. Unfortunately, most of the time we can't even easily determine whether something is 'good' or 'bad'."

"That's really profound."

As they were talking, Cen Dongsheng, who had just left, was about to meet Zhang Shidao.

The girls were worried, but since the man had said "leave it to him," they could only choose to wait and trust him.

Song Yutang looked restless, while Jiang Yunmei was quite relaxed and even had the mood to make herself a cup of tea. After a while, she, who had been languid, suddenly sat up straight and looked around suspiciously.

"what happened?"

Song Yutang, who had her face pressed against the table, looked over in surprise.

"Something's happened again? Is it Chen Jiu...?"

"No. Be careful, a strange group of people is approaching."

She answered in a serious voice.

"I thought there were no other spellcasters left on this ship."

"Indeed, no, they just appeared. There's more than one person, quite a few... the size is close to an army."

Where did they come from?

"...A 'hole.' A hole appeared deep in the ocean. They were teleported here through this hole."

Jiang Yunmei closed her eyes, activated her abilities with all her might, and her eyebrows trembled slightly.

"Let me see what's on the other side of the cave... I can't see clearly, it's sucking my gaze in, all I see is darkness... Yutang, be careful, the fact that it can conceal my abilities means the other party is at least a Special Grade... Sigh, just how many Special Grades are on this ship?"

Upon hearing this, Song Yutang did not feel nervous at all, but instead showed an eager attitude.

Her ears twitched slightly. A dozen seconds after Jiang Yunmei's reminder, footsteps finally arrived in front of the room.

It was a noisy, heavy, and sticky echo; the sound of footsteps hitting the cabin floor gave a wet impression, not like the soles of feet, not like shoes, but more like "webbed feet."

……

"Boom!"

The room door was violently flung open.

The uninvited guests' appearances were finally seen in the girls' eyes: they were a group of monsters, with humanoid forms that walked upright, but their grotesquely growing body parts were reminiscent of sea monsters.

Their eye sockets were covered by a black membrane like that of a fish, their torn jawbones protruded outwards, splitting down to below their earlobes; their nasal bridges rotted away, leaving only a pitch-black hole.

Its lead-gray skin is covered with cracks, and fluorescent blue blood vessels emerge beneath the skin. Sharp claws are embedded above its thick palms, and its entire body is covered with coral-like bone spurs, like a thick suit of armor.

"who are you?"

The sea monsters appeared cruel and devoid of intelligence. But the moment Jiang Yunmei sensed them, she used her "telepathic" ability to perceive their inner thoughts—that they possessed intelligence and were capable of relatively complex thinking.

Upon hearing the question, the monsters indeed stopped. The leader of the monsters revealed a fierce and impatient glint in its eyes, but for some reason, it still responded.

"Return to... ruins..."

The other person uttered the word in an extremely ambiguous tone.

Jiang Yunmei silently memorized the word, then calmly asked:

"from where?"

"Return to... ruins..."

Unfortunately, it seems the other person only knows this one word.

"What are you here for?"

The sea monsters did not answer again, and the main force was converging on this place, soon crowding the corridor. The leader of the sea monsters no longer restrained the actions of his subordinates, and the fishy-smelling monsters surged into the room.

When the sea monsters saw the girl blocking their way, they reached out to shove her.

Jiang Yunmei shook her head, and Song Yutang's smiling voice echoed in her mind:
"I told you it wouldn't work, didn't I?"

"I wanted to ask about the intelligence first..."

Before she could finish speaking, Song Yutang's figure disappeared from the spot.

……

The color disappeared from the eyes of the leading sea monster.

It didn't even have time to resist or react before its head flew into the air.

That was an unimaginable speed that could not be captured by either superpowers or senses.

It is a storm, it is thunder, it is a flash of light.

Then came the second head, the third...

After a faint flash, dozens of heads flew into the sky at once. From an observer's perspective, the sea monsters died almost simultaneously.

The monsters inside the room and those blocking the corridor all had clean, severed necks, with gushing, eerie blue blood splattering across the cabin walls in a wild, vibrant pattern. The flash continued forward, piercing through the entire sea monster army, instantly circling the sinking Mirage, wiping out thousands of invading sea monsters, and approaching the "door" at its source.

The portal was located at the bottom of the ship, and sea monsters poured out from behind it. The portal frame was composed of strange, twisted lines, behind which lay a deep, dark world.

"break!"

Song Yutang leaped up, her hand gripping a sword with rainbow-like energy. The cloud patterns on it swirled with the surrounding light, and for a moment, one could almost see a blue dragon soaring through the mist.

The frost-like sword gleamed, like a newly born sun, its intense light shooting out from the blade and striking the door.

The girl took a breath before she acted; until this point, she didn't need to exhale.

The moment the Kunwu Sword's blade touched the portal, the resulting energy clash surged forth, filling the field of vision with a sense of tearing.

Song Yutang retreated with superhuman speed to avoid the aftershocks; then, she moved forward again.

In the hypersonic vision, the light passing by explodes into golden lines at the corners of the eyes, and all straight lines are violently stretched into arcs.

The surrounding objects heated up through intense friction, and the molten metal shimmered with radiating trails, faint outlines like pencils erased by an eraser, while the shapes were concave, flowing, sparks-studded crimson stripes.

Time seemed to stand still for Song Yutang; the world in her eyes was static.

Therefore, the girl could see clearly that the Kunwu Sword had successfully destroyed the portal that had appeared for some unknown reason, along with the abyss-like world behind it.

But before Song Yutang could even breathe a sigh of relief, a girl in a white dress suddenly appeared in front of her amidst the energy that erupted when the portal shattered.

In this "still" world, the other person is slowly raising their head.

Judging from her movements, the girl who suddenly appeared still couldn't keep up with her speed, but the fact that she even reacted was terrifying enough.

Warning bells rang in Song Yutang's mind, and without hesitation, she swung her sword again.

"...increase..."

With the help of the "Kunwu Sword", Song Yutang's power rapidly increased to a new level. A massive amount of true qi, close to the special grade, was brewing in her full body. Her long ponytail broke free from its restraints, and her jet-black hair fluttered behind her.

"--projection!"

On the gleaming sword blade, a sun-like crown of light reappeared, this time with its power and size increased more than tenfold.

A huge, dazzling ball of light condensed on the longsword in the girl's hand, then compressed into a blade shape, extending for tens of meters, making it enormous.

Her slender yet powerful wrists gripped the enormous lightsaber, which seemed disproportionate to her size. With a slight movement, she sliced ​​off a corner of the Mirage and sent it plummeting down the boiling seawater.

The intense light could not banish everything to another dimension like a spatial slash, but the heat it accumulated could still destroy everything. The white-clad girl who suddenly appeared was cut in half at the waist.

"That was ruthless."

The other person looked up, and the pure white flower on her head swayed in the wind.

It was a face so pure it evoked pity, yet its eyes and brows revealed an alluring charm, as if it had been meticulously crafted to attract human favor, a breathtakingly beautiful face.

"Moreover, his abilities are very powerful... Sooner or later, he will reach what you humans call 'special grade'... A weakened clone alone is no match for you."

Her voice was equally beautiful, like a celestial maiden playing music or a babbling brook.

“My prior preparations were far too meager, and the strength of you all far exceeded my expectations… What methods did Cen Dongsheng use to gather all of you together? If I could know the answer to this question, I might be able to fully understand humanity…”

Song Yutang did not answer, but instead assumed a sword-drawing stance without hesitation, and intense light began to accumulate on her body once again.

The nearby steel curtain wall melted and peeled into a honeycomb pattern in the rapidly rising temperature; the corridor under Song Yutang's feet continued to collapse, forming wavy patterns.

"boom!"

With a second breath, Song Yutang unleashed Kunwu once more.

Seawater rushed in through the broken crack, and the girl's moving hand smashed the water droplets, causing them to float upwards against gravity.

Solidification and explosion: the moment the blade pierced the air barrier, the world before them collapsed to both sides like a bubble; the excessively bright light caused the saturation in their vision to peel away layer by layer during the movement.

The fierce wind pressure separated by "Kunwu" roared, stirring up gray-white vortexes, and the seawater and air collapsed the moment they came into contact with the lightsaber.

This time, the figure of the girl in the white dress was ultimately swallowed up by the light of "Kunwu"...

She only had time to utter one last sentence before her voice faded away in the icy sea and howling wind:

"Go find Cen Dongsheng quickly, he needs your help right now. Otherwise, I'll take him away!"

……

Song Yutang let out a soft sigh of relief.

Before her was a world that had been cut open and evaporated, leaving nothing but empty remains, including the remnants.

The portal, the sea monster, and the girl in the white dress all vanished.

The entire ship, and even the sea, was slashed open by Kunwu, leaving a huge wound.

Looking into the distance along the crack, you can see the seawater that has not yet healed. In the middle of the exposed seabed is a sword mark that stretches for several kilometers and is bottomless, still hissing and emitting white smoke.

The intruders were killed in just two breaths from the moment they appeared.

But Song Yutang's expression remained cold, solely because of the white-skirted girl's last words.

Although it cannot be confirmed whether it is true or false, the fact that the "person" who opened the portal knows Cen Dongsheng and understands her relationship with Cen Dongsheng is already suspicious enough.

"Such a deliberate seduction."

Jiang Yunmei kept her eyes on her companion, so she naturally heard the girl's words as well.

"Could it be another emotional debt that Teacher Cen has incurred?"

"I have never seen her before."

"How could I let you see her? Maybe she's an ex-girlfriend or something? It can't be that she picked her up under the noses of those terrifying sisters while we were on the ship..."

At this point, Jiang Yunmei changed the subject and joked.

"...It seems not impossible."

Song Yutang shook her head speechlessly and said:

"I'd better go check on Teacher Cen's situation. Anyway, if there's any problem on your end, I can come back right away."

"That's true. Thank you for your help then—"

The girls' internal communication ends here.

An unexpected turn of events disrupted their mood.

"—!"

The surging, overwhelming momentum of the ocean erupted on this ship, both unfamiliar and powerful, as if a new, towering figure had been born into this world.

"……who?"

When Song Yutang asked this question, she had already guessed the answer.

"Yes... it's Teacher Cen."

Jiang Yunmei's voice trembled slightly.

(End of this chapter)