Mystery: Survival from the Secret Doll

Chapter 318 317 The Past
The tip of the sun scepter touched the sea surface, and a series of symbols representing "knowledge" eroded downwards from the sea surface. Finally, the black sunlight exploded on the seabed.

"Praise the sun! Praise the sun! Praise the sun!"

The vengeful spirits and ghosts that had been holding onto Tang's feet loosened their grip. One by one, they sang praises to the sun, and under the influence of the black sunlight, they quickly became part of the sun scepter that was constantly praising the "sun."

Tang looked towards the black inverted pyramid in the distance; that was their destination.

Just as he was about to use the authority of the Mysterious Servant to connect the space on the other side with this space, something on the seabed seemed to be swimming rapidly, rushing towards Tang's direction.

"Ok?"

Suddenly, a huge, downward-collapsed area appeared on the dark sea surface. A strange fish-like creature, about a hundred meters long, completely black, and exuding an aura of death and a fishy smell, opened its mouth wide, about to swallow Tang whole.

But the next moment, the body of this giant fish creature was disintegrated.

One after another, spiritual threads appeared on the giant fish-like creature, mystifying every piece of its flesh, every bone, every organ, and every blood vessel, and then dismantling them with an invisible force, fixing them in place so they could not move.

This is an extraordinary being, equivalent to the level of an Undead being in the Death Path Sequence 4.

However, it has now been subjected to rapid pseudomorphization by the Puppet Master.

For the Mysterious Servant, any creature that has ever possessed the Spirit Threads possesses the Spirit Threads.

"However, if it was a setup left behind by the Grim Reaper, it shouldn't be this simple."

They're all small Karami. If other Sequence 1 or Sequence 2 monsters broke in, they should be easy to deal with. If they also brought sealed artifacts of the Solar Path, these are just small Karami minions and are of no use other than wasting spiritual energy and time.

While pondering this problem, Tang replicated the process, creating several more demigod-level mystics. After equipping them with "bionic mystics" modules, he sent them to check out the situation at the inverted pyramid.

After doing all that, Tang finally looked towards Irving's side.

"Do you need help?"

Irving's situation is more complicated than his.

The "Death Rule" of the Death Path at the Angel level means that the rulers have absolute dominion over undead creatures, whether they are vengeful spirits, zombies, or other things that only form after death. Under normal circumstances, their mere existence is enough to make undead creatures submit to them, without even needing to use extraordinary abilities to suppress or manipulate them.

But what's even stronger here than Irving, the "Pale Emperor," is Salinger's spiritual imprint.

These undead creatures are the children of Death, the things He rules over.

If it weren't for Salinger's spiritual imprint ruling over these souls who remain His subjects even in death, Owen's "Death Archon" abilities combined with Salinger's bloodline would allow him to quickly clear out even an entire sea full of undead creatures.

However, for Sequence 1, even without the ability of "Death Rule", the Pale Emperor's control over death is enough to sweep away these souls that are only somewhat special and do not even have extraordinary characteristics to support them.

Sequence 1 of the Death Path, the Pale Emperor, is a higher-level deepening of the concept of "death," and He Himself is the origin of death walking on the earth.

The Pale Emperor can cause the life of living beings to dissipate rapidly, and the aura of a target to gradually weaken, as if it were rushing towards the end of death. It can also cause the living properties of magical items to dissipate quickly, as if they were entering the end of their lives.

Within the sphere of influence of Cangqi, even the concept of "death" itself would weather away and disappear.

"Need not."

After Owen smashed the skull of a zombie with a single punch, he used the burning soul flame in the zombie's eye socket as the core to issue a wide-ranging "death" command to the surrounding area. The pale color covered those crawling out of the sea and those on the seabed, causing all undead creatures, along with their very concepts, to disappear at an accelerated pace with the passage of time.

Tang nodded, seeing that the situation on the other side was being handled quickly, and continued to gaze at the inverted mausoleum in the distance.

With the sun scepter withdrawn from the mists of history, Tang, carrying a lantern, carefully examined the inverted pyramid mausoleum with the help of the premonition of the puppet and the ability of the observer.

"That's strange." Tang exclaimed "Eh," letting out a soft sigh of interest.

The puppets he sent out were clearly rushing towards the inverted mausoleum at high speed, but under the senses manipulated by Tang's spiritual threads, although they were moving, he could not observe that they were actually getting close to the location of the mausoleum.

They were indeed getting further and further away from the Tang Dynasty, but they were not getting closer and closer to the mausoleum.

"It kills the concept of distance, keeping the mausoleum itself in an 'unreachable' otherworld."

There's a difference between those who force their way in and those who enter through normal procedures; this should be another layer of protection.

In contrast...

Tang glanced at the deep, seemingly endless ocean beneath his feet.

After being cleansed by the sunlight, everything beneath this sea should have become the chanters praising the sun on the sun scepter. However, even now, vengeful spirits and the dead continue to emerge beneath this sea.

That's not all...

Tang looked towards Owen's direction and, through the dark, lightless seawater, saw the same souls below Owen—souls that should have died along with the paleness, whose very death had been erased—reappearing one after another.

Wave after wave, endlessly...

"It is the mark of death."

Owen, who was more familiar with the Grim Reaper's methods than Tang, quickly sensed something was amiss. "At the bottom of this sea, something is hidden that can use the death marks left on these undead creatures after they are destroyed to resurrect them as vengeful spirits..."

Whether they are swallowed by the Sun Scepter or die and disappear along with it, they will be resurrected.

Only by marionette transformation can it be "killed," because the vengeful spirit and the dead after marionette transformation are still in a special "living" state, and the death mark cannot return.

“The Pale Emperor’s replacement,” Tang clicked his tongue, “The River of Eternal Darkness, huh…”

Indeed, Salinger, as the Sequence 0 of the Death Path, unified all the death imprints belonging to Him and left them in the tributary of the River of Eternal Darkness. He is also the Sequence 0 of the "Red Priest" Path... Under this configuration, it is quite normal for him to have come into contact with the River of Eternal Darkness before the Pale Calamity and to have used it to do something strange.

Thinking of this, Tang's eyes flickered slightly. "In other words, if we can't reach the mausoleum at the distance where we'll be killed, we'll be facing an army of undead creatures that will keep resurrecting, with an unknown number of resurrection opportunities."

Unless he can magically transform all the undead into something else, thus fundamentally breaking this cycle.

Irving said seriously, "Yes, we..."

"Doesn't that mean these things are endless, tireless, take up little space, have maximum horror effects, possess certain extraordinary abilities, are numerous, and are workaholics that can immediately revive even after death..."

What a perfect zombie-spawning machine! A giant respawn point. Owen was about to say, "Let's get out of here, we can't clear this thing out..." when...?
He sent Tang a question mark emoji that said, "Are you okay?" Tang replied with a smiling emoji that said, "Is this for real?"

Oh dear, since you're already here, Grandpa, I feel so embarrassed to receive such a generous gift.

While they were sorting through these "gifts"—no, the vengeful spirits and evil spirits that the death marks had become—the Euclidean space, which had been absorbed and merged by Tang and was being projected onto this place, suddenly trembled violently.

Downton Abbey, the actual manipulator of Euclidean space.

He looked up in the direction of the mausoleum.

The reason Tang was so confident and could leisurely clear the troop line here was because he was completely indifferent to the problem of not being able to reach the mausoleum. Such a thing could not stop him, who also had the right to observe.

As for the special space that has been opened up, as long as the Euclidean space annexes this place and projects this place into the Euclidean space, then for him, whether outside or inside the mausoleum, he can freely travel between the Euclidean space and the authority of the mysterious servant.

"Eternal darkness has been observed..."

He slightly raised his head, and his pitch-black eyes, which seemed to hold a vast, dark ocean, appeared to see something.

“What…” Owen looked over at Tang and saw Tang standing there, taking a few steps toward him.

Then, Owen saw Tang's body gradually turn pale, becoming ethereal and indistinct.

He is being assimilated by the very source of death.

"Don!"

Irving immediately grabbed Don's shoulders, and Don's neck cracked as if it had been bent by the passage of time and the approach of death.

Tang's head snapped off and fell into the sea. His body, along with the head, was corroded by the paleness, becoming ethereal and transparent before quickly disappearing.

The lanterns, once used to illuminate the surroundings and born from the mists of history, have also returned to the mists of history. The only light on the sea surface went out, and only the puppets that had just been fitted with "bionic puppet" modules were spared.

The remaining puppets, which had not been dealt with yet but were simply transformed into puppets, also quickly dissipated after losing the puppet master's control, returning to the origin of death.

Owen's pupils dilated as he looked around, but he did not witness the miracle of the miracle worker "coming back to life".

how come?
At the same time, something seemed to be trembling in this dark and gloomy seabed.

A fierce wind arose on the already turbulent sea, and a cold, sticky rain suddenly fell.

On the seabed, something was disturbed. The vengeful spirits and evil spirits that kept appearing surged out of the seabed in swarms, like a hornet's nest that had been disturbed.

-

When Tang opened his eyes again, the first thing he saw was a familiar face in front of him, wearing a dark black robe embroidered with gold thread, a bird-shaped crown made of gold, with indifferent eyes and bronze skin.

Azik Eggers.

No, he is, and he isn't.

Tang's gaze shifted slightly, but Azik Eggers suddenly reached out his hand. The seemingly indifferent Death Archon's lips twitched slightly, as if he wanted to say something to Tang.

However, before the deceased governor could say anything, Tang had already transformed himself into an unobservable state.

Azik Eggers' eyes flickered.

Tang, with practiced ease, quickly manipulated the spiritual threads of the deceased governor before him.

Before the Death Archon could make his next move, Tang swiftly pulled a black silk hat from the mists of history and, taking advantage of the moment when Azik Eggers was paralyzed by the threads of the spirit, placed it directly on his head.

The large-scale theft by the Thief Angel King has been successfully activated.

Azik Eggers stopped moving, and Tang quickly completed his rapid mysticization, fixing Azik Eggers' state at the limit stage of near-mysticization.

Sequence 1 attacked Sequence 2, and with the combined effect of multiple powers, Tang completed the task quite quickly, soon taking control of Azik Eggers.

He could have obtained a Death Archon Puppet if he had made just one more move, but in the end he didn't continue.

It seems to have a bit of a father-son relationship...

After confirming that Azik Eggers was no longer able to make any more effective moves, Tang returned to normal, quickly scanning his surroundings.

He knew where he was with just one glance.

This is a palace deep within the underworld, originally intended for the descendants and followers of the God of Death.

Compared to the current state of the Death Palace complex, which is dilapidated due to lack of maintenance and various problems, the current decoration and furnishings of this palace are enough to prove that the Death Palace that is currently in front of him is still intact and in use.

In other words, this is a building that is at least a thousand years old.

"Tsk."

Just now, the Euclidean Space and a tributary of the River of Eternal Darkness, which Salinger somehow managed to draw in beneath the Tomb of Death, converged.

"The past, present, and future can be unified and form a closed loop in my mind. The past can influence the future, and similarly, the future can influence the past."

So, when the layout of the River of Eternal Darkness and Salinger intersected with Euclidean space and showed signs of merging, they pulled up such a huge mess for him.
Tang tried to sense it... Hmm, no problem. That tributary of the River of Eternal Darkness is being projected into Euclidean space. Once this projection is completed, he should be able to return to his original spacetime.

He is currently at a point in time a thousand years ago.

"But what time is it now?"

Before or after the Four Emperors' War, before the Pale Disaster?
Want me to do a divination?
Tang seemed to realize something and looked at Azik Eggers, who had been transformed into a secret puppet.

He exclaimed "Ah!" and walked up to his father, whom he didn't even recognize, and asked with a smile, "My dear Death Archon, do you know what time it is?"

(End of this chapter)