Chapter 450: Twelve Round Spheres (2/2)
Han Shuo concealed himself behind the lush leaves of a broad tree. His eyes squinted slightly as he looked over to the lake in the distance.
At the center of the huge mass of water was an isle of flat land. There stood dozens of humanoids whom Han Shuo did not recognize. They were densely packed on the island, all with the same solemn looks on their faces as they worshipped in the direction of a tall, pointed building that resembled an altar, located at the center of the isle.
If it weren’t for their light-green skin, their python-like tail, and the pointy horns protruding from their foreheads to their napes, perhaps Han Shuo might have regarded them as human beings.
However, with those three distinctive features, Han Shuo would never, ever view them as humans. The mouths of these humanoids let out peculiar buzzing sounds similar those of cicadas as they kowtowed to give worship to the altar.
This altar was similar to magical towers often used by a magus. At the top of the pointed altar laid the hearts of countless magical beasts, reeking of rotting fish alongside bright, clean magical cores. Four humanoids, likely the leaders of this troupe, each with a row of five pointed horns growing from their foreheads to their collarbones, stood at the four corners of the altar. They spoke in a mysterious language akin to the droning of insects as they threw hundreds upon hundreds of those hearts and cores into a giant, grotesque oral cavity filled with thick mucus at the center of the altar.
The four figures were the powerful presences that Han Shuo had previously sensed. As they stood within close range, even without his consciousness to expand and actively probe, Han Shuo could sense the formidable aura emanating from them. Han Shuo reckoned he could handle one of those creatures alone. But if all four of them were to attack together, Han Shuo could only attempt to escape.
After observing for a while, Han Shuo quickly discovered that the strengths of these creatures were entirely differentiable by the pointy horns on the top of their heads. Among the beings on the isle, the four at each corner wielded the most terrifying strength. Around the altar and below their feet, there were a dozen or more creatures with four horns on their heads, and they stood closest to the altar.
One would find less and less pointed horns on the kowtowing creatures the further he looked around the altar. The creatures situated at the outermost perimeter donned merely a single horn.
All of a sudden, an occurrence familiar to Han Shuo captured his attention.
At the peak of the pointed altar, suddenly, a wave of tentacles slowly hoisted twelve round spheres the size of fists. One of those spheres emanated a pure aura of death, which caused Han Shuo to palpitate. It had never crossed his mind that an aura of death could be so pure.
In any plane where life was existent, there would naturally be such incidents as birth, senescence, illness, and death. As long as lives continued to end, the element of death would be present in that plane of existence. However, most creatures exhibited in addition a hideous mess of emotions like fear, rage, stubbornness, and resentment just before they met their ends.
It was precisely due to the presence of these emotions that the element of death could not be pure and on any plane of existence. Even in the netherworld where Little Skeleton resided, the element of death was always contaminated with chaotic impurities aplenty.
However, within the sphere, Han Shuo felt only the element of death in its purest form, no impurities whatsoever. On top of that, it contained an overwhelming amount of the element of death, and therefore proved an irresistible temptation for a necromancer like Han Shuo.
Instinctively, Han Shuo believed that the sphere could bring him immense benefits. If it wasn’t for the exclusive control he held over his physical body, perhaps Han Shuo’s heart would have begun beating faster from the excitement.
Han Shuo was thrilled. While he concentrated his attention on the sphere of death, he began to study the other eleven spheres using his consciousness.
After much surveying, Han Shuo was again shocked to the core. Of the other eleven spheres, seven of them contained elemental energy just as pure as the one containing death. These were namely light, darkness, wind, fire, water, electricity, and earth.
As for the remaining four spheres, although they did not contain pure elemental energy, they still contained some bizarre energy, one of which was the extremely rare energy of destruction. Another seemed to be a condensed form of fighting aura, constantly emitting different shades of fighting aura from dark blue to golden. The last two were even more baffling. Their insides were flowing like the revolution of celestial bodies, which, after great amount of contemplation, Han Shuo felt were somewhat similar to the uncommon aura found on certain space magus and summoners.
Twelve round spheres in total. Generally dim and dull, brownish in colour. They looked rather unexceptional from a distance. Perhaps, only a figure at Han Shuo’s level could understand just how mysterious, strange, and diverse the energies that these spheres contained were.