Chapter 168 — The Devoured

"What exactly happened?" Beiyila asked, unable to contain her curiosity. "Did he send any message before he fell?!"

Mental links among the Slumberers were far tighter than those with outsiders. Beiyila had heard no words in Bishop Roderick's dying thoughts, but perhaps the other Slumberers still connected had learned something.

The several minds in the link fell silent for a few seconds. At last, a Nightmare Bishop replied: "He had only time to send out one sentence."

The next second, the sentence Roderick had screamed out before being devoured—stamped with fierce obsession and emotion—burst in Beiyila's mind:

"Do not come prying into this inhuman soul!!"

……

Gao Yang opened his eyes and found himself still standing in the little hut where the prisoner was held.

The mercenary captain whom the Slumberer had used as a springboard and a sacrifice had collapsed dead on the ground. The sturdy man was bleeding from every orifice, his whole head red as though boiled and even giving off a faint steam. His contorted expression was proof enough of the ghastly agony he had suffered before death. The mercenary mage, meanwhile, still sat slumped nearby in a stupor, seemingly oblivious to all that had happened beside him.

Hedy, Pi Yun, Amber, and the others stood around him, every one of them watching him with anxious, concerned eyes.

"What is it?" Gao Yang shook his head, clearing the last trace of discomfort from his mind, then let out a long breath. "Did I lose consciousness just now?"

"Ancestor, thank goodness you're all right!" Hedy finally let out her own long breath, cold sweat only now running down her forehead as she relaxed. Forgetting all decorum, she rushed forward to check on Gao Song. "Are you all right? Are you all right? Just now that mercenary suddenly burst out with a surge of powerful mana, and then you stood there without moving at all—we were all terrified!"

"I'm fine, I'm fine," Gao Yang reassured his eldest granddaughter, who was on the verge of bristling, then frowned. "How long was I out?"

"Not long—only a few minutes, I'd say," Pi Yun said, wiping the cold sweat from his own brow. "Thank goodness you're all right. Otherwise I'd have been carried out feet first today. Someone would be sure to say it was my dubious remedies that went wrong."

Amber immediately glared at the little old man. "Are you sure it has nothing to do with those suspicious ointments and incenses you've been cooking up?!"

"It truly has nothing to do with him," Gao Yang said, waving a hand. In his heart he was now certain that the flow of time in that mental space was indeed different from the outside world—he had felt at least half a day pass in there, yet outside only a few minutes had gone by. "Just now, an Eternal Slumber cultist tried to erode my mind."

Everyone was startled. "The Sleeper Eternal?!"