The terror continued to spread as the majority of the Desolates continued to mutate one by one. Even if they hadn't been wiped out before, they would be after these events.
Thanks to Yun Yi and Po Nan's timely intel, the majority of the Celestials managed to counteract these mutations just in time. Although there was still some damage, it wasn't considerable; after all, the Celestials' discipline wasn't just for show.
The Celestials began to pull back their frontlines, since such a huge event had occurred across the entire Desolate population, the Celestials were no longer able to control such a large territory, thus having no choice but to pull back.
Yun Yi didn't participate in the snake hunt. Since he was a researcher, he only did his responsibilities as a researcher.
In front of him on the operating table, there was a head snake with only one eye remaining, but the unique thing about this head snake was that they were converted from a Celestial.
After being bitten by a head snake, the poison was poured into his body and caused him to mutate directly instead of from the subconscious passage, which was why he managed to retain a bit of his rationality.
He volunteered to be an experimental subject, to be operated on by Yun Yi while still remaining conscious, allowing him to immediately report any changes he might feel during the operation.
"Did you succeed?" the one-eyed head snake laid flat on the operating table, his facial expressions subconsciously twitching bit by bit. The pain that ate away into his soul was continuously plaguing him, urging him to spread the poison, but he had continued to suppress this instinct, using nothing but sheer willpower to fight against the excruciating pain while also expressing what he felt as clear as possible.
"It was a success!" after writing the last of his research notes, Yun Yi smiled brightly and gave the Celestial a huge thumbs up.
"Is that so, that's great to hear!" a different kind of light flickered in the remaining snake-turned iris. The light seemed to suggest happiness, or perhaps relief, or nothing at all.
Yun Yi then closed his eyes as the giant snake Totem on his back began to glow. Mobilizing as much Cede as he could, Yun Yi exerted immense strength and crushed the head snake together with his soul into dust.
Watching the scattering dust, Yun Yi coldly ordered the operating table to retrieve these infected substances.
This wasn't out of hatred, nor him losing control. Yun Yi had simply been cutting open his body one slash at a time, fully understanding what kind of pain he had been experiencing, thus not wanting the volunteer to live for even one further unnecessary second.
However, in order to ensure the accuracy of his experiments, he had to cut open the other party's body one bit at a time, then prolong the volunteer's life and test his body's reaction to various drugs.
Occasionally, whenever the volunteer couldn't clearly describe what he was feeling, Yun Yi even had to repeat the same experiment several times in order to confirm what the other party said and felt was completely accurate.
Dispelling his Totem, Yun Yi bit on his lips to the point of nearly bleeding. He then went to the washroom to clean his hands and face. With bloodshot eyes, Yun Yi wiped the water from his face and went back to work.
"The results of the experiment have come out" Yun Yi handed the heavy bundle of documents in his hand to everyone at the meeting.
Everyone's expressions were completely solemn, even Yun Rong whose image had been getting increasingly less 'unofficial' was sitting at the table with his eyes closed, seemingly suppressing some sort of emotions.
"The poison named Power Toxin is a variation of the Totem's Source Energy, which contains short pieces of information regarding a so-called Great Serpent God. The other party's understanding of the Desolates is simply too great, which was why not a single Desolate managed to resist being infected by this poison"
"Even a Celestial would be infected by this poison if it was directly injected into their bodies"
"The best countermeasure for it is to not allow the poison to enter our bodies"
"Furthermore, we've managed to develop a locator" Yun Yi pulled a trunk onto the table, which contained a large snake's eye that was staring in a single direction.
"It makes me furious!" Yun Rong opened his eyes.
This person who seemed to always have a layer of mask over his face revealed a hint of his solemnity: "Whoever they are, they're trying to infect me from inside my own mind. I will definitely not let this go without a fight, I'll join this operation. And that eavesdropper over there, are you going to join as well?"
"Who's eavesdropping? Where's the eavesdropper?" standing at the door, Killer J purposely shouted out loud, then awkwardly replied after noticing how solemn everyone in the room was:
"Well, about that. Your master really wanted to join you for some fu… to subjugate the bad guy, but the Boss has gotten to a crucial turning point, so I'm going to have to go back to the Boss' body very soon to be upgraded"
"However, don't you worry, little disciple. Before I leave, I'll definitely teach you my ultimate move!" while Killer J was still laughing, the meaning of his words was clear. The three aspects of Negary would not be able to participate in this battle, so the Celestials would have no one to rely on but themselves.
"I had assumed that was the case" Yun Yi wasn't disappointed by that answer as it was within his expectations.
Up until now, the greatest threat to the Celestials had all been prevented by Negary's consciousness directly interfering within the Ancestral Wild, and now that Negary had won, what they needed to do was to fend off the remnants of the Desolate Spirit itself.
If they couldn't do even that, the Celestials would prove themselves to be an incredibly hopeless race.
"Then it's decided. Let's gather some people to find that damned bug, then make it pay back everything it owes!" Po Nan stood up. He seemed to be wrapped in more bandages than usual, which was specifically wrapped around a certain part of his skin.
Apparently, he had gone and asked for something from Noah. Noah was unlike the emotional Lan Shan who would only take in some specific disciples, nor was he like the chaotic Killer J who took Yun Rong as a disciple out of spite.
His behaviors were almost exactly the same as Negary, always ready to grant anyone a chance to become stronger. As long as they had resolved themselves to remove their limits, Noah could give them an opportunity.
He didn't play around with taking in disciples and whatnot, as he considered everyone to be his experimental subjects or his chess pieces, but at the same time, it was much easier to obtain power from him compared to the other two.
Lan Shan acted on her emotions, but if your talents failed to catch her eyes, she wouldn't bother to look at you even once; and while Killer J's thought patterns were chaotic, if anyone tried to take advantage of him, they'd learn very soon why people say that you can't offend Killer J.
Yun Rong was at the right place at the right time, and his ability was indeed very interesting, these were the reasons why Killer J decided to play around a bit and teach him a thing or two.
Noah was the only outlier, as the number of people who obtained power from him was uncountable, although the majority of them didn't survive.
Evidently, as the head of propaganda, Po Nan's mind couldn't stay at ease when he saw his own students turning into monsters in front of his eyes, which had now become an obstacle on his path of eternal peace.
He had two choices, either to lower his standards and completely discard all of these emotions as useless and forget about them, or to eliminate the source of these emotions and turn it into a mere memory.
Of course, Po Nan chose the latter.
…
While carrying a trunk with him, Yun Yi adjusted his glasses, some signals were blinking on the glass surface.
It was unwise for anyone to underestimate the level of destruction that a researcher could cause after giving them enough preparations. Yun Yi didn't like to destroy, but if he didn't make sure to rampage as thoroughly as he could, he would feel apologetic to the scalpels he had used.
As for Yun Rong, he was pulled away by Killer J to be taught some sort of ultimate technique, so he'd catch up to them soon.
The actions of that serpent had caused them to feel angry, so they had all decided to hunt it down!
