Chapter 219: Pulsate
It was only then that Yi Chen realised that this wasn’t just limited to his hands.
Although not jet black in colour like his hands, the rest of his skin had also darkened greatly.
However, because of how absorbed he was while battling, he failed to notice the changes until now.
"What’s happening..."
"...am I turning into those demons..."
Doubts arose in his mind, but before he could mull over them, the ninth wave arrived.
ZAHIIIRRR!
Two Hundred and Fifty-Six.
That’s exactly how many demons were currently surrounding Yi Chen.
Their deafening roars rattled his ears, and the next instant, they all rushed towards him.
Feeling the ground beneath him tremoring from their simultaneous charge, Yi Chen shoved away all the unnecessary thoughts from his mind.
"Whether I’m becoming a demon or not...none of that matters."
He clenched his fists and soon charged towards the incoming enemy.
"Survival is the only thing that matters now!"
He roared at the top of his lungs and lunged.
Slaying one demon after another, the sandy land was littered with hundreds of corpses as their numbers kept piling up.
Time kept passing, and just like the clock’s incessant hands, Yi Chen’s attacks also never stopped.
Despite the passage of time, there was no change in the sky, which illuminated the surroundings with the same orange.
SLASH!
Watching the last demon falling on its back, Yi Chen panted heavily while struggling to keep standing.
It took him almost thirteen hours to deal with all two hundred and fifty-six of them.
Riddled with injuries, his body was in the worst shape it had ever been.
In many places, he was so deeply cut and was bleeding so profusely that if left untreated for another half a day, he would have died.
Clenching his stomach tightly while coughing up blood, he waited for the cloud of black smoke to gather, which soon gushed right into his body.
When the enormous cloud dispersed, all his injuries were healed. Along with that, his entire body, except for his head, had turned jet black in colour.
Seeing the changes, Yi Chen immediately touched the sides of his head and his teeth.
"Phew..."
He sighed in what little relief he could find at this dismal situation.
Although the healed injuries made him feel much better than before, his body and mind were still extremely fatigued after engaging with these demons almost nonstop for more than twenty-four hours in total.
Every inch of him wanted to crash onto the sandy ground and rest, but alas... the tenth wave materialised right at that instant.
Clenching his jaws, Yi Chen glared hatefully at the sea of demons all around him.
His entire body trembled, not from fright but from exhaustion, begging him to stop.
If he could, he would have loved to stop...but fate seemed to have a different plan for him.
’Tenth wave...Five hundred and twelve...’
Yi Chen said under his breath while taking a deep breath.
ZAHIIIR!
One of the faster demon soldiers immediately reached his vicinity and attacked.
With anger, exhaustion and frustration mixed in his eyes, Yi Chen retaliated ruthlessly.
Slamming the demon on the ground, he plucked out its two arms and started another massacre.
He noticed that compared to before, the force his attacks carried was much greater. However, under the sea of demons, that subtle improvement soon lost its significance.
Time kept passing, and soon another twelve hours had elapsed.
Yi Chen kept swinging the claws he held in his hand to inflict maximum damage on the demons.
Every inch of his body ached and screamed, his muscles convulsed and tightened, but he gritted his teeth and kept pushing himself both mentally and physically.
’I didn’t come here to die!’
He hacked another demon while keeping up the count in his mind.
257...
282..
291...
With his mind almost on the brink of collapse, these numbers had become the very anchor which kept it from drifting into oblivion.
294...
296...
His Qi pool had dried, and with no storage ring to replenish it, he had been running empty all this while.
The state of his spiritual sea also wasn’t very good. Although he had not actively used any spiritual energy in the entire period, it had dropped all the way down to 12.
It wasn’t because of the kill counts Yi Chen was clinging onto that had kept his mind from collapsing. In reality, it was his spiritual energy that had been draining on its own to keep his mind from collapsing.
However, Yi Chen had no clue about it.
He kept hacking demons one after another while clinging to the very number which had become very dear to him with time.
324...
339...
387...
Irritation, rage, and anger had all vanished from his face by now, and their place was completely taken over by tiredness.
His body felt as heavy as iron, but his arms kept swinging the claws he was tightly clutching onto as the number of bodies scattered on the sands kept piling.
427...
449...
491...
’Soon...Soon.’
His expression began to brighten as the end seemed nearer, with only a few demons around attacking him from all sides.
501...
504...
’Finally...’
509...
511...
’Finally... I can rest.’
Yi Chen hacked down the last remaining demon and fell on his knees soon after.
"I did it! I did it!"
He exclaimed with tears of joy, mustering all the energy he had in store and the very next instant, his back crashed on the sandy ground.
All the corpses immediately turned into clouds of black smoke, the next instant turning the orange sky into night, and soon rushed towards Yi Chen.
By now, Yi Chen had long grown used to this sight. As a result, instead of being focused on the cloud, his mind was more focused on other things as a question rose in his mind.
’Since this was the tenth wave, there’s not going to be another one right...?’
He thought with worry.
’What if the first demon I faced was only considered a demo, and according to the trial, the waves began after that...’
If the next wave were to arrive, then Yi Chen knew he had no way of survival.
In the last two days, he had fought close to a thousand demons...if the next wave came, then he would have to face almost the same number of demons, but in a single wave.
To fight another thousand demons when he was already on the verge of dying from exhaustion would result in only one outcome. His death.
The black smoke soon gushed inside his body through his nostrils and mouth and continued for almost five minutes.
When the black smoke was fully absorbed by his body, Yi Chen’s face, which was still human-like in colour, began to acquire the pitch-black colour of the demons.
This was soon followed by his pupils turning blood-red in colour as they gleamed with a crimson light.
Not realising the changes that had just taken place, Yi Chen instantly pushed his exhausted body up from the ground and warily looked all around.
A few moments later, a sigh escaped his lips.
’It really is over...’ A great sense of relief washed over him at this realisation.
At that very instant, a system notification popped up in front of his eyes.
Ding!
Successfully acquired the True Demon Heart!
"True Demon Heart?"
Yi Chen furrowed his brows, but before he could think any further on it, an intense suction formed on his right chest.
’Ugh!...what’s this?!’ he groaned while clutching his right chest with a confused expression, but the very next instant, his eyes widened in disbelief.
The pitch-black skin on his hand started receding to its normal white colour the very next instant. It wasn’t just the case with his hands, but the same was also happening with his arms, feet, legs, head, neck and back.
"It’s fading!"
Yi Chen exclaimed, but soon noticed that wasn’t so the case. Instead of fading, the black colour seemed to be moving towards his chest.
Coupled with the suction sensation he was feeling on his right chest, Yi Chen became more certain and immediately tore off what little remained of his tattered robes to check his right chest
"This..."
A dense black circle the size of one’s head was formed on his right chest like a tattoo, its shade darker than any black he had ever seen.
It grew darker and darker in shade as the circle’s diameter reduced and kept at it until its diameter became fist-sized.
It was at that instant that the dense circle of black seeped inside his chest and vanished.
Yi Chen’s whole body tensed up when he saw this scene, and just a few seconds later, a great surge of pain took over his being.
GAHHHHH!
He roared like a beast and, losing all strength in his legs, collapsed into a foetal position while crying and writhing because of the incessant pain he was feeling all over his body.
Inside his body, right under his right lung, a black heart had taken shape.
The next instant, several black tube-like structures grew out of the heart and turned into black blood vessels that extended and spread themselves all across his body.
"AHHH!"
The black vessels paid no heed to his organs and pierced through them if necessary to make space, which only further increased Yi Chen’s agony.
Half an hour that felt like a lifetime for Yi Chen soon elapsed.
By now, Yi Chen had long stopped shouting because of exhaustion, but his tightly pressed eyes and occasional tremors of his muscles clearly showed the pain he was going through each second.
A few seconds later, this torturous period finally came to an end as the black blood vessels fully formed a new circulatory pathway inside Yi Chen’s body.
The very next instant, the black heart shone with a black glimmer and started pulsating.
BA-DUM!
BA-DUM!
BA-DUM!