Chapter 80: Three thousand thunder-iron feathers
The moment they passed through the wall, Ethan felt his body being pulled in three different directions. Gravity below dragged him downward, another force from the left wrenched at his shoulder, while the lightning running along the shaft walls pulled the Primordial Armor on his left hand upward.
If not for Ruo Yan’s Soul Threads wrapped around their waists, all three of them would have been torn apart the instant they entered.
Ethan fought to stabilize himself and shouted, "Don’t resist the pull! Hold your positions!"
Laira immediately tucked her wings in. She didn’t try to fly, only using her uninjured wing to shield Ethan and block his body from slamming into a stone slab drifting past.
Ruo Yan directed the Necromancer to drive its broken staff into a crevice in the rock. A Bone Shield quickly materialized, forming an anchor point for all three of them.
The group skidded over ten meters before finally stopping.
Ethan braced his hand against the slab and tried to steady his breathing. His two left ribs sent a sharp stab of pain through him after the impact, but the injuries hadn’t worsened too drastically.
Laira immediately checked his body, her face full of worry.
"Are the wounds worse?"
"Not yet."
"What does not yet mean?"
Ethan straightened up and answered calmly, "It means I can still move."
Laira clearly wasn’t satisfied with that answer, but Ruo Yan spoke up before she could press further.
"Gravity is about to shift again."
The Soul Threads around Ruo Yan’s fingers were vibrating. She couldn’t see the rules the way Ethan could, but she could feel the subtle changes in the forces acting on her puppets.
Ethan immediately opened the Eye of Truth.
The path ahead appeared as hundreds of intersecting lines of light. The space looked completely chaotic, but the rules within still operated on a fixed cycle.
The first three beats, gravity pulled downward.
The next two beats, all the force shifted to the left.
On the sixth beat, gravity would reverse upward, and the lightning and spatial wind would vanish for a single moment.
That was the only window they had to move.
Ethan quickly explained. "After three beats, gravity shifts left. On the sixth beat, the lightning and spatial wind both disappear. We have to move during that window."
Laira looked at the stone slabs crashing into each other ahead.
"How long does the gap last?"
"Less than two seconds."
Ruo Yan looked at the three wooden puppets behind her, her brow creasing slightly.
"My three puppets can’t all keep up at the same time."
"Leaving one behind means it’ll be crushed."
"I know."
Two of the wooden puppets had been severely damaged in the reclamation circle, and their current speed had dropped considerably. If they had to move within less than two seconds, they would definitely slow the entire formation.
Ethan looked at the Necromancer.
"Can it summon Skeletons to scout the path?"
Ruo Yan understood immediately. She raised one hand and transmitted a command through the Soul Thread.
The Necromancer slowly lifted the broken staff. The green flames in its eye sockets flared, and a black magic circle appeared on the stone slab.
Five sword-wielding skeletons quickly crawled out.
Their energy only reached Black Iron, but their bodies were far lighter than the three wooden puppets.
Ruo Yan sent the first Skeleton onto the adjacent slab. The moment its foot touched down, a purple bolt of lightning shot out from the wall.
Boom!
The skeleton was reduced to ash.
Ethan observed where the bolt had appeared and adjusted the route in his head.
"The slab on the left isn’t safe. Try going up."
The second Skeleton moved immediately. This time, it cleared two slabs before spatial wind appeared and sliced its body into three pieces.
The third Skeleton followed Ethan’s timing exactly and passed through the first zone safely.
Ethan looked at Laira and Ruo Yan.
"Get ready."
Gravity began pulling downward. The slab beneath their feet shook violently, but all three held their positions.
’One.’
’Two.’
’Three.’
Their entire bodies were instantly yanked to the left. The Bone Shield let out a cracking sound, and the Necromancer’s staff bent a little further.
’Four.’
’Five.’
On the sixth beat, every bolt of lightning along the walls vanished simultaneously.
Ethan shouted immediately, "Go!"
Laira grabbed him around the waist and kicked off hard from the slab. She didn’t open her wings, using only her body’s raw strength to launch them both toward the next zone.
Ruo Yan used the Soul Threads to pull the three wooden puppets along behind her. The Necromancer was the last to leave its position.
The instant everyone landed, the lightning and spatial wind all surged back at once.
One wooden puppet didn’t pull its foot clear in time. A bolt struck its foot, and the entire wooden section below instantly charred black.
Ruo Yan quickly pulled the puppet back.
"Still functional."
Ethan looked at the destroyed foot.
"But it’ll be slower."
"I know."
Ruo Yan didn’t leave it behind. She directed two threads to wrap around the charred stump, temporarily replacing the lost joint.
The three of them pressed on.
Every zone had a different cycle. In some, the lightning disappeared after six beats; in others, the spatial wind stopped first but gravity still pulled the body in a different direction.
The Eye of Truth could find the path, but the volume of information flooding into Ethan’s eyes kept growing. The dull ache from before had turned into a burning sensation, as if the blood inside his eyeballs was slowly starting to boil.
Laira noticed his steps slowing and immediately wrapped an arm around his waist.
"Let me carry you."
"No. A weight shift will throw off the trajectory."
"Then lean on me."
This time Ethan didn’t refuse. He let Laira keep his body steady every time gravity changed.
Ruo Yan walked on the other side. Her Soul Threads kept the distance between all three of them under two meters at all times.
As they passed through the fourth zone, an explosion suddenly rang out from behind.
Boom!
The entire Dead Path shook violently.
The lightning cycle that still had three beats left before appearing was suddenly accelerated. The lines of light in Ethan’s field of vision shifted all at once.
His expression darkened immediately.
"The cycle’s been disrupted!"
Dozens of spatial wind blades appeared from both sides.
Laira immediately spread her uninjured wing to shield Ethan. But the damaged wing was also pulled open by the motion, and her face went white with pain.
Before Ruo Yan could give an order, the Necromancer had already stepped forward on its own. The broken staff slammed down onto the stone slab.
"Bone Shield."
The first hoarse words ever uttered from the skeleton’s throat.
Hundreds of bone fragments materialized from the void and rapidly assembled into a massive shield blocking the front of the group.
Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh!
Spatial wind slashed against the Bone Shield over and over. The outer layers of bone were sheared away chunk by chunk, but the shield still bought them a few extra seconds.
Laira thrust her hand out and fired a jet of flame behind them. The recoil launched the entire group clear of the zone just before the Bone Shield shattered completely.
All three of them crashed down onto a larger stone slab.
Ruo Yan looked at the Necromancer, a flicker of surprise crossing her face. She hadn’t given it the order to raise the shield. The puppet had recognized the danger on its own and chosen the appropriate skill.
The combat instincts of a being that once reached King level still lived within that body.
Ethan turned to look behind them.
Through the Eye of Truth, several new energy signatures had appeared inside the Dead Path. They didn’t belong to their group.
Aldren and the others had entered.
Their actions had disrupted the cycles in here.
Ruo Yan sensed it quickly as well. The two Skeletons she had left behind to scout had both lost connection simultaneously.
"Someone’s following us. My Skeletons were destroyed almost instantly."
Laira narrowed her eyes, flames beginning to flicker around her hands.
"Should we go back and kill them?"
"No."
Ethan wiped the streak of blood that had just trickled from the corner of his eye, then looked at the path ahead.
"Fighting in here will get everyone killed. Keep moving."
Laira looked at the blood on his fingertip, but ultimately pulled the flames back.
The three of them picked up their pace immediately.
After the sixth zone, the Dead Path began to narrow. The floating stone slabs disappeared, replaced by a metal bridge barely over a meter wide.
Below it was no ground at all, only an endless void of darkness with purple lightning flickering through it now and then.
Ethan walked in front. Laira held him from behind, while Ruo Yan used Soul Threads to link all three of them to the Necromancer. The wooden puppets were attached to the larger puppet’s back so they wouldn’t slow the formation.
At the end of the bridge was a round door with no lock or array.
As Ethan drew close, the Primordial Armor on his left hand suddenly trembled. Laira’s Solar Flame Seal blazed bright as well.
The door opened at once.
Purple-silver light poured out.
Beyond it was a circular chamber hundreds of meters across. The entire space was pitch black, with only a single metal feather hovering at the very center.
The feather was nearly a meter long, its surface a deep silver, and along the quill ran thin purple lines flowing like electric current.
The moment all three stepped inside, a second feather appeared.
Then a third.
Ten.
A hundred.
A thousand.
Finally, three thousand Thunder-Iron Feathers lit up in the darkness all at once.
They began to move, colliding and layering onto each other. In less than ten seconds, a pair of enormous metal wings had taken shape in the center of the chamber.
The wings were folded shut.
Behind the layers of feathers sat a spherical lightning core of purple-silver, with two streams of energy spiraling endlessly around each other inside.
Every time the wings gave the faintest tremor, small cracks appeared in the space around them.
Laira stared at the wings before her. The Solar Flame Seal burned so hot that the red patterns showed clearly through her skin, and her injured wing quivered as if it wanted to move toward the Thunder Wings on its own.
Ethan opened the Eye of Truth.
Information appeared instantly.
[Name: Thunder Wings.]
[Rarity: Mythical.]
[Creator: Puppet Master Owin.]
[Composition: Three thousand Thunder-Iron Feathers.]
[Status: Ownerless.]
[Basic functions: Flight, defense, acceleration, short-range teleportation, feather volley, and weapon form-shifting.]
[Compatible conduit detected: Primordial Armor.]
[Compatibility: 96%.]
[Full fusion is possible.]
[After fusion, the Primordial Armor will restructure and form a complete set of Thunder Wings.]
Ethan stared at the lines of information in silence.
He could absorb all of it.
No failure warning.
No need to split.
All he had to do was touch the core, and the entire Mythical Thunder Wings would be his.
Right at that moment, the Solar Flame Seal on Laira’s body suddenly erupted in a burst of red flame. The Thunder Wings reacted instantly, half of the feathers turning toward her in unison.
New information appeared rapidly.
[Second compatible conduit detected: Solar Flame Seal.]
[Dragon-race body detected with severely damaged appendage.]
[A portion of the Thunder Wings can be separated to restructure the injured wing.]
[Warning: After separation, each portion’s independent rarity will drop to Legendary.]
[The two portions can resonate and temporarily restore Mythical-level effectiveness.]
[Separation is not mandatory.]
Ethan’s gaze lingered on the final line, then he turned to look at Laira.
She couldn’t see the information panel, but from Ethan’s expression, she had already guessed part of it.
"Can you absorb it?"
Ethan nodded.
"Yes."
"All of it?"
"Yes."
Laira didn’t hesitate for a second.
"Then absorb it."