Scuttling, clicking sounds came from the deepest, unlit chasms of the tomb.
Under the eerie blue illumination of the Fox-Fire, countless Grave-Ash Horrors could be seen eyeing the Vanguard cohort from all directions; clinging to the petrified roots breaking through the ceiling, hiding within the sealed alcoves of the stone walls, and emerging from the various burial pits scattered across the floor.
Within the Crimson Lotus Pavilion's unit, a gigantic Inferno-Hound opened its molten jaws wide. A swirl of volatile, demonic Yang-flames began to gather in its throat, forming a rapidly rotating sphere of highly pressurized heat.
The fireball shot out like a miniature sun and scored a direct hit on a Grave-Ash Horror that failed to scuttle back into its crevice in time. It only managed to release a gurgling shriek of despair before being instantly incinerated by the blast.
An Elite-tier fiend was immediately eradicated by the Yang-fire without even having the chance to spew its calcifying ash.
"This is inefficient; the expenditure of Yang Qi is too steep," said Commander Yan of the Crimson Lotus, a deep frown carving lines into his tattooed scalp.
He was wearing his aura already slightly dimmed from the constant bombardment.
Although his Hounds could easily reduce these Elite-tier horrors to cinders in one blow, the sheer density of the swarm was overwhelming.
If every single one of these pale fiends required a concentrated fireball to be eliminated, his beasts would suffer core-exhaustion before they even reached the central Grave-Matrix.
"We shall restrict our Yang arts to close-quarters repulsion. Flesh-Shields form the vanguard, Curse-Weavers maintain the spatial lockdown in the center, and the Venom-Spitters take the flanks to melt the petrified terrain. Tighten the formation and advance. We must secure the Matrix before the Abyssal mercenaries claim the bounty," Commander Yan ordered from the backlines.
The Crimson Lotus disciples nodded sharply and very quickly arranged their fiends into the new, defensive phalanx.
Hovering quietly above Commander Yan's shoulder was a fist-sized Cinder-Bat with wings made of pure, crackling ember. Its two little claws were gripping a floating piece of obsidian, and its blind eyes were darting about, relying on echolocation to map the terrifying surroundings.
Right at the front of the formation was a massive, heavily armored Magma-Tortoise, a mutant variant that possessed an incredibly high physical defense and a naturally radiating heat aura.
As they advanced deeper, the Grave-Ash Horrors would frantically spit their suffocating, gray ash to petrify the Magma-Tortoise's limbs and halt its advance.
A disciple in the center of the formation activated a blood-seal, commanding his Thorny Blood-Vine to weave an additional layer of jagged, crimson briars over the Tortoise's shell.
The vines crisscrossed rapidly, forming a dense, organic barricade against the incoming streams of calcifying ash.
The Cinder-Bat above Commander Yan's shoulder spat a concentrated spark of Yang-fire, igniting the blood-soaked vines.
The organic barricade burst into a localized inferno, suddenly becoming a makeshift, roaring armor of demonic flame.
Any of the gray, necrotic ash that came into contact with it was instantly flash-boiled into harmless steam, the calcifying properties entirely neutralized by the heat. The subterranean air became filled with a sickeningly sweet, roasting smell.
The Yang-flames were an absolute counter to the necrotic ash. Upon contact with the extreme heat, the ash lost all its draining and petrifying resilience.
The Cinder-Bat was not yet at the Commander tier, hence it lacked the precise control to establish a "friendly-fire ward."
But it did not matter, since the Magma-Tortoise thrived in extreme temperatures and possessed a near-immunity to low-tier flames.
This was a brutal battle tactic that Commander Yan's pavilion specialized in.
The catacombs were a labyrinth of complex twists and collapsed tunnels. It was an ancient, sprawling burial site.
The faint, chaotic sounds of a massive clash suddenly echoed from the tunnels ahead of them. The concussive blasts of dark Qi travelled far in these hollow caverns, which meant that the battle was still a significant distance away.
The arrogant expression on Commander Yan's face instantly twisted into a furious scowl. Another mercenary band had bypassed their vanguard!
They hurriedly picked up the pace. Ablaze while wearing the roaring armor of vines, the Magma-Tortoise charged blindly through the stone archways. In no time, the claustrophobic tunnels widened, and the surroundings suddenly brightened with the glow of unleashed demonic arts. A massive, central burial chamber, many times larger than the execution squares of the sect, opened before their eyes.
In the absolute center of the chamber, resting upon a mountain of petrified cultivator corpses, a gigantic Grave-Matrix entity could be seen pulsating in the gloom.
It looked horrifyingly bloated, its central mass covered by a thick, hardened shell of compressed, gray ash, as though it were sealed within a colossal, petrified egg.
Only a dozen massive, multi-jointed, pale limbs protruded from the ash-shell, ending in jagged, bone-shearing claws that hooked deeply into the mountain of corpses.
In the chamber, the Abyssal Vanguard mercenaries were already swarming the Matrix.
Dark, corrosive wind-blades, explosive blood-talismans, and concentrated poison-darts flew through the air, but all the attacks landed on the petrified ash-shell and shattered harmlessly, simply bouncing off like pebbles thrown against a fortress wall. Nothing seemed to penetrate the dense calcification.
Looking at the incoming barrage, the Grave-Matrix simply lay motionless, emitting a low, vibrating hum. Its massive, milky-white eyes were cold and completely devoid of sentience.
Only when a highly concentrated attack was about to strike near its exposed sensory clusters did it react by instantly excreting a localized layer of hyper-dense, crystalline ash to deflect the blow.
Captain Vane, standing safely at the edge of the cavern, felt that the absolute emptiness in the creature's eyes was somewhat familiar, as though he had witnessed that exact, chilling apathy very recently.
"The Matrix relies entirely on its spawn for offense! Do not be intimidated by its armored mass! It is merely a bloated incubator! Its actual combat capacity is negligible compared to a true Calamity Lord!" shouted one of the mercenary lieutenants, desperately trying to rally his men to concentrate their fire and shatter the shell.
"As long as we synchronize our high-tier fiends, we can definitely crack the Matrix! Once the core is exposed, the bounty is ours!" Captain Vane roared, his voice cutting through the din of battle.
"For the Vanguard!" Hearing their Captain's command, many of the mercenaries injected their fiends with another dose of combat stimulants, forcing them to increase their frenzied assault.
The Grave-Matrix did not retaliate. It was trapped in a strange, dormant state, most likely conserving its ambient death Qi to reproduce another massive wave of horrors. But the mercenaries didn't care.
They fully intended to exploit its immobility to execute it while it was vulnerable.
The intervals between the dark-art bombardments grew shorter and more violent. The dense, petrified shell covering the Matrix was gradually being chipped away by sheer volume.
A few highly concentrated, corrosive strikes managed to penetrate the outer layers, causing deep, jagged fissures that leaked a foul, glowing green sludge.
Seeing the Matrix finally sustain damage, the mercenary bands grew fanatical, whipping their fiends to charge closer. The human cultivators themselves hung back near the tunnel exits, avoiding the direct splash zone of the corrosive sludge.
A newly ascended Four-Armed Abyssal Mantis launched itself forward, leaving behind a blur of obsidian motion.
It drew its two primary scythe-arms back, channeling a massive surge of dark-metal Qi.
Even after the Matrix rapidly excreted its crystalline ash to protect a deepening fissure, the defensive layer was easily sheared apart by the Commander-tier, jade-green blades of the Mantis.
Shattered pieces of the crystalline ash exploded outward like shrapnel, raining down upon the mountain of corpses.
The Grave-Matrix lost its dormant stillness. Its massive, milky-white eyes suddenly flared, glaring at the invading cultivators with an ancient, localized hatred.
A deep, bone-rattling vibration echoed across the cavern, vibrating at a frequency that directly attacked the soul.
Some of the weaker mercenary disciples immediately fell to their knees, screaming as they clutched their bleeding ears. Dark Qi seeped uncontrollably from their pores.
The sound of displaced air screamed through the cavern as one of the massive, pale limbs suddenly ripped free from the corpse-mountain.
In mid-air, the Four-Armed Abyssal Mantis desperately flared its dark aura and contorted its obsidian body, barely dodging the pale limb that stabbed upward like a falling siege pillar.
The massive limb effortlessly pierced through the solid stone ceiling of the cavern, burying itself deep into the rock as though the ceiling were made of wet mud.
A profound, suffocating pressure flooded the burial chamber. The Grave-Matrix that had been lying passively within its ash-shell all along began to violently crack open its own armor, stretching its horrifying, multi-jointed limbs.
Each of its dozen legs was over thirty feet long, looking like pale, decaying obelisks. When they slammed down to support the central mass, the entire cavern floor fractured and heaved.
The pale limbs were densely covered in highly toxic, calcifying barbs. Its central maw, previously hidden beneath the ash, split open like a blooming, jagged ravine of jagged teeth, releasing a concentrated cloud of pure, weaponized death-aura into the enclosed space.
Its hulking size, combined with the sudden, explosive speed of its movements, shattered the illusion of a helpless incubator. It was a terrifying, apex predator of the dark.
Who told the intelligence network the Matrix had negligible combat strength?
Every single mercenary in the cavern was silently screaming curses at the Vanguard Command.
We've been ordered into a slaughterhouse! This entire bounty was a suicidal trap, and we willingly marched into the jaws!
Captain Vane finally realized why the terrifying, empty apathy in the Matrix's eyes felt so familiar.
It was the exact same, dead, calculating gaze that Young Master Sunny possessed.
The eyes of an entity that viewed everything around it not as threats, but as mere, insignificant ingredients!
Beneath the central maw of the Grave-Matrix, a sickly, green halo of absolute decay was slowly rotating.
Compared to the massive, suffocating halo of the Calamity Lord they had seen earlier, this one was significantly smaller, but it was condensing rapidly.
This was a nightmare entity at the absolute peak of the Commander tier, and it was in the final, violent throes of breaking through to the Calamity tier!
It was horrifyingly obvious to the mercenaries that their bombardment had forcefully accelerated its awakening.
Even a low-tier cultist could predict the sheer, apocalyptic wrath that they had just invited upon themselves.
"Abandon the bounty! Flee to the surface!" Captain Vane roared. He immediately shattered a blood-talisman, recalling his Four-Armed Abyssal Mantis.
He threw himself onto his fiend's obsidian back and desperately spurred it toward the tunnel exit, abandoning his entire band without a second thought.