Chapter 71: Picking Chestnuts from the Fire

The Catacomb Nightingale’s indiscriminate psychic shriek, born of agonizing pain and laced with hatred, acted like a destructive command that ignited souls, dragging the entire workshop into an illogical internal purge.The bio-weapons that had just completed Ascension and were hailed as masterpieces by the cult were triggered back into primal bestiality, swinging their steel-rending arms at the nearest of their own kind.

One Ascendant, whose skull harbored a circular bone saw, went mad from the psychic torture burrowing into his brain. He roared as he swung the death-discs in his hands at a comrade who had tried to subdue him with bone spikes.

Amid the squealing chorus of carapace and bone being torn apart together, the ambushed Ascendant’s tough living exoskeleton was cleaved diagonally from his shoulder, exposing the insides.

Ominous black-purple Alchemical Blood gushed out, splattering the whole scene.

And that was only the beginning of the blood-soaked chaos.

The workshop filled with the beastly roars of out-of-control Ascendants, the sparks flying where claws and bone blades struck, and the short, piercing death screams of the white-coated scholars who were caught in the carnage and shredded.

A factory that prized order and efficiency became in seconds an arena governed only by primal jungle rules.

Imprisoned inside an amber cage, the Catacomb Nightingale was consuming the last of its life in the destructive symphony it had composed.

Its liquid-moon silver-gray hide was visibly dimming and withering, flaking off in silvery specks.

The amber crystal that bound it began to show fine cracks as the Nightingale’s increasingly violent Mental Impact battered it.

“My lord…”

The arrogant Golden-Faced Bishop on the altar, watching the self-destruction of the creature he proudly created, realized he had made a foolish, unforgivable fatal mistake.

He had underestimated the three men’s knowledge and observational skills, and overestimated the stability of the experimental modification system.

He no longer maintained the composure of a “bishop.” Panic replaced his titles as he glanced at the amber cage that was about to shatter and then at the blood-frenzied Ascendants closing in on the altar.

In the end, the instinct to survive overcame his fanatical faith.

He let out a shrill cry, and without even retrieving the precious containers holding experimental samples, he fled headlong toward the escape passage beside the altar with the few guards still at his side.

“The time has come.”

Hidden at the edge of the chaotic battlefield, Lin Jie spoke in his still-calm voice the final, crucial plan for the full assault as the bishop fled in disgrace.

He understood that once the workshop’s top commander had abandoned resistance, the three of them waiting on the sidelines had a chance to harvest the spoils.

“Our target isn’t these maddened Ascendants, and it isn’t that dying Nightingale!” The Curator Julian’s face showed no pity;instead, the gleam of a researcher shone in his eyes. “It’s the cage itself, Mr. Lin, William! It’s the UMA’s bodily tissue inside that cage!”

He quickly explained his idea to the two of them: “The Eternal Serpent cult’s atavism project has reached the forbidden realm of spiritual grafting!”

“If we can obtain some primitive, uncontaminated tissue samples from this Nightingale that they used as raw material, and compare them with the Alchemical Blood inside the Ascendants, we might reverse-engineer the core secrets of their perverse modification techniques! For the Association, that strategic intelligence is far more valuable than simply destroying a single stronghold!”

Julian’s proposal earned Lin Jie’s approval.

This was not only for study, but to find an antidote to counter these bio-weapons.

Thus, a dangerous but opportunity-laden “picking chestnuts from the fire” operation was sealed among the three of them on that doomed, chaotic battleground.

William acted. Instead of engaging the berserk Ascendants in pointless skirmishes, he trained his newly modified long-barreled Colt revolver on the iron suspension rings securing the steam pipes at the workshop’s ceiling.

After a sequence of precise shots, several heavy steam pipes came screaming down from above, crashing and forming a temporary barricade that isolated their area from the battling Ascendants.

He created for Lin Jie and Julian a brief but precious safe operating zone.

Julian immediately pulled from his canvas backpack a spray device made of lead and crystal.

He loaded a vial of green, smoking, highly corrosive alchemical acid into the apparatus, then sprayed it at the silver rune lines beneath the huge amber cage that supplied its energy.

Amid the grating hiss of metal being eaten away, the cage’s final power source was severed.

Now only Lin Jie remained standing, motionless.

His gaze pierced through the confusion and smoke, fixed on the Catacomb Nightingale that, weakened and in pain, kept ramming its body against the amber cage.

What came next would be the moment that tested his courage and skill most.

He did not rely on William’s cover. Instead, he tightened his grip on his Serene Heart, boosting the field that stabilized his mind to its current peak.

Then, alone, he walked toward the cracking amber tomb, facing the still-expanding psychic aftershocks that would concuss a normal person.

Crack… Boom—!!

When he was less than five meters from the cage, the giant alchemical amber crystal that had imprisoned the sacred songbird for months finally shattered under the UMA’s last frantic assaults.

Amber shards, small and large, glittered as they exploded outward like a lavish rain.

Amid that deadly crystal downpour, Lin Jie’s eyes locked onto the target with pinpoint accuracy.

He saw several palm-sized gray-black fragments whose shapes roughly matched wounds on the UMA’s hide. A faint silver sheen glimmered within them, mixed among countless amber splinters, tumbling toward him.

He instinctively dodged several shards that could have gutted him, rolled clear, and once the rain subsided gathered up all the scattered gray-black fragments.

Then he saw the freed but dying Catacomb Nightingale. Its weakened, semi-transparent body, upon release, did not look back at the caverns.

Its eyes, filled with a sense of release, glanced once more at the small human who had indirectly caused all its suffering yet had freed it.

Then its beautiful moonlit form issued a final, piercing, sorrowful cry that shook Paris’s underground.

It turned into a gray streak of light and shot toward the workshop dome, carrying its pain and legend into the darkness.

With that final and most powerful release of life force, the purification apparatus—whose energy node Julian had sabotaged and which had already lost its core power—experienced an irreversible overload of its unstable alchemical energy.

Blue-white arcs began to leap wildly across the machine’s surface.

The whole altar trembled like an earthquake.