I Forged the Myth of the Ancient Overlords
Chapter 817 - 817 816.42 seconds

Chapter 817: 816.42 seconds Chapter 817: 816.42 seconds From beneath the originally normal skin, pale, sprout-like tentacles burrowed out from the pores as if on the surface of rotten flesh teeming with maggots—those tentacles writhed and swayed ceaselessly until, underneath the skin, even thicker white tentacles tore through the flesh, coiling towards Lu Ban’s hand.

At the same time, the diner’s mouth suddenly burst open, splitting into four segments, each lined with fine, sharp teeth resembling the petals of a fully-bloomed flower.

However, it seemed as if the flower sought Lu Ban’s favor; without a second word, it lunged at his body. One could see the brain, ridged and textured like tofu, in the center of the blossom, where fuzzy tentacles rubbed against each other, waiting to feed.

The diner’s clothes were stretched taut, his bones seemingly digested away during centuries of gestation; his entire form collapsed into nothing but more extending pale tentacles, as if he were a plant whose sole purpose was to bloom the most splendid of flowers.

Without hesitating, Lu Ban materialized the silver revolver “Testament” in his hand and fired. The monster was immediately flung towards the direction of the cabin, smashing into several of the gracefully dancing guests along the way and finally crashing into a cabin wall, splattering into a bloom of flesh.

And for those dancers knocked down, white flesh sprouts proliferated at their severed sections—a paused film resuming playback, only now at ten times the speed. Their bodies underwent rapid mutations, transforming into grotesque and monstrous creatures.

“It looks like we can’t let them come into contact with each other.”

Lu Ban thought, raising the barrel of his gun, crouching down and swiftly propelling these creatures into the air, firing consecutively to send them even higher.

Then, those monsters froze mid-air, similar to the Skeleton Serpent enveloped by thunderclouds they held none of their former human shapes, now purely monstrous.

Silence returned to the deck.

“These humans have mutated. They’ve been severely contaminated here in the Windless Belt, but given the nature of time stagnation in this place, the corrosion from the pollution didn’t manifest immediately. However, once the flow of time resumed on their bodies, the corrosion accelerated immediately.”

Lu Ban had now roughly understood the effects of this maritime area.

In other words, the Pollution of the Windless Belt and the Superpower Ability that brought time here to a near halt were not one and the same.

Even if the crew, with Shia’s aid, could resist the fate of slowly being frozen in time, they were still enduring contamination.

Yet this pollution was not so severe; the brief contact of just a few minutes wasn’t enough to cause mutations.

But this passenger ship—how long it had been stalled here was unknown.

Judging from the attire of these people, it was completely different from the current era’s style on He Dao; it’s also unclear what the historical progress on the mainland of He Dao was like. After all, there were steam engines, and in the central regions of the mainland, there were probably some individuals with Superpower Abilities, possibly a different world to someone like Zhang Zheng, who often drifted at sea.

Even on Earth, while some developed areas enjoy coffee and air conditioning, other backward areas might only be able to sustain themselves with spearfishing.

He Dao’s current exploration of the sea was minimal; the closer to the ocean, the more likely an area was to be underdeveloped.

Therefore, these individuals might have fallen into the Windless Belt only recently. As for the speed of Mutation, Lu Ban couldn’t draw any conclusions.

“Why is it like this? Pollution should tend to spread directly; such a contradiction suggests someone’s intervention?”

Lu Ban silently pondered.

Pollution generally spreads spontaneously, from an area of high contamination to one of lower concentration, until the entire Foreign Domain becomes saturated with Pollution. Normally, it would not, like the Windless Belt, remain unchanged for decades, even up to a century.

Rather than progress, the stagnation of time here seemed to have halted the spread of pollution.

Thinking of this, Lu Ban suddenly felt the surroundings grow dim.

The stars above appeared to be shrouded in a thin veil, indistinct and ambiguous.

Lu Ban saw that not far away, Baobao was beginning to fade into nothingness, his whole being enveloped by a shadowy mist.

The next moment, Lu Ban felt a massive force seize him. He tried to resist, but found his limbs almost immovable, not so much constrained as his own body signaling him that it wasn’t time to move, a kind of instinctual immobility.

He soon saw a colossal monster hidden within the shadowy mist gripping him in its hand. The outline of the creature was indistinct, yet he could feel its body standing at least hundreds of meters tall, towering like a mountain amidst the distant mist, its dull blue eyes emitting a menacing aura. Merely being watched by it made the pollution spread like a gnawing ulcer across Lu Ban’s scalp and over the surface of his body.

In that instant, Lu Ban saw the monster’s arms stretching out from the mist were numerous, and it seemed to originate from an island in the distance. Within one of those arms, a silver light burst forth.

Like the blade of a knife, the silver radiance sliced through the shadowy mist, bringing a sliver of light to this dark world.

The next moment, Lu Ban was back in reality.

He saw Baobao sitting casually on a decaying sofa, now overgrown with tentacles and fuzz, gently stroking the sleek head of the eyeless creature on the armrest, teasing the tiny, tooth-filled mouth that gaped atop its head. Baobao looked utterly relaxed, as if he had returned to the comfort of his own home.

On the other side, Lu Ban saw Shia clad in armor.

“Some trouble,”

Shia glanced at her gauntlet-armored forearm and said.

“This creature exists in this Windless Belt, but in a special form.”

She murmured to herself.

Lu Ban, through True Sight, had also glimpsed something of the monster’s nature. He casually picked up a piece of wood that had fallen from the shattered cabin when the monster was attacked. With the silver steel pen, “Testament,” he inscribed words upon the wood’s surface, on the verge of sprouting.

“Can display time.”

In the blink of an eye, this piece of wood had become a clock capable of showing time.

Lu Ban looked at the scratches on the wood, which had shifted positions to form something resembling the scale of a clock. The buds grown on the wood slowly moved to serve as hands.

Shia didn’t ask what Lu Ban was doing, but she had some understanding.

Lu Ban noticed that time was slowly passing, and when the second hand was about to reach 42 seconds, he felt the surroundings plunge into darkness again.

But this time, Lu Ban was prepared. Following Shia’s method, he quickly escaped from around the shadowy monster and returned to reality once more.

He immediately looked at the wooden piece in his hand.

The time displayed on the piece was 43 seconds.