The yellow liquid inside the slab swayed against its walls, intent on escaping its imprisonment.
The blood was gathering onto the bottom part of the slab, and it started rising over its surface. In seconds, it was almost covered in blood and didn't seem to stop.
"Well done—it seems you've woken it completely." Bao Qingcao looked at Huo Yanming with something close to fury, unable to understand what his intention had been in striking the slab.
Many junior generals thought the same but had neither the will nor the standing to show their true feelings.
Xue Yanluo kept stepping back with his gaze fixed on every movement near the slab. "That slab is the core, and perhaps General Huo's instinct was very good," he said aloud for everyone to hear.
When people looked back at the slab, their eyes opened wide, catching the small details. The yellow liquid wasn't slamming against the walls trying to break them—it was gathering itself to slam toward the center and escape through its opening.
The liquid had some kind of awareness and mobility, though quite limited—which was why it had to inhabit trees and didn't roam freely. Now it was devising a way to boost its mobility explosively for just a second.
The blood, by contrast, had no such limitations—it scaled the slab with ease and covered it with its body to protect it and prevent the liquid inside from escaping.
Everyone watched that struggle between two liquids—a confrontation no one had ever imagined witnessing.
The yellow liquid slammed toward the center, and a current rose to the opening, almost getting out, but failing to reach the edge and falling back. In a second it had gathered itself again and created another, stronger current.
It rose and reached the opening, gripped hard, and all the liquid inside the slab vibrated upward.
The liquid pumped itself upward, a large drop nearly falling—but it never managed it, held back by a thin connection between itself and the ceiling.
It was about to pour out of the slab in a torrent, unaware that a crimson shadow was closing over it. The blood had climbed to the top of the slab and lunged for the last uncovered piece.
It climbed through the slab's opening and spilled over it. The yellow liquid felt the blood and tried to fight it, creating bulges, shaking itself, and using every method at its disposal.
That blood seemed its destined enemy. Its ability to drain the life from its prey didn't work on blood, and all it could do was push protrusions against the thin membrane covering the opening.
It had lost—the blood managed to cover the entire slab. What was inside was impossible to see, but its struggle was visible in great detail at a single point.
The people who had witnessed it felt a strange sadness and melancholy. Though that yellow liquid had killed many soldiers, and though it had some awareness, it was not human—yet watching its desperate struggle, it had moved their hearts.
"I can't say whether what just happened is good or bad," Xue Yanluo remarked with a frown. "General Huo, what do you propose?"
Huo Yanming swept his gaze across the whole hall and then the spot where the translucent slab stood, now coated in a layer of blood that made it impossible to know what was happening inside. "Wait," he finally said, gripped his spear, and took an evasive stance that could shift to attack or counterattack at any moment.
The soldiers followed his lead, every one of them with their eyes fixed on the center of the hall, stances set, weapons drawn.
A drop formed in a crack in the ceiling, grew slowly, accumulated, and finally fell from the ceiling and shattered against the indifferent floor. Its only significance in that hall was the sound it made on impact.
Many eyes turned immediately toward the sound, hands tightening on sabers and spears, one movement away from striking anything that moved.
"False alarm."
"It was a drop."
"Nearly scared me to death."
Each soldier voiced his thoughts aloud, trying to calm himself and avoid letting the constant tension wear him down.
The seconds passed to complete the minute, and the minutes gathered seven times before something happened at the center of the hall.
The blood coating the slab shook and began sliding down from the top, uncovering the slab it had hidden for itself alone.
The slab had lost its transparency, and the yellow liquid inside no longer existed. The entire slab was filled with a solid green mass that glowed faintly as it was freed from the membrane of blood that had covered it until now.
When the whole slab was fully visible to everyone, the brightness it exuded suddenly retracted—and a second later it exploded into a blinding light that filled the entire hall.
The soldiers had no time to react, and by the time they did, they had already been temporarily blinded and were rubbing their eyes with their hands.
The only ones who managed to react in time were the vampires and the three division generals—everyone else, soldiers and generals alike, was blind.
When the few who had kept their sight opened their eyes, the slab was floating in the air, and the pedestal that had supported it was broken, a large hole at its center.
From the hole, a roar shook the ceiling, and the floor trembled repeatedly.
"Get ready—it's coming up. Anyone who still can't see, fall back and put your back to the wall!"
More than half the soldiers stepped back slowly until their hands and backs were touching the wall, crouching down and making themselves as small as possible.
In less than a minute, a yellow and red hand crashed through the ceiling. Then a grotesque mass followed, dragging itself out of the hole.
A mass of yellowish and red fluids soaked the floor. The mass, covered in branches, bulges, and swellings, writhed as it pulled itself forward.
Many soldiers wept openly; others squeezed their thighs or bit their lower lip to dilute the hatred, fury, and desolation building inside them.
"We've… found the missing soldiers…" said Huo Yanming, his whole body tensed and his brow drawn into a deep frown. He gripped his spear with everything he had, and his feet sank slightly into the ground, readying himself to attack with full force, and murmured, "Rest in peace."