Chapter 25: Azhdaha's Erosion is Finally Purged
Before the ancient dragon could finish his furious roar, a mountain-crushing pressure fully descended. The sheer weight of Zhongli's geo energy slammed into Azhdaha's massive form, forcing his final words back into the depths of his throat and choking off even the faintest whimper.
"Paimon, do it now!" Lumine shouted. The dull scrape of metal rang out as she drew her longsword, the blade catching the dim light of the cavern. She dropped into a low, defensive stance, her golden eyes locked onto the colossal, thrashing beast, muscles coiled and ready to strike if the suppression failed.
Paimon hovered in the air, staring down at the mountain-sized Dragon King pinned to the cavern floor. Seeing the terrifying beast rendered completely immobile by the Adepti's combined might managed to wash away a fraction of the trembling fear in her small chest. She could feel the steady, reassuring warmth of Lumine standing right behind her. That silent, unwavering support anchored her nerves. Swallowing hard, Paimon gave a firm nod.
Slowly, she drifted forward. Her tiny hands clenched into fists, betraying a lingering thread of nervousness, but her eyes shone with absolute determination. She floated directly toward the enormous, craggy expanse of Azhdaha's head. Lumine matched her pace step for step, keeping her blade raised, her senses dialed to their absolute peak to intercept any sudden backlash.
Paimon finally came to a halt right in front of the Dragon King's snout. Up close, the sheer scale of the creature was staggering. His ancient, rock-like scales were heavily gouged with deep, jagged scars, and his massive features were contorted in a mask of primal rage. Even fully suppressed, the suffocating aura radiating from the Lord of Vishaps felt like standing beneath a collapsing mountain. The air itself felt thick, heavy, and hard to breathe.
Seeking one last burst of courage, Paimon glanced over her shoulder. She met Zhongli's calm, glowing amber eyes, Lumine's fierce nod, and the focused expressions of the Adepti pouring their energy into the glowing golden arrays. Their silent encouragement was all she needed. Paimon took a deep, shaky breath, puffing out her chest, and extended her small right hand forward.
A brilliant white light converged in her palm. With a soft chime, a silver wrench materialized—the physical manifestation of her system's unique optimization ability. But as she looked down at the tiny, ordinary-looking tool in her grip, and then back up at the continent-sized forehead of the primordial dragon, a sudden wave of comical powerlessness washed over her.
'This... this is completely out of proportion!'she complained inwardly, her face twitching.'It's like trying to fix a ruin guard with a toothpick! Is hitting him with this really going to do anything?!'
She shook her head rapidly, slapping her own cheeks to snap out of it. No! This wouldn't do! Paimon's eyes narrowed into fierce slits, her small face scrunching up in intense concentration. She had to give it everything she had! As that singular thought burned through her mind, a strange, boundless energy erupted from deep within her core, flooding down her arm and pouring directly into the silver metal.
Hum! The silver wrench vibrated violently, emitting a high-pitched mechanical whine as if it had suddenly come alive. Right before everyone's eyes, the metal began to expand at a terrifying, visible rate! One foot, two feet... ten feet... The silver light stretched and thickened until it finally transformed into a colossal, heavy-duty giant wrench a full thirty feet long!
Despite its absurdly massive new proportions, Paimon hoisted it over her shoulder without breaking a sweat. To her, the weight hadn't increased at all; it still felt as light as a feather, perfectly balanced for her to swing. While a thirty-foot-long wrench still looked somewhat small when compared to the sheer geographical mass of Azhdaha, it was infinitely better than the miniature toy she had been holding seconds prior.
A low, rumbling growl vibrated through the earth. Azhdaha, firmly pinned to the bedrock, rolled his massive crimson eyes downward. He stared intently at the floating white speck wielding an utterly ridiculous, oversized metal stick. A tidal wave of humiliation and pure, unadulterated anger boiled in his chest, nearly shattering the geo seals holding him down.
'Morax! You dare mock me with this farce?!' the Dragon King roared madly within the confines of his own mind. Yet, no matter how hard his spirit thrashed, his physical body remained completely paralyzed beneath the crushing weight of the Adeptal arrays.
Paimon wasted no more time. She gripped the handle of the giant wrench with both hands, her eyes blazing with unwavering resolve. Pulling the massive tool back like a baseball bat, she swung it down with absolutely every ounce of strength her tiny body could muster, aiming dead center for the Dragon King's broad forehead.
"Just... be healed already!!" she screamed at the top of her lungs.
Just like her previous experiences purging Xiao's karmic debt and clearing Atea's abyssal corruption, there was no physical impact. The very instant the heavy silver metal made contact with Azhdaha's rocky scales, the surface rippled as if the wrench had struck a calm pool of water. The thirty-foot tool sank directly into the dragon's skull, completely merging with his spiritual essence and disappearing from sight!
Lumine's combat instincts flared instantly. She darted forward, grabbing Paimon by the cape, and rapidly kicked off the ground to retreat to a safer distance. She kept her longsword raised horizontally across her chest, her golden eyes tracking every micro-movement of the colossal beast, fully prepared to intercept any violent backlash.
The exact second the wrench fully vanished into Azhdaha's forehead—
Boom!!!
A deafening explosion of pure energy rocked the cavern. A dazzling, hyper-complex golden formation erupted directly from the earth beneath the Dragon King's belly. It was exponentially larger and infinitely more complex than any array the Adepti had cast thus far.
The sheer scope of the glowing geometric lines expanded outward like a shockwave, instantly painting the walls, floor, and ceiling of the massive underground domain in blinding gold. The runic patterns swirling within the formation were ancient and deep, exuding an aura of absolute, inviolable authority. Yet, buried beneath that solemn majesty was a gentle, inclusive warmth—a restorative power designed to nourish and mend the broken fragments of a fractured soul.
Immediately following the array's activation, the air above Azhdaha's head warped and distorted. An ethereal, translucent phantom of the silver wrench slowly materialized in the empty space. This spectral projection was staggeringly huge—easily several times larger than the thirty-foot physical version Paimon had just swung. It hung suspended in the air, glowing with a clinical, systemic light, and began to slowly, agonizingly rotate.
However, purging the accumulated erosion of a primordial elemental being was clearly a vastly different undertaking than anything the system had attempted before. The giant phantom wrench turned with excruciating sluggishness. It stuttered and hitched in the air, moving as though it were trying to grind through solid diamond or push against the weight of an entire ocean.
With every fraction of a rotation, the phantom tool ground against the invisible, deeply entrenched corruption festering within the dragon's body. The friction between the system's purifying light and the stubborn, centuries-old erosion erupted into dazzling, enormous sparks! These were not ordinary flames, but violent anomalies born from the catastrophic collision of two opposing laws of reality. The sparks shot upward, exploding against the cavern ceiling like a brilliant, chaotic fireworks display.
Even though the spiritual purification produced no physical noise, the sheer visual violence of the energy collisions tricked the senses. Everyone present could practically feel the deafening, bone-rattling clangs of heavy metal grinding against unyielding steel echoing inside their skulls.
"Urrrgh... RRRRAAAAGH!!!"
Azhdaha, who had been completely immobilized moments prior, suddenly unleashed a bloodcurdling roar. The violent, forceful nature of the system's 'optimization' clearly inflicted an indescribable, tearing agony upon his fractured psyche. His massive, mountain-like body began to thrash and heave against the earth with renewed, terrifying violence. The primal resistance and blind rage born from his erosion had been completely reignited by the invasive purification!
"Hold him! Do not let the seals break!" Zhongli's expression darkened into a mask of severe concentration as his commanding voice cut through the chaos.
He thrust both of his arms downward in a sharp, decisive motion. The vast, bottomless reserves of his Geo authority poured unreservedly into the surrounding Dominus Lapidis constructs. The golden runes carved into the eight towering stone pillars flared with blinding intensity, glowing as fiercely as red-hot branding irons fresh from the forge.
"Ley Lines, suppress!" Mountain Shaper cried out. Sweeping his massive wings, he drove his talons into the ground, pouring a waterfall of heavy, crystallized amber light directly into the formation.
"Rock Peaks, solidify!" Cloud Retainer folded her elegant wings inward, her Adeptal arts transforming the surrounding air into the crushing, illusory weight of two massive mountains pressing down on the beast's spine.
"Spiritual Core, stabilize!" Moon Carver tossed his majestic head, his glowing antlers flaring as an ethereal mechanism compass manifested above him. It spun rapidly to its absolute limit, forcefully locking down the chaotic elemental turbulence in the cavern.
"Dust Heart, calm!" Madame Ping stepped forward, her hands steady. The spout of her Adeptal teapot sprayed out soft, yet incredibly tenacious bands of glowing light, coiling tightly around the dragon's thrashing limbs like unbreakable silk.
The four mighty Adepti simultaneously pushed their energy output to the absolute maximum, holding nothing back in their desperate bid to keep the ancient earth dragon grounded.
Azhdaha was not just a monster to them; he was their oldest comrade-in-arms. Every single person present harbored the desperate hope that he could finally regain his sanity. Achieving that, however, was infinitely more difficult than simply fighting him to the death. Defeating the Dragon King in combat was one thing, but stably suppressing his colossal physical might without harming him was another entirely., the system's purification process required the subject's own spiritual energy to cooperate. If they allowed Azhdaha to thrash wildly and deplete his own life force in a blind panic, the erosion would only dig deeper, making the situation entirely unsalvageable.
They could not let him burn himself out. It took the absolute combined strength of the Geo Archon and his four most powerful Adepti to forcefully crush the Dragon King's frantic, agonizing death throes back into the dirt.
Even with him pinned, the violent shockwaves from the energy collisions and the sheer kinetic force of his rippling muscles caused the entire subterranean cavern to quake violently. Massive chunks of rubble and thick clouds of ancient dust rained down from the fractured ceiling. Far above ground, the tremors were so severe that the giant Dragon-Queller tree in Nantianmen shook violently, shedding thousands of glowing blue leaves into the wind.
"Do you think everything is alright up there?!" Paimon squeaked, peeking out from behind Lumine's shoulder to stare nervously at the crumbling rock above them.
"Don't worry about the surface. Xiao is up there standing guard," Lumine replied, her voice low and steady. She didn't dare look up, keeping her golden eyes locked entirely on the chaotic vortex of energy dead ahead.
This agonizing, grueling 'optimization' process dragged on for nearly half an hour.
For thirty agonizing minutes, the giant phantom wrench continued its sluggish, grinding rotation. Every single inch it moved was accompanied by a blinding shower of sparks and the deafening, invisible roar of conflicting energies tearing each other apart.
Azhdaha's body convulsed and struggled several more times throughout the ordeal, driven by immense, tearing pain and the blind, instinctive resistance of the abyss. Each time he surged upward, Zhongli and the four Adepti had to grit their teeth and slam him back down with everything they had, sending violent tremors rippling through the bedrock.
But as the minutes ticked by, the Dragon King's violent thrashing noticeably began to weaken. The rigid tension in his massive limbs slowly bled away. The most obvious and miraculous change was happening in his eyes. The sickening, corrupted blood-red hue that had clouded his slit pupils—a color previously filled with nothing but mindless madness and an insatiable urge to destroy—was finally beginning to fade. The suffocating, violent aura that had choked the cavern for centuries was gradually dissipating into the cool underground air.
Beneath the fading red, a deep, ancient amber began to shine through. The primal rage in his gaze was replaced first by immense, crushing fatigue, then by a deep bewilderment, and finally... by the slow, unmistakable light of returning clarity.
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