455 Take This

Blood dyed the entire alley red. Under the pungent odor, the shocking redness and ghastly white ashes created a messy painting on the wall.

Everything was silent. There was only the sound of blood flowing and bones cracking.

At the front of the alley, the wraith-like musician in gray stared at Charles and Constantine coldly. However, Charles looked behind him and could not hold back his pleasant surprise.

"Yezi, you—"

Yezi? Who was Yezi? And then it dawned on the musician who 'Yezi' was… Ye Qingxuan!

The Ye Qingxuan who had killed six preparatory grandmasters with one blow! It was the young man who had shaken the world recently with his brash actions and the musician that even the Sacred Court could not handle!

He was instantly nervous. When did Ye Qingxuan get here? And he was so close that in the musician's daze, he could almost feel the cold breath on the back of his neck.

The gray-clothed musician looked back instinctively. He gathered all his strength to fight to the death in an instant.

But when he looked back, he froze. There was nothing there! He had been f*cking tricked!

Fury instantly took over his expression. But when he turned around again, Charles' face was right in front of him. As he ran, he used his feet to kick up a broken sword from the puddle of blood. Grasping it, he ran a finger over the blade, cutting down to the bone. The blood remained on the sword and converged into layers of runes under his mind's control. The six-layered structure had more than four hundred notes. They were all different and yet connected.

Flow, create, activity, form—these four zones overlapped into one. Something that an alchemist needed days of hard work was created in an instant. His blood seeped into the sword.

After his music theory path was cut off, Charles became obsessed with mechanics because all he could use was his amateur alchemy and strange ideas that alchemists looked down upon. Even so, he was still shockingly skilled. After being guided and taught by Newton, no one knew Charles had reached this level… He completed the alchemy array within seconds.

The notes were activated! The blade hummed with a screech! Aether lay on the blade. In the blink of an eye, the blade vibrated thousands and thousands of times, pushing the metal to its limits. But just before it broke apart, the sword in Charles's hand had gone from trash to a war weapon designed specifically to target musicians. He had replicated the Chainsaw Fraternity's alchemy technique perfectly. It was the Sighing Sword!

Charles roared. Using all his strength, he grasped the only chance and stabbed. The sword shook thousands of times. It broke through the levels of shields and was only one inch away from the musician's chest. Only one inch! And this inch…was like an abyss!

In an instant, a blurry object emerged from the nothingness. Scales and metal pieces scraped, sparks flying. The gray-clothed musician snorted. He did not even need to look down. With just a thought, the music theory within him transformed. He shattered the frozen blade without touching it. Then he pointed forward. The beasts around him began sucking in aether. Mercury flowed over like liquid metal. It formed a shell that pounced at Charles. It was a mercury python! So long one could not see its end, the python reached out of thin air. Even the air in its path froze. Piercing coldness swept by.

Charles could not even fight back. He flew backwards. The python restrained him and he instantly lost all feeling. He could only hear his bones creaking under the python.

The Summoning musician did not even spare him a glance. He walked past Charles for the unconscious Constantine. As he walked, he slowly raised his forefinger. Under the distant yet cold melody, bits of metallic light grouped onto his finger. It was a firefly that looked like metal sand. This tiny firefly without any aether waves had traveled past four walls and three skulls instantly. Now, it was aimed at Constantine.

The murderous intent was clear.

"Stop!" Charles tried to roar but he could not utter any sound. He heard his bones cracking joint by joint. His ribs seemed to have already pierced his lungs. There should have been pain but under the terrifying temperature of the python, even the pain was frozen. His flesh shattered like stone.

Painless death was coming.

But in this numbness, shattering pain burst from his skull. It swept into all directions like lava. It seemed to want to evaporate his blood, turn his skull into cinder, and burn his sanity into ashes with hellfire.

The next instant, his eyes were aflame. The dust and illusions were gone, revealing the dazzling yet cold appearance. Some power controlled his body, filling his consciousness. It made him furious, made him roar, made him open his mouth and scream at the python.

"Get the f*ck away!" It was a not a human's voice but countless rumbles and noises put together. Thousands of wails and wild laughter from hell fused into one and left his mouth. It was as if hell was shaking!

Instantly, the coldness and pain disappeared. The mercury python screamed and shot back as if trying to escape into the aether world to save itself. But in the air, it stiffened, crumbled, and turned to dust. His music theory was wiped by the aggression, turning into blank white space. The beastly nature fell apart. The gray-clothed musician trembled and growled in pain. The fireflies at his fingers almost scattered.

The mercury python was a piece of his consciousness. After being raised for so many years, it had evolved into an aggressive beast. But now, the beastly nature had been defeated. His pieces of consciousness boomeranged back, cutting his sanity like icy knives with extreme pain.

He roared. Fireflies shot from his fingertips. They cut through the sky with white air waves. They seemed to have transformed from insects into sharp knives, coming for Charles' skull.

But then, on his last breath, Charles smiled and raised a finger. "Take this!"

Water vapor threads floated from his fingers, flying into the distance. It was Bolero! Instantly reaching the sixth measure, thirty-two perception threads came out of Bolero and reached in all directions. They instantly covered the entire street. They let out Charles' desperate cry in unison.

"Yezi, save me!"

The next moment, a moonlight perception thread rose up to the sky. It crossed thousands of miles, sweeping across the air. Instantly, they tangled with the thirty-two strands and became one. The instrument strings that crossed the aether and material world have come from the aether sea!

Jiu Xiao Huan Pei descended from the sky!

In that instant, Jiu Xiao Huan Pei followed the perception threads and unfolded inside Charles. The pure music theory opened up. It flowed with his blood and followed the rhythm of his breaths. Countless complex music notes bloomed. They wove together and grew, forming a music score in Charles' empty body.

It formed an authentic…Heaven Ladder! The resonance had begun!

Charles instantly closed his eyes.

Murderous moonlight lit up from his eyes.

Ye Qingxuan opened his eyes.