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Then they heard a sound from above, the sound of a knife being drawn.

Genjiro descended from the sky.

He plunged down the emergency ventilation duct that led straight to the bottom of the shaft, without any lights on halfway down. His crimson-gold eyes were the only warning as he slid at high speed through the vertical ventilation shaft.

His feet splashed up two dark red waves as they stepped into the blood-soaked water on the platform at the bottom of the well.

Spider Cutter was in his left hand, and Dojigiri Yasutsuna in his right. Without pausing, he leaped straight into the center of the group of Dead Servants in front of the defensive line.

The Deadpools instinctively flinched for a moment before the crimson-gold dragon's eyes. Taking advantage of this less than half-second gap, Genjiro cut two intersecting arcs of silver light with his twin blades, cleaving the three Deadpools that had just emerged from the pipes in half from the middle of their torsos.

As Sakurai Nanami watched the black figure rapidly advancing through the horde of Deadpools, she suddenly recalled the ancient painting she had seen at Tsurugaoka Hachiman Shrine. In the painting, Susanoo held the Ame no Habakiri, standing alone at the confluence of eight rivers.

The man standing in front of her tonight was the same young man who had been reviewing documents at Xingshen Temple that day, but only now did she see clearly the armor of a king on his body.

Inside the ventilation pipe that Genji had drilled open above the well wall, another team of agents dressed in Executive Bureau uniforms were rapidly descending the wellhead along ropes.

The leader was Fuma Kotaro, who waved his hand while still in mid-air, causing hundreds of flares hanging under miniature parachutes to fall from the well opening at the same time, illuminating the entire Red Well as if it were daytime.

The flares illuminated every remaining Deadpool still biting on the battlefield at the bottom of the well, and also the enormous figure half-covered by the dragon viper deep in the tunnel.

The Yamata no Orochi remained paralyzed in the blood, but the frequency of its chest rising and falling was gradually increasing.

It is gradually waking up from the anesthesia.

Chapter 849 Erii the Dragon VS Yamata no Orochi

Before the white light of the flare had completely faded above the Red Well, the Yamata no Orochi opened all eight of its eyes.

In an instant, the eyelids of the sixteen heads on the eight heads tore open simultaneously, revealing a scorching, pure dark golden light beneath them, devoid of pupils and irises.

The light pierced through the murky blood of the Red Demon River, through the smoke and mist that filled the entire cavity, making everyone who looked up at it realize in that instant that all the information they had previously understood about it was wrong.

It is not an undeveloped embryo, nor is it a giant specimen suppressed on a shallow beach by anesthetics and left to be slaughtered. It is the direct bloodline of the White King, the ultimate creature conceived after being soaked in fetal blood for tens of thousands of years in the Well of Bones.

Its awakening never requires a gradual process; it only needs a sufficiently strong stimulus, and the evolution drug that the Fierce Ghosts just injected into its body was that final fuse.

The first head launched the attack.

A dark golden beam of light shot from deep within its throat, grazing the top of the cavity and striking the remaining lighting array above the cave wall. Wherever it passed, rocks and metal melted simultaneously, and molten, shimmering liquid stone poured down from the top of the cave wall, drenching the few operators who had not yet managed to evacuate.

They didn't even utter a scream before their bodies were reduced to charred silhouettes by the combined effects of high temperature and strong acid.

The second and third heads followed closely behind, and eight tails unfurled simultaneously from the blood, each tail ending in barbed bone blades.

These tails swept across the entire shallow area, directly knocking over the hundreds-of-tons-heavy drill bit platform of the tunneling machine as if it were a toy.

The last few monitoring devices still in operation on the platform were crushed to pieces, with sparks and thick smoke gushing out from the twisted metal frames.

Summoned by it, the dragon vipers surged wildly from the cave walls, from the upstream undercurrents of the Red Demon River, and from the cracks in the shattered rocks, converging into a silvery-blue torrent.

With a single slash, Genji cut off the neck of the dead servant who lunged at Sakurai Nanami, then turned and plunged the tip of his blade into the ground, putting all his strength into the Dojigiri Yasutsuna that was stuck in the ground.

His black trench coat had been scorched to shreds during the battle, and the sleeve of his left arm had been ripped off by Deadpool's sharp teeth, revealing the edge of a wound that was healing rapidly underneath.

"Retreat!" he shouted to everyone who could still hear him. "Everyone retreat! Evacuate the Red Well along the backup shafts! Take Miyamoto and the remaining operators with you!"

His voice was almost completely swallowed up by the roar of the Yamata no Orochi, but Kotaro Fuma understood his lip movements.

The old ninja drew two smoke grenades from his waist and threw them behind him. The thick gray smoke blocked the Deadpools' path as they rushed toward the gate at the last second.

Sakurai Nanami helped the injured Miyamoto Shio back from the tunneling platform to the climbing cable at the edge of the well wall. The few remaining engineers at the Ganryu Research Institute were desperately stuffing hard drives containing data that they couldn't upload into fireproof boxes.

Just then, a very thin, silvery-white crack silently tore open in the bloody water at the bottom of the red well.

The light emanating from the crack was not the blinding cold light of teleportation magic, but the tranquil pale gold of the depths of the forest.

Frillie stepped out of the crack, her long silver hair flickering in the light of the embers still burning at the bottom of the well.

She held a wand in one hand, while the fingertips of her other hand still retained the lingering spatial magic from the long-distance teleportation.

Beside her, Lu Mingfei stumbled out of the crack, his hunter boots sinking into the warm dragon blood that reached his ankles. He almost lost his balance due to the continuous tremors of the ground.

He gripped the Desert Eagle in one hand and an unactivated high-explosive grenade in the other. The first thing he saw when he looked up was the Yamata no Orochi sweeping across the bone tail that was right above where he was standing.

Frillie raised her wand, and an invisible barrier opened above their heads. The bone blades scraped against the barrier, creating a series of dazzling sparks before bouncing back into the water.

Then she turned to look at Genjiro, who was standing by the well wall anchor point, holding the knife handle and directing the retreat.

What she wanted to say to Genjiro had already been prepared when they crossed the spatial rift; no further explanation was needed.

“We’ll hold it off here. How many of your men haven’t been evacuated yet? Leave the remnants of the Demons to us.”

Genji gritted his teeth and did not answer immediately.

In a matter of seconds, he used all his strength to push away a viper that had pounced on the well wall and was trying to tear apart the retreating team. Then, he gave his last order of the night as the frontline commander into the other end of the headset: "Everyone, listen to my command, follow the Sakurai family head and the old man Fuma to the surface along the return air duct. The wounded go first, the engineers follow with the data. The Executive Bureau will cover the rear, and I will take care of that."

Only after issuing the order did he turn his head, his crimson-gold pupils meeting Frilian's calm, ancient-well-like silver eyes for half a second.

Lu Mingfei was no longer beside them.

He slid down the shattered railing at the bottom of the well, down to the northeast corner of the well where a few members of the Fierce Ghosts were still putting up a last-ditch fight.

With his left hand, he pulled the pin on the high-explosive grenade, and with his right hand, he raised the Desert Eagle to shoulder level and fired two shots at the Ghosts member at the front who was trying to drag an injured Executive Bureau agent into the water.

The large-caliber blunt metal-piercing projectile kicked up two deep red columns of water, and the team member was thrown into the air, his back slamming heavily against the shattered well wall.

The grenade exploded less than two seconds later in the middle of the group of Ghosts raiders behind him, scattering the small group of remnants who were still trying to rush into the well entrance.

Lu Mingfei was thrown backward by the shockwave, his back slamming against the rock wall, a strong smell of gunpowder rising in his throat.

But he didn't stop, not even giving himself a moment to catch his breath. He turned away from the shattered flames and ran towards the next anchor point, stumbling along.

Orochi's entire attention has been firmly drawn to another force.

It wasn't the silver arc of light slashed by Genjiro's twin swords, nor the residual anesthetic left by Miyamoto Shigeo on the shallows, nor those tiny humans slowly climbing away along the well's cable.

Instead, it was a human figure, slowly walking down from the edge of the pipe leading to the outlet of the Red Demon River at the highest point of the Red Well.

She walked on air with every step, without any steps or cables beneath her feet, only a very faint golden halo supporting her in the air.

Erii Uesugi wore a deep purple ruffled skirt that Genji had never seen before, the hem of which fluttered in the hot wind from the bottom of the well.

Her long, deep red hair, which had been restyled by Frilian, shone like flames amidst the ashes.

Its pupils were a clear gold, not the murky and violent dark gold of the Yamata no Orochi, but a bright luster that only a dragon species that had truly refined the dragon blood within its body into its own flesh and blood possessed.

Barefoot, she trudged through ashes and steam toward the raging beast.

All of Orochi's heads locked onto her at the same instant.

For the first time, an emotion beyond hunger and anger appeared in the eight pairs of dark golden eyes—the rage that only equal predators would feel when their territory was violated.

It swept all eight of its tails in the same direction, and the huge bone blades drew a continuous wall of death wind in the air, aiming to cut the tiny humanoid intruder into pieces.

Erii did not dodge. She raised her arms, and a visible golden barrier unfolded in front of her, its shape exactly the same as the crooked little crown she used to write on her notepad.

The bone blades were deflected the moment they hit the barrier, and the shattered bone fragments fell into the blood, creating a cloud of steam.

Then she stepped out from behind the barrier and grasped the long sword she hadn't drawn in a long time.

The blade emitted a dragon's roar as it was drawn. With a single slash, golden light shot from the bottom of the well to the hollow ceiling, severing the head closest to her from the jawbone to the cervical spine. The head let out a low, mournful cry as it crashed onto the shallows, sending up a spray of blood several feet high.

The roar of Yamata no Orochi erupted simultaneously from its remaining seven mouths.

It used its giant tail to wrap around the wreckage of a still-burning excavator on the ground and slammed it towards Erii, while two heads simultaneously opened their huge mouths filled with backward teeth from the left and right sides, trying to bite her in half.

Erii did not dodge the one on the left. She let the serrated teeth bite into her left arm, but the dragon scales that naturally covered her skin after being blessed by Frilian after her dragon transformation were far beyond the reach of any dragon subspecies' teeth.

Amidst the grating noise of teeth grinding against dragon scales, she plunged her longsword deep into the fragile crevice between the third and fourth cervical vertebrae of the skull, then snapped its spine.

From the moment she transformed into a dragon, she no longer needed to communicate with people through writing. She could speak.

"Let everyone leave," Erii said to Genjiro.

This was the first time in many years that she had spoken to her brother since regaining her ability to speak. Her voice was clear and steady, and there was truly no curse involved, nor would anyone die because of it.

Genji gripped the hilt of the knife, his five fingers tightening and then loosening.

His lips were cracked from dehydration and constant roaring. He watched his sister standing in the light red rain and mist, slashing at the ferocious beast that had once required the entire nation's gods to seal away. He suddenly remembered the last note she had left for him in her notebook—"Go out and have some fun, come back in a few days."

He didn't shed a tear, but the way he looked at her changed.

The girl who always sat in the windowless room watching TV is gone. She is now someone more powerful, a dragon, but she will still stand in front of everyone she knows amidst the smoke of battle.

Frilian viewed all the remaining members of the Snake Clan who had not yet been evacuated with the same care as the corridor leading to the only passage to the bottom of the well.

With a phantom-like silver scythe, she sliced ​​open a hidden door in the well wall where the remnants of the demons were hiding, disarming all the attackers inside who were still holding submachine guns.

When Lu Mingfei carried the last injured and trapped senior engineer from the Yanliu Research Institute to the wellhead exit, he casually discarded his Desert Eagle with its empty magazine.

Genji glanced at the golden and dark gold lights still fiercely clashing at the bottom of the well, drew his Spider Cutter, and followed Lu Mingfei as the last to step into the return air duct.

He tucked the knife behind his back and shoved the fireproof hard drive he had been protecting into Sakurai Nanami's arms.

Then he turned and shouted into the depths of the pipe, "Miyamoto, are you still there? Start all the turbines that are still working, and forcefully pump the mixture of thermite and residual mercury into the ventilation shaft, quick!"

His answer came from Shigeo Miyamoto's hoarse roar coming from the emergency compartment dozens of meters away: "The turbine is already running!"

Chapter 850 The Death of Yamata no Orochi

The turbines deep within the Red Well began to run at full speed, and hundreds of alloy pipes buried in the well wall emitted a low rumble at the same time.

Inside the emergency compartment, Shigeo Miyamoto personally disengaged the last safety interlock device, and thousands of tons of liquid mercury, which had been pre-filled into the upper storage tank of the Red Well, poured down from the pipe rupture, reflecting a dazzling silvery-white torrent in the afterglow of the searchlight.

The mercury began to evaporate the moment it came into contact with the air, and highly toxic mercury vapor spread throughout the bottom of the well. Within seconds of contact with the vapor, all the remaining Ghastsperm fell off the cave walls. Their gills were corroded by the amalgam reaction and riddled with holes. Their silvery-blue scales tumbled a few times in the blood and then remained motionless.

Immediately afterwards, thermite incendiary bombs were continuously pushed in through the pre-set launch ports above the well wall. The first one exploded above one of the heads of the Yamata no Orochi. The high-temperature flames instantly penetrated the outer scales of that head, burning the still-convulsing muscle tissue under the skin into a charred black.

Several incendiary bombs then detonated simultaneously around its massive body, instantly raising the temperature to 3,000 degrees Celsius and boiling the blood on the shallows.

Liquid mercury evaporates rapidly at high temperatures, and the highly toxic silvery-white fog intertwines with the incandescent flames produced by the burning thermite, turning the entire cavity into a sealed incinerator.

Surrounded by flames and mercury vapor, Yamata no Orochi let out its most piercing roar to date.

Its seven heads rose simultaneously from the blood, each mouth spewing out dark golden elemental beams, attempting to blast an escape route through the well wall.

The craters created when the beams struck the well walls were each several meters deep, but the Red Well's lining was reinforced with alloy concrete soaked in dragon's blood, a process that Miyamoto Shio had spent ten years building. Every crack that appeared was immediately filled with mercury. It could not escape.

It found itself finally trapped, not by anesthetics, not by knives, but by chemical elements specifically targeting its physiological weaknesses, which simultaneously blocked all its escape routes from all sides.

Erii Uesugi stood in the silvery-white fog of mercury vapor, her bare feet stepping on the boiling blood water, the high temperature and the deadly poison having no effect on her.

Her clear golden eyes pierced through the thick poisonous fog, firmly locking onto the head in the very center of the Yamata no Orochi, the only one that had never roared.