Chapter 77: [space Severance], Ever-increasing Difficulty
Grabbing another mouse again, Yuan Zhu ignored its struggles and unleashed Holy Light Blast with his bare hands.
He raised his right hand high, the Holy Light condensing in his palm like a blazing flashlight, illuminating every corner of the room. He pressed forward step by step, the blazing Holy Light sweeping through the entire villa like flames, thoroughly cleaning and disinfecting every inch of space.
Whenever he pushed open a room door, he would sprinkle the burned-out ‘Divine Protein Powder’ on the floor, drawing runes with it. Once lit, it marked that the house had been thoroughly purified. In this way, he cleared most of the rooms on the first floor in one go.
The lingering chilly aura grew weaker and weaker, attempting several times to interfere with his spirit but failing each time. It seemed the evil spirit was at the end of its rope.
However, when he stepped onto the stairs, a new change occurred.
Originally, Yuan Zhu thought the evil spirit in the haunted house was only this capable, having no power to fight back against the Holy Light, so his tense mindset gradually relaxed. But after climbing halfway up the steps, the spatial perception talent from the Holy Seal keenly captured intense spatial fluctuations inside the haunted house.
The entire villa was like a scrambled Rubik’s Cube. Space twisted under invisible forces, bending, misaligning, and reassembling. The originally straight stairs had unknowingly become spiral-shaped; clearly ascending to the second floor, yet it felt like heading to the basement.
After reaching the second floor, the corridor that should have been straight split into two paths left and right, extending far beyond the villa’s normal length. One door, two doors… looking ahead, this corridor had over 20 rooms, but how was that possible?
Before he could choose, a dense chilly aura emanated from behind the first tightly closed room door on the left. It was as if the haunted house’s evil spirit was right now in this bedroom, waiting for his arrival.
“Tch! Are you inviting me?” Yuan Zhu sneered, drawing the Ram Horn Hammer from his waist while gripping the 5.0 mouse in his other hand. He kicked the door open with one foot, the huge crash echoing through the corridor.
The room door was forced open, revealing the scene inside—this was an unreasonably large dance room, with floor mirrors hanging on the walls all around, but the center was piled with cabinets full of books, clutter, dolls… and a piano shoved in the corner. No matter how you looked at it, it was like several rooms of different functions had been spliced together here.
“Could it be that the evil spirit in this haunted house has ‘Space System’ abilities?” Yuan Zhu was startled, thinking this was beyond what an ordinary cleaning company could handle. He wasn’t afraid of the evil spirit in the house, but he deeply felt the current situation far exceeded the business limits of an ordinary cleaner.
“Which ordinary cleaning company deals with evil spirit pollution at the ‘interfering with distorted space’ level? How much salary is this mission paying me?” Yuan Zhu cursed inwardly.
‘Hee hee hee hee…’ Strange sounds rang out in the room, like an invitation or a provocation.
Without hesitation, as he stepped inside, the disorienting sense of spacetime inversion became even more pronounced. Suddenly, piano music echoed in his ears, masking the sound of blades slicing through the air.
He jolted alert and sharply dodged to the side. He saw a short black shadow dart out from behind, holding a kitchen knife stabbing toward his lower back.
Bang!
Light Barrier erupted, perfectly deflecting the kitchen knife’s cutting path. Yuan Zhu followed with a Side Whiplash Kick, sending the black shadow flying like a kicked soccer ball, smashing hard into the wall. His shin felt the impact of hitting something hard, and only then did he see clearly it was a doll in a princess dress.
Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh!
One by one, wooden dolls, each holding weapons, surrounded him, nimbly pouncing close and thrusting, slashing with their weapons. Their wooden faces were covered in a thin layer of fleshy membrane with traces of capillaries, mixed with green, gray, and orange mold clusters, looking extremely unsettling.
Yuan Zhu increased his Holy Light Output, isolating himself from the outside, unleashing continuous whiplash kicks to send the approaching dolls flying. At the same time, he gripped the 5.0 mouse tightly in his left hand, squeezing out its Holy Light as much as possible, while his right hand’s Ram Horn Hammer had bloodlight bursting from its eyes, smashing out viciously.
Bang!
With a loud explosion, the metal hammer head directly smashed open a doll’s crown of the head. The wooden skull cracked, exposing a foul-smelling blackened mass of brain tissue inside, making Yuan Zhu’s face change drastically!
“What the hell is this thing?”
Someone had actually stuffed brain tissue into the puppet’s head, severely polluted and mutated. These puppets provided no nutrients at all; the ‘brain’ in their wooden skulls was more like a culture medium, breeding black bacterial clusters that crawled over the unknown brain’s folds, looking extremely evil.
“This is definitely not some ordinary evil spirit haunted house—someone deliberately manufactured and cultivated these disgusting puppets here!” Yuan Zhu cursed inwardly. What kind of job did that idiot boss assign him? Is this money I can earn!
Boom boom boom!
Holy Light Output intensified again, the Ram Horn Hammer in Yuan Zhu’s hand erupting with both bloodlight and Holy Light, smashing the doll in front of him along with its weapon to pieces.
Boom!
The puppet exploded, crashing to the floor, splattering large amounts of diseased flesh tissue and black smoke. But before it could get close, it was repelled by the Holy Light around him, incinerated into black smoke rising upward.
One after another, the diseased dolls fearlessly pounced at him, nimble as monkeys. Yuan Zhu crushed the dry battery in his hand, flinging the burned and crumbled protein powder forward to isolate the black smoke spewing from their mouths. His other hand wildly swung the weapon, rapidly and precisely bursting one puppet after another in mid-air. The Ram Horn Hammer, enhanced by the Sanctuary Holy Seal, allowed him to unleash continuous pseudo-spatial critical hits.
Every hit added an extra layer of Force Field Critical Hit, completely smashing the fragile wooden dolls to pieces. From their skulls and wooden bodies splashed diseased flesh-mold mutated tissue, clinging to the floor, walls, cabinets… spewing black spores, filling the room with choking black haze.
Forcing Yuan Zhu to increase Holy Light Output and activate Sanctuary to prevent inhaling harmful gases through nose and mouth. At the same time, he used blazing light to burn and incinerate the black dust in the air.
His continuous smashing of puppets also enraged the evil spirit hiding in the shadows. While increasing the puppets’ suicidal assaults, it unleashed a soul-shocking screech assaulting his spirit.
Not only that, the spatial structure of this room twisted again, the entire spacetime twisting and flipping like a wrung towel, forming an invisible Möbius strip that locked him in the spatial center with no escape.
The game sprite suddenly let out a sharp alarm: “Boss! Careful, the spacetime structure here is abnormal! Space is about to fracture—dodge quick!”
Sanctuary activated at full power!
No need for her reminder, Yuan Zhu also perceived the room’s spatial structure violently changing. It was essentially snapping half the space and splicing it with another half-room, temporarily stabilized by a special spacetime loop structure on both sides.
And at that moment, Yuan Zhu was firmly locked by this powerful and profound spatial structure. When the game sprite warned, the opponent had already withdrawn the stabilizing structure, letting two different spaces fracture on Yuan Zhu’s body, forming a Space Sever effect to cut him in two.
“Fuck!”
Yuan Zhu desperately tried to dodge, but that higher-dimensional gaze always locked on him. From the moment he entered this haunted house and stepped into this room specially prepared for him, he had been firmly locked by this power. No matter how he evaded or tried to save himself, he couldn’t escape the spatial layer’s lock.
“Damn it!”
In the critical moment, he pushed the Space System Holy Seal Sanctuary to maximum power, trying to counter space with space. Ignoring the Holy Light’s burning and overdraft on his life, he piled a thick layer of Force Field Barrier on his body surface, clashing head-on with the instantly converging Space Sever.
Crack crack crack… snap!
Harsh sounds of Holy Light Force Field shattering rang out continuously. The ‘pseudo-spatial field’ enveloping his body was too immature, too impure—not even a Holy Seal forged—unable to withstand this sudden real Space Sever.
In the nick of time, Yuan Zhu used Sanctuary’s attributes of dispersing, deflecting, and transferring damage to forcibly shift the spatial slash locking his body to his right arm, wrapped in a thick layer of ‘Holy Light Force Field’, escaping waist severance.
Crack!
He watched as space converged, half the room vanishing before his eyes, intense pain from his arm, blood and Holy Light erupting together, illuminating the unfamiliar room. Half his arm and half the house disappeared; at the same moment, the other half of a strange bedroom, along with the neatly severed bed and vanity, appeared opposite him.
“Hiss… fuck!”
Under the intense pain, Yuan Zhu looked at his missing forearm and flew into a complete rage. Abandoning the immature Holy Light, he activated Tiger Demon Stance with full malice.
The Holy Light bursting from his eyes quickly extinguished, the Holy Light that had been eyeing the Shadow Uniform shrinking back into the Holy Mark, striving to minimize his presence.
Mutated Spiritual Root awakened and erupted, shadows on the room floor boiling and roiling violently. The silhouette of the shadow under Yuan Zhu’s feet drilled out of the ground, wrapping and pouncing on the real body; his upright form twisted violently, deformed, and elongated into a burly pitch-black evil tiger.
The Tiger Demon’s right foreclaw was severed at the elbow. Viscous asphalt-like shadows surged from the stump, quickly shaping and solidifying into a brand new Shadow Tiger Claw, wrapped in pale and ferocious Exoskeleton Armor, looking perfectly coordinated without hindering the Tiger Demon’s movements.
“Roar…!”
The Tiger Demon roared furiously at the invisible malicious gaze, its heavy claws tearing at the room, severing walls and floor, exposing the adjacent space. At the same time, countless shadow ghost hands drilled from underfoot, tearing apart and dismembering the remaining wooden dolls, dragging fragments into the shadows.
More and more shadows surged from the shadow under the Tiger Demon, spreading in all directions, defying gravity to climb walls toward the ceiling. It would draw unlimited Shadow Pollution, reverse-wrapping and refining the entire haunted house, demonizing everything, destroying everything, forcing out that power to torment it viciously, destroy it, take revenge! Venting its fury.
The Skeleton Snake tail behind the Tiger Demon suddenly lashed out, tightly wrapping around the Tiger Demon’s neck, urging its boss to calm down: “Boss, calm down! Calm down quick! Your severed arm is still emitting Holy Light—I can sense its position, right in that direction! A gentleman avenges himself after ten years—don’t act on impulse or let hatred blind you. The priority is reclaiming the arm. Shadow Power can only temporarily build a prosthetic; your human body is still disabled!”
“Fuck! My arm.”
Hearing this, Yuan Zhu instantly sobered up a lot, thinking of his missing forearm. His dark gold pupils were full of bloodshot, hesitating a moment before pausing revenge and turning toward the direction indicated by the snake tail.
“Boss, simply breaking the wall won’t work. This haunted house has scrambled the room order into a Space Maze. Quick, use Claw! Slash there!”
Without hesitation, Yuan Zhu followed the game sprite’s advice, activating the Supernatural Ability Claw. This time, its Skeleton Tiger Claw was wrapped in a familiar ‘Spatial Fluctuation’, similar yet more powerful and sharper than Sanctuary’s pseudo-spatial fluctuation.
“This…” When did my Claw become so ferocious?
“It’s Universe Within The Belly! I overlaid spatial Supernatural Ability on Claw!”
The game sprite excitedly explained: since Yuan Zhu imprinted Sanctuary, the biggest beneficiary wasn’t Holy Light, but the Boss Template.
The Tiger Demon already had its own spatial talent Universe Within The Belly (Snake Demon), a real exclusive space. But lacking native Du Ling data support, it was hard to utilize. With Sanctuary, the Boss Template gained a ‘spatial formula’ applicable to Du Ling.
Now, after Little Spicy Stick’s tuning, it could fully overlay Universe Within The Belly’s Space Attribute onto Claw for spatial slashing strikes.
Sky-Rending Claw—boom!
Following instinctual control, the Tiger Demon swiped a claw at the wall, directly tearing open the not-so-sturdy Space Fault, exposing another unfamiliar empty room.
Its body turned into a mass of pitch-black silhouette, drilling into the spatial rift. When the invisible malice reacted and tried to close the spatial gap to sever the Tiger Demon, it only managed to cut off a puddle of active ‘Shadow Pollution slime’.
Yuan Zhu’s real body had already entered the empty room: “Where’s my fucking arm?”
“This is a transfer station—switch directions, do it again! Boss, go for it!”
“Roar!”
The evil tiger roared, shadows erupting, Skeleton Heavy Claw dragging four spatial slashes, tearing space and carving a crack in the air, blasting apart the haunted house’s internal Space Maze.
Rumble!
Space was torn open into a huge hole; opposite was an unfamiliar study room. A severed arm emanating dense Power of Holy Light, externally wrapped and sealed by thick Holy Light Crystal, lay quietly on the dusty floor, continuously emitting sacred radiance, resembling an unknown Holy Relic.
The snake tail whipped, extending to about ten meters, drilling into the void to bite the severed arm, about to return to the main body.
At this moment, spatial distortion fluctuations came from the indoor space again, that inescapable locking sensation surging. The haunted house once more targeted him with Space Sever.
Unlike the underdeveloped Sanctuary, the Shadow Tiger Demon erupted with endless Shadow Power; Universe Within The Belly + Claw ran at full power, quickly constructing a set of skeletal armament on the Tiger Demon’s pitch-black body, internally fully referencing Sanctuary’s microscopic spatial structure.
Before forging the Holy Seal, Little Spicy Stick first applied Sanctuary’s essence to Claw (Exoskeleton)’s microscopic structure.
Crack crack crack…
Space severed again, heavily striking the Tiger Demon’s chest and abdomen to split it in two. The spatial scenes before and behind switched again, but the dual spacetime pressure smashed onto the Tiger Demon was firmly withstood by its Exoskeleton Armor. No matter how the spatial slash strained, it couldn’t shake this Space Attribute-enhanced exoskeleton.
Essentially, this was a contest of strength between the haunted house’s internal Space Sever and the Tiger Demon’s Universe Within The Belly.
“Fuck off! You mouse hiding in the gutter, have the guts to come out and face me head-on!”
The Tiger Demon roared, whipping up a Yellow Springs storm from flat ground, erupting all the previously absorbed ‘Yellow Springs Death Qi’, sweeping across the multiple spaces his body spanned, viciously gnawing away part of the intangible chilling aura.
Though he didn’t know the evil spirit’s exact background, his Yellow Springs Death Qi hard-countered it. If it didn’t flee, he even felt he could capture and refine it with Ghost Companion?
Compared to the immature Holy Light, this Shadow was the evil spirit’s natural nemesis.
“Boss, don’t be impulsive—calm down first, quickly reattach the arm before anything else!” the game sprite anxiously said.
“Damn it, what a huge loss this time. This is absolutely not a difficulty a cleaner should face!” The Tiger Demon grumbled indignantly, manipulating shadows to form an arm and taking over his Holy Light severed arm.
But as soon as his shadows touched the arm, it triggered a counterattack from the outer-wrapping ‘Holy Light Crystal’. The Power of Holy Light madly squeezed the arm’s activity, converting it into Holy Light to attack and destroy the Shadow Pollution.
“Fuck! Why is this arm so stupid?” The Tiger Demon rolled its eyes, forced to deactivate Boss Template, resuppressing the Shadow Pollution to take the arm in Human Stance.
Only then did the rampaging Holy Light calm down docilely, awaiting its master’s command. Yuan Zhu looked at the stump of his right hand; the Tiger Demon Stance’s regeneration hadn’t regrown the arm but instead rapidly healed the stump closed.
How to reattach it now?
The game sprite promptly suggested: “Boss, don’t panic—quickly splice it back! Don’t worry about the wound healing; transfer the Holy Mark to the stump face, then burn fiercely to release blazing Holy Light, splice the arm on, use hot welding process to let Holy Light’s high temperature melt-cast the limb back!”
“Is this reliable? This isn’t metal welding!” He’d seen various hot welding in the Steam Factory, but on an arm? Would he need to sprinkle borax too?
Little Spicy Stick: “Trust me! Holy Light has healing power. As long as you splice the arm on, Boss Template can regenerate and fix the details.”
Yuan Zhu had no choice; grabbing the severed arm with his left hand while controlling the regenerated Holy Mark on his right stump, he squeezed life potential again, erupting blinding Holy Light at the right arm.
Then he spliced the severed right arm back on; under the high-temperature searing pain, the stump really seemed to ‘melt’, beginning to recast together. Even the lost finger sensations reappeared in his mind; he tried moving, and his right hand indeed flipped the middle finger.
He finally breathed a sigh of relief: “Damn, that scared me earlier. I thought I’d be disabled. This Holy Light is pretty good.”
Shadow Power couldn’t regenerate a severed limb, but Holy Light hot-welded it back.
Holy Light dissipated, Yuan Zhu looked at his right arm again.
Simple comparison of both hands: length unchanged, flexibility as good as before injury, Holy Mark back on right wrist. Just a ring-shaped scar now at the original cut position—more exaggerated than the cutting scars on his wrists and ankles.
Yuan Zhu felt like crying but had no tears; this wound looked pretty brutal—would it affect finding a partner later?
“Boss, don’t cry—scars are a man’s medal! You’re explosively handsome! So manly! This scar isn’t ugly at all—it’s unique and cool, bound to start a trend in the future.”
“Tch, bootlicker!” Yuan Zhu huffed arrogantly, then his gaze darkened. “This mission’s difficulty is over the limit; from now on, only Tiger Demon Form for cleanup.”
Thinking of the unpredictable, irresistible Space Sever, malice surged in Yuan Zhu’s heart; even the currently running Holy Light in Human Stance dimmed in color. His malice and mindset shift caused Holy Light to deviate again, becoming stronger and more aggressive.
Holy Light retracted, shadows underfoot surged again like a boiling black oil ocean, geysering in the room, dyeing everything pitch black…
