Card Apprentice Daily Log

Chapter 2766: Star Poison, Void Silk

Date: Unspecified

Time: Unspecified

Location: Zhongguo (China), Liaodong Province, Shuntian Prefecture, Shenyang City, Imperial Palace, Inner Court

”You are just as beautiful as the first time I met you,” the Emperor said with a low voice filled with strange satisfaction as he stood before Corey. ”Though I didn’t expect it would take me so long to finally make you mine.”

For the first time since their battle began, he did not attack after he had finally stepped directly in front of Coryn as she stopped the explosions and showed no signs of retreating. To him, that looked like surrender.

After surviving the storm of detonations with nothing but his golden scale armor, his confidence had grown. The man who stood before the one once hailed as the strongest martial artist in the world no longer felt the need to guard himself, thinking, ’Regardless of her strength and means, she is still a woman.’

Slowly, he lifted a hand toward her face. His fingers moved toward her cheek as if he intended to caress it. But before his hand could touch her skin, his body betrayed him.

The Emperor suddenly coughed violently. A mouthful of blood burst from his lips. Then more followed. Blood began leaking from every opening in his body, his mouth, his nose, even the corners of his eyes. It trickled down his face and dripped onto the gleaming scales of his armor.

Shock flashed across his expression. Instinctively, he used the same hand he had raised to touch Corey to wipe at the warm liquid streaming from his eye. When he looked at his fingers, he saw them stained red. His gaze snapped back to Corey, shock written plainly across his face and demanded, ”What sorcery is this?”

The Emperor truly didn’t understand what was happening to him. As far as he knew, his golden scale armor had shielded him from every explosion perfectly. The blasts had struck him again and again, yet he had barely felt them.

And still, here he was. Bleeding from every orifice. He had not seen Corey cast any spell either. Throughout the fight she had been too busy surrounding him with relentless explosions. There had been no chant, no ritual, nothing he could recognize as witchcraft.

Across from him, Corey’s indifferent expression slowly curled into a satisfied grin. She watched his face as panic crept into it, watched his breathing grow ragged and uneven. By now most of his internal organs had already begun shutting down. The only reason he remained standing was because his martial spirit was still forcing his body to move.

But even that was starting to fail. As his body collapsed, the spirit sustaining it weakened in turn.

”I call it star poison,” Coryn replied calmly. As she spoke, she dipped her fingers into the blood still running down her arm and began tracing an occult circle on the broken floor around him. He could only helplessly watch her as he had trouble breathing let alone stop her.

”You see, stars like our sun don’t just emit light and warmth. They also release a kind of poison.” She continued drawing the occult circle while the Emperor swayed unsteadily inside it, his martial spirit now fully retreating as his strength abandoned him. ”I call that poison: star poison (Radiation Poisoning).”

She glanced up at him, explaining, ”Normally the distance of our world from the sun and its air protects us from it.”

”You really think your Golden Scale Armor can survive my explosions? My explosions are like little suns and stars. They can erase entire mountain ranges, let alone your palace. Naturally, they also carry vast amounts of star poison.”

Corey gestured toward the ruined remains of the imperial palace before continuing.

”I only made you think you could survive them. I kept the explosions small so you would grow careless. All the while, I was slowly poisoning you with star poison. As you can see, star poison infects the target directly, bypassing almost every defense. Your Void Shift could have avoided it, of course.”

She paused, a faint grin forming in amusement, as she revealed, ”But I never expected you to grow so overconfident that you would stop using Void Shift entirely and face me with your Golden Scale Armor alone. You walked straight into my explosions and willingly soaked in the star poison.”

Corey shrugged lightly with a satisfied smile, ”That made things much easier for me.”

Ignoring the Emperor’s shock, she calmly continued drawing the final strokes of the occult circle around him with her own blood. Each line was deliberate, precise, the pattern slowly closing in around his sickly body.

When the circle was complete, she straightened and wiped the blood from her fingers, watching with faint amusement as the Emperor collapsed fully to the floor. His breathing came in ragged gasps, his face twisted with pain. Still struggling to remain conscious, he forced out a question, ”How... how did you avoid the poison?”

Corey answered without hesitation, ”By fusing a extremely dense layer of conjoined air molecules with my mental field and shaping it into a second skin. The layer acted as a barrier. The star poison never reached my body.”

Before the Emperor could respond, she stepped back and activated the occult circle, chanting, ”Synthesis.”

The blood-lined formation ignited with a dull crimson glow. At its center, Long Liao lay on his back, already drawing his final breaths. The moment the circle activated, his body began to convulse. Flesh, bone, and spirit were dragged apart by the formation’s power, only to be forcibly recombined again and again as the ritual refined what it sought.

Corey watched the process with clinical focus. She was using the same witchcraft she had once used on herself to forge the Dragon Dicing Saber. Now she was applying that same chivalric synthesis to the Emperor. Her goal was simple: extract and reshape his Martial Spirit.

After all, his Void Shift was the ultimate evasion technique. And she intended to claim it.

Soon, the Emperor’s body dissolved under the power of the occult circle. Flesh, bone, and spirit were broken down and refined until nothing remained of the man who had once ruled the empire. In his place, something new took form.

A long, narrow shawl slowly emerged at the center of the circle. The fabric was thin and almost transparent, woven like delicate silk gauze with a faint golden hue shimmering through it. It drifted slightly in the air, weightless and elegant.

The garment resembled the traditional accessory worn by Zhongguo’s noblewomen, a light shawl known as a pibo. But the moment Corey picked it up, she gave it a different name: ”Void Silk.”

Without hesitation, she draped the translucent shawl across her shoulders. The fabric settled around her like flowing mist, its faint golden threads occasionally flickering in and out of existence.

By then, the palace guards had arrived. Imperial guards, captains, and shadow guards poured into the ruined courtyard, surrounding her from every direction. Blades were drawn, spears lowered, and crossbows raised as they closed in.

Corey ignored them completely. Instead, she lifted her gaze toward the sky. The clouds above the shattered palace were beginning to change. What had been a clear sky moments earlier now darkened rapidly, the clouds thickening and twisting like the formation of a storm.

Then the sky split open. A vast tear spread across the heavens, and something began to emerge from the rift. Slowly, a colossal figure stepped through. It resembled a humanoid cactus. Its towering body was covered in thick, ridged plates and thorn-like protrusions. Its limbs long and heavy like ancient tree trunks. The sheer scale of the creature dwarfed the palace ruins below.

Yet its gaze was fixed on only one thing: Corey herself. The Void Silk draped across her shoulders, to be exact.

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