Mystic Calling：Stone of Glory

Chapter 1154: The Turtle With Worlds

Ethan’s expression shifted.

As soon as the system finished its sweep, he knew—this kirin’s Tier was a whole notch higher than his.

And the power on it wasn’t ordinary Infernal aura, either.

It was tied to the darkness energy saturating this place and to that ghost-blue Infernal Primordial Power. Just standing there, it tugged on the oppressive pressure of the entire underground space, like it was part of the environment’s breathing.

The ghastly white lightning inside Ethan started to cycle.

He was still weighing how to respond when Lily moved first.

Her body blurred into a ghost-blue streak and flashed right up to the kirin. The light-waves in the kirin’s eyes had only just begun to condense—

Lily’s palm was already on its skull.

Her fingers clamped down around its head. She twisted her wrist to the side.

Crack!

The kirin’s massive body locked up.

In the next instant, Lily’s other hand seized its spine. Ghost-blue Infernal Primordial Power slammed in from her palm, driving straight into its body. The kirin—higher Tier than Ethan—was torn apart, split into two halves by sheer force.

Flesh and scales peeled away to either side. Ghost-blue energy sprayed out of the rupture.

A ghost-blue gemstone rolled out from its abdomen, clinked onto the ground, and rang crisp against the black stone.

Lily bent down, picked up the gem, and casually stuffed it into Ethan’s hand.

"This is an Infernal Abyss energy core."

She glanced at him.

"If you can absorb it completely, the transparent lightning you release will get a lot stronger."

Ethan closed his fingers around the ghost-blue gem, and his palm sank slightly with its weight.

The power inside was insanely concentrated.

Ghost-blue energy rotated slowly within the gem. With every turn, a deep, heavy surge of Infernal Primordial Power knocked against his skin.

Ghastly white lightning coiled around it on its own—but it didn’t absorb immediately. It circled the gem again and again, like it was studying the structure first.

Ethan could feel it clearly: once he fully digested this core, his lightning would break through again.

Maybe even more than that.

With everything he’d gotten here... he almost had a real shot at becoming an actual overlord in this world.

He and Lily were still riding that rush—

When the entire underground space suddenly began to shake violently.

Rumble—!

The rock strata overhead split open. Huge chunks of stone crashed down from above. The ground bucked with it, and the darkness energy—no longer stable—started whipping around in chaotic currents.

That pure darkness that had been suppressing light a moment ago now collapsed in sheets, like it had lost the foundation holding it together.

Ethan snapped his head up.

The fissures were spreading.

This cave—this whole pocket space—had always been a fragment of a broken Infernal Abyss world, held together by the Infernal Primordial Power stored inside it. But now, most of that core energy had been swallowed by Lily, and what remained had been taken by Ethan.

Naturally, the space couldn’t keep supporting itself.

The falling rocks grew denser.

From deep in the distant dark came heavier, uglier sounds of rupture—like the entire small world was caving in from the inside out.

The ghost-blue light winked out in patches. The remaining patterns in the rock walls snapped one after another, collapsing like frayed cords.

Ethan didn’t linger in a world that was about to die.

Overhead, the ceiling was coming down in slabs. With the darkness energy gone feral, the underground space started cracking inward from the edges, its shape failing.

A deep faultline boom echoed from far away, like the earth itself was being pried apart from within.

Ethan grabbed Lily’s hand.

Ghastly white lightning spread from his palm, wrapping around both of them at once. The arcs skimmed tight along their bodies, knocking aside falling rubble and isolating them from the out-of-control Infernal Primordial currents.

In the next second, Ethan and Lily became a streak of light and shot upward along the fissure they’d come down through—

But they’d barely left the ground when a massive shadow lunged out of the darkness beside them.

Ethan’s eyes sharpened. He slid half a step back, pulling Lily behind him.

Ghastly white lightning spread in front of him, fanning out into a curved barrier that caught the huge shadow that had burst from the dark.

The shadow stopped beside the fissure, finally revealing its full shape.

It was a colossal beast that looked like a sea turtle—an absurdly thick shell covering its back, limbs like pillars, a massive head—

But its tail was a coiled serpent.

The snake-tail lifted slowly in the darkness, and the breath it exhaled carried a dense, choking Infernal stench.

What Ethan couldn’t ignore were the blood-red gemstones embedded around its neck.

They were packed tight along the seam where shell met flesh. Every single one radiated a terrifying energy. When Ethan’s gaze swept over them, he could see distinct layers of power rotating inside each gem, slow and deliberate.

These weren’t ordinary crystals.

They were more like tiny worlds compressed to the extreme.

Each gemstone held its own world-force.

The Titan Turtle lowered its head to look at Ethan and Lily. Its heavy voice boomed through the collapsing pocket world.

"The Infernal Abyss is the supreme existence. You two actually dared steal the power here. Today, I’ll make you pay the price."

Ethan’s brows knitted.

He could feel what was inside those blood-red gems.

That wasn’t some core he could casually crush, and it wasn’t a chunk of ore. If they fought head-on, the moment those gems erupted together, the sheer output would slam him into an absolute disadvantage.

In a situation like this, the smartest choice was to leave.

Ethan was already pulling his ghastly white lightning into motion, ready to rush out through the fissure with Lily—

But his power had only just started to turn when Lily vanished from his side.

She reappeared right in front of the Titan Turtle.

The behemoth hadn’t even processed it yet when Lily lifted a finger and gently tapped its forehead.

The motion was light—so light it barely stirred any energy—

Yet the Infernal aura around the Titan Turtle stuttered in that instant, like something had pinched the flow shut.

Lily lifted her eyes to meet its gaze.

"It’s just a little turtle," she said, calm as if she were commenting on the weather, with a lazy edge of contempt. "You really think that makes you the boss here?"

Then her mouth curved faintly.

"To me, you’re nothing but something you toss in a pot to make soup."

The Titan Turtle’s eyes widened.

It hadn’t imagined that in a place that belonged to a broken fragment of the Infernal Abyss, anyone would dare talk to it like that—right to its face.

One by one, the blood-red gemstones on its neck lit up. A scarlet glow crawled across its shell and spilled outward, and for a brief moment, it actually propped up the collapsing darkness around them by sheer force.

It let out a low roar and released the energy sealed inside every gemstone at once.

Scarlet light erupted from its neck like a bloom of blood.

It became countless chains forged from world-force, whipping toward Lily to bind her. Each strand carried crushing pressure. As they slammed down, even the space itself buckled, fine cracks rippling outward in dense rings.