Chapter 159: Woman in the Rain VS Artist

Eighteen seconds after entering the Mirror World, the Artist awoke from its dormancy, and its tens of thousands of Killing Rules took effect.

Gao Tian's body underwent a hellish mutation, too gruesome to look at directly.

Triggering some unknown Killing Rule, his head was cleanly severed by a fine thread. It flew high into the air, only to be frozen into ice crystals by another rule before it could hit the ground. A face materialized out of the void, opened its maw, and swallowed the head whole.

His torso was split vertically down the middle, laying bare his organs and bones. They decayed and aged at a visible rate before an unseen force froze them into a pale ice sculpture. A split second later, pitch-black flames ignited from within, reducing the remains to churning cinders.

Countless flashing blades simultaneously severed and impaled his limbs. Not a drop of blood spilled from the stumps; instead, new appendages sprouted. Those slender, pitch-black hands and feet were completely alien. Defying their owner's will entirely, they reached up and clamped around his throat.

It was as if his entire being had been shredded and shoved into a kaleidoscope, only to be instantly blasted into a mist of blood and gore. A myriad of ghastly apparitions crawled out of the void, frenziedly tearing at Gao Tian's meager remaining flesh.

Thousands upon thousands of deaths, each more bizarre than the last, were inflicted upon Gao Tian's mortal body in an instant.

The Artist simply possessed far too many Killing Rules.

Just looking at it triggered fifteen Killing Rules. Death.

Closing his eyes triggered seven Killing Rules. Death.

Breathing triggered eight Killing Rules. Death.

Walking triggered thirty-one Killing Rules. Death.

Using a Supernatural Item triggered fifty-five Killing Rules. Death.

Doing nothing at all triggered eight Killing Rules. A fate worse than death.

Once the Artist awakened, merely existing in the same space was a death sentence, no matter what one did.

Death, death, death.

Suppressed by Ghost Luck, the Artist's most terrifying power—the Final Decree—remained jammed by its other rules and had yet to activate. Otherwise, all of Gao Tian's Supernatural Items would have failed, and his immortality would have been stripped away. He would have died on the spot.

Bolstered by the immortality effect of the Supernatural Die, Gao Tian barely managed to hang on. Within mere seconds, his body rapidly reconstituted itself from head to toe, bone to flesh, in a manner that defied all logic.

The frozen ice crystals shattered in the roaring flames, vaporizing into white mist. His charred flesh rapidly peeled away to reveal newborn skin underneath. His severed head plummeted from the air, caught by an invisible force just before hitting the ground, and snapped back onto his neck like a puzzle piece. Broken bones popped and cracked as they mended themselves, while melted nerves and blood vessels writhed like living creatures to knit back together.

In just a few seconds, he had experienced hundreds of meaningless cycles of death and resurrection.

Even though his physical body couldn't die, the agony was entirely real. Every nerve was pushed past its absolute limit, as if he were experiencing every form of torture and pain in the world all at once. Hundreds of the Artist's rules were treating his body as a testing ground.

If given the chance to do it all over again, even if it meant the end of the world, Gao Tian never would have agreed to stall for sixty seconds for Old Man Sun.

"Old Man Sun, you motherfucker."

Gao Tian's throat was constantly being torn apart, pulverized, and parasitized by ghosts. He couldn't even manage to spit out that single curse.

The only silver lining right now, the greatest stroke of luck amidst the misfortune—

—was that the Final Decree was still jammed. As long as he maintained his immortal body and the Supernatural Die's effect held, he could keep enduring this.

Ghost Luck continually orchestrated all kinds of coincidences, causing the thousands of rules within the Artist's body to overlap and conflict, preventing it from executing the Final Decree.

Only twenty-five seconds had passed, and the first eighteen of those had been a gift to Gao Tian while the Artist was in its dormant state.

For the remaining thirty-five seconds, every second would feel like a century. He truly had no idea how he was going to survive them.

Enduring this level of agony for thirty-five full seconds would almost certainly shatter his mind and strip away his sanity completely.

Furthermore, the Final Decree couldn't be jammed forever. If its effect slipped through for even a single second—or even half a second—he would be instantly killed thousands of times over.

Struggling, Gao Tian reached his hand toward the nearby Urn.

He needed to use the Urn to contain the Artist.

But his cycles of death and resurrection were too fast. His hand twisted and deformed endlessly. Every time he extended it a few centimeters, it was instantly minced, scorched, rotted, and poisoned countless times before being reset to its original position. He couldn't even touch the Urn that sat mere inches away.

The high-frequency death loop effectively kept him paralyzed.

Just then, holding her White Umbrella, the Woman in the Rain walked step by step toward the colossal mountain of human heads in the distance.

Through his battered vision, Gao Tian could barely track her movements. Now, all his hopes rested entirely on her.

She was an S-Level Fierce Ghost, after all. Against the Artist, she should at least be able to endure a few blows.

As the Woman in the Rain approached, the countless faces adorning the Artist's abdomen and legs turned toward her in unison.

The Woman in the Rain could drag ghosts into a new world, but the Artist's Killing Rules were equally effective against other ghosts.

As the distance between them closed, something began to go wrong with the Woman in the Rain's body.

First, her umbrella instantly burst apart, dissolving into a puddle of bloody water that drifted away. This fully exposed her head. She let out a shriek, seemingly desperate to keep her face hidden from the starry sky, and immediately tried to drop to her knees to cover it.

Right at that moment, her hands morphed into rotting, viscous ghost claws that uncontrollably tore her own face to shreds. The eight eyes hovering above her head burst simultaneously, spraying black fluid. Her torso and limbs suffered an even grislier fate as bone spikes erupted to cover her entire body. In an instant, she was brutally slaughtered and dismembered thousands of times over.

Yet despite all this, the Woman in the Rain continued her approach. Screaming, weeping, and clutching her mangled face, her broken legs forcing her to writhe and crawl like a maggot, she made her way, inch by inch, to the foot of the Artist's mountain of heads.

Ghosts were immortal and indestructible. No matter how many of the Killing Rules the Woman in the Rain endured, she kept moving forward.

Tens of thousands of faces looked down at the woman at their feet. The vast majority of the Artist's heads shifted their attention entirely onto the Woman in the Rain. Even the speed at which it was executing Gao Tian began to slow down considerably.

Bearing the brunt of a dense barrage of Killing Rules, the Woman in the Rain slowly hoisted her body up. She manifested a new umbrella and, with great difficulty, offered it toward the Artist.

Even in this wretched state, she still hadn't forgotten to follow her own rule of "saving people."

Her lips twitched faintly as she whispered something.

Upon "hearing" her words, the Artist's colossal form reacted. It slowly leaned down and extended a horrifying arm made of thousands of human heads, reaching out to grasp the umbrella she offered.

In his entire life, Gao Tian would never be able to guess what the Woman in the Rain had said to make the Artist actually touch that umbrella.

Boom—

Gao Tian could hardly believe his eyes at the scene that followed.

The moment it touched the umbrella, the Artist's terrifying, multi-story body and its tens of thousands of heads abruptly vanished from the Mirror World.

It disappeared without a trace, not leaving a single head behind.

For a few brief seconds, Gao Tian wondered if the Artist had activated some invisibility rule, or perhaps teleported away.

He turned his head. Behind him, in the distance, in every direction—there was no sign of the Artist anywhere.

The entire Mirror World was dark and void. Only two figures remained on the long white path: himself and the Woman in the Rain.

The relentless Killing Rules tearing his body apart had ceased as well. As his final wound healed, Gao Tian pushed himself up from the ground, feeling as if he were in a dream. The excruciating pain faded rapidly, as though it belonged to a bygone century.

In the distance, the Woman in the Rain held up her wide umbrella with one hand, completely shielding the upper half of her face to avoid exposing it to the starry sky.

She had regained her elegant, dignified, yet grotesque silhouette.

The Woman in the Rain... had contained the Artist.

The Woman in the Rain had actually contained the Artist!

It was unbelievable. Just like that, she had successfully imprisoned it.

Even among S-Level Fierce Ghosts, there were disparities in power. That single Killing Rule of the Woman in the Rain was a match for millions of the Artist's rules.

Gao Tian had to admit that he had severely underestimated her strength. He had only unleashed Sophia to stall for as much time as possible; he had never imagined her underlying concept would actually surpass the Artist's.

Only forty seconds had passed. He had overachieved his mission.

Now fully recovered, Gao Tian reached out for the Urn.

After all, the Woman in the Rain had completed her task, and now it was time to seal her back inside.

Just then.

Sizzle—

Faint traces of blood began to seep from the Woman in the Rain as she stood across from him with her umbrella.

The crimson rapidly stained the stark white surface of her umbrella. Blood cascaded from her body in a torrential downpour, bursting forth uncontrollably.

Faces began to surface and sprout across Sophia's body. Their expressions were vicious, desperately trying to tear themselves free from her flesh.

Like overripe fruit, heads pushed their way out of the Woman in the Rain, fighting violently to break the confines of her body.

They kept bursting from every inch of her until she was completely swamped. Unable to withstand the relentless extrusion of heads, the Woman in the Rain's body catastrophically collapsed and exploded. An ever-growing tide of heads poured forth, burying her completely out of sight.

The mass of heads continued to swell until it formed a towering mountain, exactly matching the gargantuan size the Artist had been when it first entered the Mirror World.

The Artist. It had broken free from the Woman in the Rain's containment just like that.

She hadn't even lasted five seconds holding it.

Back in the Mirror World, the Artist's tens of thousands of heads swiveled wildly before their gaze locked onto Gao Tian once more.

Things were just as bad as before.

No, they were worse.

Because the Woman in the Rain had effectively been absorbed into its countless heads. The Artist had devoured her S-Level Killing Rule.

Now, the immortality granted by the Supernatural Die was useless, because the Multi-Headed Ghost could simply toss him into a new world.

There was also the Final Decree. Ghost Luck had been jamming it this whole time, but it had held it back long enough.

The Ghost Luck hovering over Gao Tian was depleting at a terrifying rate. It looked like it would lose its grip on the Artist's third Killing Rule at any second.

With twenty seconds left, he was fast approaching his absolute limit.

He seized the initiative and activated the Urn, forcefully requesting to play a containment game with the Artist.