# Chapter 353: Flesh Tentacles
The Mechanical Battle Saint beside Lu Yuan leaped to his feet, stumbling backward until he pressed into a far corner, staring at Lu Yuan with the wariness of a man cornered by some apex predator.
After all, Lu Yuan had been sitting right beside him the entire time—and he hadn't sensed a thing. The realization sent a chill deep into his core.
Lu Yuan glanced at the wary Battle Saint, then at the two Mechanical War Gods, before quickly turning his full attention to the writhing mass of crimson flesh.
Neither the Battle Saint nor the two War Gods posed any threat to him now.
The only real danger was whatever lurked within that crimson mass.
Lu Yuan acted without hesitation. Spirit Power surged through his body, phantom clock hands materializing in his eyes as the River of Time shimmered into existence behind him and bronze grains of sand swirled around his form.
The writhing, convulsing flesh was reflected in his gaze. The clock hands spun, and the power of time was unleashed.
Sands of Time—Time Stasis.
Time ground to a halt throughout the entire hall. The Mechanical Battle Saint, both War Gods, and even the pulsing crimson mass that had been bulging outward moments before—all frozen in place.
But it lasted only an instant. The sound of shattering glass rang in Lu Yuan's ears, followed by a piercing shriek that lanced through his skull. The frozen moment snapped back into motion.
He narrowed his eyes, expression grim.
*As expected—Time Stasis barely works on something this powerful.*
Darkness radiated from Lu Yuan's body, flooding the hall until nothing remained visible except the swirling bronze sand and an ocean of shadow.
Shadow Divine Kingdom.
Two Law domains layered atop one another—this was Lu Yuan's most powerful enhancement state.
At the same time, the crimson mass twisted and screamed. Every patch of flesh coating the hall seemed to come alive, squirming and coalescing until tentacle after tentacle of raw sinew and muscle had taken form.
Hundreds of them sprouted across the entire hall—from ceiling, walls, and floor alike. Green veins laced through each one, tracing intricate patterns that pulsed with an ineffable, arcane power.
Terrifying energy coursed through every tendril. Even this pocket dimension—already extraordinarily stable—warped and tore under the sheer violence of their power. A faint weight settled in Lu Yuan's chest.
The tentacles screamed through the air toward him. Lu Yuan's gaze sharpened at the force behind them, and his body vanished, reappearing across the hall.
The moment he materialized, more tentacles were already whipping toward him.
With hundreds of flesh tentacles spanning every inch of the hall, no matter where Lu Yuan dodged, fresh ones lashed out from new angles.
His figure flickered in and out of existence among the writhing mass.
Just then, a tentacle swept out from a wall corner. Lu Yuan dodged it easily—but it continued on a direct path toward the Mechanical Battle Saint cowering in that same corner, trying to shelter from the devastating shockwaves.
The Battle Saint never expected to be caught in the crossfire. The tentacles struck with blinding speed.
He hadn't even begun to react before it slammed into him.
**BOOM!**
The explosion echoed through the hall. The Battle Saint offered virtually no resistance—he was smashed into metal fragments on the spot, his life snuffed out instantly.
Lu Yuan glanced at the pile of components that had been the Battle Saint, a strange look crossing his face even as he continued weaving through the attacks.
*He was all the way in the corner and still got hit?*
*That has to be Misfortune at work.*
With Lu Yuan's current strength, applying Misfortune through the Wheel of Fate to a Mechanical Battle Saint far weaker than himself made the curse devastatingly lethal.
On the other side of the hall, the two Mechanical War Gods watched the dancing tentacles and Lu Yuan's blurring form with mounting anxiety. They wanted to intervene, but the tentacles were too powerful and Lu Yuan too fast—they realized, to their disbelief, that they simply couldn't find an opening to act.
As War God-level powerhouses, when had they ever been unable to even participate in a fight?
When the Battle Saint was shattered to pieces, both froze for a moment, then exchanged a glance.
The black Mechanical War God transmitted mentally:
"Garton! What do we do? Just stand here and watch?"
The silver Mechanical War God replied with a note of helplessness:
"I don't know either. This human uses spatial power to move—he's too fast to lock onto. But if we use wide-area Combat Techniques, we'd hit My Lord too. I have no good solution."
The black War God was at a loss:
"So we just sit here watching?!"
Garton thought for a moment. "How about this—we reinforce the surrounding space to interfere with this human's spatial power and slow him down. Then he won't be able to dodge My Lord's attacks!"
The black War God's eyes lit up, and he nodded:
"Let's do it! Between the two of us, we can definitely bog him down."
Violent energy erupted from both of them, saturating not Lu Yuan or the tentacles, but the fabric of the hall itself—the space around them.
Their goal was simple: slow Lu Yuan down.
Both were immensely powerful. Brute force alone could affect spatial stability to some degree, and Garton's mutation leaned toward spatial manipulation besides. After all, he was the one who had painstakingly hidden the Blood of Machinery's headquarters within this pocket dimension in the first place.
Reinforcing space was naturally his specialty.
Lu Yuan had just evaded another wave of attacks and was about to teleport when a faint frown crossed his face—he felt a thin layer of resistance.
He glanced at the two War Gods in the distance. *Their handiwork.*
Before he could dwell on it, tentacles came screaming toward him again. Lu Yuan shed the spatial resistance effortlessly and blinked away.
The smug expressions on the two War Gods' faces froze solid when they saw him completely unaffected.
Garton was stunned:
"He broke free of our suppression that easily—and while being hunted by My Lord, no less! This human's spatial power is far stronger than I imagined. He might even possess a Divine Grade Transcendent Gene."
"A Divine Grade Transcendent Gene? Someone can actually inscribe a gene like that?!"
The black War God gaped, then looked back at Lu Yuan's still-flickering form:
"Then what do we do?"
Before they could answer that question, a piercing howl tore through the hall.
Fury saturated the shriek. The crimson mass's aura surged wildly, every tentacle thrashing in a frenzy.
Garton and the black War God both paled, snapping their gazes toward the mass.
"My Lord! What's happening?!"
"Guro! Look there!"
Garton's mechanical eyes flashed as he pointed at several tentacles that had collapsed limply to the ground.
Beside each fallen tentacle stood a Shadow Divine Messenger.
Lu Yuan had been studying the tentacles carefully even while dodging. He'd noticed that the base of each one was connected to the crimson mass by a fleshy conduit.
His theory: the mass hadn't fully matured yet, so it could only control the tentacles through these conduits.
So he'd summoned Shadow Divine Messengers right beside them.
With his vastly increased power, the Messengers materialized almost instantly.
The crimson mass had been entirely focused on Lu Yuan himself. By the time it noticed the Messengers, it managed to swat several apart—but not before others had already severed a number of conduits. The tentacles connected to those severed conduits went limp, slumping to the ground like dead things, all control lost.
A smile tugged at the corner of Lu Yuan's mouth. The tentacles were powerful, but their weakness was equally obvious.
Eliminate them, and the difficulty of dealing with the crimson mass would drop dramatically.
But his smile stiffened almost immediately. Through the Messengers' eyes, he could see the severed conduits already squirming, reconnecting—regenerating at alarming speed.
He narrowed his eyes. *Aberrant Beasts and their monstrous regeneration—every last one of them is the same.*
Cold determination settled over his features. He commanded every Shadow Divine Messenger to sever the conduits again the instant they began to knit back together.
The crimson mass roared in fury. Every tentacle that had been chasing Lu Yuan pivoted and hurled itself at the Shadow Divine Messengers instead.
Lu Yuan's lips curved upward. Bronze sand swirled into existence once more—Time Stasis, activated.
Every tentacle lunging toward the Messengers froze mid-strike—but only for an instant before the crimson mass shattered the stasis with another piercing howl.
That single instant was all he needed.
Every Shadow Divine Messenger unleashed Scythe of Death simultaneously.
Lu Yuan knew the Scythe of Death would likely be useless against the crimson mass itself.
His targets were the tentacles.
Spectral scythes swept through the air. Tentacle after tentacle succumbed to conceptual death—flesh blackening, rotting away, releasing a nauseating stench.
Roughly half of all the tentacles had been killed outright.
Lu Yuan was surprised. The tentacles weren't the mass itself, true, but they were extensions of its power—they should have had considerable resistance to abnormal effects. He hadn't expected to outright "kill" half of them in one strike.
This exceeded his expectations.
But understanding came quickly—it had to be fate's influence. When the power gap was narrow, the Scythe of Death's effectiveness came down partly to luck.
And clearly, Lu Yuan's luck right now was excellent—far superior to the crimson mass's, at the very least.
The moment the tentacles withered, the crimson mass let loose another terrifying scream. Every surviving tentacle flailed wildly, some stretching even longer as they hurled themselves at the Messengers.
The Shadow Divine Messengers were swarmed and ripped apart within seconds.
Still, Lu Yuan could feel the crimson mass's rage radiating through the hall like a physical force.
He couldn't help but smile.
*Angry already?*
Lu Yuan surveyed the remaining tentacles, ready to press the attack. Ideally, he'd keep pushing this thing until its own fury consumed it.