Unfortunately, they missed one crucial point: he wasn't possessed by an evil force. On the contrary, the 【Great Wilderness Immortal Scripture】 continued to devour the polluted energy (spiritual energy) within the Shadow, loading a mutated version of the 【Boss Template】 onto him.
As the 【Aberrant Spiritual Root】 finished loading, it was like a starting gun signal, successfully breaking the barrier between the real world and the energy dimension.
Immediately, those restless sources of pollution also rushed towards him, attempting to invade this body. But they were quickly repelled by the alarm sounding in his mind.
【Detecting Soul corrosion by pollution, firewall is active... Mental resistance check successful... Pollution corrosion has been blocked and expelled.】
The 【Boss Template】 fiercely drew upon the Shadow energy, driving the Soul Firewall, continuously blocking, bouncing back, and expelling various unfamiliar attacks.
It was truly a combination of embracing a polluted energy source and the Soul defense program (moves) of the 【Great Wilderness Immortal Scripture】, instantly forming a powerful alliance, standing at the same starting line as other pollution sources, and using more extensive and advanced experience to beat them all to death!
At this moment, Yuan Zhu's Soul seemed to be encased in a layer of dark golden bell, ignoring all kinds of mental pollution attacks, standing firm and unmoving.
Finally, he stood up. The 【Great Wilderness Immortal Scripture】 is truly remarkable.
With the Soul invasion proving fruitless, these pollution sources turned back again, using the sacrifice Yuan Zhu as a medium, following the invisible connection between him and the numerous believers, and using those 'amulet artifacts' as a guide to launch an invasion.
These trashy human 雜魚 had no Soul Firewall, nor the protection of the 【Boss Template】, and thus suffered greatly. Their bodies instantly erupted in violent mutations under the infiltration of the polluted energy.
For a time, the hall was filled with roars of laughter, screams, howls, and shrieks, one after another, without end. Under the distorted reflection of the crimson candlelight, a grotesque transformation party of dancing demons unfolded.
...
At this moment, Yuan Zhu, who had passively activated the 【Boss Template】, also experienced a surge of power within his body, his physique swelling and growing uncontrollably.
The view in his eyes became lower, and his spine was pulled longer by an invisible force. This feeling was not painful; instead, it was like stretching stiff muscles after sitting for a long time, a tingling sensation mixed with a slightly painful soreness.
Then, his body uncontrollably stooped towards the ground.
Looking down, his arms, shoulders, waist, and abdomen... were all expanding, lengthening, thickening, and strengthening. His blood-stained clothes were torn open, the dagger stuck in his chest was squeezed out by muscle contractions, and finger-like granulation tissue grew from the wound, intertwining and sticking together, healing rapidly.
That cool sensation permeated every pore of his body, and thick black whiskers pierced through his skin, growing more and more numerous, dense and thick. His palms grew larger and thicker as they stretched, his fingers became stout and powerful, also covered in black hair, and his nails transformed into sharp curved claws.
As his visual perspective continuously rose, his throat tingled, and then he couldn't help but let out a roaring howl: "ROAR!!!"
The tiger's roar, like a sudden thunderclap on flat ground, exploded in the empty hall, shaking the air and causing the ground to tremble.
As the pressure of the king of beasts spread, the believers in the hall felt challenged and responded with piercing screams.
These evil cultists, contaminated by different sources, also underwent changes in form. Some, in bursts of wild laughter, tore open their cloaks and clothes, looked at their equally hairy claws, and shouted towards the sky: "Power! I feel infinite power! At this moment, I am! INVIC! TI! BLE!"
Immediately, his head swelled violently, his mouth protruded and elongated, his eyes were pierced from within his skull by a pair of sharp antlers, which grew and branched rapidly in his eye sockets, spurting blood. Then his arm muscles grew rapidly, his body hunched and bent, and his legs became reverse-jointed, transforming him into an upright walking monster with antlers and a wolf's head.
This antlered monster was just the beginning. Next, several believers with large, obese bellies opened their mouths in painful wails, their hands uncontrollably tearing open their skin, exposing bright red stringy muscles and subcutaneous fat. At the neck, there was a crunching sound of breaking bones and chewing.
A structure (organ) that resembled both a wound and a mouth appeared on the neck's cross-section, continuously stretching and extending, spreading from the left shoulder blade to the right, then opening wide to reveal layers of sharp teeth, and then crying out: "Hungry! Hungry! I'm so hungry!"
Furthermore, long-legged crow monsters with twisted and bent skeletons, drastically deformed faces, bird beaks, and bodies covered in black feathers... and candle-headed slime monsters whose flesh melted and wrapped around blood candles like slime, using them as core organs, all made their appearances.
Even the corpses that had lost their warmth and were completely still began to twitch and crawl up, forced back into action.
Some corpses grew scales; some had their heads split down the middle; some had their limbs melt and shrink, their torsos elongating into serpentine forms; some had their flesh and blood absorbed by their bones, becoming clacking white skeletons...
Compared to the giant tiger transformed by his own 【Boss Template】, these grotesque, distorted, monstrous things before him were more like the demons and ghosts that had been possessed by evil gods.
The abstract art style was actually beyond his own!
These monsters, one by one, lost their sanity, uttering unclear mumblings, screaming or laughing wildly, making uncoordinated movements with body structures that defied natural laws, turning the sacrificial hall into a veritable hellish abyss. Looking at it for even a moment was torture for the mind.
Seeing this unforgivable scene of evil, a sense of mission to 'slay demons and devils, and execute justice on behalf of the heavens!' involuntarily arose in his heart. He really wanted to get rid of this garbage that was an eyesore!
...
Before Yuan Zhu could strike down the demons, the human-faced crow covered in black feathers opened its beak, revealing a hole in its throat formed by layers of fleshy rings, aimed at the fierce tiger Yuan Zhu had become, and unleashed a sound wave attack that ravaged both mind and Soul.
Visible wave ripples appeared in the air, mixed with the aura of evil gods, spreading out like a fan, brutally sweeping over where Yuan Zhu was located.
【Suffering mental impact, resisted.】
The violent sound waves brought gusts of strong wind, causing the fierce tiger's black fur to ripple and surge. A sharp booming sound echoed in his ears, causing him to lose his sense of hearing for a time, his brain buzzing.
However, the opponent's strongest mental attack did not work. The evil god pollution was blocked by the restarted firewall, which instead angered the other half-mad, half-foolish polluted monsters nearby.
The candle demons, with candles for heads, blood vessels as connections, and molded from flesh and mud, quickly melted into semi-solid bone and flesh slurry, moving their bodies, and pouncing towards the crow monster. During their leaps, they also rapidly expanded their bodies, transforming into a blood flame net, increasing their capture area.
At this moment, a skeleton whose upper and lower jaws were clacking also became agitated, flailing its limbs and pouncing towards the headless, skinless bloody fat man beside it. It was then firmly held down by a huge muscular blood hand that had swollen four or five times in size, and then lifted high by the headless, skinless fat man and stuffed into the giant mouth coiled around his neck.
"Hungry... hungry... hungry..."
The layers of teeth repeatedly chewed, grinding half of the white bone skeleton's body into dust and swallowing it into the bloated abdomen, the highly bulging belly growing another circle larger.
But not long after, dense white bone blades exploded, pierced out, and grew wildly within its body, branching like plant stems, instantly turning the skinless fat man into a skinless bone spine sea urchin.
In the chaotic battle, Yuan Zhu became the focal point of concentrated attacks.
Numerous monsters instinctively regarded him as the priority target, and various dirty tricks that defied logic, surpassed imagination, and subverted cognition came at him. They came to deceive, to sneak attack.
Bad breath storm, acid vomit, giant tongue projection, internal organ ejection... a torrential downpour came at him, forcing the fierce tiger to twist his body agilely, dodging left and right, not daring to confront them head-on, fearing that he would stain his smooth and shiny fur.
These monsters were not only insane and violent, not giving the fierce tiger a chance to counterattack, but also mixed strange mental pollution into their attacks. Simple contact would trigger the 【Great Wilderness Immortal Scripture】's Soul pollution warning, like Lü Bu dragging a mop stained with feces.
It's not that he couldn't fight, but he didn't dare to touch! He absolutely didn't dare to touch them. This was probably the helplessness of the Old Ones facing the Elder Sign?
Fortunately, the firewall, which had come back online, was effective, blocking all mental erosion. Although the mana value, covered in question marks, couldn't be seen directly, he could sense it burning and decreasing rapidly.
He couldn't drag this out any longer.
...
At the same time, under round after round of dangerous pollution attacks, Yuan Zhu, who had transformed into a fierce tiger, was also burning with rage, feeling the anger and frustration of being offended by mere minions, the bestial nature originating from the demon's instinct rapidly eroding his rationality.
This was not the erosion and distortion of the mind and Soul by polluted energy, but the demon characteristics inherent in the 【Boss Template】, a biological instinct written deep within the Soul.
Meanwhile, he vaguely heard something about an elf providing service?
Without time to think carefully, the black Tiger Demon raised his right paw high, gathered the demonic energy within his body, and fiercely swiped at the two-headed rat-man that was darting towards him.
The two-headed rat-man let out a strange cry from its mouth, also changing direction nimbly, dodging the strike. Then, two more giant rat-men, hearing the call, darted out from behind him, launching a surprise attack from three different directions, moving as fast as lightning, forcefully whipping their slender rat tails as they ran.
At the end of the rat tails were sharp, curved bone blades. Like tough long whips, they whipped and lashed violently, instantly breaking the sound barrier, and then, combined with the kinetic energy impact from running, directly dealt triple sonic boom cutting damage.
Sensing a strong threat, Yuan Zhu felt a sense of crisis, and at the same time, a strange and urgent female voice sounded in his mind: 'Quickly use your innate Divine Ability, you fool!'
Following the prompt, his heart stirred, and he easily mobilized the cool energy that was darting around disorderly within his body, quickly gathering it towards his tiger claws.
He saw wisps of demonic energy escaping from the tips of his black, coarse fur, transforming into a cloud of black smoke, wrapping around the tips of his claws, and striking down again.
This strike landed heavily on the ground in front of him, just before the rat-headed monster's tail whips came down.
Immediately, the surface of the floor beneath the tiger's paw rippled with shadow waves, spreading outwards, dyeing the ground within ten meters around the black tiger pitch black, yet not affecting the other monsters standing or stepping on it at all.
The attacks of the three semi-human rat monsters shot forth like lightning, whipping their tails towards Yuan Zhu's spine, back of the neck, and eyes – three vital points.
But at the same time, three soft shadow whips, also with curved blades at their ends, shot out from the shadows beneath the rat-headed monsters' feet, arriving later but reaching first, colliding precisely with their tail whips, and then intertwining, pulling them forcefully askew.
The attacks that were supposed to land on Yuan Zhu were instantly deflected, striking a lucky monster nearby.
Crack, snap, snap!
After three whipping sounds that tore through the air, a one-eyed corpse demon was cut into several pieces, scattered across the ground.
Yuan Zhu also simultaneously understood the ability he had just used, which was 【Ability 1: Shadow Manipulation】, covered by layers of question marks.
Although he didn't know what the Tiger Demon's original Divine Ability was, after being modified by that unknown pollution, the 【Ability 1】 now recorded in the 【Boss Template】 was the free manipulation of the 【Shadow Power】 represented by the refreshing energy within his body.
...
That special spiritual energy source (pollution source) deeply bound to the 【Aberrant Spiritual Root】 should be a concept of pollution representing 【Shadow】. As for the evil god pointed to by this power? Sorry, he didn't feel anything at all.
Yuan Zhu, who could freely control Shadow Power, was certain that behind him was only the 【Boss Template】, and no evil god whatsoever. This was completely different from the pathetic Puppets before him whose bodies were corroded and Souls occupied by evil polluted power.
If a 'Shadow-type evil god' truly existed, then his 【Mountain Lord Tiger Demon】 might also be counted among them, considered a new, minor demon god who had formed a connection with the 'Shadow Pollution source'.