Chapter 104: Opening the Blood Pool

After dinner, the deep night had already fallen.

At the entrance of Shenjue Castle.

Gunie, dressed in a black robe and wearing a thick hat, raised the collar of his robe, wrapping himself tightly.

On this outing, no one knew if there were others secretly watching.

One still had to be cautious.

After the two boarded the carriage.

Under the driver's command, the carriage began to speed forward, quickly disappearing into the snow-falling night.

The journey was quite safe.

About twenty minutes later.

The carriage stopped.

Opening the carriage door, the sight that met the eyes was a remote Byzantine-style castle.

Under the night, Gunie could make out the silhouette of this massive castle, and from that silhouette, he could sense its vastness and grandeur.

Moreover, in many places, Gunie felt faint traces of danger.

"Follow me; it's safe here," Veya said, stepping down from the carriage first.

"Is 9970 here?" Gunie asked in a low voice after getting down.

Veya glanced at Gunie and nodded slightly.

"Don't talk too much here; someone might be listening secretly," Veya said softly.

Gunie's heart stirred, and he extended his perception outward.

However, he sensed nothing.

Clearly, such mysterious means were beyond his current ability to detect.

Passing through the castle gate, the first thing that met the eye was a road paved with fired bricks.

Then the two moved swiftly through the castle's passages, corridors, and courtyards.

After five or six minutes, they stopped at the entrance of a cellar that looked pitch-black.

The cellar entrance seemed unremarkable.

But at the entrance, eight superhuman soldiers clad in black iron armor stood guard.

The lowest rank among these black iron armor soldiers was second-order.

The highest, the captain, was a formidable fourth-order.

Veya approached the fourth-order guard captain and handed over a red token.

After inspecting it, the guard captain nodded.

"And this is?" the guard captain then asked, glancing at Gunie, who wore a hat and had his collar raised, half his face hidden.

"Can't say," Veya replied curtly.

The guard captain tactfully nodded and let them pass.

Following the sloping stairs down to the inner door of the cellar, Gunie felt waves of cold air rushing toward him.

"The temperature must be minus twenty or thirty degrees!" Gunie mused softly.

Using the token, Veya quickly opened the cellar door, which was covered in a thick layer of ice crystals.

As the cellar door swung open, a cold mist rushed out.

Gunie shivered all over, then stepped inside.

The temperature inside was even lower than outside by more than ten degrees.

"This temperature... so cold," Gunie frowned as he entered.

At the same time, he began to accelerate his blood flow, quickly warming his body.

"Several 'Ice Demon Cores' are sealed here. These cores continuously absorb source power and transform the surrounding environment into an 'Extreme Ice Domain,' which is why it's so cold."

"Pity that Ice Demon Cores are just cores; no matter how they change the environment, they won't become powerful Ice Demons."

After hearing Veya's explanation, Gunie's eyes lit up.

"These Ice Demon Cores are practically natural refrigeration machines!"

"If I could get one, I wouldn't have to worry about the alchemy lab being so stuffy in the summer."

"Alright, the Man-Faced Flower King is here," Veya said as she opened a sealed ice coffin drawer on one side.

Approaching the ice coffin drawer where the Man-Faced Flower King lay, Gunie looked over.

It was a woman in her early twenties, her face still twisted with the horror and distortion of death, clearly not having passed peacefully.

However, that was not the point.

The point was that this female Man-Faced Flower King's body was frozen solid, hard as iron.

Seeing the completely frozen Man-Faced Flower King, Gunie was stunned for a few seconds.

"This... frozen like this, I can't draw blood!" Gunie looked at Veya and shrugged helplessly.

Looking at the frozen Man-Faced Flower King, Veya also frowned slightly.

"How long can we stay here?" Gunie asked quickly after a moment's thought.

"If you want, you can stay until tomorrow."

"That's good," Gunie nodded.

"What do you mean?" Veya was puzzled.

"Drawing blood," Gunie said succinctly.

"You have a way?"

"Of course."

Looking at the frozen Man-Faced Flower King, Gunie quickly constructed a blueprint in his mind.

"My blood pool is already stirring; what it lacks is the infusion of powerful blood. Once that happens, opening it will be quick."

"I can use two puppet threads to form blood conduits, insert them into her heart, send my warm blood in to melt a small amount of the Man-Faced Flower King's blood, and then draw it back."

"Once the blood pool opens, I won't need my own blood anymore; I can directly use the blood pool's blood to form a circulation with the frozen Man-Faced Flower King's blood."

"This Man-Faced Flower King is a third-order existence, and at the king level, her blood is of a very high grade."

"As for my blood, even with the blessing of a blood curse master, without absorbing powerful blood, it can only be considered second-order enhanced ordinary blood, still some distance from elite blood."

"The gap is still quite large."

"Fortunately, my bloodline talent is high enough, and my digestion ability is strong."

"More importantly, this flower king has been dead for several days; the superhuman activity of her blood should be minimal. Direct absorption shouldn't be a big problem."

"If it really doesn't work, I can retreat in time."

After considering everything thoroughly, Gunie looked at Veya.

"Drawing blood from this frozen flower king might be a bit tricky; I'll need to stay here for quite a while."

"Mm, that's no problem," Veya nodded.

Standing beside the Man-Faced Flower King, Gunie released two puppet threads.

Under Gunie's control, the second-order puppet threads easily transformed into two invisible conduits.

After some manipulation, one end of the puppet threads connected from Gunie's palm to his wrist arteries and veins.

The other end connected into the flower king's heart.

To maintain a closer distance and minimize heat loss from the blood.

Gunie pressed his palm directly against the Man-Faced Flower King's heart.

"Begin."

With Gunie's manipulation, the blood throughout his body began to heat up significantly.

To melt these blood ice blocks at minus twenty or thirty degrees, room-temperature blood wouldn't work.

Gunie needed high-temperature blood.

And as a blood curse master, a natural controller of blood, raising blood temperature was a simple operation.

40 degrees.

45 degrees.

50 degrees.

55 degrees.

...

Gunie's blood temperature soared, and his entire skin turned red.

He stopped raising the temperature when it reached about 70 degrees.

At this point, Gunie felt a burning heat all over, but fortunately, this high temperature was still within tolerable limits.

Gunie opened the input and output ports of his arteries and veins. Under his control, the viscous, high-temperature blood carried a large amount of heat into the frozen heart of the Man-Faced Flower King.

As the blood rushed in, it immediately formed a small vortex, while the absorption conduit began to draw the blood back.

The blood mixed with the Man-Faced Flower King's heart entered Gunie's body.

Gunie felt a slight tremor deep within his body.

As if a long-dry, cracked earth was finally about to receive abundant rain.

Digest! Digest to the fullest.

Gunie sensed that the blood in his right arm, which first came into contact with the Man-Faced Flower King's blood, was like countless tiny wild beasts, frantically devouring the absorbed blood.

Earlier, Gunie had worried about absorption, but now it seemed he had been overly concerned.

His blood was clearly more formidable than he had expected, directly gulping down, absorbing, and digesting.

As the Man-Faced Flower King's blood flowed from his right arm into his heart and then throughout his body.

The vast amount of blood in Gunie's entire body entered a state of excitement, each blood cell scrambling to devour.

Gunie's entire body became a battlefield.

A battlefield of superhuman blood.

As the higher-quality Man-Faced Flower King's blood was absorbed by Gunie's blood.

"Crack, crack, crack..."

Deep within Gunie's body, the invisible blood pool was finally about to open.