Julian’s vast knowledge, combined with the patrol maps, gave the squad clear direction.

Under the lead of this Parisian "walking encyclopedia," they began a strategic insertion deep into unknown territory.

The path to that ancient Roman aqueduct was harsher and stranger than any passage they had taken before.

There were almost no traces of human repair here;

it was mainly formed by natural karst caves and narrow fissures carved by underground water over centuries.

If not for Julian’s two maps guiding them, any ordinary person stepping into this area would only get lost in that maze of complex structures and ultimately become fertilizer for those strange fungi.

After squeezing through another narrow crack that allowed only one person to sidle through, a faint buzzing and a thick stench of alchemical reagents drifted from the darkness ahead.

They had arrived.

The three of them stopped at the same time and pressed themselves against the rock wall.

Lin Jie dialed his Focused Carbide Lamp down to its lowest setting, leaving just a thin beam cautiously probing the darkness ahead.

At the end of the beam lay a magnificent underground chamber with an air of sacrilege.

Its dome rose so high it was swallowed by darkness;

only at the edges of the lamp’s thin beam could one make out the grand arches built from huge stones dating back to ancient Rome.

Yet now this ancient engineering marvel, which should have represented the pinnacle of human civilization and wisdom, had been completely transformed by a group of fanatical followers into a blasphemous altar that blended primordial bloodiness with futuristic horror.

The floor of the entire circular cavern was paved with black basalt.

In the center stood a massive altar, several meters high, constructed entirely from that black rock, exuding a suffocating, terrifying aura.

The altar’s surface was carved with dense, blood-colored patterns, and countless enormous nonhuman bones, chewed down to nothing but fragments, were casually piled around it as decorations.

What really made Lin Jie and the others’ scalps crawl, however, were the ten horrifying figures surrounding the bloody altar, each radiating an inhumanly oppressive presence.

Julian held his breath, instantly perceiving that these monsters were not the same life-dimension as the Purifiers in steam armor they had encountered earlier.

Even his research on the Eternal Serpent had never uncovered anything like this.

There were no external mechanical elements on them;

instead, they bore grotesque, bio-organic “living exoskeletons.”

The exoskeletons had a strange, almost deep-sea crustacean-like texture;

they were not worn but in many twisted places semi-fused with the modifiers’ flesh, tendons, and even bones.

Insect-like spiracles dotted the seams of the carapace, rhythmically exhaling pale mist with each breath.

Their modified right arms showcased this bio-punk aesthetic in full horror.

Some arms had been grafted with two-meter-long, cold-glinting UMA talons resembling prehistoric raptors;

others had fused completely with huge bony blades.

On those biological weapons one could see flesh-colored sinews connected to the modifier’s own circulatory system, pulsing like veins.

Beneath their skin a dark, scale-like keratin layer shimmered faintly.

And their eyes, hidden under helmet shadows, were no longer human round pupils but reptilian vertical slits.

These were the experimental products of the Eternal Serpent cult’s extreme "atavism" ritual!

They were not seeking mechanical strength;

rather, through grafting UMA flesh and forbidden alchemy, they forcibly twisted fragile human bodies into a new form—stronger and more beast-like!

For the three of them, mere mortals, to fight ten of these biological weapons—superseding human limits in strength, speed, and defense—the odds of victory were vanishingly small.

"Our exit..." Julian pointed to a passage leading upward on the left side of the altar, "is right there..."

Lin Jie’s gaze, however, was fixed on a heavily guarded area on the other side of the altar that nonetheless exuded a certain "vitality."

It was a workshop in operation.

Unlike the noisy, steam-filled Purification Workshop they had seen earlier, this place resembled a slaughterhouse that mixed a medieval operating theater with a secretive biological lab.

Several white-robed cult scholars who looked like doctors had gathered around a huge operating table.

Lying on that table was a cult volunteer whose eyes had rolled back and who foamed at the mouth, yet his face radiated sublime glory and fanatic ecstasy!

Those white-coated scholars, like anatomists, were cutting through the volunteer’s skin and muscles with scalpels, then grafting UMA tissues resembling nerve bundles into the volunteer’s body in extremely bloody fashion!

Providing the "spiritual template" and biological material for this inhuman modification were several amber containment cages in the workshop’s center.

In one huge amber-like crystal was imprisoned another Catacomb Nightingale almost identical to the one they had seen in the Purification Workshop before!

This UMA was clearly not there to "sing."

Its body was pierced with dozens of slender silver tubes.

Through those tubes, the white-robed scholars were continuously drawing a kind of cell sap that shimmered with a faint silver glow from the UMA’s spiritually rich tissues, slowly and steadily.

After a series of decomposition and catalytic operations by cult members, that sap was immediately injected into the volunteers undergoing modification!

They were forcibly stamping the UMA’s "spirit" and "stealth" attributes into mortal bloodlines in the most direct and brutal way possible!

"Look..."

As the three of them felt chilled to the bone by this hellish scene, an authoritative but mocking elderly voice echoed from the center of the altar.

They startled!

Only then did they notice a red-robed bishop standing atop the black basalt altar, a staff strung with white bones in his hand, whom they had not seen before!

He wore robes similar to the purple-robed bishop they had encountered earlier, but the spiritual aura he emitted was several times stronger than the other’s.

His face was hidden behind an ornate pure-gold mask, revealing only a pair of cold, snake-like ancient eyes.

He had long since perceived Lin Jie and the others’ presence.

"What an interesting look in your eyes," the Golden Mask Bishop's voice reverberated through the vast cavern, "filled with anger, fear, and an envy you yourselves have not yet noticed, is it not?"

He spread his arms as if embracing his masterpiece, then pointed at the monstrous guards and spoke in a tone mixing superiority and pity:

"Look at them.

They were once like you—mere mortals who age, who fall ill, who are bound by fear and desire.

And now," his voice trembled with uncontrollable zeal, "they have broken free from that flawed cage of flesh!"

"They have become the first new humans to touch divinity! And you..."

His pitying gaze fell on Lin Jie and the others, "…can only wriggle like insects trapped in amber, struggling pointlessly amidst the ruins of this old world soon to be discarded by history, wailing."

"But do not be sorrowful," the bishop’s tone softened into false benevolence, "for your deaths will not be meaningless. The corpses of you invaders will become the most delicious and nutritious fertilizer for the birth of our next 'Ascended'."