Chapter 145: The City Beneath Shadows
The fortress above would live. The corruption would fade. The Stream would return to normal.
And yet, deep in her chest, Ling Yu felt no victory, only an unsettling stillness, as if the silence that followed wasn’t peace, but the calm before another storm.
For even as she turned to leave, the faintest whisper brushed against her ear, soft, distant, but unmistakably real.
"You’ve only freed me from their chains, little mortal. The next time we meet, it will not be as strangers."
"Before I go, I left a little reward for you. Check it out, who knows, you might come to like it."
Her blood ran cold.
But she didn’t look back.
The moment Ling Yu landed on the cracked stone floor, the world erupted into chaos.
The chamber trembled with a guttural, echoing roar that reverberated through her bones. The dark fog that had been seeping from the shattered Anchor condensed into shapes, writhing, snarling, taking form from shadow and bone. They crawled from the pit, one after another, eyes glowing with sickly light, their breaths thick with decay.
They weren’t ordinary beasts.
Their bodies were made of fragmented flesh and crystallized veins, pulsing with the Anchor’s energy. Each movement dripped with corruption, their claws scraping against the stone with a screech that felt like a thousand whispers clawing at her mind.
Ling Yu’s instincts screamed.
She spun, blades flashing, barely dodging a tendril that lashed out from behind her. The moment her feet touched the ground again, she rolled forward, the air hissing as another monster’s claw sliced where she had been standing.
Her breath came sharp. It was too late to retreat now.
The chamber’s exit had already been sealed, swallowed by a shimmering wall of energy that pulsed with the same rhythm as the Anchor’s broken core. The monsters formed a tightening circle around her, their tongues lolling out like serpents tasting blood.
She exhaled slowly as the corners of her mouth lifted up in a bitter smile, her eyes narrowed.
"Haha, so that bastard was prepared for this already. So it begins."
Her blades sang as she drew them fully, twin arcs of blue light shimmering along their edges. These were Eclipsers, weapons forged from fragments of fallen stars, bound by her soul contract.
With a faint flick of her wrist, the weapons hummed in resonance, and a soft ripple spread through the air.
The first monster lunged, a hulking, four-armed beast with a gaping maw and eyes of molten gold. Its roar shook the dust from the ceiling.
Ling Yu pivoted.
Her movement was fluid, almost weightless, as she sidestepped the creature’s downward strike. Sparks burst where its claws met the floor. In the same instant, she thrust her blade upward, slicing through its arm at the joint.
A shriek tore through the chamber. Dark fluid sprayed across the ground, sizzling where it touched stone.
But the wound didn’t slow it.
The severed limb writhed, reattaching itself as black tendrils snaked from the wound.
Regeneration ability?
Ling Yu’s lips pressed into a hard line. "So they feed off the Anchor’s core."
She spun her other blade, activating the energy channels along its edge. Golden sigils flared across her skin as she chanted a low incantation.
"Celestial Edge— Break."
Her strike cleaved the air with blinding force. The blade cut through the beast’s head cleanly, splitting it in two. The creature convulsed once, then dissolved into a pool of inky blackness that seeped into the ground.
For a moment, silence.
Then the ground trembled again as dozens of shapes emerged from the fog.
They were multiplying.
’Did that man already know? Did he deliberately avoid this place to push this problem off his shoulders?’
Ling Yu’s thoughts suddenly flashed back to the flying silhouette she saw for a brief moment, her vision blurring before she snapped out of it. Her eyes hardened. "So be it."
Ling Yu moved like wind and flame. Every step she took was deliberate, every slash calculated.
Her body became a blur, weaving through the monsters’ ranks with impossible precision. She cut down one, pivoted midair to kick another in the throat, then spun her blades outward to slice through three more in a single arc.
Blood, smoke, and black miasma filled the air.
But the monsters didn’t stop.
Their shrieks merged into a terrible chorus that shook the walls, filling the chamber with sound and fury. Some crawled along the walls and ceiling, their limbs stretching like spiders; others charged from below, their bodies reforming from mist after being shattered.
Her energy flickered at the edges. Each strike drained her reserves faster than usual—the taint from the Anchor resisted her divine qi, forcing her to use brute force instead of flowing resonance.
Sweat trickled down her temples.
Her lungs burned, her muscles screamed, but her expression didn’t falter.
"Fuck these monsters, don’t they get tired? These fuckeers just keep increasing even after killing them! Not yet..." she cursed and whispered like a mad woman, not paying any attention to her surroundings.
She leapt backward, landing on a crumbling platform near the pit.
Dozens of monsters roared below, climbing the walls to reach her.
Ling Yu pressed her palms together, blades crossed before her chest. The air around her shifted, dense, trembling, alive.
She closed her eyes and drew upon the last remnants of divine energy stored in her spiritual core. The golden seal on her wristband shimmered, its sigils flaring to life.
"Activate the skill."
[Activating Seal of Atonement— Ignition Protocol!]
A low hum resonated through the chamber.
Flames burst outward from her body, not red or orange, but pure gold and azure, spiraling upward like celestial wings. The monsters froze for a moment, recoiling from the sudden divine radiance.
She opened her eyes, glowing with twin hues of starlight.
Then she swung both blades downward.
A wave of golden fire erupted across the battlefield, consuming everything in its path. The flames didn’t burn like ordinary fire; they purified.