The Royal City is Gone

Gawain acted immediately, using soil to condense a sturdy cage, imprisoning the "Extinction"—Zhang Qiuqiu—who was playing dead inside.

To be safe, he also took the opportunity to break Extinction's limbs. This infuriated Zhang Qiuqiu so much that she sent a flurry of messages in the Anomaly Web, swearing she would tear Gawain into ten thousand pieces.

Afterward, Ren Yi directed the men to collect Tarol's body and began "cleaning" the inside and outside of the nest.

He intentionally kept Gawain by his side while bringing Zhang Qiuqiu along in her soil cage. As he put on a show for the soldiers, he granted the sorrowful souls their release.

By the time the matters at the nest were fully handled, the sun had risen again, and the sky was bright.

Ren Yi sat in the pickup truck, with a different soldier driving this time. Gawain kept a death grip on his gaze toward the "motionless" Zhang Qiuqiu in the soil cage, not daring to relax for even a moment.

Ren Yi looked up at the sky, and then his eyes widened slightly.

Had "The Emptiness" on the horizon, which represented the Calamity, grown significantly larger?

Immediately after, he received a message from Zhang Qiuqiu through the Anomaly Web.

【Holy crap, Ren Yi, check the forum, quick!】

【What happened?】 Ren Yi replied instantly.

Zhang Qiuqiu quickly dropped four words.

【The Royal City is gone!】

Ren Yi's heart tightened. He quickly closed his eyes, pretending to be exhausted and resting his mind, while secretly connecting his perception to the Anomaly Web and clicking into the "Rebellion Squad" thread created by the Royal City's Anomalies.

Upon entering the thread, the first thing he saw was a massive wave of shocking, greyed-out avatars.

No way... Did all the Anomalies in the Royal City "die"? What happened? Did that Calamity lose control and go on a killing spree?

Ren Yi quickly clicked on an avatar. After seeing the details, he breathed a sigh of relief.

The IP address below the avatar had changed to 【The Alliance】, and the status displayed was 【Out of Service Area】.

It seemed they hadn't "died" but had returned to the Alliance ahead of schedule.

What on earth had happened?

Ren Yi began to browse the thread rapidly to get a general understanding of the situation in the Royal City.

Previously, the Anomalies in the Royal City had been targeted by the royal army and Espers. With no other choice, they had retreated to the civilian districts and reverted to their original Anomaly forms.

Hiding in the city's shadows, sewers, and all sorts of nooks and crannies, they had launched constant attacks.

Of course, the density of these attacks was far higher than any urban legend. For a time, the civilian districts of the Royal City had fallen into complete chaos, a literal dance of demons.

The Royal City was divided into an Inner City and an Outer City. The royal family seemed to have intended to abandon the Outer City, concentrating a massive amount of military force in the Inner City to defend it strictly.

To the Anomalies, there was no difference between the Inner and Outer Cities. Except for a few troublemaking squads, no Anomaly wanted to bash their heads against the hard nut that was the Inner City.

For a time, a massive contrast formed between the two. The Inner City was peaceful and quiet, while the Outer City was a chaotic mess.

Large numbers of people from the Outer City tried to enter the Inner City, only to be dispersed by the Inner City's army. Afterward, the Outer City became a true "apocalypse," and some people began to flee.

Just yesterday, a fatal event occurred in the Outer City—they ran out of food.

Originally, the Royal City didn't have much food to begin with, and the majority of it was gathered in the Inner City.

After the connection between the Inner and Outer Cities was completely severed, those with food hid it as securely as possible. Large-scale "starvation" broke out in the Outer City.

Ren Yi scrolled down to this point and found that the thread had almost reached the end.

At the very bottom was a video posted by an avatar that had already turned grey.

Ren Yi clicked on it.

The camera angle of this video was very high, appearing to be from a city wall. The wall was dozens of meters above the ground, and Ren Yi could see many soldiers in armor standing around.

The perspective first swept over the area below the wall, which was filled with low, stone-built houses. Ren Yi noticed many corpses and broken spears scattered beneath the wall, a complete mess.

Suddenly, terrified screams erupted from the surroundings. The camera jerked upward, pointing toward the sky.

A tiny black dot appeared in the sky.

Then, within a few breaths, the black dot expanded rapidly as if being corroded by something, becoming a black hole. Its edges melted into a thick liquid, like oil paint, and began to drip slowly.

This time, Ren Yi finally saw what was falling from the black hole.

It was "rain."

The thin threads of rain were almost transparent, appearing out of nowhere from the void, falling pattering down like the sky's tears.

The almost gentle threads of rain hit the ground, but the moment they made contact, the ground suddenly melted like a lit candle.

The surrounding scenery began to distort and become abstract, like a paint box drenched in water. In the blink of an eye, the entire world turned into a bizarre, abstract painting.

The city walls began to become soft and curved like watered-down clay, collapsing downward.

The rain also fell on the nearby soldiers. Before they could even make a sound, they too suddenly "collapsed," melting into a puddle of colors that merged into the omnipresent colorful flow.

Bricks, people, and then the clouds in the sky, the light, the space—everything began to flow. In their original places, nothing remained but a patch of emptiness.

The world became quiet in an instant, with only the faint sound of rain remaining between heaven and earth.

Ren Yi saw the colors of the sky constantly dripping, various brilliant hues flowing in the same direction, gathering toward a low-lying area.

Just as Ren Yi wanted to see what would happen to those colors in the end...

With a crack, the video abruptly cut off.