With Luo Yang’s permission, the sphere began to rotate slowly.
To call it a sphere wasn't entirely accurate. It was more like a hole forced into the size of a fist, its edges constantly collapsing inward only to be filled by new darkness.
The lingering firelight in the shopping mall ruins reflected off its surface, yet not a single glint remained.
All light that touched its surface was devoured before it could even bounce back.
Luo Yang stood half a step behind Yan Zhi, his right hand still gripping the hilt of Night Owl, though the blade’s tip had unconsciously lowered a few inches.
He instinctively swept the area with his mental power.
The moment his mental power touched the edge of the sphere, it felt as if it had been bitten; a small segment of his perception was torn away, and a needle-like sting radiated from the point of disconnection.
The smile on the Heterosequence’s face hadn't completely shattered yet. Its purple-glowing eyes darted back and forth between Yan Zhi and Luo Yang, its mouth opening as if it wanted to say something.
Perhaps it was a new taunt, another round of negotiation, or simply a desire to confirm the origin of this young girl.
But no one present cared what it had to say; Yan Zhi didn't give it the chance.
First, the sound was sucked away.
It was as if an invisible hand had grabbed every sound wave from the air and dragged them into that darkness.
The distant explosions of the battlefield, the roars of mutant beasts, the dull thud of bricks hitting the ground—every sound was stretched into a thin line, flowing toward the sphere before vanishing completely at a certain threshold.
Then came the light.
The firelight remaining in the ruins began to distort. The flames were still burning, but the light they emitted changed direction, eerily refracting toward the sphere’s position.
The airflow was the last to arrive.
It poured in from all directions, carrying glass shards and concrete dust, creating a blade-like scraping sensation as it rushed past Luo Yang.
His shirt was pressed against his chest by the wind pressure, his glasses slid to the tip of his nose, and his vision blurred for a moment.
Yan Zhi’s control was incredibly precise. Luo Yang could even feel an extremely thin layer of isolation between them, as delicate as a surgical incision made between blood vessels. Had there been a deviation of even a millimeter, he would have been sucked in.
A second later, the Underworld rank Heterosequence began to run.
It no longer cared about phrasing its words elegantly. Its grayish-white humanoid body suddenly began to collapse, folding inward from the tips of its limbs.
The energy film between its feet and the ground, originally used to maintain its stance, was instantly redirected to propel it backward with explosive force.
This was its ultimate escape move, one that had allowed it to slip away from three Dao Manifestation level Punishers over the last five years.
From compression to ejection, the entire process took less than 0.3 seconds.
But after 0.3 seconds, its body was still in the same spot.
It was as if it hadn't moved at all. The energy alignment of its torso remained unchanged, and even the redirected energy film beneath its feet stayed in place.
It was as if its nascent thought of escaping had been denied by a higher existence. Along with the act of fleeing itself, that black mass had handed down a death sentence.
It instinctively looked down at its hands.
In that moment, it no longer had hands.
The energy structures at the ends of its fingers were disintegrating, and even the black blood produced by the collapse was devoured the instant it appeared.
Its palms were gone, its wrists were missing, and only half of its forearms remained. The gaps were as smooth as if those limbs had never existed.
It finally managed to make a sound.
“This—this isn't—what on earth is—!”
The Heterosequence’s entire body began to be stretched toward the sphere. Limbs, torso, head—every energy structure was torn into countless fine threads at the same instant.
Its purple eyes lasted a bit longer than the rest of its body. It watched its entire existence being distorted into fluid streams by that black mass, yet it couldn't even manage a decent gesture of resistance.
A few minutes later, the originally sinister aura had been swallowed clean.
The sphere dissipated on its own. The air settled once more, sound and light returned, and the fires continued to lick upward.
Yan Zhi let out a small burp. Through the fabric of her white and pink casual wear, she touched her lower abdomen and slowly rubbed it with her fingers, looking as if she had just finished a substantial dessert.
Something had changed on her face.
What was once a pallor from years of avoiding the sun was now replaced by a very faint, healthy flush on her cheeks.
Though subtle, it left Luo Yang utterly astonished.
She shouldn't have been capable of such a change. As a dead person with no heartbeat, no body temperature, and no blood energy circulation, the physiological response of “blushing” shouldn't even exist in theory.
Luo Yang pushed his glasses back up from the tip of his nose. His gaze lingered on Yan Zhi’s cheeks for perhaps half a second before he silently looked away.
“Let’s go. We should head back and see how things are going over there.”
His tone was exactly the same as usual—relaxed with a hint of laziness—as if he hadn't just witnessed an Underworld rank Heterosequence being chewed up like a snack, but rather Yan Zhi eating a few extra skewers of grilled gluten at a roadside stall.
The two returned even faster than they had come.
Luo Yang walked in front, his footsteps making almost no sound on the broken bricks. Yan Zhi followed behind, habitually clutching the corner of his clothes, a look of satiated drowsiness on her face.
At the Changhong Avenue intersection, the defensive line was unrecognizable.
More than half of a bus had been flipped onto the sidewalk, its roof crushing a telephone booth.
Concrete fragments had been ground into powder by some immense force, mixing with blood to form a layer of dark red sludge on the ground.
Several mutant beast corpses lay across the middle of the road. The edges of their wounds were wreathed in black mist—the traces left by Chu Zimo’s Shadow Bind ability.
Chu Zimo was still standing.
But he was only standing. His right knee was trembling so violently that his pant leg was swaying slightly.
The black energy in his left hand was still writhing, attempting to condense into a dagger once more, but the shadow energy failed to take shape twice, eventually dissipating into a wisp of black smoke in his palm.
His blood energy was completely drained; he couldn't even maintain the most basic deployment.
Yet he continued to move forward, his feet dragging across the ground with the sound of scraping gravel.
Three Level 2 bone lizards flanked him. Having realized the Punisher’s blood energy was depleted, they no longer tested him as they had before, instead closing in to surround him in a triangular formation.
The leader had a fragment of a broken shadow blade embedded in its bone armor. Chu Zimo had left it there minutes ago, unable to follow up with a deeper strike before it had shaken him off.
Chu Zimo didn't even notice when Luo Yang appeared at his side.
All of his perception was narrowed onto the three bone lizards in front of him. When a hand pressed down on his shoulder, his first reaction was to throw a backhanded elbow strike.
Luo Yang caught the elbow with his palm. The force was as light as a child tapping a ball.
“That’s enough.”
Chu Zimo turned his head. The whites of his eyes were bloodshot, and his pupils were constricted like two nails driven into his sockets.
His lips moved, and his voice squeezed out of his throat, dry and hoarse: “I can still—”
“No, you can’t.”
Luo Yang added a bit more pressure, pulling him back half a step.
Chu Zimo’s right leg, which had been shaking for nearly half a minute, finally gave out. His knee buckled, and his whole body slumped to the side.
Yan Zhi had already circled around to the other side at some point. She grabbed Chu Zimo’s wrists with both hands and hoisted him up.
She only came up to his chest, making the task of dragging him look a bit strenuous, but only “a bit.”
With both of Chu Zimo’s arms draped over her shoulders, his heels left two drag marks in the gravel.
He was hauled away like a fragile piece of cargo, one step at a time, until Yan Zhi reached a relatively intact low wall in the rear.
After settling him down, Yan Zhi poked half her head out from behind the wall, looking toward Luo Yang.
Ten Grantee Longswords were currently hovering around him. They weren't arranged symmetrically; some were above his head, others at his waist. They seemed disorganized, yet the angle each blade pointed at did not overlap with any other.
The faint light on the sword blades flickered in the smoke, reflecting off Luo Yang’s plain glass spectacles in tiny, sharp glints.
With both hands in his pockets, he took a step toward the three bone lizards. All ten swords leaned forward simultaneously.
Leaning against the low wall, Chu Zimo’s eyelids were nearly closed.
The last image he saw was a silhouette from behind.
The man’s shoulders were relaxed, and his steps were as casual as if he were strolling through his own living room, yet the longswords floating behind him seemed capable of covering the entire battlefield ahead with their edges.
Then, his eyelids fell completely.
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