Chapter 436

Chapter 436: Crawling on the Spiderweb

Across the wilderness, six or seven crystal fountains of different sizes sprayed nonstop. One Great Sage after another emerged from the pale surge, and every one of them stared straight at Irene.

The Little Doll’s hair practically exploded.

Foxy was already drawing in power for another volley of fox carrot missiles when a sharp tearing sound split the air high above. A flash cut across the sky and slammed into a nearby crystal rift—and with that flash came a familiar shout.

“Eat my boundless seal!”

A blazing fireball erupted from the rift. The explosion tore through crystal with a shriek, and crystal dust filled the sky as a mushroom cloud surged upward.

Yu Sheng looked up and saw Immortal Yuan Hao floating behind them, a grand array of construction materials hovering at his back. He stood in the air, white robes snapping in the wind. Beside him was Xuan Che, freshly hauled back from the brink—how he’d almost died earlier was a story for later.

Immortal Yuan Hao cupped his hands toward Yu Sheng’s direction, but before he could even get a greeting out, lightning flared inside that rising cloud.

The next second, a thunderbolt slammed down with immense force. Wind and thunder churned, and the clouds drew out hundreds upon hundreds of bolts. Like a storm, they charged toward Immortal Yuan Hao and Xuan Che.

At the same time, gale winds rose and tore away the smoke and dust. When the mushroom cloud cleared, the Great Sage Immortal Yuan Hao had just nailed with a spirit brick was still standing inside the rift.

His crystal body was battered and cracked, but he was clearly still “alive.” His form tore apart and resealed again, the endless supply of crystallized matter knitting wounds at a terrifying speed.

“This one’s annoying.” Immortal Yuan Hao’s expression tightened. He immediately realized the enemy below wasn’t like the ants he’d smashed earlier. His gaze turned solemn. Behind him, the grand array shifted with the five elements and the four images, rearranging at high speed. A thick spiritual shield condensed in an instant.

“Che’er!” he barked. “Behind your Martial Uncle!”

Xuan Che didn’t dare move around—mostly because he’d just been half-killed by a brick, and even if he wanted to run, his legs weren’t listening. He hurriedly dropped back and tucked himself behind his Senior Uncle’s array.

Lightning poured down like heavenly punishment.

And almost at the same time, the other Great Sages moved too, pouring their fury onto every hostile target on the battlefield.

Thunder. Crystal storms. Howling wind. Cannonball-sized boulders crashing from above. And creatures surging out of rifts in the earth—things that might once have been human, but now no longer resembled anything a sane mind could name.

Yu Sheng didn’t hesitate. He opened a door and tossed Zheng Zhi back into Wu Tong Road 66.

On a battlefield this chaotic, that nephew-sized body would die if anything so much as grazed him. And Immortal Yuan Hao, once the fighting started, had a bad habit of throwing spirit bricks wherever he pleased—enemies and allies alike.

Two Great Sages finally disintegrated under the combined firepower of Foxy and Immortal Yuan Hao. The crystal rifts beneath them shattered as well.

But almost immediately, new rifts split open elsewhere, and more Great Sages climbed out through the spraying crystal.

Worse—whether it was an illusion or not—with every regeneration they looked more chaotic. More twisted. Less like a person and more like a monster cobbled together from malformed lumps. Their attacks grew wilder, more hysterical, as if the only thing driving them was rage and pain.

“Foxy!” Unease tightened in Yu Sheng’s chest. “Can you use that move again? The impact—”

He didn’t get the chance to finish.

Foxy shook her head hard. “No. After I use that, I need a long time to rest!”

Yu Sheng’s brow knotted.

And in the same moment, the low, chaotic murmuring inside his head intensified again.

Not long after leaving Ink City, he’d started hearing it—that dreamlike mutter rising from somewhere deep inside the planet. He knew exactly what it was.

It was the sound coming from the cocoon of Yanxing Entity’s metamorphosis. A doomsday countdown whispered from under the world.

Yanxing Entity had noticed what was happening on the surface. It had noticed something was destroying its “cradle.” That powerful, chaotic dark angel was trying to erase the disharmonious noise moving above its head, because its ascension… was near.

They had to interrupt the metamorphosis before the ascension form matured.

Crystals lashed through the sky like tearing storms. Thunder churned in the clouds and hammered the land.

Irene clung to Yu Sheng’s arm, bouncing with Foxy’s evasive leaps as the fox threaded through the battlefield. But she kept peeking out, eyes wide, staring at one specific direction.

Another Great Sage was climbing out of a rift. Its body was huge and swollen, malformed crystal swaying in the wind and rain—vicious, ugly, wrong.

Anger. Extreme anger.

And beneath it… unwillingness, resentment, regret…

And fear.

The Little Doll tilted her head.

It felt like time around her suddenly slowed. Even Silly Fox’s wild, frantic movement became gentle, stretched thin. In that slow-flowing world, Irene locked onto the frenzied crystal figure, and a strange, excited gleam rose in her crimson eyes.

She saw it.

Inside that crystal shell, a devoured soul was struggling—bound tight. Black threads were creeping through it, spreading inside the cage like roots in flesh, then seeping out into the air in invisible strands.

When had those threads wrapped around that soul?

When she killed him last time?

Time slowed to near stillness. Irene couldn’t fully understand what she was seeing, but instinct moved her anyway. She reached toward the suffering soul trapped in crystal.

The black silk threads reacted, as if a child had answered the call of a mother hive. They became active at once, weaving into an unseen net that connected to the spider silk at Irene’s fingertips.

And now Irene understood why the Great Sages stared at her with such hatred.

“It’s fear,” she whispered, delighted.

She crawled out of Yu Sheng’s arms.

In a battlefield that felt frozen on the edge of motion, she began crawling forward along the spider silk—crawling toward the Hermitage Order Great Sage who had been swallowed by Yanxing Entity.

“It’s fear!”

Excitement lit her small face. Light spilled slowly from her crimson eyes as she passed through flying crystal clusters, through boulders turning end over end, through crystal monsters clawing up from the ground.

She crawled past Luna, who was mid-leap, using fingertip blades to slice apart lightning in the air.

In the slow-motion stillness, C Buckle looked ridiculous.

The thought drifted up in Irene’s head, bright and silly.

Then she saw Luna’s body twitch—just slightly. In that near-frozen battlefield, the so-called artificial saintess seemed to sense something. Luna began to turn her head, slow and searching, like she was feeling for something in the air.

Irene made a tiny sound and hurried faster.

“Crawl, crawl, crawl… I crawl the fastest… C Buckle is scary as hell…”

She glanced back again. Luna was still suspended in the air. That slow head turn felt like it might have been a trick of Irene’s imagination.

For a moment, the Little Doll was confused.

Then she stopped thinking about it.

Because sweet fear was waiting right ahead.

The crystal cage dissolved without a sound. In the darkness, a soul pierced through by countless black threads cowered and trembled.

At first it looked tall.

Then, in the next second, it shrank—until it was no bigger than a tiny insect.

Irene tilted her head and looked down at the small figure prostrating itself at her feet.

It felt like it had been a very, very long time since she’d looked down at someone from this angle.

But a long time ago… she had always spoken to small figures from this angle.

…What were those small figures?

The doll couldn’t remember.

She reached out and poked the soul with one finger.

“Hey.”

The Great Sage felt himself sinking endlessly, like drowning in a nightmare he could never wake from. Vast pain and fury flooded every corner of his memories. Suffering spread through his soul like poison.

Pain without end. Rage with nowhere to go.

A torment worse than death.

When had it all begun?

When he first lost control in hallucinations?

When he opened his eyes to find his believers kneeling around the crystals in the cave, worshiping and pledging loyalty?

Or earlier still… when that shameless betrayal began fermenting in silence?

He should have known. Betrayal was inevitable. No one could stay on the side of “human” after prolonged contact with dark angels. That creature calling itself Yun Qing Zi… had never been trustworthy.

But a sliver of luck, and the urgency in his heart, still drove him into disaster.

Now this eternal cage—filled with agony—was the result.

“Hey.”

The voice detonated deep in his soul, piercing chaos and jolting him awake.

He “opened” his eyes in shock.

And in the space of a single second, he dug out his own eyeballs—on the soul level.

Searing pain ripped through him. He clutched at his eyes in the dark and howled, but even so, it was too late.

He had seen what he was never meant to see.

And with the sight came the knowledge bound to it—

A vast spiderweb called End covered the world. Every strand was a woven fate, and every knot was a gathering point for the world’s ill omen. And prostrated upon that web, the master of suffering and fear gazed down at him in silence.