Chapter 440

Chapter 441: Ascension, Rainy Season

What had happened to Sentinel Silence? What had happened to the surface?

The people stationed on the orbital platform stared in fear at the Homeworld below their feet. In a short time it had changed beyond recognition. Creeping pale matter spread like a nightmare across the planet, and even the heavy equatorial rain clouds could not hide the horrible distortion. That warping had started hundreds of years ago, but only now did it reach their eyes.

The cognitive barrier over Sentinel Silence was breaking. That powerful interference had once stretched from the surface into space, dragging even the high-orbit watchers into a dream where “everything is normal.” Now the dream had ended.

But it was not because the Youth Form had stopped. It was because the “Angel” parasitizing the planet’s interior was ready for Ascension.

The Ascension Body was cutting its connections to the Eclosion Nest. As those massive neural systems buried in the deep and the crystal branches spread across the globe disconnected one by one, the cognitive interference field that had run for centuries on Sentinel Silence shut down with them.

The Youth Form had decided to abandon this nest ahead of schedule. The many abnormal events here made it feel great danger.

Face pale, Mo Ran looked at the spirit mirror her subordinate brought her and stared at the projection.

It was a live view from the orbital platform, looking down at Sentinel Silence from space.

Pale matter writhed and heaved across the surface. From the poles to the equator, every landform was changing. A horrible “face” now covered nearly one third of the planet. It looked like a complex nest, but also like a face that mixed human and insect. At its center stood… that “mountain.”

Mo Ran lifted her head with a tight chest and looked toward the plain. The landform swelling out there now rose higher than the tallest peak near Ink City. Inside that mountain of crystal, something was slowly being “squeezed” out of the crust. Hot magma spilled from the crystal cliffs around it. The “tendrils” that had grown up from underground earlier seemed to be losing control.

The army outside the city fell into disorder. The cultivators under Lord Yun Shan scattered from the clouds. Some tried to restore order. Some dove like they meant to die straight into the living thicket.

Mo Ran no longer had time to care about them.

Under her feet, the planet where she was born and raised was waking up.

Her home had become a living world filled with killing intent, and the city felt like an unwelcome bruise on the body of a huge, terrible creature.

The whole city shook. The defenses under Ink City were close to failing.

With a roar that almost burst the liver and gall, an ominous flash lit the rain in the distance. A huge structure fell from the clouds. Chain explosions and rolling debris smashed against the already wavering City Protection Array.

Someone shouted in panic: “Refining Tower No. 6 has collapsed… something crawled up from underground!”

From the place where that tower fell, a giant crystal tendril speared up from the earth and slammed against the city’s last shield.

In the shield flash that rippled over nearly half the city, the tendril shattered. The crystal fragments fell, but before they hit the ground, they turned into countless crystalline creatures that swarmed like insects toward the shaken city guard lines.

“Do not retreat!” Mo Ran shouted, then leaped without hesitation from Refining Tower No. 4 and dove through the storm with her personal guard toward the breach: “Plug the gap!”

They were everywhere.

As far as the eye could see, the shards had become endless crystal swarms. The ground split into countless mouths, and from those cracks crawled small, gleaming tendrils. Black-clad figures also slid through the rain like ghosts. They wore withered, twisted black masks. Their bodies looked human, but when they died there was no blood, only pale crystal veined with dirty gray.

The city guard did not fall back. With the city lord herself on the line, the soldiers steadied and fought the endless beasts.

The gale carried sheets of rain, like the sea pouring upside down. Mo Ran gasped for air. The water seemed to flood her chest. Even breathing felt like a burden.

A strange crystalline creature burst through the rain behind her, its blade-like limbs stabbing down.

Mo Ran felt the danger at her back. She spun. Her flying sword flashed from her hand in a curve of light toward the monster.

But before it hit, a hot beam struck the creature’s shell. In a short, fierce flare, the creature brightened like a lantern, then exploded into shards.

Shocked, Mo Ran turned. A small, blank-faced figure stood a dozen meters away.

Then, one after another, more small figures appeared nearby.

“You are…” Mo Ran began, but she did not know which one to address. The short figures looked dull, as if they were just automatons summoned for battle. She even doubted they could talk. Then a voice called from close by: “Here to help!”

A giant Nine-Tailed Silver Fox strode up to Mo Ran. A tiny, proud figure stood on its head.

Another ghostlike figure spun through the rain like a dancer. In that light turn, her fingertip blades cut down two black robed cultivators on the spot.

Luna turned her ever-smiling face toward the battered Mo Ran and said slowly, one word at a time: “Almost over.”

Mo Ran froze, ready to ask something, when she saw a crystalline creature leap high behind the silver fox and pounce.

She did not have time to warn them. The creature’s body suddenly jerked. It stopped its strike, dropped to the ground, spun, and lunged at the nearest black-clad figure.

Caught off guard, the man never expected an “ally” to attack. The blow ripped away half his torso.

More crystalline creatures squealed in confusion, then went wild and turned on the “friends” nearest to them.

The frenzy spread in a blink, like a fast-plague. Chaos rolled through the crystalline swarms. They began to gnaw the small tendrils rising from the ground. Some tendrils started striking the black-clad attackers still trying to push the city guard. Finally, even the black-clad ranks fell apart.

Those “cultivators” with human shells and crystal inside staggered in the rain, as if fighting some invisible enemy. At first they only backed away in panic. Then it seemed like they realized something. They clawed at their bodies and rushed to find any cover. They sprinted for the nearest fallen walls, ignoring blades inches from them. But after a few steps, they lost the last of their reason. With a horrible spasm, they turned and jumped like beasts at the nearest “ally.”

Mo Ran stared, stunned. Only after a long moment did she grasp what the black “people” had been doing before they lost control.

They were hiding from the rain.

She lifted her hand and, without thinking, wiped her face.

The rain was dense, even heavier than usual for this season. The falling curtain felt like two storms stacked together, pouring from two angles at once. Threads of red ran through the water.

Mo Ran lowered her gaze to her palm. A bloodlike smear bloomed in the rainwater. From that stain, a thin red line split off and crawled like a living thing. It gathered into a strange triangle mark, then slowly shaped into a smiling face.

Mo Ran screamed and flung the water from her hand.

Because of that, she did not see the phone number or the note behind the smile that said, “If you need help, call the hotel.”

Then she heard a new roar from outside the city.

The guards who had stayed on the Refining Towers turned toward the sound and saw the “mountain” on the plain cracking from within.

The mountain collapsed. Pale crystal poured down like an avalanche. A wave of heat burst from the rift. A mass of light shot upward from the deep.

The wide field of crystals around the mountain flared with sudden life, but the rain that fell from the sky washed over them and forced them, inch by inch, back into stillness.

A chorus of chaotic shrieks rang from within the mountain. Something rising from the underground had sensed danger. But Ascension had already begun, and the process could not be undone.

A vast, irregular body of crystal, bigger than all of Ink City, rose out of the broken mountain. It squeezed free of the crust and flew upward, climbing the storm. Sheets of crystal kept peeling off its surface. A dull glow flowed across the torn fragments.

The Ascension Body forced its way out of its “membrane.”

It hung exposed in the torrential rain of Sentinel Silence.