Chapter 441

Chapter 441: Ascension, Rainy Season

What happened to Shu Ji?

What happened on the surface?

On the orbital platform, the people on duty stared down at their homeworld in terror. Over the last stretch of time, the planet had undergone a change that felt impossible to describe. Strange, pale matter had spread across the surface like a nightmare spilling out of a wound—until even the thick rain clouds near the equator couldn’t hide the mutation anymore.

A mutation that had begun centuries ago, yet only now had entered their sight.

The cognitive screen covering Shu Ji was collapsing. That powerful interference had once stretched from the surface into space, dragging even high-orbit guards into the dream that everything was normal.

Now, the dream was over.

But it wasn’t because the Yanxing Entity had stopped moving. It was because the “angel” parasitizing the planet’s interior had finished preparing for ascension.

The ascension form was severing its connection to the eclosion nest. As the massive underground nerve system and the crystal-branch structures spread across the world were cut away one by one, the cognitive field that had run over Shu Ji for centuries naturally stalled and failed.

The Yanxing Entity had decided to abandon this nest ahead of schedule. Too many abnormalities had piled up, and it could sense extreme danger.

Mo Ran’s face drained of color as she stared at the spirit-link mirror her people thrust into her hands.

The image inside was the view transmitted from the orbital platform—Shu Ji seen from space.

Pale matter writhed across the planet’s surface from the polar regions down toward the equator. Cities, mountains, coastlines—everything had begun to change. A terrifying “face,” covering nearly a third of the world, had taken shape. It looked like a complex nest structure, and also like a fusion of a human face and an insect’s.

And at the center of that face was… the “mountain.”

Mo Ran lifted her head, choking on a sense of suffocation as she looked toward the plain’s far end. The swelling crystal structure in the distance had risen higher than the tallest peaks near Ink City. Within that mountain of crystal, something seemed to be slowly squeezing itself out of the crust. Scalding magma seeped from around the crystalline cliffs, and as the process continued, the tentacles that had drilled upward earlier seemed to slip into a terrifying, uncontrolled frenzy.

Outside the city, the army fell into chaos. The cultivators led by Lord Yun Shan scattered and fled from the clouds. Some still tried to restore order. Others rushed into the living crystal jungle as if throwing themselves into death.

Mo Ran barely noticed.

Beneath her feet, the planet where she’d been born and raised was waking up.

Her homeworld had become a living thing—vast, murderous, and hungry—and Ink City felt like an unwanted bruise on the skin of that enormous horror.

The entire city shook. The defensive structures beneath Ink City trembled on the verge of collapse.

With a roar that felt like it might rupture organs, Mo Ran saw an ominous flash bloom in the distant curtain of rain. Then a massive structure fell from the clouds. Explosions hammered the already-wavering city-protection array, huge chunks of wreckage slamming into the shield like fists.

“The No. 6 refining tower collapsed!” someone shouted. “Something drilled up from underground!”

Then everyone saw it.

From the crater where the refining tower had fallen, a gigantic crystal tentacle speared up from the earth and slammed down like a crushing hammer onto the last shield at the edge of Ink City’s district.

The shield flared, light rippling across nearly half the city. The tentacle shattered—crystal shards raining from the sky—yet before they could hit the ground, they twisted and changed into countless crystalline creatures, surging like an insect swarm toward the city guard below.

“Hold the line!” Mo Ran shouted.

Then, without hesitation, she leapt from the No. 4 refining tower and charged into the storm with her personal guard.

“Plug the breach!”

They were everywhere.

Crystal swarms filled every direction. The ground split with countless cracks, and from the fissures glittering feelers wriggled out with an eerie sheen. And like ghosts sliding through the wind and rain, black-clad figures struck from nowhere. They wore twisted, withered black masks, their bodies shaped like human beings.

Kill them, and there was no blood.

Inside the wounds, there was only pale crystal streaked with ashen black.

In the end, the city guard did not retreat. With the City Lord personally on the front line, the warriors found their footing again and threw themselves into brutal combat against the endless monsters.

Rain poured in sheets. The gale carried it like a sea turned upside down. Mo Ran panted hard, rainwater choking into her chest until even breathing felt like a burden.

A crystalline creature burst through the rain curtain. It landed silently behind her, blade-like limbs hacking down.

Mo Ran sensed the danger and spun, sending her flying sword streaking toward it in a slash of light—

But before her blade arrived, a searing beam struck the monster’s shell. A short, violent flash lit the storm, and the creature exploded into a skyful of fragments.

Mo Ran turned in shock.

A small figure stood a dozen meters away, face blank, posture still.

Then another similar figure appeared nearby.

“Who are you—” Mo Ran started, but she didn’t even know which one to ask. They all looked empty and dull, like automatons dragged out of some summoning array. For a moment, she doubted they could even speak.

But as her words fell, a voice rang out from the rain.

“Here to help!”

A huge nine-tailed silver fox strode up before Mo Ran, rain sliding off its fur in ribbons. Atop its silver head stood a tiny figure with its chin lifted high.

Another ghostlike shape slipped through the storm. With a dancer’s light spin, she cut down two black-robed cultivators on the spot, fingertip blades flashing like knives.

Luna turned her head and looked at Mo Ran with that ever-smiling face.

“It’s almost over,” she said, slow and deliberate, one word at a time.

Mo Ran froze, about to ask what she meant, when she caught another crystalline creature leaping in the corner of her eye—pouncing toward the nine-tailed fox from behind.

“Watch out—!”

But before the warning could leave her throat, the creature stiffened midair. It landed, shuddered, then spun and lunged at the nearest black-clad figure instead.

The black-clad figure didn’t even have time to react. He never expected to be attacked by a so-called ally. Half his torso was ripped open.

Then more crystalline creatures began to chitter in chaotic cries, as if the rain itself had driven them mad. One after another, they turned their attacks on the nearest “companion.”

More and more monsters snapped.

In a blink, a wave of madness spread through the crystal ranks like a contagious plague, dragging enemies both inside and outside the city into frenzy.

The out-of-control swarm began gnawing on the small feelers that had drilled up through the surface. Some of those feelers, infected, began attacking the black-clad figures still trying to break the city guard. And soon even the black-clad ranks themselves devolved into chaos—

Those “cultivators,” human only in outline, their insides long since replaced by crystal creatures, staggered in the rain as if fighting an invisible enemy. At first they backed away in panic. Then, as if understanding something, they clawed at their own bodies and frantically searched for cover, trying to block whatever was falling from above.

They sprinted toward shattered walls and broken beams, ignoring blades that flashed within inches of their skin. But often, after only a few steps, the last scraps of reason vanished. Their bodies convulsed—and they turned and pounced like beasts on the nearest “ally.”

Mo Ran stared, stunned.

After a long moment, she finally understood what those black-clad “people” had been doing before they lost control.

They were trying to avoid the rain.

She lifted a hand in a daze and wiped water from her face—then looked up.

The rain was too dense, even for this season. It felt like two downpours overlapping, pouring from two dimensions at once. And within that curtain… threads of blood-red color seeped through the water.

Mo Ran looked down at her palm.

Something like blood bloomed through the rainwater. A thin red strand split from the diluted stain and crawled across her skin like a living thing, gathering and coalescing. It formed a strange triangular emblem first—then gradually shaped itself into a smiling face…

Mo Ran screamed and flung the rainwater from her hand in horror.

That was how she missed the phone number behind the smiley face.

And the note: If you’re in trouble, find Hotel.

After that, the rumbling returned—this time from beyond the city.

Up on the refining towers, the guards looked toward the sound and watched the “mountain” rising at the plain’s end begin to crack open from within.

The mountain collapsed.

Pale crystal poured out like an avalanche across the plain. Heat surged from the fissures, and a ball of light shot up from deep underground. The vast crystal around the mountain shuddered to life—only to be hammered by the downpour from above and forced back into stillness.

A chaotic, screeching roar came from within the collapsed “mountain.” Whatever was trying to break free seemed to sense danger.

Yet ascension had already begun early.

The process could not be reversed.

A massive, irregular lump of crystal—larger than all of Ink City—rose from the ruined mountain. It squeezed out of the crust and climbed into the sky through the gale and rain. Great slabs of crystal peeled away from its surface, and a dim glow flowed between the torn fragments.

The ascension form had been exposed.

Stripped of its birth membrane.

Exposed beneath Shu Ji’s sky-filling torrential rain.