Chapter 214.1: In the Darkness Part 1

In Spring City, it felt as though the night would last forever. The dark, windswept night seemed endless.

Strange streams of light kept flashing across the night sky, like auroras and neon lights thrown into a blender, juiced together, then patiently smeared layer by layer across the heavens. It was nauseating at first, but after enough time passed, one’s senses adapted in some uncanny way.

Eventually, even this bizarre landscape started to seem perfectly ordinary.

The moment Ji Jue realized that, vigilance rose in his heart. The contamination of aberrants and Foolish Abominations was often subtle and gradual. Many times, it wasn’t visible to the naked eye. It could begin with a sharing session at an alcoholics’ meeting, a bizarre dream one couldn’t remember after waking, an unremarkable ornament at home, a strangely peculiar story in a book, or even a common bowl of wonton noodles.

That was precisely why its influence was so insidious. Before the victim noticed anything, they had often already begun drifting toward the Foolish Abominations. By the end, all it took was a single spark to ignite the accumulated kindling, and the process could no longer be controlled.

Forty years ago, a disturbance beneath the vortex sent a great purple star streaking across the sky, blazing with brilliant light. For the next ten years, spontaneous outbreaks of aberration occurred throughout the world, all because people had looked at the star once.

The instant that radiance was glanced upon, it planted within people’s souls an irresistible longing for something that should have never been desired. Because of this, Lu Changsheng was granted the title of High Priest-Saint, and he completely unified the previously scattered Heretic Cult.

Before that, he had been only the most ordinary-seeming member among all its middle and upper ranks. Unlike the others of his kind, he’d never seemed impatient for quick results. His greatest strength was slow, relentless persistence, the kind that wore through stone one drop at a time and cut through wood with nothing but a rope. By the time you noticed that the cold had frozen the ground three feet deep, it was already too late to stop it.

That was precisely why Changsheng’s decision to step into the open, unite such a vast array of forces, and confront the Security Bureau head-on was so alarming. What exactly was he doing? What had gotten into him? Why was he taking things this far?

Ji Jue had no idea how far Changsheng intended to take things. Even the small part of his plan that was already in motion was nearly enough to crush them.

An icy wind blew straight at Ji Jue as he lay prone atop the ruins of a broken high-rise and raised his binoculars. Only from such a height could he see the full horror of Spring City. Countless streams of light hung from the sky like curtains, descending in layers over the darkened city. Beyond that dreamlike veil of radiance, the entire world appeared twisted and monstrous.

Through his spirit matter perception, Ji Jue sensed immense waves spreading from every corner of Spring City. The entire city had long since become the Heretic Cult’s plaything. And now, as that invisible hand descended from the clouds and toyed with it at will, the shadowed city revealed the violence and hunger it had kept suppressed in the dark.

Amid distant rumbling, enormous silhouettes loomed in and out of the dense fog, sweeping over the ruins. Tentacles stretched out from within the mist, wantonly preying on the surrounding aberrants and feasting without restraint.

Meanwhile, that strange shadow they had once encountered by chance slithered across the ground. Accompanied by a series of faint cracking noises, it wound its way through the streets.

At times, a massive, broken statue would appear without warning in the middle of an empty street or plaza, with blood pouring in streams from the jagged stump of its severed neck. Though the statue never seemed to move, mutated heads kept appearing at its base.

Everything within sight had become a pasture for monsters. Those enormous, unnatural creatures wandered docilely through the darkness like cattle and sheep, lowering their heads to graze on the aberration that constantly sprouted around them, growing larger with every mouthful.

Ji Jue deliberately steered his gaze away from them. He didn’t even dare to look straight at them. Who knew how sharp those things’ perception was? If simply seeing them was enough to be locked onto, then he would be delivering himself right to their doorstep.

“Mechanic, in position.” He lay at the edge of the floor and looked, through the reflection in the mirror, toward an utterly unremarkable building below—Spring City Bank.

The bleak, dilapidated bank occupied the entirety of a four-story building. Along the streets outside, indistinct shadows flickered past from time to time. Whenever an aberrant moth swept through the air, a strange halo would rise from the bank and effortlessly crush it into pulp.

The entire bank was enveloped in esoterism, sealed so tightly that not even a drop of water could get through. Behind the tattered curtains, faint pinpricks of light could be seen, but it was impossible to make out what was happening inside.

During his reconnaissance mission, Tong Shan had identified this as the stronghold farthest from their hideout and the least responsive to outside disturbances. He and Xu Guan had burned through four candles and spent several hours scanning the area before finally piecing together what was happening inside.

The Heretic Cult’s followers had certainly not gathered at the bank to apply for loans. They had gone to great lengths to transform the entire building into an aberrant sanctum, all to draw themselves as close to the vortex as possible and call down the descent and blessings of an Upper Abomination.

It was just like what Lian Cheng had done in the Time Ruin.

With the world constantly rejecting Spring City, keeping it forcibly “afloat” consumed an enormous amount of resources every day. To avoid an expense enormous enough to make even a Celestial Being wince, they needed something to fill the void beneath Spring City, something that could serve as a foundation and hold it aloft.

There were many ways to accomplish that. Even Ji Jue could think of more than a dozen. The simplest was undoubtedly the most depraved—human sacrifices. Kill ten or twenty thousand people, and the problem would solve itself.

It wasn’t that the Heretic Cult had any moral objections. The gap was simply too vast and the ritual too complex for them to manage. A “sacrifice” wasn’t something you could improvise with frozen chickens and ducks. Every offering had to meet strict requirements and be slaughtered fresh on-site.

Besides, if they could quietly grab more than ten thousand living people out from under the Federation’s nose, why waste them on this? If they killed them all and offered them to the furnace, they could make six or seven aberrant Divine Creations out of them!

Since brute force was out of the question, they could only resort to finesse. By performing a ritual, they could temporarily open a breach above the vortex, much like cutting a hole in the ice to fish, and lure the ravenous Upper Abominations below into coming up for some air.

The Heretic Cult had been doing this for years and had no shortage of connections down there. After so much long-term cooperation, they could probably ring a bell and whatever lurked below would know dinner was about to be served. They had the entire process down to a routine.

In just a few short hours, strange pillars of light flashed across Spring City, shooting up from the ground and into the sky, signifying the successful descent of Upper Abominations. Like great columns, they supported the city from below, linking with one another to form a stable structure and hold Spring City firmly aloft.

This bank was one of the few locations where nothing had happened yet. More importantly, there was no Transcendence Realm fighter stationed inside. If they could successfully purge the site and sever this particular pillar, they would disrupt the resonance and links between the Upper Abominations. The Heretic Cult would also face even greater pressure in keeping Spring City afloat.

There was no telling how much redundancy had been built into a project this costly. But while a building could have more than one load-bearing wall, losing even one was enough to leave the entire structure dangerously unstable. Break one of their legs first, and the rest would be simple. After that, all they had to do was kick the cripple’s good leg as hard as they could.

One by one, voices crackled through the earpiece, buried beneath heavy static.

“Big Brother, in position.”

“Garlic Girl, in position.”

“Iron Man, in position.”

“Gossip Junkie, in position.”

Then came Lou Feng’s voice, thick with suppressed embarrassment. “Big... Hose, in position.”