In a hidden cave northwest of Wind Eye Market, occupied by the Celestial Wings Society.

It was supposed to be one of the strongest fortresses in the Secret Realm.

Now, the air inside the cave was even more suffocating than the gray fog outside.

"The comms are completely down."

Sun Rui stared at the frantic static on his tactical terminal, veins popping on the back of his hand. He slammed his fist down on the special alloy tabletop.

CLANG!

The massive clang made Sun Hao, who was beside him, flinch violently. His cup slipped from his grasp, and the warm liquid splashed all over his crotch.

"Bro... What’s happening?"

Sun Hao’s voice was on the verge of tears, all traces of the pampered young master’s swagger completely gone.

"Are we going to die?"

The other core members of the Celestial Wings Society in the cave all had ashen faces, their mouths clamped tightly shut.

From outside the cave walls, the faint, shrill screams grated on everyone’s nerves.

"Shut up!"

Sun Rui growled irritably.

"What’s there to panic about! We have three ’Rock Array’ formations and twenty crates of high-purity Calming Incense. That’s enough to hide us for three days and three nights!"

Despite his words, his own heart was pounding like a war drum.

An early arrival of the gray period was unheard of.

What’s more, the bizarre energy fluctuations from outside made even a Meridian Passage Realm expert like him feel a stinging sensation on his skin, unsettling his Divine Soul.

It was as if the entire world was rejecting them.

"Where’s Li Wei?"

Sun Rui suddenly remembered something and whipped his head around.

In the shadows of a corner, Li Wei—the one who was usually so sycophantic—was squatting with his back to them, his shoulders twitching as he fiddled with something unknown.

"Li Wei! I’m talking to you! Did you seal the air vent?!"

The figure in the corner stirred.

"Sealed tight, Vice President."

Li Wei’s voice was strange.

It was dry and grating, as if his vocal cords had been forcibly ripped apart and then crudely stuck back together.

He slowly stood up and turned around.

The emergency light illuminated his face.

Sun Rui’s pupils constricted instantly.

Li Wei was smiling.

The corners of his mouth were stretched into an inhuman arc, split all the way to his ears.

His eyeballs bulged unnaturally, riddled with bloodshot veins. Beneath a layer of transparent eyelids, countless tiny, dark-red worms seemed to be writhing frantically.

"You..."

Sun Hao pointed at Li Wei, his teeth chattering uncontrollably.

"Your face..."

"My face?"

Li Wei raised a hand, stroking his own twisted features with the stiff movements of a marionette.

"My face is fine, Second Young Master."

"It’s never been better."

He started walking, approaching them step by step.

He was just a lackey, yet every step he took seemed to land on their hearts, bringing with it an indescribable chill.

"Stop right there!"

Sun Rui’s right hand gripped the hilt of his saber, his muscles instantly tensing.

Li Wei stopped. He tilted his head, sizing up Sun Rui with the look one gives to something already dead, his expression full of derision.

He suddenly reached out and grabbed his shirt.

RRRIP!

The fabric tore apart, revealing his emaciated chest.

A collective gasp filled the cave.

In the center of Li Wei’s chest, the skin was gone.

In its place was a dark-red, pulsating crystal.

Around the crystal, countless bizarre, vein-like tendrils were rooted deep within his flesh, pulsing with an eerie red light that flickered in time with his heart.

In the very center of the crystal, the outline of a thumb-sized, curled-up humanoid embryo was clearly visible.

"What... what the hell is that thing!"

Sun Hao completely broke down. He fell from his chair and scrambled backward on all fours.

...

「Meanwhile, in a stone house on the outskirts of Wind Eye Market.」

THUD!

The stone slabs overhead vibrated violently, and dust rained down into the self-heating noodles Wang Meng had just prepared.

"Ptui! This is ridiculous!"

Wang Meng spat out a mouthful of dusty saliva and snatched up the Alloy Giant Axe beside him.

"Do these bastards think this is their landing pad?"

"The thirty-seventh impact."

Su Yue pushed the tactical glasses up the bridge of her nose. Data streams flickered across the lenses, and her face was pale.

"Sonar feedback indicates at least fifty flying creatures have us surrounded."

"Structural integrity of the building is down twelve percent."

The inside of the stone house was dim, lit only by the eerie green light of a few emergency glow sticks.

Han Feng sat cross-legged in a corner, fiddling with a dull "Sand Python" pistol. His eyes, however, seemed to stare right through the walls.

In his [Spiritual Vision], the stone house was enveloped by countless twisting threads of energy.

Outside, a flock of Tier Two Early Stage "Blood Feather Crows" was frantically ramming the stone house in a suicidal frenzy.

Their heads shattered on impact, splattering blood across the stone.

But the blood didn’t run down.

Instead, the moment it touched the stone, it was decomposed by the gray fog, transforming into a hissing, dark-red acidic gas that corroded the Defense Runes on the house’s surface.

On a deeper level of his vision, he saw that with every Blood Feather Crow’s death, a faint wisp of Soul Energy was siphoned away by some rule within the gray fog and fed into an invisible net that covered the entire market.

"They’re not trying to get in to eat us."

Han Feng suddenly spoke, his voice so calm it was nearly cold.

Zhang Hao, who was polishing his Battle Saber, looked up at the sound of his voice.

"They’re fuel."

Han Feng pointed to the stone slabs overhead. To his eyes, the defensive energy there was dimming at a visible rate.

"These Demon Beasts are being controlled. They’re using their own flesh, blood, and souls as a sacrifice to wear down this house’s defenses."

As soon as the words left his mouth,

CRACKLE!

A runestone in the upper-left corner of the house exploded. Its faint blue light was instantly extinguished, revealing a fist-sized hole.

Gray fog immediately poured in, and an alarm blared with a piercing shriek.

A mangled, bloody crow’s head squeezed through, its one remaining eye flashing with a sickening red light.

"SKREEE!"

It opened its beak to spray corrosive Poisonous Liquid.

THWIP!

A flash of silver light beat it to the punch.

Somehow, Han Feng had already flung his Armor-Piercing Short Sword. The Sword Essence imbued in the blade precisely pierced the crow’s head, sending its body flying backward to be pinned tightly against the exterior rock wall.

"Plug it!"

Zhang Hao roared, single-handedly lifting a spare alloy plate and slamming it over the opening.

"Fan Jian, the sealant!"

Fan Jian moved with extreme speed, pulling a can of quick-drying industrial sealant from his tactical vest and spraying it frantically over the gap.

The white foam rapidly expanded and hardened, temporarily sealing the hole.

But this was only a stopgap measure.

"We’re going to the Trading Hall."

Han Feng got to his feet, dusting himself off.

"It’s the only fortress-grade defensive point in the entire market."

"Go out now?"

Gu Yun hesitated, looking at the screen of his detector, which was covered in a dense cluster of red dots.

"It’s full of crazed birds out there. The radar’s down; we’ll be no different from blind men."

"I’ll be your eyes."

Han Feng looked at Zhang Hao.

"Captain?"

Zhang Hao’s eyes narrowed, his hesitation vanishing.

"Do what Han Feng says! Wang Meng, you clear the path! Old Liu and I will cover the rear! Let’s move!"

"Three, two, one! Open the door!"

WHOOSH!

The moment the stone door opened, a stinking gale rushed in.

"Get lost!"

Wang Meng roared. He swept his Alloy Giant Axe horizontally, the Power Assistance Device on its hilt humming as it flattened the three Blood Feather Crows blocking the door into a pulp.

"Go!"

The nine members of the Sharp Sword Club shot out like cannonballs into the gray, hazy street.

The once-bustling market now lay in ruins, expensive Spiritual Materials scattered everywhere, completely ignored.

In the sky, a massive flock of birds hung like a dark cloud. Seeing the living, they immediately let out excited shrieks and dove down like a black rain of arrows.

"Nine o’clock, two of them, low altitude!"

Han Feng’s voice was perfectly level. His eyes glowed alarmingly in the gray fog as his Divine Sense locked onto the targets.

BANG! BANG!

The modified shotgun in Liu Cheng’s hands spat fire. Two strange birds that had just emerged from the fog—too fast for the radar to even register—were instantly blown to pieces.

"Holy shit, Han Feng! You were a full second faster than my Spiritual Energy Radar!"

Su Yue exclaimed as she ran. The moment the warning popped up on her screen, the birds were already in pieces.

"Keep up!"

Han Feng moved like lightning, weaving between his teammates.

He wasn’t using a gun.

In this chaotic close-quarters brawl, empowered by his Sword Essence, he was more lethal than any automatic weapon.

A three-inch-long silver Sword Aura pulsed from his fingertips. Like a master surgeon, every strike precisely severed the necks of the strange birds attempting to ambush his teammates.

Two hundred meters.

One hundred meters.

The grand stone pillars of the Trading Hall were almost within reach.

At the entrance to the hall, two squads of City Guard Army soldiers in heavy Exoskeleton Armor had established a tight network of firepower. The flaming muzzles of their six-barreled Spiritual Energy Machine Guns tore any approaching Demon Beasts to shreds.

"East Sea Martial Arts University, Sharp Sword Club! Identification code XJ-9982!"

Zhang Hao displayed the holographic ID code on his terminal.

"Clear them! Get in here, quick!"

The battered group scrambled up the steps and dove through the heavy metal doors.

SLAM!

The great doors slammed shut behind them, as if they had locked Hell itself outside.

The hall was packed with people and in a state of utter chaos. The air was thick with the strange, mingled stench of blood, sweat, and repellent spray.

The members of the Sharp Sword Club found a corner against a wall and sat down.

Wang Meng flopped onto the ground, gasping for air.

"That was a fucking rush... Another two minutes and we would’ve been bird feed."

Han Feng didn’t sit down.

He stood at the edge of the crowd, his gaze sweeping across the entire hall.

Lei Qianjun from the Martial Arts Academy was bare-chested while a teammate sprayed sealant on the claw marks covering his back. His "Mad Ape" exoskeleton was in tatters.

Zhou Qi from the Spiritual Energy Ability Academy was with a group of techies, gathered around the massive Energy Crystal Pillar in the center of the hall, trying to connect a backup power supply.

’A ragtag bunch.’

That was Han Feng’s assessment.

He retracted his gaze and looked up at the hall’s domed ceiling.

It was the weakest point of the entire structure, made from a special reinforced crystal glass.

Through his [Spiritual Vision], he could see the crystal’s energy structure growing fragile under high-frequency vibrations. The light from its Defense Runes was dim, already on the verge of collapse.

The flock of birds outside was no longer ramming the building mindlessly. Instead, they hovered in the air in an organized formation.

They were like soldiers waiting for inspection.

Or like they were waiting... for their king.

"They’re waiting."

Han Feng narrowed his eyes.

"Waiting for a signal."

As if to confirm his words, a piercing shriek that could shatter stone suddenly rang out from outside the hall.

The sound was like a steel needle, stabbing violently into everyone’s mind.

At that moment, everyone’s detectors began to blare wildly.

BEEP BEEP BEEP—!

"High-energy reading! It’s right above us!"

A terrified scream came from Zhou Qi’s direction.

"The energy signature is off the charts! It’s a Tier Two Peak!"

THOOOM!!!

An earth-shattering crash came from directly overhead.

The hundreds of people inside the hall all looked up at once.

There, on the sturdy crystal dome, was a massive black shadow with a wingspan of over fifteen meters.

Its feathers were a dark gold, each one looking as if it had been forged from alloy.

Its golden eyes held none of the frenzy of a wild beast, only the cold indifference and majesty of a monarch.

A Tier Two Peak, the Golden Crowned Eagle King!

CRACK...

The crisp sound of splintering was infinitely amplified in the deathly silent hall.

In the very center of the crystal dome, a visible crack slowly spread.

"Prepare for battle!"

The City Guard Army officer tossed aside his communicator and drew his Vibrating Long Saber, his voice hoarse with fear.

"Everyone! Get on your feet if you don’t want to die!"

"It’s breaking through... from above!"