Outworld Liberators-Chapter 140: Escalating Situation at Goldkeep Crownmarkets

Chapter 140: Escalating Situation at Goldkeep Crownmarkets

The unseen dust rode the wind like it owned the air.

It slipped into Highroost District first, then Ironcrest Forges, then Shopcap Ventures, then Sunkissed Bazaar.

They were neighboring cities near the Ledgegrove Bazaar.

Barriers rose for invasions, for energy blasts, for troops, beasts, and flying curses. Dust was neither fire nor beast.

Cultivators felt calamity the way animals felt storms. They did not wait for proof.

"Anyone on the road. Go indoors. No one to stay outside."

"Everyone go inside fast. Go."

Half initiative, half panic. They had watched. They shoved people into homes like they were possessed.

Packed like sardines, piled under one roof.

They watched gilded core strength form as if cultivation cost nothing.

Still, for most of them the instant boost held no allure.

Power was sweet. Becoming a mindless beast was not.

Jekyll heard the first reports as a fizzing under the skin, the kind of warning that came when qi barriers failed without a visible strike.

The dust from Vision Crystals was spreading fast.

In the four closest cities, men on street corners coughed and stiffened.

A few women clawed at their faces as bone tried to remember a different shape.

In the next breath the count of those turning into hybrids bloated to a staggering ten thousand.

Cultivators did not stand and watch the morphing. They started killing the ones who turned.

By the next breath the four cities were riddled with hybrid, all in the cornerstone setting, watered down hybrids but still strong enough to break doors and tear throats.

Panic ran outward through Goldkeep Crownmarkets. People on other cities watched through scry.

Doors barred. Families crowded indoors. Even the rich stopped pretending they were safe behind walls.

The city owners and the five peak emperors moved at last without greed clouding the math.

Strong winds erupted above the ridges, pushing outward, trying to herd the dust away.

Then a voice boomed through the whole Crownmarket like it had paid for every throat.

"Bring the dust to us."

It came from Cairnlight Barterhold. Eldric.

No one understood what the elder planned. Most knew the rumor that he was tied to Ossuary Necropolis.

What’s more, clearing the Voulgrim Evershades was no easy task.

The guardian, once Calyx, matched the strength of anyone who entered and broke the arrogant ones like toys.

A tornado rose over Cairnlight’s peak. At first it was small. Then it swelled into an engulfing cyclone as the ghosts and wraiths coordinated their attacks like clockwork. 𝒇𝙧𝙚𝓮𝙬𝙚𝓫𝒏𝓸𝓿𝓮𝒍.𝓬𝙤𝓶

What was astonishing was that those below, especially the mortal men clinging to the Cairnlight Barterhold, did not get sucked in.

The men who led the five emperor peaks saw it, and they could feel it was coming from the power of a single man.

Their evaluation of the Cairnlight Barterhold changed. This was a grand display of Eldric’s capability.

At the heart of the storm, Eldric took the gathered material into himself.

Radeon did not waste time. He used his soul as a filter.

He scraped away any trace of the original eldritch’s will, stripping out the potential for exponential evolution.

What remained was only shiny dust, dead of intent. Radeon kept it anyway.

It was material from the void, and he knew he was the only one who could actually use it.

While the other cities coordinated the wind, either through conjuration or qi, toward the Cairnlight Barterhold, the hybrid conversion still happened fast.

Over three hundred thousand had a cultivation basis, and enough of them changed that the hybrids began to bunch together.

They were not just spreading by accident now. They pushed outward in coordinated clusters, learning the shape of invasion.

People in structures, houses, and closed off tents were being raided by the hybrids.

Then Blessedgrove Fortunecrest answered.

A huge image of a golden cauldron showed above its peak. The cauldron was smooth, with four handles set to the four directions.

White smoke billowed down in thick sheets. It did not tumble wild. It moved slow, controlled, measured.

Out of the fog a palm shape formed, the gesture of a gentle hand that did not ask permission.

It landed on the four cities with a silent puff.

People dropped. Hybrids dropped. A sleeping agent, potent enough that even nascent soul cultivators yawned mid-sprint and collapsed on rooftops.

A few fell out of the sky still holding their flying arts, faces slack with disbelief.

For a moment it looked contained.

Petrus was still at large, already beyond the reach of Silvertoll Summits. However his body was a poor vessel compared to what the Aberrant had once been.

That weakness was the only reason Jekyll was still behind him.

Jekyll ran without wasting breath on dealing damage on Petrus.

Forest line ahead. Wind in his mask. The taste of sap and cold earth.

Then a glimmer appeared at his side.

A seven colored crystal, walnut shaped, spinning in the air as if it had been waiting for him to notice.

Jekyll’s instincts snapped. He shifted to strike, to release the charge he had been hoarding.

Time stretched. His arms moved too slow.

From above, a smoky black bullet brushed the seven colored walnut.

It bounced off and did no damage. Jekyll had seen it before. It was the same thing that had struck the Aberrant in the eyes, the one injury it could not regenerate.

Petrus convulsed. The half human torso finished its surrender. Flesh became wrong. Eyes went too deep. Breath went too wide.

A full Aberrant stood where a desperate alchemist had been.

Jekyll felt the power spike like a slap. Ethereal Integration, half step, a level Petrus had not earned with years or tribulations.

The air thickened overhead. Clouds gathered with a deliberate cruelty.

Tribulation reacted at the worst possible time.

As Jekyll saw the clouds above, he knew he could not withstand the calamity. So he chose to retreat for now.

The city leaders and peak emperors were discussing calling on their own sects that backed them, now that the situation was getting out of hand.