Chapter 113

Chapter 113

A massive wind blade shrieked through the air, the very atmosphere condensing into a solid force capable of grinding stone to dust.

This wasn’t a gentle breeze. It was a hurricane made flesh.

Solid debris from the ground was ripped skyward, hurled toward Ning Huai like shrapnel.

But Feng Qing’s assault didn’t end there. His staff tapped the ground once, and from his pale lips came another word. "Fire."

The wind fanned the flames. A conflagration erupted, black smoke boiling upward as tongues of fire licked at Ning Huai’s skin.

After a split-second’s hesitation, Ning Huai charged forward, a living torch. His hair and eyebrows were cinders, only his three sets of eyes remained untouched. His hand shot out, aiming for Feng Qing’s ankle.

Feng Qing simply rose into the air, the faint tremor of his wings the only movement. He looked down, a god gazing upon an insect.

"Feng Qing!" Ning Huai’s roar was the scream of a wounded beast, all six eyes fixed with manic intensity on the figure above.

He had recognized him. Even though the memory of the Azure Bird’s face was lost, the moment their eyes met, some deep, shattered part of him knew.

Feng Qing’s response was a flat, dispassionate syllable. "Earth."

The ground beneath Ning Huai’s feet heaved. Clods of soil surged like living things, wrapping around his lower limbs with the grip of a hundred hands, locking him in place.

This is just a fission body, Ning Huai reminded himself, the thought a bitter pill. Ten years ago, they had been equals. Now, Feng Qing was a pollutant. Ning Huai had grown stronger, but the Azure Bird seemed stronger still.

Ning Huai threw his head back, a raw, bestial howl tearing from his throat. "I am—Ning Huai—!"

For the briefest instant, Feng Qing’s parted lips hesitated. Then the next word fell. "Fire."

Azure flames geysered upward, a colossal, blooming lotus of destruction when seen from above.

At its heart, Ning Huai’s fission body began to melt. The chitinous shell bubbled and ran like wax, revealing raw, crimson flesh beneath.

A fission body’s pain wasn’t supposed to reach its originator.

Yet, in that moment, Ning Huai felt a searing agony that had nothing to do with physical nerves. He severed the mental link, doubling over, gasping for air.

Meng Hu was at his side in an instant, voice tight. "Captain Ning! Are you alright?"

Ning Huai’s hand tightened around the shaft of his spear. Slowly, he forced himself upright.

"The path to the Sacred One’s true form is lined with mental traps," he reported, voice rough but controlled. "The Divine Court has three zones. I call them the Surface, the Veil, and the Core. The Surface appears as normal streets—likely the real, physical space. Pollutants there are common, mostly B-Class. Manageable."

"The second zone, the Veil… it conjures your fondest memories. A paradise meant to make you lose yourself. Succumb here, and you forget who you are. You become one of them."

"The third zone…" His grip on the spear tightened until his knuckles were white. "That’s where the Sacred One’s body lies. Guarded by powerful Divine Court sentinels. All pollutants. And there… I saw Feng Qing."

"Additionally, the white mist within the Court has physical and hallucinogenic effects. Weakens you, clouds your mind."

**[He’s mostly correct. But he’s wrong about one thing. The first two zones are both the Veil. Illusions spun from fragments of reality and personal desire.]**

If Lu Yan had followed the fission body’s sensory feed, he would have seen Ning Huai in the first "zone," fighting viciously against empty air.

The ruined, corpse-strewn wreckage Ning Huai saw in his second zone? That was the Divine Court’s true, current state. It wouldn’t have collapsed so utterly if the Sacred One hadn’t previously invaded Lu Yan’s mental space.

Meng Hu stiffened. "Captain Feng? But he… he was KIA!"

Ning Huai’s eyes were bloodshot webs, his face a mask of pure hatred. "Yes. Which is why the Sacred One must die."

As much as it sickened him, those brief exchanges had made one thing brutally clear: Feng Qing was gone. What remained was a monster wearing his skin.

Ning Huai shoved the grief down, locking it away. He activated his comms, speaking into the silent void with stubborn formality. "Report to headquarters. This is 'Alpha.' New Calendar Year 21, October 11th. Team members Meng Hu, Di Ting, and I are initiating the second Divine Kingdom operation. Report complete."

A former nuclear physicist, Ning Huai had instinctively chosen "α particle" as his callsign. Told it wouldn't display in the system, he’d settled for "Alpha."

---

Ning Huai took point. Meng Hu covered the rear. Lu Yan was, quite naturally, placed in the middle. With the lowest spiritual power reading and a non-combat designation, the other two found the arrangement perfectly logical.

The System chimed in. [Doesn’t really matter how you walk. You’ll get separated anyway.]

Sure enough, within minutes of entering the thick mist, Ning Huai and Meng Hu each bolted in different directions. From their perspectives, they were likely still walking a straight line.

[Thanks to your ‘Eyes,’ you’re immune to the illusions.]

[Wouldn’t recommend being the first to reach the inner sanctum, though. You’d get wrecked.]

While the first two zones were fabrications, the pollutants guarding the Sacred One’s doorstep were very real.

The central Divine Court had ten guards. Four died in the hunting grounds. Ning Huai’s fission body took out two more. Four remained.

The most formidable among them was the Azure Bird.

[As an Awakener, the Azure Bird’s spiritual power threshold was 9200. Now, aside from the Sacred One, he’s the only pollutant in the kingdom with a pollution value over ten thousand… Oh. My mistake. Even the Sacred One isn’t over ten thousand right now. It’s injured, still recovering.]

The remaining guards had pollution values between 6000 and 7000. They hadn’t grown much stronger since the kingdom’s lockdown.

In this place, it wasn’t just humans who were domesticated. The pollutants were too. Once they reached a certain level, the Sacred One culled the powerful ones, ensuring its secondary brain nodes couldn’t rebel and challenge its rule.

Feng Qing was kept because, over the years, human Awakeners had grown stronger. The suicide raids by advance teams, while never killing the Sacred One, often left it wounded. That was why this S-Class pollutant spent most of the year dormant.

It needed an absolute enforcer to maintain control. It wasn’t the invincible monolith many imagined. At its core, the Sacred One was just a mass of neural tissue—a brain with delusions of grandeur.

Lu Yan passed through a long street littered with corpses and reached the entrance to the third zone. In the white mist, footsteps echoed, sometimes near, sometimes far.

He took a drag from his cigarette, feeling a twinge of envy for the other two, lost in their illusions. At least their journey wasn’t this monotonous.

The System was incredulous. [Are you even listening to yourself?]

The mist forced his pollution degree to climb relentlessly. After three consecutive tranquilizer injections, Lu Yan finally spotted Ning Huai. Any reduction he’d managed earlier had surely been undone.

Ning Huai’s arthropod legs tapped the ground, leaving a spiderweb of fine cracks. Several smaller versions of him—fission bodies—scuttled around his feet.

"You made good time," Ning Huai said, his voice a low rasp. "Where’s Meng Hu?"

Lu Yan pointed. "That way." The direction the Tiger had originally run.

[Good news: two of the Divine Court guards, under the Azure Bird’s orders, went to intercept Meng Hu. Only two guards remain with the brain-blob.]

[Bad news: the two who went are quite strong. Meng Hu’s odds… let’s call it fifty-fifty.]

Ning Huai’s brow furrowed. "We can’t wait. Pollution degree spikes the deeper we go. Mine’s about to break 94." Two of the smaller fission bodies detached from the group, skittering off on their spindly legs toward the direction Lu Yan had indicated.

[Odds just improved to seventy-thirty.]

Lu Yan gave a slight, relieved nod.

"You’re certain you can resist its mental attacks?" Ning Huai asked. It was absurd to be confirming this now, on the threshold, but the weight of his gamble was crushing. He had no System, no certainty. He was staking everything on this one-in-ten-thousand chance.

"Certain," Lu Yan replied.

Ning Huai drew a steadying breath. "Research data indicates that unless they share a direct pollution source as 'patron' and 'vassal,' pollutants have no inherent hierarchy. These ones protect the Sacred One because they’re controlled by its secondary nodes. The Sacred One’s true form possesses no physical attack capabilities beyond its mental assaults."

"Long ago, the Institute confirmed that destroying its core body is fatal. Even if it performs a 'Divine Descent' to escape death, its resulting pollution value cannot exceed the spiritual power threshold of the believer it descends into."

"Pollutants have no faith, so they cannot be believers. That leaves only the vassal tribes on this island as potential hosts. Their overall strength is low. We can hunt it down, given time."

The System grumbled. [Forty-five years of tangling with the brain-blob in its own kingdom… He stole my whole analysis. How rude.]

Ning Huai locked eyes with Lu Yan, his gaze grave. "I will pay any price to hold the other pollutants back. The Sacred One… is yours."

Knowing he probably wouldn't die, Lu Yan felt a profound, unshakable calm. It was hard to muster any dramatic reaction. "Understood."

*

The core area of the Central Divine Court was called Paradise.

In the past, tens of thousands of white souls toiled here, performing tasks of little real purpose. The Sacred One simply used the work to maintain their cognitive functions and keep them… fresh.

But recently, after suffering several grievous wounds, less than one in ten of those souls remained.

The Sacred One had devoured most of them, absorbing their essence as nutritional supplements.

A massive, convoluted brain—a grotesque bloom of neural tissue—bounced restlessly within Paradise, agitated.

The Sacred One had lost all interest in maintaining Paradise’s facade of serenity. Each bounce crushed hundreds of the remaining white souls. They burst into puddles of savory fluid, which were promptly absorbed into its quivering mass.

The surviving souls scattered, fleeing to hide in the farthest corners of Paradise.

Realizing this hunt had gone terribly wrong, the Sacred One had immediately sent out a desperate plea for reinforcements to other S-Class pollutants.

Given the peculiar nature of the sea fog, its chosen call for help went to the master of the Floating Island—a pitch-black crow that brought misfortune.

This crow could navigate the sea fog and pinpoint Changjia's location.

The Sacred One promised that if the crow came to its aid, it would help the crow subdue other high-level pollutants, making it the sole ruler of the skies.

It's him. How could it be him…

The memory of that fleeting glimpse within the shared consciousness space surfaced, sending a phantom chill across the brain's surface, a ripple of primal fear.

That was a power even it feared. The Sacred One wasn't willing to gamble.

A pure white pigeon sliced through the white mist, a message tube fastened to its leg. It flew in from the horizon.

The pigeon had a pair of unnervingly vivid, blood-red eyes. When it cooed, its orange-yellow beak parted slightly, revealing rows of tiny, serrated teeth. It looked like a carnivore.

The pigeon's pollution value wasn't high. Its primary function was message delivery. Occasionally, it also served as a courier for the slaughterhouses, delivering… packages.

Upon seeing the pigeon, the crimson brain's surface crackled with a burst of hopeful bio-electric sparks. "Is that a reply from your Island Master? Is he coming?"

The pigeon let out a small burp, and the Island Master's voice issued from it. "You tricked the old banyan tree of Luo River Botanical Garden, and you have the nerve to ask me for help? Do you think a Perfect Evolution specimen is that easy to control? Rot in Changjia."

With that, the pigeon flapped its wings and flew off.

The brain-blob stared, stunned for a second, before a wave of fury boiled over. "The hell?! Get back here! Explain yourself! I, the Sacred One, have always acted with honor and integrity! Who exactly did I trick?!"