178: Silent Shadow Blade

The moment his voice fell, from beneath the feet of the Withering Shadows leader, a grey, deathly aura, like ink dripping into clear water, rapidly spread throughout the entire cavern.

This was a decaying force field that stripped away vitality.

Along its path, the moss on the rock walls quickly withered, turning to dust in mere seconds.

The air became sluggish; each breath felt like inhaling a handful of grit, eroding the lungs.

The actions of the Shadows were visibly affected.

Their vaunted stealth was forcibly interrupted within the domain.

They tumbled out of the shadows, and their movements became much slower.

The decaying energy, like maggots on bone, continuously corroded their bodies.

“In my domain, your proud concealment is nothing but a joke,” the leader’s voice echoed through the cavern, filled with the arrogance of assured victory.

“Your lives, your powers, will all become nourishment for this eternal night.”

However, the scene of his opponents struggling in their death throes, which he had anticipated, did not appear.

Instead, Shadow One stood still in the center of the field.

The surrounding decaying energy flowed within three feet of him, then quietly annihilated as if encountering an invisible barrier.

He had no superfluous words.

A deeper, purer darkness, centered on him, silently unfurled.

The descent of this darkness was like the natural fall of night, silent and irresistible.

In this darkness, sound vanished, light was swallowed, and even perception itself seemed to sink into a quagmire.

[Shadow One ★ Hero ★ Blade of Silent Shadow (Gold - Upper Tier)]

[Level: Twelfth-tier]

[Skills: Shadow Walk, Fatal Strike, Shadow Jump, Jué Yǐng Style: Lightless (Completely erases his presence for a short time, cannot be locked onto by any means), Shadow Doppelganger (Creates a clone with 70% of the main body's combat power, lasts for 30 seconds)]

[Aura: Shadow Assault (Allied attack speed within a 2000-meter radius increases by 15%, movement speed increases by 10%, applies “Dark Erosion” effect, stealth enhanced).]

[Domain: Silent Shadow Killing Realm (Unfurls a silent domain that isolates perception. Within the domain, his all attributes increase by 50%, he can manipulate shadows for binding and attacking, and continuously suppresses enemies’ minds)]

[Description: He is the monarch of shadows, the silent god of death. When his domain unfolds, light recedes, and all things fall silent. His dagger is wielded only for termination.]

Ten days ago, Su Jin performed another Sublimation on the territory's troop types, allowing several top commanders to cross the unattainable threshold in the eyes of mortals.

Shadow One was one of them.

“Domain: Silent Shadow Killing Realm.”

He announced softly.

If the enemy’s domain was a chaotic storm filled with noise and constantly spreading decay, then Shadow One’s domain was the absolute zero of deep space silence.

Whether it was raging wind or decay, once it touched this silence, it was assimilated and dissolved.

The Shadow Guards, whose movements were originally impeded, after stepping into the range of the Silent Shadow Killing Realm, their figures re-merged into the darkness, their aura vanished without a trace, and the sense of oppression was even greater than before.

“This... this is impossible!”

The arrogance on the leader’s face froze.

His domain was being swallowed and covered by the opponent’s domain, and his connection to his domain was rapidly weakening.

His proud power was actually suppressed in front of the opponent.

The cavern fell into absolute silence.

There was no sound of wind, no sound of dripping water, and even the sound of his own heartbeat seemed distant and distorted.

Senses were blurred, minds were suppressed; this darkness itself was a form of torture.

Fear gripped his heart.

He no longer held anything back, condensing all his remaining domain power into the dagger in his hand, and his entire body transformed into a grey line, stabbing directly at Shadow One.

This was his all-or-nothing attack.

However, within the Silent Shadow Killing Realm, his target had long since disappeared.

His senses were completely stripped, up, down, left, right, front, back, inside, outside, all were the same maddening silence and darkness.

He lost his target, and he lost his direction.

Pfft.

A faint sound of flesh being pierced.

The leader’s forward momentum came to an abrupt halt.

He stiffly lowered his head and saw a black blade tip protruding from his heart.

Shadow One’s figure slowly emerged behind him.

“Cough…”

Blood gushed from the leader’s mouth, and he lowered his head, letting out a low, guttural laugh.

“Killing me… is useless… Do you think… this is over…?”

“There’s more than one Disintegration Array Plate…”

“The entire Cloud City… all the nodes… will activate simultaneously…”

“Listen… this will be cloud heart’s… final wail…”

After speaking the last word, he tilted his head, and his life completely extinguished.

‘Bang.....’

In front of where he had stabbed, another “Shadow One” quietly dissipated—the Shadow Doppelganger.

Shadow One pulled out his short blade, letting the corpse fall softly to the ground.

He took out a new communication rune, lightly touched it with his fingertip, and crushed it.

An invisible wave penetrated the rock layers and space, reaching the City Lord’s Mansion.

......

Cloud City, City Lord’s Mansion, Council Hall.

The atmosphere was somewhat oppressive.

Old City Lord paced back and forth in the hall.

General Yan Lie and several officials also had anxious faces.

Just then, the communicator in front of City Lord Su flashed with a faint light.

“City Lord Su, is there news?” General Yan Lie asked eagerly when he saw the faint light.

“Mm.”

City Lord Su nodded, his gaze sweeping over those present.

“My people have dealt with them, but he brought back some bad news.”

“There is more than one ‘Disintegration Array Plate’ created by the Dark Star Empire.”

“Furthermore, they plan to act simultaneously at all energy nodes connected to the ‘cloud heart’ within Cloud City.”

“What?!”

Old City Lord swayed, almost losing his balance, and General Yan Lie quickly supported him.

“All nodes… This… How is this possible! How did they manage to do this?!” an official cried out in alarm.

“The Lin family,” Old City Lord said in a deep voice.

Everyone’s hearts tightened.

Indeed, the Lin family had been in charge of Cloud City’s defenses for many years, and they were intimately familiar with the structure of each node and its defensive loopholes.

If they deliberately cooperated, it would indeed not be difficult for the Dark Star Empire’s people to infiltrate.

“Quick! Send orders down! Continue to send more guards to all nodes and strengthen the defenses,” Old City Lord ordered hoarsely.

However, his words had not yet finished.

Boom—!!!

A dull roar came from deep within the city’s ley lines, and the entire City Lord’s Mansion shook violently.

Immediately after, from all directions, violent explosions and the roar of energy collisions rang out one after another!

A guard stumbled into the Council Hall, his face full of terror.

“Lord City Lord! This is bad! The ‘Bearing Tower’ in East Third District, the ‘Stable Cornerstone’ on the lower sixth level, and… and the nine guardian arrays surrounding the ‘cloud heart’… have all been attacked simultaneously.”

Inside the Council Hall, there was a deathly silence.

The officials who had still held a glimmer of hope now had ashen faces, slumping in their chairs.

It was over.

Everything was too late.

The enemy’s actions were more than one step faster than their reactions.

“Hahaha… It’s over… It’s all over…”

The fat official who had previously defended the Lin family now laughed maniacally, his eyes filled with despair.

Amidst this chaos and despair, City Lord Su stood up.

“Why panic?”

His voice drowned out all the noise.

“The battle has only just begun.”

As he spoke, outside the Council Hall, brilliant sword lights soared into the sky.

The Ling Shu Sword Guards had made their move.