148: Doomsday crisis is coming

"Puff!"

A Golden Core contributor from the Demon Suppression Division was simultaneously pierced by three standard-issue spears from the Puppet legion. He looked at the blood gushing from his chest in disbelief, his entire body pinned to the battlements of the city wall by the immense force.

Before he died, the last thing he saw was the blank faces of those Puppets, and beneath the city wall, an endless sea of companions like a black tide.

"Old Zhang!"

Wei Zheng's eyes were splitting with rage. He cleaved two Puppets rushing up to him with a single saber strike, but more Puppets immediately filled the gaps. The defensive line was being torn apart and devoured piece by piece.

Every second, people died.

These fearless Puppets, whose strength had been amplified, were simply not something ordinary soldiers could withstand. Even Golden Core Cultivators could not hold out for long under the tightly coordinated strangulation of their military formation.

The shouts of battle, screams, and the sounds of Magic Treasure shattering blended into one; the city walls of Jing City became a giant meat grinder for human lives.

Morale?

When the comrades you lived and worked with fell one after another, and you couldn't even keep a complete corpse, morale became a joke. Despair spread among the defenders like a plague.

High in the sky, the situation of the Royal Ancestor was even worse.

"Cough... cough cough..."

His imperial robes were already tattered, and the Dragon shadow transformed from his protective secret treasure, the "Mysterious Yellow Qi," let out a mournful cry before its light collapsed under a whip strike from Qiankun Zi's horsetail whisk.

"Old thing, why haven't you knelt down to welcome the Divine Grace?" Qiankun Zi's voice was flat, as if he were merely brushing dust off a piece of clothing.

On the other side, Nether Scorpion said nothing. His massive fist, carrying the power to tear through space, punched the Royal Ancestor's chest again and again without mercy.

"Bang!"

The Royal Ancestor spat out a mouthful of blood again, his entire body slamming into the city wall like a kite with a broken string, creating a large crater in the hard bluestone ground. He struggled to get up, but he no longer had the strength to even move a finger.

At the end of his rope.

"Wei Zheng, how is it on your end?" Li Qingxuan's voice came through the forbidden army's communication Talisman, carrying a trace of trembling she didn't even notice.

Wei Zheng did not answer.

He was being besieged by seven or eight Early Stage Golden Core Puppets. These guys coordinated seamlessly, and under their resonance of spiritual power, they actually faintly suppressed him, a Late Stage Golden Core expert. The elites of the Demon Suppression Division around him were few and far between. He cast out Talismans, but they were quickly corroded by the strange white divine halo on the opponents' bodies, unable to exert even half of their power.

A lone tree is hard to support.

"Your Highness! The inner city... the inner city is in chaos!" A forbidden army captain ran over, stumbling and crawling, his face full of fear. "The citizens who have been... been infected by evil thoughts are rioting! They are attacking patrols and setting fires everywhere!"

Li Qingxuan's heart sank completely.

The external threat was not yet quelled, and internal trouble had arisen.

"Stabilize! Mobilize the reserves, suppress the rioters, and prioritize protecting the defensive nodes!" She forced herself to calm down and issued orders.

But just at this moment, the most terrifying scene on the battlefield occurred.

The Second Elder, Ying Mei, had been hovering in the air, as if watching a play. At this moment, she finally moved.

She merely raised her hand and pointed from afar at several Golden Core Cultivators who were fighting bloody battles in the defensive ranks.

"Repent."

The voice was soft, yet it was like the most vicious curse.

An Old Ancestor of a noble family surnamed Liu, who had just killed a divine demon with a sword, was preparing to recover his Qi when his body suddenly stiffened. The several Cultivators beside him experienced the same condition.

"Old Ancestor Liu?" The Cultivator next to him noticed something wrong and called out.

Old Ancestor Liu slowly turned his head; his originally firm gaze had now become hollow and fanatical.

"Divine Lord... Supreme..."

He muttered to himself, and the long sword in his hand struck the companion who had just reminded him without warning.

"You!"

That Cultivator had no time to react and was pierced through the heart by the sword, his face filled with astonishment and confusion.

"Hahaha! For the Divine Lord!"

"Purify everything, welcome the Divine Kingdom!"

The several controlled Golden Core Cultivators launched an attack simultaneously, launching the most fatal backstab against the comrades behind them.

The defensive line collapsed completely at this moment.

"Rumble—"

Above the sky, the phantom of the Jing City Dragon Vein let out an unbearable wail, and huge cracks expanded once more. Wisps of black Qi gushed out from the cracks, and the light of the entire city dimmed.

It's over.

Li Qingxuan looked at the Cultivators who had turned against them on the city walls, looked at the blazing fire rising in the inner city, and looked at the Dragon Vein on the verge of shattering in the sky; an unprecedented sense of powerlessness enveloped her.

This Jing City was already a giant iron bucket cage.

They were turtles in a jar.

...

Deep underground.

Li Dong's consciousness was like a small boat in a stormy sea.

The impact of the Divine Lord's will was stronger with each wave. His mental barrier was covered in cracks, and every impact made him feel like his Soul was about to be torn apart.

Yet his [Spiritual Domain] remained open, like the most precise radar, feeding back everything happening on the ground without a single error.

He saw the fall of the Golden Core contributor, saw the defeat of the Royal Ancestor, saw Wei Zheng's desperate fight, and even saw the sudden betrayal of those few Golden Core Cultivators.

Despair? Anger?

No.

In the midst of extreme pain, Li Dong instead captured a trace of strange detail.

"Something is not right..."

He "watched" the fanatical believers rioting in the city.

"The conversion... isn't a one-time thing?"

In his perception, the mental state of the Golden Core Cultivators controlled by Ying Mei was a "complete state" of being instantly conquered. But the mental pollution level of those rioting civilians in the city varied.

Some were just muttering to themselves, their eyes confused.

Some fell into madness, crazily attacking everything around them.

Some... were even struggling repeatedly between fanaticism and clarity.

"This is... phased brainwashing?" An absurd thought popped into Li Dong's mind.

Just like raising a Gu, first infect them initially, then filter out those with weak willpower, deepen the control, and finally turn them into complete Puppets like the Puppet legion.

Why go to such trouble?

Because... the conversion of this "divine" power requires consumption, and the process is not stable!

This discovery allowed Li Dong to see a glimmer of light in the endless darkness.

As long as it isn't unsolvable, there is a chance!

"Boom!"

The Divine Lord's will seemed to notice his prying and launched an even fiercer attack.

Li Dong's Sea of Consciousness shook violently, and the golden mental barrier emitted a "crack" sound.

Just at this moment, the black crystal that had been silent in the deepest part of his Sea of Consciousness suddenly hummed.

A weak but incomparably pure chill radiated from the crystal, quickly repairing the cracks on the mental barrier.

At the same time, this impact seemed to activate some characteristic of the black crystal; it produced a faint resonance with the tyrannical will of the Divine Lord outside.

Just like... a key and a keyhole.

"This is..."

Li Dong had not yet had time to ponder the anomaly of the black crystal.

Just at the moment when Jing City was about to sink completely and his consciousness was about to be overwhelmed.

A brand-new consciousness, abruptly and yet extremely gently, probed into his Sea of Consciousness.

This consciousness was ancient, vast, and carried the heaviness of time.

It did not come from the "Divine Lord" beneath the West Mountain, but from... beneath his feet, from the deepest part of the Jing City Dragon Vein.

It had no language, no logic, only a pure thought.

It was a kind of... longing.

Like an infant who had been hungry for ten thousand years, finally smelling the scent of milk.

And Li Dong was that piece of... cake?