197: Chapter 197 The Last Meat Grinder

The golden dome descending from the heavens was the Daylight Tower's final and most brilliant radiance.

Known as "Divine Grace Sanctuary", it was the tower's ultimate dignity and the final boundary separating heaven and hell.

Beneath the dome, the lower section of the tower was being frantically devoured, digested, and reorganized by black-and-red flesh and blood.

That place had already transformed into Jiang Ming's stomach pouch, where former streets, buildings, and plazas were being decomposed into the most basic nutrients within the viscous, living flesh.

Above the dome lay the Daylight Tower's final and most core region.

It still maintained a pristine whiteness and cleanliness, standing like an unyielding isolated island amidst the apocalypse.

The Chief Councilor had no time to mourn the fall of the lower district.

He had assembled the tower's last and most elite armed force—the "Glow Guard", composed of all high-tier Awakened from Districts A and B and the battle-hardened Imperial Guards.

Their mission was singular: before the energy dome vanished, at all costs, to defend the sole path leading to the Firmament Council Chamber at the top of the tower—the "Central Celestial Stairway" that ran through the entire upper district.

They needed to buy final time for the Council to initiate the final protocol.

Jiang Ming's will coldly "gazed" at that golden energy shield.

He chose not to assault it with brute force.

He knew that an energy shield of this scale was inevitably a massive energy consumer.

It couldn't last much longer.

He ordered the main tide of flesh and blood below to temporarily halt its upward offensive, turning instead to dedicatedly "digest" the area it had already occupied.

Countless roots pierced into the walls and foundations of the buildings, absorbing trace elements from the metal, while even more fungal mats blanketed the piles of corpses, breaking them down into the purest life energy.

The entire lower half of the Daylight Tower had turned into a massive "biological battery" accumulating strength for the impending general assault.

Simultaneously, he dispatched his sharpest fangs.

From within the breached District D, through those intricate ventilation and maintenance ducts, silent elite puppets—reconstructed from the remains of high-tier Awakened—began to silently infiltrate the upper district.

They were none other than Jiang Ming's "Fallen Knight" legion.

Walking right at the front were startlingly the puppets reconstructed from Gu Ran and members of his "Heart-Slicing Squad".

They retained their lithe physiques and partial combat instincts from when they were alive, but the brilliance in their eyes had long been replaced by cold data streams.

Street fighting erupted abruptly the moment the Glow Guard and the Fallen Knights unexpectedly crossed paths.

The site of the battle was the pure-white, futuristic metal corridors inside the Daylight Tower and the transparent observation walkways suspended mid-air.

This was the ultimate collision between order and chaos.

A Glow Guard captain holding a high-frequency battle blade moved like lightning, cleanly slicing open the chest armor of a Fallen Knight puppet with a single stroke.

However, the scene he anticipated of blood and viscera splashing everywhere did not occur.

Inside that puppet's chest cavity, there were no viscera at all.

Replacing them was a high-speed rotating "meat grinder core" composed of countless bone spurs, alloy fragments, and twisted nerve bundles!

Before he could even react, that meat grinder core exploded with a roar, instantly enveloping him with countless fragments like buckshot.

This captain couldn't even let out a miserable scream before his entire body was riddled into a sieve of flesh and blood, collapsing limply.

On the other side, the puppet reconstructed from Gu Ran displayed a chilling combat efficiency.

It silently faced three Imperial Guards holding alloy tower shields.

The Imperial Guards had formed a flawless defensive formation sufficient to withstand a direct bombardment from a small siege cannon.

But "Gu Ran" calmly raised its right arm.

Its arm had been modified into a high-speed rotating bone drill cast from its own arm bone and high-strength alloy.

Accompanied by a piercing friction sound, the bone drill easily tore through the air, directly piercing the center of the foremost tower shield.

The indestructible alloy shield was as fragile as cheese before the bone drill.

In mere seconds, a hole was drilled through the shield.

Immediately following was the terrified face of the Imperial Guard behind it, and his entire body.

When "Gu Ran" retracted its arm, those three Imperial Guards had been neatly pierced through like a skewer of candied hawthorns.

A young Awakened—he was a former admirer of Gu Ran.

When he saw the cold visage of that puppet, his psyche instantly collapsed.

"Captain Gu Ran! Is that you?! Wake up!"

He shouted at the top of his lungs, even forgetting to attack.

Responding to him were "Gu Ran"'s utterly unfluctuating eyes flashing with red data streams.

Its movements exhibited an imperceptible, thousandth-of-a-second pause.

It seemed that the cry of "Captain" had touched some long-buried reverberation deep within its sea of data.

But that was all.

The next second, its figure vanished from its spot, instantly appearing before that young Awakened, and a heavy punch burning with raging corpse-fire accurately slammed into his heart.

Jiang Ming's will, through the senses of these Fallen Knights, calmly observed and recorded the entire battle.

Every Glow Guard member's energy pattern, skill combination, and tactical weakness were clearly captured and analyzed by him.

He wasn't slaughtering; he was "learning".

This battle was his final and most delicious lesson in digesting humanity's highest-end military force.

As the battle continued, because of the massive energy consumption, the golden energy dome at the top of the tower began to flicker erratically in light.

Jiang Ming knew the time had come.

Through the system privileges he had already partially taken over, he issued a simple command to the area where the Central Celestial Stairway was located.

"Gravity stabilization device, shut down."

Instantly, the entire Central Celestial Stairway and all surrounding skywalks completely lost gravity!

The Glow Guard, long accustomed to stable gravity, instantly fell into complete disarray in their formations.

In the zero-gravity environment, they floated and tumbled like headless flies, completely unable to effectively organize attacks and defenses.

But for the Fallen Knights, this was their most comfortable battlefield.

They bounced at high speeds between the walls and ceilings, unleashing a bloody and efficient multi-dimensional massacre from all directions and every unimaginable angle against those "living targets" floating mid-air.

In just a few short minutes, the pure white metal corridors were thoroughly dyed red.

As the last corpse of the Glow Guard drifted slowly past in the weightless environment, this tragic street battle came to an end.

The Fallen Knights silently salvaged the remains of their companions and the enemies' corpses, dragging these precious "nutrients" deep into the dark ventilation ducts.

The Daylight Tower's final living resistance force was completely wiped out.

At this very moment, after flickering unwillingly for one last time, the golden "Divine Grace Sanctuary" above the firmament dissipated completely into the air like a dandelion blown away by the wind.

There were no longer any obstacles left on the path leading to the pinnacle of human power.

Feeling the disappearance of the restraint, the tide of flesh and blood below let out earth-shaking cheers.

The massive, infinitely energized black-and-red wave finally submerged the final pure-white staircase leading to the top of the tower.