63: Chapter 63 The Abyss Eyes Open, All Things Submit! Only the Flame—Refuses to Kneel!

That eye blinked.

It wasn't a blink in the physical sense.

It was the vertical slit in the pupil expanding by a fraction of a millimeter, letting the light of the scarlet iris spill outward, covering the entire sky.

Then, the world changed.

The air grew thick.

It wasn't temperature, and it wasn't humidity; it was something invisible pouring into every inch of space, soaking the entire War Zone in a vat of viscous, malicious liquid.

The mental domain.

A burst of white noise exploded inside Section Chief Han Zheng's cranium.

Chaotic, disordered, and twisted streams of information surged in from all directions, each pulling at his consciousness in different directions.

He bit down on the tip of his tongue.

The taste of rust flooded his throat, and the pain dragged him back from that chaos by a fraction.

"Everyone—clench your teeth! Don't listen! Don't look up at the sky!"

The command was squeezed out of his throat, his voice distorted.

It was useless.

In the back of the vehicle, black slime began to ooze from the forehead of a middle-aged refugee.

It trickled down his brow bone and nose bridge like melting wax.

His eyeballs rolled around in their sockets, the pupils disappearing, leaving only cloudy gray-white.

His lips parted.

A string of syllables never heard before poured from the depths of his throat—it wasn't any human language, but everyone in the vehicle "understood" its meaning.

Praise, submission, allegiance.

A second person began to secrete slime.

Then a third.

A young soldier slammed his head violently against the car window.

Once, twice, three times.

The skin on his forehead split open, and blood mixed with black slime trickled down the glass.

The corners of his mouth were smiling.

"Stop! Hold him down!"

Section Chief Han Zheng lunged forward, his arms clamping down on the soldier's shoulders.

The soldier's strength was unnaturally great; his bones twisted beneath his skin, as if driven by something from within.

Lin Xiaoman curled up under the seat, her hands covering her ears tightly.

It was useless.

That information didn't enter through her ears; it was poured directly into her brain.

Her consciousness struggled in a sea of chaos.

Countless images flashed before her eyes—abysses, tentacles, an endless dark ocean, a giant eye opening on the seabed—

"Kneel down."

A voice echoed in the depths of her mind.

It wasn't a command; it was a temptation.

A gentle, enveloping temptation, like a mother's embrace.

"Kneel down, and it won't hurt anymore."

Lin Xiaoman's knees went weak.

Professor Henry leaned against the wall of the vehicle, his gold-rimmed glasses long gone.

His vision was blurred, his consciousness swaying on the verge of collapse.

Forty years of rational thinking were like a wall, being dismantled brick by brick by that stream of information.

Wang Hao clutched the bronze piece.

The golden light was still there.

Faint, flickering.

But it was shining.

Outside the vehicle.

The remaining soldiers and refugees in the War Zone were falling in large numbers.

Black slime seeped from beneath their skin, their joints began to bend backward, and their spines curved at impossible angles.

Their mouths opened simultaneously, chanting the same hymn in unison.

'We worship the Awakener of the ancient slumber, bowing to the nameless gaze from beyond the sea of stars. Tear apart reason, sink into delusion, surrender to the Unspeakable One, praise the arrival of the deep, eternal sleep.'

The voices converged, forming a low-frequency, continuous buzzing. The entire earth was singing a hymn for that giant eye in the sky.

The assimilated people began to attack those who were not infected.

A mutated soldier lunged at a fleeing refugee, his fingers touching the other's bare skin—blackness immediately oozed from the point of contact.

Three seconds.

A new infected person joined the ranks of the chanting.

Touch meant infection.

—Just as the convoy was about to be completely swallowed by the mental domain, golden light exploded.

Liu Yuyan appeared directly in front of the convoy.

The holy runes on her silver-white armor all lit up, and eight points of light pulsed wildly on her chest.

She held the Oath Tower Shield horizontally in front of her, grasping the shield's edge with both hands, and the cross pattern on the shield face bloomed with blinding golden radiance.

The holy light spread outward from the shield, forming a hemispherical curtain of light, enveloping the three off-road vehicles and the surrounding ten-plus meters.

The information stream of the mental domain slammed into the holy light barrier.

The black tide and the golden light hissed at the contact surface, the mental contamination weakened, filtered, and blocked outside the light curtain.

Inside the vehicle.

The chaos in Lin Xiaoman's mind receded by a fraction.

The voice tempting her to kneel grew distant, separated by some kind of layer.

Professor Henry's consciousness refocused.

He gasped for air, his fingernails embedded in the cracks of the vehicle wall.

Section Chief Han Zheng released his grip on the soldier—the soldier stopped slamming his head.

The rate of black slime secretion slowed down.

Everyone's gaze passed through the car windows and landed on that silver-white figure outside.

Liu Yuyan knelt on one knee, the Sword of Judgment propped in the rubble to support her body.

Her lips beneath her helmet were bleeding, and every breath carried a muffled sound from deep within her chest.

Her reserve of holy light had already been mostly consumed in the battle with the Mantis Beast.

Maintaining this barrier now was equivalent to holding on with sheer life force.

The tower shield trembled.

The first crack appeared on the shield's surface.

The pressure of the mental domain continued to increase.

The giant eye of the Abyssal Eye turned.

The slit pupil within the scarlet iris contracted suddenly—it had noticed this ant.

A destructive energy poured down from the crack in the sky.

A dark purple beam of light, over ten meters in diameter, carrying the terrifying pressure of distorted space, slammed straight into the holy light barrier.

The tower shield emitted the mournful sound of metal breaking.

A second crack. A third. A fourth.

Liu Yuyan's arms trembled, and her muscle fibers snapped one by one under the overload.

Her knees sank into the rubble inch by inch.

The holy light of her armor teetered before the dark purple torrent.

Her consciousness began to blur.

But the eight points of light were still pulsing.

Mercy, humility, honor, sacrifice, reverence, loyalty, courage, justice!

There were people behind her.

This thought grew from the marrow of her bones, holding up her last trace of clarity.

"As long as I am here... no one... can fall—"

The fifth crack in the tower shield pierced through the entire shield face.

The cross pattern on the shield shattered completely, and the golden radiance extinguished bit by bit.

Liu Yuyan's vision went dark.

In her ears, there was only the sound of her own heartbeat, slower and slower, further and further away.

The next second, the shield shattered—

Heat.

Pure heat falling from above, dispelling all cold and darkness.

Flames tore a bright orange rift in the sky, transforming into a curtain of fire ten times larger than the tower shield, spanning above her.

The dark purple energy torrent slammed into the fire curtain.

Gold and dark purple collided, tore at each other, and annihilated in mid-air.

The shockwave swept out in a ring, the ruins within fifty meters ground into powder, and gravel and soil were evaporated into white mist by the thermal radiation.

The energy torrent was routed by the flames. Torn apart. Evaporated.

Su Chen stood atop the flames.

His black trench coat flapped violently in the airflow, and the cracks in his bronze mask cast intersecting shadows in the firelight.

He looked down at the kneeling Liu Yuyan.

Then he looked up.

Those eyes behind the mask gazed calmly at the giant pupil, thirty meters in diameter, in the sky.

His voice was not loud.

But it pierced through the buzzing of the mental domain, pierced through the chanting of the hymn, pierced through the chaos in everyone's eardrums, and landed clearly in everyone's consciousness.

"Is that all you've got?"

Four words.

In the vehicle, Lin Xiaoman's tears splashed onto her knees.

Henry's hand clutching the bronze piece stopped shaking.

Section Chief Han Zheng lowered his gun, staring at the figure stepping on the flames, his Adam's apple bobbing.

Wang Hao knelt on the vehicle floor, his forehead pressed against the bronze piece, smiling silently.

Above the sky, in the giant pupil of the Abyssal Eye, the scarlet iris contracted violently.

It was enraged.

The pressure of the entire mental domain suddenly doubled.

Those human bodies on the ground that had already been assimilated looked up simultaneously, thousands of mouths emitting the same syllable—a sharp, eardrum-piercing screech with substantial destructive power.

Su Chen did not move.

The flame staircase hovered steadily beneath his feet, the high temperature isolating the black tide of the mental domain three meters away.

He was calculating.

That fire curtain just now had consumed nearly thirty percent of his extraordinary energy reserves.

Adding the fire dragon from before that incinerated two E-class Shadow Erosion Beasts, plus the continuous output to maintain the flame staircase—the energy circulation within his body had already dropped from full to sixty percent.

Space Cut could be used three times at full capacity.

Now—at most twice.

Two chances.

Facing a D-class Abyssal Eye.

Su Chen's right hand hung inside the sleeve of his trench coat, his five fingers curling and stretching slightly.

Behind the mask, those eyes showed no fluctuation.

Two times it is.

Once to break the defense, once to reap.

Not a single time can be wasted.