The singularity '1969' unleashed a devastating thrust, propelling the waste layer of the Maya District like an ignited meteorite, laden with centuries of underground resentment and hurt, towards the void rift. However, the anticipated cataclysmic destruction did not occur.
As soon as the waste layer entered the airspace of the Holy Capital, the entire area appeared to be covered by a viscous, transparent substance.
'Buzz—'
A vast, sacred yet utterly cold will descended from the sky: the Holy Blood Council's defensive system, the 'Shield of Solaria'. Under that will's influence, the previously raging torrent of waste collided with an invisible, massive crusher. Tens of thousands of tons of steel were instantly broken down into their most basic molecules and turned into golden dust, which drifted down onto the Holy Capital's pristine streets.
This was hardly an attack; it was more like a magnificent fireworks display celebrating the Holy Capital's festivities!
Aaryan felt an irresistible repulsive force. He held Dahlia tightly in his arms as the mechanical ethereal wings on their backs shattered into countless gears under the high-frequency vibrations. Instead of landing in the bustling core area filled with silver spires, they streaked across the glorious outline of the holy city like two withered leaves abandoned by a storm, crashing heavily into the low-lying area shrouded in mist on the edge of the city.
'Bang!'
They smashed through the stained-glass window of an abandoned church and landed amidst shattered glass and decaying wooden beams.
Sunlight.
This was Aaryan's first thought upon waking — not the dark red filtered through acid rain and smog of the Maya district, but a bright, warm, faintly floral, pale golden glow.
Struggling to sit up, he felt his bones groan and a dull ache throb in the spot where the royal emblem had fused to his chest. The amethyst ether, which had once raged like a wildfire, was now tightly coiled deep within his dantian, afraid to make the slightest movement.
The ether here was extremely concentrated; for someone like him, accustomed to the barren depths of the Underground, it felt like a slow poison.
"Dahlia?" He turned his head and saw Dahlia lying on the ruins of an altar not far away. Her pale face was flushed with a sickly red colour. The wound on her forehead had scabbed over, but tiny pale blue holy runes had emerged from where the probe had been attached.
'Don't move, outsider.'
An old, hoarse voice came from the shadows of the church.
Aaryan tensed abruptly, his right hand instinctively grabbing a shard of stained glass. However, when he saw who it was, he froze.
It was an old man dressed in a worn yet immaculately clean robe. He held a pair of pruning shears stained with machine oil in his hand. The left half of his face was covered by an exquisite, artistic white porcelain mask. However, the skin occasionally exposed beneath the mask was covered in purple crystals identical to those worn by the labourers in the Maya District.
"Where am I?" Aaryan asked in a hoarse voice.
'This is Grishal, the most charming garbage dump in the Holy City,' the old man replied, slowly severing a mutated vine that had crawled in through the window. 'It's what you would call the Holy City's slums.'
Aaryan stood up and leaned against the wall before walking to the broken window to look out.
What he saw filled him with a strong sense of absurdity: there was none of the incessant, piston-like roar of the Maya District or the pungent smell of sulphur; the streets were paved with smooth bluestone and lined with neatly trimmed ornamental trees; the poor people were well dressed and had serene expressions; they even greeted each other with polite bows.
However, Aaryan's keen senses detected an eeriness beneath the apparent peace. Each person wore a pale gold collar around their neck with a tiny crystal embedded in its centre. The crystal flashed blue light in time with their breathing, continuously drawing energy and ether from their bodies and converting it into some kind of energy before transmitting it to the distant, towering white spire.
'Are they smiling?' Aaryan stared in disbelief at a man cleaning the street. His right hand was completely crystallised, and he had lost grip of the broom. Yet, with an almost pious expression, he mechanically repeated the cleaning motion with his broken limb.
'This is called the "Holy Blood Gift",' the old man said, walking up to Aaryan with a self-deprecating sneer in his voice. 'The council tells these wretches that as long as they dedicate their extra energy to maintaining the operation of the Holy City, the council will give them the purest etheric air and the right to be buried in the Cloud Sea Cemetery after death.
This is more disgusting than underground slavery.' Aaryan's fists clenched so tightly that they cracked.
In the Maya district, exploitation was plain to see; in Solaria, however, it was shrouded in sacred faith and cheap comfort.
Just then, Dahlia, who had been unconscious, suddenly let out a short scream.
She opened her eyes, which were no longer clear but filled with a chilling pure white. She sat up abruptly and began to scratch at the air frantically, as if trying to tear apart some unseen thread.
'It is watching me... Father's eyes are open in the clouds...' Dahlia said, trembling, her voice carrying inhuman, overlapping tones.
Aaryan rushed forward and hugged her. 'Calm down, Dahlia! It's me, Aaryan!'
'No, Brother, can't you feel it?' Dahlia gripped Aaryan's clothes, her nails almost digging into his flesh. 'That voice... Vane isn't dead; he brought the "core" up.' He's using the Council's 'Great Library' as a computing array to analyse our bloodline by force!"
'Buzz—!'
In response to her words, a massive crack suddenly appeared at the top of the grandest silver spire in the heart of the Holy City. A mechanical eyeball, composed of countless stacked gears and over a hundred metres in diameter, slowly emerged from the crack.
The eyeball rotated, emitting a purple beam that swept across the entire city. Wherever the beam touched, all the Holy City residents knelt on the ground as if struck by lightning, their hands clasped in front of their chests as they whispered an obscure incantation.
'That's the "Eye of Omniscience".' The old man's expression changed drastically and he shoved Aaryan and Dahlia into the church cellar. 'It's searching for the resonance of royalty! That madman Vane actually convinced the Council to initiate the 'Final Judgement Procedure'!" The cellar reeked of stale engine oil and mildew. Piles of discarded equipment were scattered throughout — clearly the old man's 'collection', accumulated over the years.
Aaryan felt the chilling, murderous probes sweeping overhead and knew he had nowhere to hide. The riots in the Maya district might just be the trigger Vane needed; his ultimate goal was to use the Holy Blood Council's vast resources to mass-produce and mechanise the royal family's power.
'Who are you?' Aaryan stared into the old man's eyes. In those cloudy eyes, he saw a familiar light. 'The poor of Grishal don't know how to repair the royal family's ethereal wings.'
The old man fell silent for a moment, then slowly removed his white porcelain mask.
Beneath it was a face scarred by burns, with a faint, almost invisible, gear-like emblem visible in the centre of his forehead.
'I was once the chief mechanic of this city, and I was the one who personally stripped those golden wings from your father.' The old man's voice deepened.
The air in the cellar froze instantly. Aaryan's amethyst ether surged once more and, in that instant, his dark red killing intent materialised.
The cellar was dimly lit, with only the sparks from the grinding of old gears illuminating Aaryan's contorted, rage-filled face. 'You said you stripped him of his wings?'
His voice was as deep and resonant as magma from the earth's depths. A shard of stained glass shattered in his right hand from the force of his grip, tiny crystals piercing his palm and blood dripping from between his fingers and splashing onto the cold floor tiles.
Carlos, the former chief mechanic, faced the murderous pressure with a calm straightening of his hunched back. He pointed to a massive silhouette covered by a tarpaulin deep within the cellar. 'That is the sin of the Holy Blood Council, and the nightmare I will never escape for the rest of my life.' The wings of the Celestial Vein Royal Family are not just for flying; they are also the key to the 'Primordial Crystal'. Back then, in order to mass-produce the power cores of the 'Holy Blood Knights', they forced me to dismantle the wings of the former king personally..."
'Shut up!'
Aaryan took a step forward and used his mechanical left arm to grip Carlos's throat, pinning him to the mottled wall.
'Brother... stop...' came Dahlia's weak call from behind. She stood up and leaned against the remains of the altar. Two clear tears streamed from her pure white eyes. 'I can feel it... He wasn't lying; his soul is filled with those dismantled parts crying.'
Just then, a heavy thud echoed from above the church.
'Solarian Inquisition Deacon, search at your command! Heretic energy source locked; prepare for detonation!'
A cold command seeped into the cellar through the cracks in the floorboards, followed by an icy, high-frequency shockwave. The church's centuries-old stained-glass windows shattered into dust in an instant. 'There's no time to kill me, Your Highness.' Carlos's face was flushed from lack of oxygen, but his eyes gleamed with an increasingly intense resolve. 'The All-Seeing Eye has locked onto the coordinates. Every inch of air here is filled with etheric probes. Your only chance of survival is to go there.'
He pressed a concealed electromagnetic switch at his waist with all his might.
The cellar floor instantly collapsed, revealing a bottomless vertical shaft — clearly not an ordinary drainage ditch. The walls of the well were inlaid with a dense array of transmission rods and blue magic stone conduits, which emitted a ghostly glow.
"Go down! This is the main sewage pipe left over from the construction of the Holy City, and also the only blind spot.' Carlos shoved a heavy toolbox into Aaryan's arms. 'Inside are energy dissipators and maps of the Holy City's underground system. Quickly find those hiding in the shadows. They call themselves the 'Rust Brotherhood'."
'Why are you helping me?' Aaryan asked, releasing his grip and staring at his former enemy with a complex expression.
"Because I stripped him not only of his wings, but also of something else." Carlos smiled bitterly as he pulled a small, heavily sealed lead-encased reactor core from his robes. 'That was the late king's last "heartfire". Vane thought he had everything, but in reality, he only got the shell."
BOOM!
The church ceiling collapsed completely and three Holy Blood Knights clad in pure white power armour and wielding laser-enhanced swords landed with a thud.
"Go!" Carlos shoved Aaryan forcefully.
Aaryan picked up Dahlia and jumped into the dark shaft. In his final moments, he saw Carlos detonate the reactor he was carrying. A blinding white light instantly engulfed the entire cellar, keeping the pursuing knights at bay from the inferno. Cold.
That was Aaryan's first sensation upon landing.
The Holy City's underground system was far more vast than he had imagined. There was no sunlight, only countless enormous bronze pipes crisscrossing like viscera and highly corrosive wastewater gushing through the dark channels beneath their feet and emitting unsettling splashes.
'Brother, I... I'm so scared.' Huddling in Aaryan's arms, Dahlia's body was as cold as ice — the result of the Holy City's high ether concentration causing her blood to violently defend itself.
'Don't be afraid, I'm here.'
Aaryan opened the toolkit that Carlos had given him. The energy dissipator activated and created a miniature force field with a one-metre radius around them. This filtered out the aggressive holy ether in the air.
He navigated the labyrinthine pipes, referring to the yellowed blueprints. About an hour later, a rhythmic knocking sound suddenly came from ahead.
'Three long, two short, one heavy.'
It was the common distress signal among miners in the Maya District.
Aaryan stopped, his right hand gripping the broken sword fragment on his back. 'Who's there?'
In the darkness, dark red lanterns lit up one after another.
Dozens of figures emerged from the shadows of the massive pipes. Like Aaryan, they wore wide cloaks, but their exposed limbs were strange: some had half of their bodies made of rusty iron frames, while others had basic multifocal lenses embedded in their eyes.
The burly man at the front stepped forward and removed his gas mask to reveal a face full of flesh, bearing the characteristic honest and simple look of the Maya District.
"That royal aura... though faint, it's definitely there." The burly man stared at Aaryan, then knelt on one knee. His voice was hoarse as he said, 'The Iron Rust Brotherhood's Holy Capital branch was late in providing support. Please punish us, Your Highness.' This refuge, known as the 'Sewer Hive', was a meeting place for labourers and disabled soldiers who had escaped to the Holy Capital from underground over the past few decades, but who had then been banished back underground due to their 'impure bloodline'.
Here, Aaryan encountered someone he had not expected to see: Balthazar, the demon warrior he had met briefly in the underground arena.
Balthazar was in an extremely poor state: half of his tail had been cut off, his chest was wrapped in thick bandages and blood was seeping eerily from beneath them.
'That bastard Vane… he not only came up, but he brought an entire "Crystallized Legion".' Balthazar leaned against the iron barrel, weakly spitting out a mouthful of bloody saliva. 'Aaryan, you think you escaped? No, you've just brought hell to earth.'
"What do you mean?" Aaryan frowned.
'The High Judges of the Holy Blood Council didn't intend to try Vane.' Balthazar gave a bitter laugh. 'They reached an agreement: the Council would provide computational support for the "All-Seeing Eye", and Vane would provide your royal bloodline as a catalyst to activate the ultimate weapon slumbering beneath the Holy City — the "Wrath of Solaria".'
Aaryan's pupils suddenly contracted.
'Once activated, that weapon will not only completely obliterate the Maya District, but also turn Grishal and the Holy City into slaughterhouses for harvesting souls.'
Dahlia suddenly let out a muffled groan. Her pure white eyes shone with a blinding light once more, projecting a blurry image onto the shelter's ceiling.
In the heart of the Holy City, countless mechanical tentacles burrowed deep into the earth from the Great Library, greedily sucking up a golden liquid of some kind. At the centre of these tentacles, Vane floated in mid-air. His body had vanished, replaced by a mechanical heart made up of countless beating hearts.
'That's not a heart... that's... the Achilles' heel of all our people...' Dahlia stammered. Aaryan surveyed his surroundings.
The incomplete and abandoned people of the Holy City looked at him with complex expressions of awe and doubt, but above all, an almost deadly hope.
He touched the core that Carlos had left behind in his arms, then glanced at Balthazar, who was now completely incapacitated.
'I need no loyalty from you.' Aaryan stood atop an abandoned boiler, his voice echoing through the vast culvert. 'Because I am no longer the so-called King of the Celestial Veins. I am just like you: a prisoner, stripped of my home, my family and my dignity as a human being."
He raised his right hand, amethyst-gold ether dancing at his fingertips. But this time, the light was infused with a dark, red, rusty scent reminiscent of the sewers.
"Solaria is draining us dry. Since they consider us the filth of the city, the sludge of the sewers, then we will rise from the depths of hell and drag their hypocritical Crystal Tower into the mire with our own hands!"
"For Rust!" the burly leader roared.
"For Rust!" Dozens of survivors roared in unison, their voices shaking even the sewage culverts.
In the dim red light, Aaryan sensed an unprecedented breakthrough. His cultivation level hadn't increased, but the flow of ether within his body had changed. No longer erupting outwards, it was collapsing inwards and forming a deep vortex at his heart.
This mutation had never been seen before in fantasy novels and was known as the 'Realm of Depletion'.
From the brink of death, life begins.'