That night, the rain in the Maya district was torrential and turned thick and black, as if the city's sins had been poured back through the drainpipes. Aaryan evaded the patrol posts of the Holy Blood Council and slipped into Warehouse No. 7 at the end of East Wharf. Originally a transfer station for storing scrapped mech parts, the place now reeked of forcibly compressed and corroded flesh mixed with the nauseating fragrance of gardenias, a symbol of sacrifice, sending alarm bells through every cell of Aaryan's body.
'If hell has an entrance, it must be behind this iron door,' said Balthazar, who was with him, in a low voice. The magical runes on his dark red greatsword trembled violently and emitted a low growl, like a trapped beast sensing the pain of its kin.
He pushed open the heavy, sealed iron door and the scene before him shattered Aaryan's understanding of 'boundaries'.
This wasn't a warehouse, but a gigantic living altar stitched together by industrial civilisation. The massive warehouse had been transformed into a staggered steel-frame structure. Hundreds of demonic labourers, their shoulder blades pierced by heavy cast-iron hooks, hung suspended in mid-air like raw meat for sale. They had once been the city's most resilient workforce; now they were merely living cogs in this colossal machine.
Most suffocating of all were the morbidly translucent green conduits connected to the workers' spines, greedily drawing a purplish-black, viscous substance from their bodies with a dull, pumping rhythm.
'They're... extracting souls,' Aaryan's voice trembled. He watched his formerly strong workers weaken rapidly under the suction of the conduits. Their magical runes faded and peeled away as if corroded by strong acid, transforming into the dark ether energy flowing within the green tubes.
In the centre of the warehouse, a 'primordial singularity', made up of countless white bones and golden gears and surrounded by the undying flames of 1969, slowly unfolded. A holographic projection of Lord Malakor hovered above it. His chillingly benevolent voice echoed through the empty warehouse: "Look, Aaryan. Here, discrimination isn't based on prejudice, but on their value as 'consumables'. Their suffering will become the purest fuel driving the eternal order of the Maya District."
Aaryan stared at the long row of hooks. At the very end, he spotted a familiar figure — the child who had once given him a mouldy biscuit. The child's eyes, once timid yet clear, were now completely hollow, and a thick tube protruded from his thin spine. With each flash of green light, the child's life faded.
At that moment, the royal blood within Aaryan roared like thunder. Layers of obsidian scales peeled away from his left arm, revealing golden bones composed of pure ether and ancient runes. He was no longer fighting merely for survival, but to defend the last vestiges of dignity in this cursed land.
The exhaust fans on top of the warehouse whirred slowly, churning out a thick green mist. The familiar child — the little boy who handed Aaryan the mouldy biscuits in Chapter 21 and was always trembling in the shadows of the machinery — let out a barely audible groan like a suffocating kitten, as his soul was drained excessively. The air seemed to freeze.
"Who's there?" A deacon of the Holy Blood Council whirled around. He wore a standard robe made of pristine white silk and a steel frame; half of his face was covered by a cold, silver mask — the mark of the 'higher class' of the Maya District — an elegance tinged with a nauseating, deathly aura.
"Someone heading towards hell."
Aaryan's voice was as deep and resonant as magma rolling beneath the earth. He no longer concealed his presence, leaping from the high steel frame. In that instant, the obsidian scales that had been used to camouflage his left arm shattered inch by inch in mid-air, revealing the golden bones beneath. They were as dazzling as a star — the most primal and violent resonance of the cursed royal bloodline when confronted with the suffering of its kin.
"It's that traitor! Fire!" the deacon screamed.
The dozens of elite council guards surrounding the altar immediately raised their etheric blasters. Rather than using physical bullets, these weapons generated highly corrosive green rays by compressing dark ether extracted from the bodies of the demon race.
*Sizzle!*
The rays intertwined to form a deadly green net, attempting to disintegrate Aaryan mid-air. However, just as the rays were about to touch him, his figure folded in mid-air. This wasn't a physical dodge, but rather his 'spiritual root' absorbing the surrounding fluctuating etheric energy and causing a localised spatial collapse in an instant.
"Instant... Instant Step?" The deacon's eyes widened in horror, but the next second, his vision was obscured by the flash of a dark red sword.
'Get out of the way, you scum!' Like a raging lion broken free of its shackles, Balthazar charged into the guards' formation. Swung downwards at an angle, his dark red greatsword was wider than an adult and its magical runes glowed fiery red as they absorbed the lingering anger in the air. One guard tried to block it with his powered shield, but was slammed into the concrete floor, shield and all, and turned into a steaming pile of scrap metal.
Chaos erupted inside the warehouse. Steam pipes were pierced by stray bullets and billowing white steam turned the terrifying altar into a maze of death.
Aaryan had only one target: the green conduit connected to the child's spine.
He leapt into the air, using a guard's shoulder as a springboard and gripping the pulsating conduit precisely with his fingers like hooks. "Let go!" The deacon frantically pressed the controller in his hand, attempting to activate the self-destruct rune on the conduit.
'Too slow.' Aaryan's eyes blazed. Rather than using brute force, he channelled the golden ether within him back through his fingertips. If the conduits were straws sucking life, then Aaryan was now a raging sea bursting its banks.
Boom!
Golden holy light collided with green fel energy. The conduit instantly expanded and exploded. The extracted fragments of souls, bearing memories of suffering, were released and returned. Aaryan caught the dangling child in one arm while spinning in mid-air and slamming his other hand down on the ground.
'Thunder shakes the heavens!'
This was the perfect fusion of fantasy and ethereal technology. Golden arcs of electricity spread wildly along the steel floor. Guards who were still attempting to fire were instantly paralysed by the electromagnetic pulse. Ironically, their heavy exoskeletons became prisons, confining them.
However, the battle was not yet over. The 'Primal Singularity' at the centre of the altar sensed the approach of the royal bloodline. The golden gears spun faster, emitting a grating, grinding sound. Meanwhile, Malakor's holographic projection in the void grew enormous and solid.
'Aaryan, do you think you're saving them?' Malakor extended a ghostly finger and pointed at the hundreds of demons still hanging from the hooks. 'Every time you destroy a conduit, the unstable energy balance explodes instantly, and you are the final executioner.'
With Malakor's cold laugh, the extraction light, which had previously been green, suddenly turned red. The workers hanging on the hooks let out even more horrific screams. Their skin began to turn red like lava as the altar switched to 'overload incineration' mode.
'Balthazar! Pau! Cyrus!' Aaryan's roar echoed through the steam-filled warehouse. 'Forget the guards! Cut off the main power! I'll personally reduce this 'throne' to rubble right here!"
Under the black rain of Maya, the sounds of battle within the warehouse had only just begun. Cradling a child who was barely breathing, Aaryan's eyes were now devoid of any trace of confusion, replaced by a divine fire powerful enough to incinerate an entire city.
The air inside the warehouse was torn apart by surging golden lightning. In the brief silence that followed, the only sound was the hiss of liquid flowing from the broken pipes onto the ground. Cradling the child he had rescued, Aaryan could feel its small body trembling violently — the aftershocks of its life force being forcibly drained.
"It's severed… but this is only the beginning." Balthazar walked to Aaryan's side, his dark red greatsword humming as he plunged it into the ground. His voice was filled with unprecedented exhaustion. The nearly withered demonic workers around them stared at the golden bones exposed on Aaryan's left arm with a mixture of fear and ecstasy.
'That's... royal.' Someone murmured hoarsely.
This echoed in the empty warehouse like a stone thrown into stagnant water, causing tremendous shock among the demonic people of the Maya district. 'Royal' was not just a social class, but a myth that had been buried before 1969. Aaryan stared at the faint glow in their eyes, a chill running down his spine. He realised that Malakor hadn't allowed him to come here, even to witness this horrific scene, out of carelessness, but as a premeditated 'baptism'.
'Do you see that, Aaryan?' Malakor's holographic projection, blurred and flickering from the recent lightning strike, revealed a twisted smile that grew ever clearer. 'When you display this power, you cease to be the saviour trying to change the rules and become their only lifeline. You give them hope, and hope is the lubricant that unlocks the final lock of the 'Primordial Singularity'."
As Malakor spoke, a heavy, mechanical clanking echoed from the shadows at the far end of the warehouse. The 'ancient calculation' that Cyrus had mentioned earlier resurfaced in Aaryan's mind: if opening the Gate of Causality required the sacrifice of ten thousand souls, would the gate become more secure if those souls offered themselves willingly?
"Don't listen to his nonsense!" Balthazar growled, attempting to rush towards the core of the altar.
But just then, the warehouse walls suddenly cracked open and countless silver steel wires descended. Rather than killing directly, they precisely pierced the back of their weakened colleagues' necks, like puppeteers.
'What we need is not simple redemption.' An ethereal, almost divine voice echoed above the warehouse. It was the Holy Blood Council's secret force — the 'Soul Cleansers'. Wearing light armour that appeared to be made of holy light, they hovered in mid-air, their prayer wheels spinning continuously and disrupting the flow of ether.
Aaryan felt the purple-gold divine light within him being violently suppressed; the laws of the Maya District were being rewritten. A 'confinement domain' targeting specifically the bloodline of the Demon Clan was spreading out. He looked at the faint reflection of the clock tower on top of the warehouse — the source of all the chaos and the coordinate point, 1969.
'If you don't want them all to turn to ashes, stop resisting,' said the leader of the Soul Cleansers coldly. 'Royalty, your return was already part of our plan.'
The rain outside the warehouse grew even more violent; black raindrops pounded the lead roof like a premature death knell tolling for this manipulated fate. Aaryan clenched his fists; he knew that every step he took next would be on the edge of an abyss.
The warehouse began to tremble, not due to an earthquake, but because reality was being forcibly torn apart. Following the intervention of the 'Soul Cleansers', the previously chaotic battlefield was quickly enveloped in a cold, methodical and suffocating aura of death.
'Royal Mark, strip away.'
The leading Soul Cleanser slowly clasped his hands together and countless tiny silver runes erupted from the spinning prayer wheel. They automatically wove in the air into a vast, sky-covering net. The instant the net fell, Aaryan felt his blood freeze and the bones of his left arm creak under the weight. The ancient royal purple-gold divine light flowing through his veins gradually withered and dimmed under the suppression of the silver runes.
'This isn't just "ether technology"...' Gritting his teeth, Aaryan knelt on the cold steel floor, tightly protecting the child in his arms with his hand. He could feel the power being used to negate the 'existence value' of the Demon Race at its most fundamental level. Under the influence of these runes, he felt like an empty shell, stripped of his soul.
'It's "causality law",' Cyrus's voice came through the communication channel, tinged with rare terror. 'Aaryan, evacuate immediately! They're not fighting; they're conducting a city-wide experiment. They're using the fear of hundreds of thousands of Demon Race members in the Maya District as fuel to modify the physical constants of this region. According to that law, the Demon Race's bloodline is original sin. The more they resist, the greater the backlash will be!"
'Evacuate? Where do we go?" Balthazar roared, his voice echoing through the warehouse.
Balthazar was in a terrible state. His dark red greatsword was chipped in several places and he was pierced by more than a dozen fine steel wires, each thinner than a hair. These wires were digging into his pressure points and forcibly extracting his violent energy. The Soul Cleansers hovered high in the air, looking down at the two struggling figures below. Their eyes were devoid of any mercy; they showed only the cold indifference of people treating laboratory mice.
'Is this what they call "order"?' Aaryan suddenly looked up, his eyes bloodshot.
He could see his fellow workers hanging on hooks. Their painful cries were robbed of power by the confinement field and they were thrown in batches, like pieces of dry wood, into the 'Primal Singularity' at the centre of the altar. With each soul devoured, the vortex, wreathed in the fire of 1969, grew larger. The heat emanating from it caused the warehouse's steel frame to melt, and the dripping molten iron resembled lava.
'This is called "optimisation", child.' Malakor's projection froze again. He slowly walked towards Aaryan, his illusory hand attempting to stroke his head. 'The Demon Race are remnants of the old era, scrambled code generated by the system's operation. You, however, possess the purest code. Why do you associate with this garbage?"
'Garbage?' Blood seeped from Aaryan's gums. The child in his arms had stopped trembling and its body temperature was dropping rapidly. The child who, in Chapter 21, had dreamed of buying a can of clean soda was now slowly turning to ashes, like a discarded part.
'Die... your order!'
Aaryan suddenly erupted. He no longer tried to guide the purple-gold divine light within his body; instead, he opened all the meridians completely to the oppressive silver runes. His dark red greatsword was chipped in several places and his body was pierced by more than a dozen fine steel wires, each as thin as a hair. These wires were digging into his pressure points and forcibly extracting his violent energy. The Soul Cleansers hovered high in the air, looking down.
This was a self-destructive fighting style. Since you want to suppress me and strip me of my power, I will channel this suppression into my body as a fuse and ignite the deepest rage within my bloodline. This was the 'reverse cultivation' method from the fantasy system, which, at that moment, eerily overlapped with the overload logic of Etherpunk.
Boom!
A muffled explosion emanated from Aaryan's body. His skin began to bleed, but his eyes erupted with holy light ten times stronger than before. He forced himself to stand, each step shattering the floor beneath the chaotic energy emanating from his body.
'Balthazar! Take them away!' Aaryan's voice was distorted, carrying overlapping frequencies.
'And what about you?'
'I'm going to dismantle this machine.' "
The conflict reached its most tense moment. The Soul Cleansers chanted in unison and silver threads converged to form enormous spears of light that pierced Aaryan from all directions. Neither dodging nor evading, Aaryan simply waved his hand and the illusory longsword formed from the golden bones within his body — the 'Causal Fracture Blade' — manifested completely for the first time.
The blade sliced through the void silently and without sparks. In that instant, however, the green conduits connecting the backs of hundreds of workers to the silver threads in the sky all snapped neatly, like fragile spider's silk.
This was not a victory of power, but a reclaiming of authority.
But the price was enormous. Aaryan's aura weakened rapidly, his consciousness blurred, and he saw that Malakor was not panicking but displaying a strange sense of relief.
'That's right, Aaryan. You destroyed the surface altar, but with your 'rage', you completely activated the core of the singularity.' Malakor pointed forward.
The broken conduits continued to draw energy, absorbing some deeper energy directly from the void instead. The once golden and green warehouse was now cloaked in pure, all-consuming black. The reflection of the 1969 clock tower became clearer and clearer in the darkness, resembling a colossal beast rising from the river of time and slowly opening its jaws.
The warehouse walls collapsed completely and thick black rain poured in from outside. Aaryan knelt in the rain and looked at the distant clock tower, a symbol of ultimate power. He had saved a child, yet it seemed that he had personally initiated the destruction of the entire city.
A sense of oppression overwhelmed East Wharf. In the centre of that darkness, only a sliver of golden light remained on Aaryan's left hand, like a lone lamp about to be extinguished in the apocalyptic world where the building was about to collapse.
A tidal wave of darkness engulfed Warehouse No. 7. The illusory clock tower, which connected to the ghost of 1969, began to solidify, transforming from an ethereal image into tangible bricks and verdigris as the 'Primal Singularity' sucked it in. Every second, hundreds of souls were cast into the black hole formed by golden gears.
'Aaryan! It's evolving!" Cyrus's roar echoed through the thunder. 'That singularity isn't for extracting energy; it's a "reality rewriter"! It's replacing the underlying logic of the Maya District with some kind of extinct horror!'
Aaryan stood at the edge of the altar, his vision now completely transformed to a dazzling purple and gold. His body was covered in porcelain-like cracks caused by overdrawn blood, and golden blood was flowing from the wounds and dripping onto the ground with the power to burn through steel.
"Give up, royalty." The leader of the Soul Cleansers looked down at Aaryan from above, pitying him. 'Your so-called sacrifice is nothing more than a final shot in the arm for this machine. Your rage and divine light will ultimately become the ladder for Lord Malakor to godhood.'
Malakor's shadowed figure let out a chilling, maniacal laugh. His hand was already touching the core of the singularity. It was as if, with a mere flick of his wrist, he could reassemble the entire city according to his will.
However, at that moment, Aaryan suddenly stopped his attack.
He released the 'Causal Fracture Blade', shattering the longsword formed from divine light into pieces. Glancing down at the child in his arms, now cold and ashen, he then looked at his fellow workers, controlled by threads and living like zombies.
"You're right, Malakor." Aaryan raised his head, his eyes devoid of anger and possessing an extreme, almost divine calm. 'By destroying the altar, I was nourishing the singularity. Since this machine is built on the principle of 'ordered extraction'..."
He suddenly spread his arms, dismantling all defences within his body. Even his core 'spiritual root' was exposed to the singularity.
'What if I gave it an infinitely large negative number that it could not possibly withstand?'
'You're insane!' Malakor's smile froze. 'Are you going to self-destruct? At this distance, your self-destruction will only accelerate the expansion of the singularity!'
'Not self-destruction.' Aaryan's voice resounded deep within everyone's souls: 'Returning to zero.' When a member of royalty sacrifices their entire existence, they gain the authority to modify local causality for a short period.
The golden bones of Aaryan's left arm began to burn intensely. They weren't flames, but pure, compressed information entropy. Rather than pushing the force away, he absorbed all the darkness of the singularity, all the extraction processes and the ghost of 1969 into his body.
"With my broken body, I seal all laws!"
In that instant, the expanding black vortex halted eerily. Then, an indescribable suction force erupted from Aaryan's frail body. The conduits connected to his back stopped supplying souls and began pouring back in frantically. The etheric energy stolen by Malakor and accumulated over decades surged back into Aaryan's body at destructive speed.
"No! Stop! You're destroying everything!" Malakor screamed madly. He realised that his connection to the singularity had been severed and that even his projection was being sucked away by Aaryan.
Aaryan became the brightest light source in the entire city. His body was disintegrating, but each fragment of light shattered a Soul Cleanser's prayer wheel precisely and severed a thread on a hook.
"Balthazar! Take them away!' Aaryan roared, accompanied by thunder. 'Tell Pau and Cyrus that the bells of the Maya District must stop ringing!'
In a blinding white light, the golden gears of the singularity core emitted an ear-splitting cracking sound. After consuming the causality of Aaryan's sacrifice, the so-called 'primordial singularity' had its logical system completely trapped in a dead loop. Attempting to process the 'non-existent' energy caused the physical constants of the entire Warehouse 7 to instantly drop to zero.
BOOM!
A silent explosion lit up half the night sky over East Wharf.
When the light faded, Warehouse 7 had vanished, leaving only a massive, mirror-like crater. Black rain slid down the crater walls, washing away the remaining sins.
Malakor's projection had disappeared, the Soul Cleanser army had been annihilated and the survivors stood frozen in the rain, staring at the empty crater.
"Aaryan…" Balthazar, his face covered in blood and clutching his greatsword, found a broken obsidian scale at the bottom of the pit. It was faintly glowing gold — the only thing Aaryan had left behind.
Just when everyone thought that Aaryan had perished alongside his enemy, a charred yet tenacious gardenia quietly bloomed in the centre of the pit amidst the rubble. The hands of the distant clock tower, forever frozen at 19:69, chimed crisply.
Time began to flow again. As the clock struck, all the electronic screens in the Maya district lit up simultaneously, displaying an encrypted signal codenamed 'Zeroing Out'. At the same time, Malakor, the leader of the Holy Blood Council, suddenly coughed up blood. He stared at his rapidly withering hands, his eyes filled with terror.
Rainwater had gathered in the form of murky streams, filling the deep crater where Warehouse No. 7 had once stood. In this desolate ruin, Baltazar trembled as he picked up the glowing obsidian fragment.
'He's not dead... he can't just die like this.' Baltazar's low growl echoed through the empty eastern district.
The collapse of the singularity did not bring the expected tranquillity; it felt more like a wound that had been torn open and could not heal. In the distance, the click of the Maya District's landmark clock tower grew louder. It was no longer a mechanical rhythm, but more like the pulse of a colossal being. As the hands laboriously moved forward a notch from '1969', a stagnant year for decades, the city's etheric concentration instantly surpassed the critical threshold.
'Warning: Large-scale mental pollution detected. Citywide 'silence mode' activated.'
On the streets, the mechanical eyes of the Holy Blood Council enforcers simultaneously turned from blue to red, paralysed by the destruction of the altar. The steam-powered cores within them were being taken over by violent, resentful dark ether. The guards and even the surviving demonic workers were losing their rationality, replaced by an extreme urge to destroy the entire city.
"Aaryan hasn't quelled his anger." Pale-faced, Cyrus sat behind the monitor in the underground shelter, his fingers flying across the keyboard. 'He's just used himself as a floodgate, unleashing decades of Malakor's pent-up malice onto every nerve ending in the city. The Maya district has become a massive 'fury reactor' ready to explode at any moment!'
Suddenly, the mud at the centre of the crater churned and a charred hand shot out, gripping the edge of the steel reinforcements. The hand was devoid of skin, replaced by bones flowing with a dark golden fluid, with red electrical wires coiled around them.
It was Aaryan, but the aura he exuded was no longer human; it was no longer that of noble 'royalty'.
He slowly raised his head, his golden pupils reflecting the Maya District on the verge of collapse. Above each resident's head, a constantly fluctuating number appeared. 'Anger threshold: 98%."
Once this number reached 100%, the Maya District would no longer require altars. The entire city would spontaneously combust, becoming a grand funeral pyre and a tribute to 1969.
'Malakor...' Aaryan's voice was hoarse, like two rusty gears grinding together. 'The "perfect order" you desired, I will now end it.'