Chapter 153: The Black Xuanyuan Sword
The mechanical system voice echoed through the minds of every Descender on the battlefield, cold and indifferent to the chaos it wrought.
"What is going on? Why did the resurrection progress suddenly jump by twenty-five percent?!"
"...Look on the bright side. At least we can deal direct damage to Chiyou now."
A frantic tactical meeting took place over the faction communication channels. The Descenders of the Shenzhou territory quickly calculated the maximum capacity of their coastal ports. Within minutes, they dispatched a massive fleet of transport boats, sending roughly five hundred thousand players across the churning waters to crusade against the colossal Honkai beast.
The remaining forces dug their heels into the blood-soaked earth, bracing themselves to hold the line against the relentless offensive from Faction 2.
However, reality proved far crueler than their hasty plans. When the vanguard spent over ten agonizing minutes handling the treacherous waves to reach Chiyou and finally boarded its mountainous body, they hit a literal wall. The beast's outer hide was impenetrable. The vast majority of the strike force could not even scratch Chiyou's defenses.
Less than five percent of the players possessed the stats required to break through its armor. And the damage numbers floating above the beast's hide from that elite five percent? Almost entirely in the single digits.
"As long as we can deal damage, it counts! Damn it!" a frontline commander roared, his voice cracking with desperation. "If we have to, we will slash this thing a hundred times, a thousand times, ten thousand times! We will chip away at its health until it drops dead! Those who cannot break its defense, fall back! Go fight those foreign bastards on the mainland and swap in the heavy hitters!"
Not a single voice raised an objection. Faced with a crisis that threatened the very existence of Shenzhou, the Descenders displayed an unmatched, ironclad cohesion.
But this desperate rotation birthed a fatal flaw. Pulling their strongest players to fight the beast meant their defensive line against the foreign Descenders was continuously bleeding strength.
Worse still, the resurrection progress timer was accelerating.
Munitions vanished at an alarming rate. Gunfire sputtered and died across the trenches as ammunition reserves hit rock bottom. Left with no other choice, the frontline Shenzhou Descenders discarded their useless firearms, drew their blades, hefted their spears, and charged screaming into the ranks of Faction 2 in brutal hand-to-hand combat.
High above the grinding meat grinder of the streets, Yuki moved like a phantom across the rooftops of the ruined high-rises. She settled into a crouch, the cold wind whipping her hair, and peered through her sniper scope. Her finger squeezed the trigger.
A sharp crack echoed. A high-level target in the enemy backline crumpled, a clean hole punched straight through their skull.
Every single shot she fired was a masterclass in lethal precision. She did not just hit her marks; she devastated them, landing perfect strikes to the center of their foreheads.
[Weakness Attack!]
[Weakness Attack!]
She was a god of death perched above the battlefield, methodically harvesting lives with cold efficiency. While her individual kill count was just a drop in the bucket compared to the millions fighting below, her targeted assassination of high-end combatants sowed massive chaos within the enemy ranks.
Enemy commanders quickly learned to fear the open air. They scrambled for cover, pressing their backs against concrete walls, terrified to even peek around a corner lest they become the sniper's next victim.
Deep within the suffocating, fleshy caverns of Chiyou's massive body, Rovel inspected his status window.
'I didn't expect the cost of Dead Force to drop this drastically after my physical fitness improved,' Rovel thought, a dry smile touching his lips.
Previously, channeling the destructive energy of Dead Force drained a staggering ten thousand experience points per punch. Now? The system only demanded three thousand.
Considering he had just ruthlessly fleeced several hundred thousand experience points from Xing Master, his reserves were practically overflowing. He had more than enough fuel for the fire.
He pressed deeper into the beast's anatomy, handling the pulsing, Honkai-corrupted veins in search of Chiyou's second seal. The search was grueling. It took him a full thirty minutes of handling the twisting, maze-like internal structures before he finally located it. He certainly had not expected the core to be hidden all the way down near the beast's tail.
He planted his feet. Dark, destructive energy surged around his fist, wrapping his knuckles in a terrifying aura. He drove his fist forward, smashing directly into the crystalline structure.
[Ding! Chiyou's Sealing Crystal has been shattered. Resurrection progress increased by 25%.]
[Chiyou's current resurrection progress: 82.9%]
[Chiyou's movement speed has increased. The Devour ability has awakened.]
[System Note: Chiyou can accelerate its resurrection progress by devouring cities, allowing it to grow stronger and rapidly restore damaged health.]
[Chiyou is currently 12 kilometers away from Nanwu City. Estimated arrival time: 27 minutes.]
Back on the mainland, a Faction 2 commander laughed uproariously from behind a barricade, checking his system interface.
"Heaven is truly on our side! I have no idea why Chiyou's resurrection progress just jumped by fifty percent out of nowhere, but who cares? It looks like the victory this time belongs to Faction 2..."
His triumphant speech ended in a wet thud. A bloody hole erupted in the center of his forehead. A massive damage number, easily breaking past a thousand, flashed above his collapsing corpse.
The surrounding players shrieked, scrambling away from the fresh corpse on their hands and knees, desperately seeking deeper cover.
"Talks too much," Yuki murmured coldly from her sniper perch, racking the bolt of her rifle to chamber another round.
Despite the sniper's suppression, the system announcement had done its job. The morale of Faction 2 soared to fanatical heights. Their offensive surged forward with renewed, violent vigor, crashing against the Shenzhou defenders. The numbers of Faction 1 players were dropping at a visible, terrifying rate.
"This is bad..." Himeko muttered, her grip tightening on her heavy claymore. She stared out at the dense, endless sea of hostile players swarming their position, a throbbing headache building behind her eyes.
Beside her, Fu Hua stood silent, her gaze fixed on the distant, mountainous silhouette of Chiyou rising from the ocean. Her brow furrowed in deep confusion.
"Chiyou's movements are getting faster," Fu Hua observed softly. "Just what on earth is Rovel doing in there..."
If the colossal beast truly made landfall and reached their position, the defensive line would be instantly crushed. If that happened, she would have no other choice.
She opened her right hand. A single, ethereal feather materialized in her palm, glowing with a soft, pulsing red light.
This was her final trump card.
Her fingers trembled slightly as she stared at the crimson glow. If she used its power again, she did not know what fragments of her past she would be forced to sacrifice. What memories would she forget this time?
As the heavy weight of that choice pressed down on her, a familiar voice drifted into her mind, clear and warm against the cold reality of the battlefield.
'If you don't remember, then so be it... At least for now, and in the near future, we can create more beautiful Remembrances.''I only speak of the present moment; when plums are ripe, the gardenias are fragrant...'
The red light reflected in her calm eyes. Her fingers slowly closed around the feather.
"...I am sorry, Rovel," Fu Hua murmured, her voice barely audible over the roar of the battlefield.
Deep inside the belly of the beast, Rovel followed the dense, suffocating flow of Honkai Energy. The corrupted veins grew thicker, pulsing with a rhythmic, thunderous heartbeat that shook the very air.
He stepped into a massive, cavernous chamber. This was Chiyou's heart.
And there, waiting in the center of the oppressive darkness, he finally saw her. The Will of Ji Lin.
The bright yellow robes that had once symbolized humanity's light and hope were completely gone, stained into a pitch-black abyss. The crimson gemstone resting upon her forehead radiated a sinister, murky aura.
Worse still was the weapon in her hand. Through thousands of years of suffocating loneliness and agonizing pain, the sheer despair overflowing from the Will of Ji Lin's heart had thoroughly corrupted the divine weapon. The once-brilliant golden blade of the Xuanyuan Sword was now dyed in the color of absolute darkness.
She sat tall atop a massive, heavily armored black warhorse, exuding a majestic, impressive, and utterly terrifying presence.
Her cold, dead eyes locked onto Rovel the moment he entered, as if she had been sitting in the dark, patiently anticipating his arrival for centuries.
Without a word, Rovel summoned his own weapon. The golden light of his Xuanyuan Sword flared to life, pushing back the shadows of the chamber.
Ji Lin's gaze snapped to the radiant, uncorrupted blade in his grip. For a brief, fleeting second, a hint of reminiscence flashed deep within her dark eyes.
But that fragile emotion was ruthlessly and instantly snuffed out, replaced by a chilling emptiness.
"Ji Lin," Rovel called out, his voice echoing over the thumping of the massive heart. "Do you really want to take revenge on the Shenzhou you once swore to protect?"
The Will of Ji Lin looked down at him, her expression devoid of warmth.
"That is correct," she replied, her voice echoing with a hollow, metallic resonance. "The moment the true Ji Lin disappeared, her conviction to protect Shenzhou vanished with her. I am not her. I am merely the remnants left behind. I am her despair. Her hatred. Her resentment..."
The black warhorse shifted its hooves, its breath steaming in the damp air.
"In the dark, I began to wonder what I was even fighting for," she continued, raising the corrupted blade. "But Ji Lin's disappearance took everything away, including her original intentions. And my heart... was given to me by Chiyou. It was Chiyou that allowed me to survive in this endless abyss."
She leveled the tip of the Black Xuanyuan Sword directly at Rovel's chest.
"So... words are useless now. Let us fight!"
The warhorse beneath her let out a deafening, demonic roar, its hooves tearing into the fleshy ground as it charged straight at Rovel like a dark meteor.
"...Come," Rovel muttered. He tightened his grip on the golden hilt of his Xuanyuan Sword, bent his knees, and launched himself forward to meet the clash.
Gold and black steel collided with a thunderous shockwave that ripped through the fleshy chamber.
The sheer kinetic force traveling down the blade nearly knocked the breath out of Rovel's lungs. Ji Lin's physical strength was vastly beyond his expectations. She was strong—so terrifyingly strong that Rovel found it hard to believe this was just a lingering will.
"Heaven!" Ji Lin shouted, her voice cutting through the ringing of steel.
In the blink of an eye, she vanished from her position. The air above Rovel warped, and she materialized directly over him, the massive hooves of her warhorse trampling down with crushing, lethal force.
Rovel reacted purely on instinct. He activated Quantumization, his physical form fracturing into ethereal blue data just as the hooves slammed into the ground where he had stood a millisecond prior. He reappeared a dozen meters away, sliding to a halt.
Before he could even steady his breathing, Ji Lin's cold voice rang out again.
"Earth!"
The air itself turned into lead. Rovel instantly felt dozens of times the normal gravitational force slam down onto his shoulders. His knees buckled under the invisible weight, the ground cracking beneath his boots. The suffocating pressure violently disrupted his energy flow, immediately restricting his ability to use Quantumization again.
Trapped and weighed down, he had no choice. He threw his golden sword up with both hands, struggling desperately to block the incoming executioner's strike.
The Black Xuanyuan Sword crashed against his guard. But the physical impact was only a distraction. In the next instant, the dark blade erupted with a storm of razor-sharp wind blades.
The violent gales bypassed his guard entirely, tearing through his clothes and leaving countless bloody lacerations across his arms, chest, and face.
Blood dripped from his chin, sizzling against the corrupted floor. Perhaps he had subconsciously underestimated his opponent because of her tragic past, or perhaps he was simply caught completely off guard by the sheer versatility of her elemental abilities.
Whatever the reason, the truth was brutally clear.
Rovel had fallen into a severe disadvantage.
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