373: The first action of "Spark"

Three days later.

The atmosphere throughout the Tomb of the Epoch had become exceptionally severe.

Squads of elite guards, clad in heavy armor and possessing auras far exceeding those of ordinary soldiers, patrolled the various main thoroughfares. Their gazes swept over every prisoner, cold and devoid of any emotion.

The transport of Law crystals was the top priority of this base.

In a dim stone room, Lin Fan's Clone remained huddled in a corner, body trembling slightly. He looked even more pathetic than before, as if any slight disturbance could scare him out of his wits.

He was performing the role of a weak, terrified Soul to the extreme.

Inside the Command Hall.

Lin Fan's main body watched calmly as the light spot marked as "Area D-3 Mining Zone" pulsed on the System star map.

On the star map, seventy-three glowing nodes representing the Xin Huo Members were like fireflies in the dark night, poised and ready.

A brief command, impossible for any entity to intercept, sounded simultaneously in the depths of seventy-three Souls via the "Kindling Local Area Network".

"Act."

...

At the central energy hub, beside a massive pipeline responsible for transporting raw energy.

A prisoner codenamed "910" was struggling to move scorching energy waste.

He was one of the nodes newly developed by Lin Fan, an Artifact Refining Great Master whose divine fire had been stripped away.

The moment he received the command, a spark of scorching fire ignited deep within his numb eyes.

A microscopic crack appeared on the Shackle of the Soul on his forehead.

A stream of pure power, belonging to himself, returned for one second.

His palm "inadvertently" brushed over an extremely concealed valve beneath the pipeline.

It was a safety valve, a security mechanism designed to be impossible to turn from the outside.

But at this moment, a burst of extremely exquisite, clever force bypassed layers of Restriction and gently nudged the core metal shaft inside the valve.

Click.

A sound so faint it was almost inaudible.

After completing this, the crack in the shackle on his forehead healed, and his power receded like a tide.

He returned to being that numb porter, continuing his work as if nothing had happened.

...

Geng-7 Mining Area.

A prisoner with a physique as burly as a mountain was swinging a mining pick.

He was a descendant of the Battle-Crazy clan, born with the ability to resonate with the earth.

The signal arrived.

Flames of revenge ignited in his eyes, and his power returned for an instant.

The mining pick in his hand did not strike the rock wall but instead, at an extremely tricky angle, smashed fiercely into the ground beneath his feet.

A vibrating force did not explode upward but was guided by his racial talent deep into the ground, precisely transmitted to a pre-calculated structural node.

...

Smelting Workshop.

Formation Great Master.

Prison Area.

Assassination Grandmaster.

In this instant, the seventy-plus Xin Huo Members distributed in every corner of the base, like parts of a precision machine activated simultaneously, used their power, which had only been restored for one second, to complete the final piece of the puzzle that was enough to detonate everything.

Central energy hub.

The Artifact Refining Great Master had walked less than ten steps away.

BOOM—!!!

The massive energy pipeline behind him emitted a dull, deafening sound without any warning.

Immediately after, the entire pipeline, like a balloon inflated to its limit, exploded with a bang.

A destructive storm of raw energy transformed into a visible shockwave, sweeping crazily in all directions.

"Alarm! Alarm! Energy pipeline in Zone A ruptured!"

"An explosion has occurred!"

The piercing sound of the alarm instantly resounded throughout the entire base.

But this was only the beginning.

In Geng-7 Mining Area, the underground vibration triggered by that Battle-Crazy clan member collided precisely with the shockwave of the energy explosion at the pre-set node.

Hum—

The ground of the entire Mining Area sank abruptly.

All the Restriction Formations used to suppress the prisoners failed collectively for 0.3 seconds at this moment.

"The Restriction is gone!"

"Charge!"

The despair that had been suppressed for countless years turned into the wildest ferocity at this moment.

Thousands of prisoners, like wild beasts breaking out of cages, roared and charged at the stunned Gray Armored Soldiers.

The chain reaction was officially ignited.

A riot in one Mining Area instantly ignited a dozen others.

The explosion of the energy pipeline caused the energy supply of the defense System to be interrupted.

The lower area of the entire Tomb of the Epoch was in complete Chaos.

...

"Trash!"

On the base's highest command platform, a commander wearing silver armor with a single horn on his head smashed his fist into the alloy console in front of him, leaving a deep dent.

He looked at the red alarm areas lighting up on the screen, the muscles on his face twisted in rage.

"A bunch of trash whose Souls have been drained can actually start a riot?"

"Connect me to the 'Purge' authorization!"

His adjutant, a humanoid creature also with a single horn, had a look of terror on his face.

"Commander, sir, initiating 'Indiscriminate Purge' will format all slaves, our mining progress..."

"Shut up!"

The commander grabbed the adjutant by the neck and lifted him up, his scarlet eyes filled with madness.

"I want these bugs to know what true despair is."

He threw the adjutant aside and personally entered a series of complex commands into the console.

"Authorization code: K-733-Gamma."

"Initiate protocol: Indiscriminate format purge."

Beep—

A cold, emotionless electronic voice resounded in every corner of the base.

[Warning: Grid purge program initiated.]

[In thirty seconds, all areas below D-level will be formatted.]

In an instant, all the rioting prisoners froze.

A fear stemming from the instinct of life seized their hearts.

They saw the dome of the base, that "sky" composed of Chaos rules, instantly become transparent.

A huge energy grid covering all Mining Areas and slave barracks appeared out of thin air and began to descend slowly.

Wherever the light grid passed, space itself emitted groans of being unable to bear the load.

Everyone knew that once swept by that light grid, no matter who you were or whether you resisted, your existence itself would be "formatted" and reset to the most primitive particles.

In the Kindling Local Area Network, the terrified and desperate cries of the members rang out.

"Lord Kindling! What is this?"

"We can't dodge it! We're all going to die!"

Lin Fan's Clone remained curled up in the corner, trampled by the chaotic crowd, looking pathetic to the extreme.

Inside the Command Hall, the expression of Lin Fan's main body became solemn for the first time.

He watched the slowly descending light grid, feeling that rule power capable of erasing everything.

He had underestimated the other party's madness.

"System."

His voice was cold and decisive.

"With the Clone as the center, cover all areas where Xin Huo Members are located."

"Consume existence value to construct 'Absolute Rule Vacuum'."

[Warning: This operation will perform large-scale rule tampering, estimated consumption of existence value: 5.000%]

"Execute."

Lin Fan's [existence value] dropped instantly from 73.999% to 68.999%.

The huge price was exchanged for absolute control.

Just at the moment before that death light grid descended and was about to touch the ground.

In the areas where all Xin Huo Members were located, the space of several tens of meters around them underwent a distortion that could not be described in words.

It was as if those pieces of space had been temporarily "scooped out" from this Universe.

Sss—

The destructive light grid swept across the land.

Countless prisoners turned into fly ash in the light before they could even scream.

But when the light grid passed through those seventy-plus "scooped out" spaces, it passed directly through, as if there was nothing there.

The light grid passed, the land was a mess, and ninety percent of the rioting prisoners were completely erased.

And those seventy-plus Xin Huo Members were unscathed.

They stared blankly at their companions who had turned into fly ash around them, then looked at their own intact bodies. Finally, everyone's consciousness turned in unison toward the "Poor Worm" who was shivering in the corner, appearing as if he had been scared silly.

Awe, fanaticism, worship.

A god-like prestige was firmly imprinted in the heart of every Xin Huo Member at this moment.

The purge ended, and the alarm was lifted.

In the Command Hall, Lin Fan's main body ignored the notification on the System panel about the surge in loyalty of the Xin Huo Members.

In the instant he launched the global riot and caused the network Chaos, he took the opportunity to steal a piece of data.

A core structural map of the entire base.

He quickly opened the drawing, his gaze sweeping over the energy hub, the prison, and the command tower.

Finally, his gaze locked onto the most central, most heavily defended area of the entire "Tomb of the Epoch".

On the drawing, the structure there was complex and sacred, and the flow of countless energies and rules eventually gathered here.

It was not an energy hub, nor was it a command center.

It was an... altar.