92: Chapter 92 The Holy Source Descends, the Rancher Enters the Scene

Bai Cang walked toward the tsunami.

The rain parted around him.

Not because of nature.

But because of some extremely precise water-based rule stripping it away, drop by drop, from his path.

With every step forward, the accumulated water beneath his feet automatically formed a transparent line.

That line extended from the abandoned freight station to the port.

Then it pierced into the churning East Sea.

It was like a needle, so slender it could break at any moment, forcefully stabbing into that wall of black sea pressing toward Linhai City.

The next second.

Bai Cang raised his hand.

His fingers curled in a void grip.

The very crest of the East Sea stalled for a moment.

Just a moment.

As fleeting as a dying man's hallucination.

But in that instant, the piercing disaster sirens over Linhai seemed to have their throats gripped by an invisible hand, choking for a beat.

The steel cables on the port cranes stopped swaying.

The water on the airport runway stopped flowing.

The crowds running through the streets even subconsciously looked up at the sea for a split second.

As if death itself had been held back by its hem.

A bloody gash split open on Bai Cang's forehead.

The blood washed away by the rain as soon as it flowed out.

His face turned paler, but he laughed instead.

"Damn, I'm literally working overtime with my life!"

As his words fell, his trench coat snapped in the wind.

That wasn't wind.

It was the backlash of the rules.

He was using the power of an S-rank Awakened of the water element to forcibly contain the entire sea area stirred up by a Half-King level Strange Tales.

Every second felt like grinding his own Soul in a mill.

In the distance.

The Mirage of the Sea Kingdom lowered its gaze.

In that illusory city suspended above the East Sea, countless windows lit up simultaneously.

Each high-rise building was like a tomb.

Each window was like an eye.

It was as if an entire city of people drowned years ago had opened their eyes at the same time, looking at the human who dared to block the descent of the Sea Kingdom.

Yomi Boy stood on the roof of an abandoned cold-chain truck, clapping and laughing.

"Block it, then!"

"Bai Cang, don't you like doing stress tests on the world?"

"Now it's your turn to be tested!"

He laughed so hard his shoulders shook.

Black water seeped from the tattered schoolbag on his back, and the sounds of a child crying and teeth grinding faintly emanated from within.

The Noh mask on Faceless Lady's face slowly turned into a weeping expression.

Yet, her voice was as soft as a lover's whisper.

"There are millions of people in Linhai, right?"

"Their screams will sound lovely."

The Elder of the Hundred Ghosts Night Parade covered his bleeding eye socket and grinned.

The shattered copper coins were still embedded in his socket, black blood oozing out with every rotation.

"My King will be pleased."

More black granulation crawled out from the remnant Buddha behind Inverse Buddha.

That Buddha statue, half-compassionate and half-rotting, spoke with all three faces at once.

"Fear is an offering."

The Headless Samurai held his split head, his broken blade pointing toward the Linhai urban area.

The head in his arms also revealed a stiff smile.

"This time, it's not the sinking of Neon."

"It is the Linhai of Great Xia."

Black Flames exploded under Su Jianguo's feet.

"Shut up!"

He transformed into a shadow of black fire, charging directly at Yomi Boy.

The schoolbag on Yomi Boy's back suddenly opened.

Dozens of rotting child corpses with blue-purple skin and bloated abdomens crawled out, screeching as they pounced on Night Owl.

Black Flames swept across.

The child corpses exploded instantly into white bones and black ash, like balls of burning rotten cloth.

The bones were still twitching as they hit the ground.

Yet Yomi Boy kept laughing.

"Night Owl, are you anxious?"

"You're on the gift list."

"So is your big brother."

"And that Queen, too."

When he mentioned the Queen.

Queen Elizabeth raised her hand.

Silver-white spiritual energy condensed into a scepter in her palm.

No wasted movement.

The scepter descended.

Boom!

Yomi Boy's chest collapsed on the spot, and he flew backward like a cannonball, snapping two sections of abandoned railway tracks.

The Queen retracted her glove, her tone calm.

"Child, having a loose tongue makes for poor upbringing."

Princess Evelyn stood behind her, her face pale, but she couldn't help adding a jab.

"Mother, is being polite at a time like this a bit of a hellish joke?"

The Queen didn't look back.

"The closer the apocalypse, the more one must maintain dignity."

Hearing this, Bai Cang almost suffered a backlash from the ocean waves.

His mouth twitched.

This woman was truly reliably insane.

With a Half-King level tsunami about to smash into her face, she was still insisting on royal etiquette.

On the other side.

Saintess Lin Xinglan slashed with her holy sword.

Blazing Holy Light, like a judgment descending from the sky, forcibly pushed Faceless Lady's infiltration rules back to the ground.

The mask on Faceless Lady's face cracked in several places.

She stepped back, her voice sharpening.

"Saintess, you can block me."

"But can you block the sea?"

Saintess Lin Xinglan didn't answer.

She looked at the sea surface.

Bai Cang's water line was collapsing.

That transparent water line spanning the port and the East Sea was now covered in cracks.

With every crack that appeared, a bloody gash would simultaneously explode on Bai Cang's body.

The front of the tsunami had only slowed for a few breaths.

Soon, it was pressing toward Linhai again.

His water-based rules were strong.

Strong enough to briefly drag down the tsunami.

But the Mirage of the Sea Kingdom was no ordinary natural disaster.

It had pressed the weight of an entire illusory city into the sea.

Water was no longer water.

It was death pushed forth by Half-King level rules.

Lin Wanqing raised her hand.

Golden threads shot out from her cuffs, like countless invisible strands of Holy Light, binding the incomplete Buddha body of Inverse Buddha.

She clenched her five fingers.

Crack.

The Buddha body split.

Inverse Buddha let out a painful roar.

"Former Saintess!"

"Your Saint Domain will die too!"

Lin Wanqing didn't even look at him.

Her gaze rested in the direction of the Linhai urban area.

Her home was there.

Countless others' homes were there too.

Lin Wanqing said in a low voice: "Xinglan."

Saintess Lin Xinglan turned her head.

"Master?"

"Prepare the Holy Source."

Saintess Lin Xinglan paused.

The Holy Light in her palm flickered.

"Now?"

"Now."

Saintess Lin Xinglan frowned.

"Isn't the Holy Source meant for cleaning up that thing in the reservoir?"

Lin Wanqing raised her hand, golden threads piercing through the rain curtain, forcing back the Headless Samurai who was trying to sneak attack the Queen from the side.

Her voice was steady.

"That thing in the reservoir hasn't come yet."

"The sea has already arrived."

Saintess Lin Xinglan looked at her.

"Once the Holy Source is used, the projection can only be maintained for thirty seconds."

"If we use it to block the tsunami, and the reservoir monster appears later, we have no second card to play."

Lin Wanqing said: "Then let Linhai survive these thirty seconds first."

Saintess Lin Xinglan fell silent.

The words were light.

Yet they felt as heavy as the entire city pressing on her shoulders.

The people from Neon heard the word "Holy Source," and their expressions changed simultaneously.

Tsukuyomi stood under the black moon, black blood still flowing from the crack in his right eye.

He stared at the two Saintesses, his eyes gloomy.

"The Saint Domain still has something like this?"

Executive Jiang Xu gripped his dark gold spear, blocking his path.

Half of his body was still being eroded by black spots, and dark gold patterns flickered uncontrollably under his skin.

Yet, his spear tip remained steadily pointed at Tsukuyomi.

"You'd better not move."

Tsukuyomi laughed.

"You can't stop the tsunami, and you can't stop the King's ascension."

Executive Jiang Xu raised his spear.

"But I can stop you."

Tsukuyomi's expression darkened.

Saintess Lin Xinglan took a deep breath.

She raised her right hand.

A golden crystal emerged in her palm.

The crystal was only the size of a knuckle.

Yet inside, there was a figure with closed eyes.

It wasn't a living person.

It wasn't a spirit body either.

It was more like a wisp of authority left behind by some ancient existence.

The moment it appeared, all the Strange Tales rules in the entire freight station felt like they had been pricked by a needle.

The pollution in the air was forcibly suppressed.

The mask on Faceless Lady's face made a faint cracking sound.

The copper coin fragments in the Elder of the Hundred Ghosts Night Parade's eye sockets stopped rotating.

Even the black moon behind Tsukuyomi dimmed for an instant.

The highest Foundation of the Saint Domain.

The Holy Source.

Lin Wanqing stood in front of her.

"I'll hold them off."

Saintess Lin Xinglan looked at her.

"You alone are blocking five of them?"

Lin Wanqing's sleeves hung down.

Countless golden threads fell into the rain.

Freight station.

Railway tracks.

Containers.

Cold-chain trucks.

Abandoned warehouses.

Everywhere light could reach was connected by silk threads.

She said calmly: "I am not alone."

Saintess Lin Xinglan was stunned.

Lin Wanqing looked at Bai Cang, who was struggling at the seaside.

She looked at Night Owl, who was entangled in Black Flames.

Finally, she looked at Queen Elizabeth.

"Even the love debt that traveled from afar is standing on the battlefield with its life on the line."

Upon hearing the words "love debt," the Queen's eyebrows moved slightly.

Princess Evelyn whispered: "Mother, her summary is so precise."

Bai Cang shouted from afar: "Former Saintess! Can you not spread rumors at a time like this!"

Su Jianguo also almost threw a punch in the wrong direction.

He looked at the Queen, then at Bai Cang, his mood as complicated as if he'd been fed a volume of cross-border melodramatic romance.

It seemed this "love debt" of his big brother's was truly no ordinary debt.

Lin Wanqing ignored them.

She said to Saintess Lin Xinglan: "The Saint Domain cannot be slower than them."

Saintess Lin Xinglan smiled slightly.

"Master, your departure from the Saint Domain back then was truly a loss for the Saint Domain."

Lin Wanqing said indifferently: "Less flattery, open the Holy Source."

The next second.

Saintess Lin Xinglan crushed the golden crystal.

Boom!

The sky lit up.

It wasn't lightning.

It was Holy Light falling from behind the clouds.

A massive phantom condensed over Linhai.

It had no clear facial features.

No crown.

No wings.

Only a pair of clasped hands.

Those hands reached down from the firmament, pressing against the tsunami.

Inside Linhai City, everyone looked up.

The mother clutching her child and fleeing on the street stopped in her tracks.

The old man who had cried until he lost his voice in the mall knelt on the ground.

In the school classroom, students looked through the windows, seeing that god-like phantom standing between the city and the sea.

Bai Cang looked up, his face deathly pale.

"The Saint Domain still hides things like this?"

Executive Jiang Xu looked at the phantom, his eyes sinking.

No wonder the Saint Domain dared to flip the table.

They indeed held a trump card capable of briefly shifting a disaster-level situation.

Tsukuyomi, however, laughed.

He laughed louder and louder.

"Just a projection."

"Just an echo."

"You humans always like to treat tombstones as gods."

The Mirage of the Sea Kingdom emitted a deep tremor.

That illusory city slowly crashed into the Holy Source phantom.

The Holy Light hands pressed down on the sea wall.

Boom!!!

The tsunami stopped.

The seawater at the edge of the entire city was forcefully pinned in mid-air.

The wave, like a high-rise building, could no longer advance.

The black water curled at the crest of the wave stagnated in mid-air, like a sky curtain about to collapse.

Inside Linhai City, countless people knelt on the ground.

Cries erupted.

Some called out to gods.

Some called out to the Saint Domain.

Some just held their families, saying over and over that they were still alive.

In the Investigation Bureau hall.

Chen Jianguo Chen Jianguo slumped in his chair, his lips trembling.

"It blocked it…"

But Ye Zhiwei didn't speak.

Su Yao stared at the big screen.

The color on her face didn't return.

Because she saw the hands of the Holy Source phantom splitting.

One crack.

Two cracks.

Dense cracks.

Thirty seconds.

No.

Maybe it wouldn't even last thirty seconds.

In the city of the Mirage of the Sea Kingdom, all the shadows looked up simultaneously.

They were pressed behind the glass.

They stood on the edge of the rooftops.

They turned slowly from the illusory streets.

Then, they opened their mouths at the same time.

There was no sound.

But the Holy Light began to dim.

Blood spilled from the corners of Saintess Lin Xinglan's mouth.

She knelt on one knee, desperately supporting the remaining light of the Holy Source.

Thin lines of blood flowed from all seven orifices.

Lin Wanqing's golden threads snapped one by one.

With every thread that broke, her face turned paler.

Faceless Lady suddenly shrieked.

"She can't hold it anymore!"

Yomi Boy climbed up from the railway ruins, covered in blood and filth.

"Kill her!"

The five S-rank Neon entities pounced on Saintess Lin Xinglan simultaneously.

Lin Wanqing blocked them from the front.

The golden threads formed a net.

Black Flames rolled in from the side.

The Queen's scepter descended.

Su Jianguo roared, his fist wrapped in Black Flames, smashing half of Yomi Boy's body.

"Who dares touch her!"

His roar was extremely heavy.

It was directed at the Neon Strange Tales.

It was also directed at himself.

Saintess Lin Xinglan could not have anything happen to her.

Linhai could not have anything happen to it either.

Bai Cang looked back at the seaside.

He wanted to move.

But he couldn't.

If he let go, the tsunami would immediately overwhelm the cracks in the Holy Source.

His body had already begun to turn transparent.

The edges of his arms turned into water mist, dissipating into the rain curtain bit by bit.

This was a sign of disintegration after overdrawing his water-based rules to the limit.

Bai Cang looked down at his own hands and cursed in a low voice.

"Working this overtime, and no one even files for worker's compensation."

At this moment.

Everyone was stalled.

Executive Jiang Xu was blocked by Tsukuyomi.

Lin Wanqing, Night Owl, and the Queen were entangled by the five S-ranks.

Saintess Lin Xinglan was supporting the Holy Source, bleeding from her seven orifices.

Bai Cang was supporting the sea, his body starting to turn transparent.

The cracks on the hands of the Holy Source phantom spread, as if it could shatter into a sky full of golden dust at any moment.

Tsukuyomi stood in the black rain, opening his arms.

"See that?"

"This is the limit of humanity."

"You are always sacrificing."

"Always patching holes."

"Always filling a disaster with the next life."

He looked at Linhai.

There was a morbid fanaticism in his eyes.

"But the King is different."

"The King will devour everything."

Just the moment he finished saying this sentence.

The Mirage of the Sea Kingdom suddenly stopped.

It wasn't blocked by the Holy Source.

It stopped on its own.

All the windows of the illusory city went dark simultaneously.

Those dead shadows pressed behind the glass, as if they had seen something even more terrifying, retreated in unison.

Under the sea.

A kind of feeding sound came.

Click.

Clack.

Crunch.

As if something had bitten into the Foundation of the Mirage of the Sea Kingdom.

Or like a giant beast sleeping in the deep sea, finally Awakened by the food delivered to its mouth.

Saintess Lin Xinglan raised her head.

Executive Jiang Xu turned around.

Bai Cang's expression changed.

The fanaticism on Tsukuyomi's face also froze at this moment.

In the Investigation Bureau hall.

Ye Zhiwei spoke softly.

"It's here."

Su Yao stared fixedly at the screen, her breathing almost stopping.

Above the East Sea.

The seawater parted to the sides.

Not sliced open by Holy Light.

Not pushed away by a storm.

But as if the entire ocean was afraid of the awakening of something, voluntarily giving way.

A huge scarlet eyeball opened from beneath the sea surface.

Immediately after.

A second.

A third.

The tenth.

The hundredth.

Countless scarlet eyeballs opened beneath the deep sea, densely reflecting that heaven-covering Mirage of the Sea Kingdom.

The next second.

Countless tentacles rose from the deep sea.

They wrapped around the Foundation of the Mirage of the Sea Kingdom.

Wrapped around the illusory high-rises.

Wrapped around those dead shadows reaching out from the city.

The surface of the tentacles was covered in eerie patterns, every inch seeming to devour light, devour sound, devour rules.

The sky darkened.

A mouth larger than the tsunami slowly opened beneath the sea surface.

The Mirage of the Sea Kingdom trembled for the first time.

That wasn't anger.

It was more like fear.

Tsukuyomi's pupils shrank.

"No…"

His lips trembled.

"My King…"

Bai Cang froze in place.

Su Jianguo's throat went dry.

Executive Jiang Xu gripped his dark gold spear, the abyss rules within him instinctively cowering.

Lin Wanqing looked up, a flash of undisguised terror crossing her eyes for the first time.

Su Yun's voice echoed from across the entire East Sea.

Deep.

Lazy.

And carrying a bit of dissatisfaction at having his feeding order disturbed.

"Who gave you permission…"

"To touch my ranch?"