Chapter 899: Chapter 899

Rodan Republic·Eren City

The dim sunlight sprinkled over the temporary tents dotting the plaza, where a tall woman dressed in professional attire stood on a nearby platform, her gaze sweeping over the tents.

A young woman with the appearance of someone from Central Earth jogged up to the platform, panting as she handed over a folder to the tall woman, "All the evacuation arrangements have been made, and the evacuation in the southern part of the Yika Republic is complete."

"Mm, were there any casualties?"

Yan Yue reached out for the folder and quickly asked as she opened it.

"Some convoys were attacked by Daybreak; there were some losses of vehicles and supplies, and about a dozen researchers from Central Earth who came to help and a few hundred people from Yika City were injured. They’re now in the temporary hospital, but no one has died."

The young woman paused briefly before answering slowly.

"Evacuation is a huge project, everyone has already done well enough. Minister He specifically sent a message before he left, saying not to expect flawless perfection; we can’t achieve that."

Yan Yue looked up again at the square in front of her, slightly relieved. She turned back and looked at the young woman, "What’s the situation in other regions?"

"The zonal system that Minister He instructed us to implement has been arranged. It’s basically set up as simple responsibility teams consisting of gendarmes + local esteemed elders + Transcendent members, integrated to the maximum extent with the original management mechanisms,"

The young woman hesitated with a bit of concern,

"However, ’calls’ from different districts are increasing, and from the data we’ve collected, these calls have already spread massively throughout the western part of the Western Lands.

"Now, everyone’s mood is not very good,"

She paused again and glanced at the array of tents below, speaking softly, "Beyond here lies the ocean, and we don’t have the means to move hundreds of millions of people out to sea in a short time."

Yan Yue closed the folder in her hands, looked at the city under the dim daylight, then took a deep breath, turned her head to look at the young man and woman beside her, and smiled, "Don’t worry, isn’t Minister He and the dean out dealing with this matter?"

After a brief hesitation, the young woman nodded gently.

She looked at the tall Yan Yue’s cheeks and was suddenly startled to find a hint of redness on Yan Yue’s fair skin.

Yan Yue noticed the young woman’s gaze as well. Her vision fell on the young woman’s reddened cheeks and she suddenly realized something, abruptly lifting her head to look at the sky.

The once cloudy sky seemed to be stripped of its brightness at this moment, dimmed down, with a blood-red light covering the entire firmament.

And in the center of this blood-red sky, a massive ’blood sun’ was quietly suspended.

Vague illusions undulated on the edges of that blood sun, like the dense and numerous tentacles covering the entire surface of the planet.

Some kind of invisible and distorted noise faintly echoed under the blood-red sky.

The crisp telephone rings started to sound intermittently throughout the city.

The young woman, noticing something off about Yan Yue’s gaze and expression, started to speak in a hoarse voice, and lifted her head to look at the sky too.

Yan Yue, called back to her senses by that whisper, lowered her head and placed her hand on the young woman’s head, "Contact each district, have them instruct everyone not to make phone calls and not to look up at the sky easily,"

Then she let go of the young woman’s head, paused as if remembering something, and immediately said, "Tell them to find an open area or higher ground nearby so they can seek shelter from earthquakes and tsunamis when they hit."

The young woman was startled by Yan Yue’s actions, but quickly came back to her senses. She looked at the city already dyed red by the bloody glow, stuttering and trembling as she nodded, then turned to leave.

By then, a somewhat more composed Yan Yue watched the woman’s retreating figure and called out softly, "If there’s anything you want to say, send a timed text message to your family."

The young woman paused, turned her head back, and nodded gently at Yan Yue, "Okay."

She quickened her pace and rushed down into the already somewhat panicked crowd.

Yan Yue took a deep breath, turned her head back, and once again looked at the rows of tents that had been dyed red by the blood-colored radiance.

She picked up her cell phone, unlocked the screen, and the last interface remained on a text message. The final message was from ’Minister He.’

[No matter what happens, remain calm.]

She took a deep breath, returned to the dialer interface, and quickly dialed a number marked ’World Tree Branch.’

Rodan Republic·Western Port

The undulating seawater violently lashed against the rocks beneath their feet. With his white hair, Rudel looked up at the blood sun in the sky, then lowered his gaze to the waves before him.

"The waves are getting higher," he said slowly into his satellite phone.

"From the information transmitted by the space telescope," the voice of Liu Zhengyun came back slowly, "the transparent planet in space has revealed its shape, completely enveloped in a blood-red illusion. It seems to be descending, and the ocean tides may have been affected by its gravitational pull."

"It looks like the blood sun contains a slight pollution; it seems that the guy is indeed descending. Does that mean we are in the final moments now?"

Rudel gazed at the sea covered in blood-red brilliance, took a deep breath, "Which means, Goya and Li Cheng, ’Hao Yi’ and the others..."

The other end of the phone fell silent, and after a moment, along with the sound of the rising and falling waves, Liu Zhengyun’s voice slowly resumed, "They might have failed."

"Let’s think differently, what if they have pushed this blood sun into a corner, and now it’s like a cornered dog jumping over the wall, trying to forcefully descend?"

A rough voice suddenly cut into the conversation over the phone— that of Wu Ganglie from the Research Institute, another B-level Transcendent.

This time, all three, both on and off the phone, fell silent for a moment.

"It is a possibility," said Liu Zhengyun after a while, taking a deep breath, "but we also have to consider the worst-case scenario. Does World Tree have some sort of ’disaster’ plan? Did they build facilities similar to underground shelters?"

"Hmm," Rudel nodded slightly, looking up at the sky, "I’ll send a message to instruct the leaders of each region to begin the evacuation..."

He stopped speaking abruptly halfway through.

At the very edge of his field of view, in the midst of the blood-red sky, beside the vast and massive blood sun, tiny and imperceptible except to high-ranking Transcendents, powerful auras began to converge.

Merely ’feeling’ that information made Rudel’s body shake uncontrollably, as if it wanted to prostrate on the ground.

The undulating waves hit the rocks with a crisp sound.

The elderly man’s somewhat hoarse voice sounded over the phone, "I’m afraid the people of the Western Lands won’t be able to run."

Relic of the Bygone Days

"What is that in the sky?"

A black tendril flashed by, and green vines emerged from the ground, entwining around the tendril. Goya, holding her magic wand, looked up at the black cracks that spanned across the starry sky.

A huge, vague, and chaotic illusion was emerging from those dark cracks.

"Is it something from outer space? A scene from outside the cracks, outside the Relic of the Bygone Days, in the true starry sky?"

Li Cheng, wielding the Thunder Spear, sliced through the controlled tendril and also looked up at the sky, speaking with a hint of confusion.

He looked at those scattered and blurry lights, frowning lightly, and somewhere in the back of his mind, he felt that the massive illusion was somewhat familiar.

"It’s the real world,"

Beside him, He Ao raised the Shadowless Sword, completely severing the controlled and dazed tendril, and spoke slowly. His gaze swept over the fluttering tendrils, "This guy is trying to forcefully descend into the real world."

With his words, the brilliance behind the crack also began to clear, revealing a huge azure-blue planet.

Li Cheng’s gaze became focused as he looked at the massive planet.

Goya seemed lost as she looked around at the disturbing tentacles, dodging past them once more. At this moment, the ground was still trembling incessantly, with countless cracks being torn open on the surface, more and more tentacles stretching out from beneath the ground and attacking them.

"If this guy had the ability to forcefully descend from the beginning, why go through all this trouble?"

"He probably didn’t have the ability to forcefully descend at the beginning,"

Li Cheng, after a brief moment of shock, came back to his senses. He withdrew his gaze from the crack in the sky and stepped back beside ’Hao Yi’ and Goya, pondering, "He must have accumulated some ’strength’ through the Blood Sun incident."

He Ao, holding the Shadowless Sword, nodded slightly,

"This ’ceremony’ allowed him to partially open the passageway to the real world to some degree, but not enough to fully descend. His original plan must have been to slowly open the passage completely through the ’ceremony,’ and then descend.

"But we destroyed the Relic of the Bygone Days, which was the core of the ceremony, causing his plan to completely fail. So now he is actually attempting to forcefully get part of his body ’squeezed’ into the real world through the passage, and then acquire strength through a blood sacrifice to complete the descent."

"’Blood sacrifice’? Does that mean the Main World is in danger?"

While tending to the wounds of both, Goya manipulated vines to block other tentacles, quickly seizing on the key term.

But as she said this, her tone paused slightly, as the ’three’ of them were nearly all severely injured, their combat effectiveness reduced to almost nothing. Even with her full healing efforts, she could only recover a little.

Dealing with one or two tentacles was feasible, but any more would be dangerous, not to mention the suspected angelic entity.

Li Cheng clearly knew this too and after a brief silence, looked towards the cracks splitting open the earth and suddenly spoke, "These tentacles seem to be extending from underground; their entity may also be down there?"

Li Cheng glanced at Andaville’s Spear in his hand.

The situation had become more urgent than before. He didn’t know what arrangements ’Hao Yi’ had made or what the intentions of Hao Yi’s ’angel companion’ were, whether they would be willing to save the real world.

From what had transpired earlier, it seemed that ’Hao Yi’ and his ’angel companion’ were not perfectly synchronized.

Hao Yi was willing to save their world, but his companion might not be.

Whatever the case, he had to be prepared for the last resort.

He Ao understood Li Cheng’s intentions by his actions.

But before He Ao could say anything, a thunderous boom erupted in the sky.

Within their field of view, the earth, the lava, the starry sky, and even the tentacles fluttering through the air all began to distort and then rapidly disappeared.

He Ao’s face changed, and he looked up at the sky.

Just as Goya was ready to capture the next tentacle, she saw it twist and contort in her field of view, then disappear as if it evaporated.

The entire world seemed to be quickly becoming empty and void.

Li Cheng also realized what was happening and looked up at the sky.

A formless, vast pressure passed through the illusory sky, spreading twisting, surging power to every corner of the world.

A massive presence coalesced in the pitch-black universe, sketching out an ineffable phantom that seemed like a cluster of twisted and converging points of light, like a writhing mechanical giant.

The phantom, with tremendous pressure, swept through every inch of the universe, and the ravings of a twisted rage echoed instantly in He Ao’s mind.

He spat out a mouthful of blood, immediately turning to look at Goya beside him, who seemed to be pinned down by a tremendous force, and with a hoarse voice, roared, "Don’t look!"

Li Cheng’s hand clutched Andaville’s Spear, which lit up with a hazy thunder light; his body trembled as he propped himself up with the spear, fresh blood clouding his eyes and trickling down his cheeks.

Goya clenched her teeth, daring not to look up as she gripped the magic wand in her hand, leaning on it to stand; a faint life power flowed into both their bodies.

Yet even so, her skin rapidly paled, and blood spilled from the corners of her mouth as if she bore some invisible heavy burden.

This same pressure was on the other He Aos and Li Cheng, bringing with it chaotic and twisted ravings, pressing on their bodies, demanding their kneeling, demanding they prostrate themselves.

Leaning on the spear, Li Cheng’s hands tightly grasped its shaft, blood mixing with saliva spilling from the corners of his mouth, and at this moment, he realized what was being sketched out in the sky.

Blood had filled his eyes, leaving his field of view pitch black.

He slowly began to speak, his voice for the first time tinged with a low huskiness, "Hao Yi, can we win?"

He Ao tightened his grip on the sword hilt, his clothes soaked with gushing blood as he raised his head to look at the shapes being outlined in the sky and huskily said, "We..."

In a blind spot to their field of view, the Velora emerged from the sky with thunderous and distorted ’explosions’ resounding within the train, as though some powerful external force was acting upon it.

He Ao himself was inside the train, looking up at the point of light and illusion sketched in the sky.

Countless worships of machinery, of the Great Being, spread through his mind.

Bloody tears streamed from the young man’s eyes, which shone with an orange-gray hue.

The Relic of the Bygone Days was a crucial part of the angel behind the scenes, so damaging the ruins was akin to seriously injuring this angel, which was why he was so eager to descend to the Main World to obtain a ’Sacrifice’ to replenish his strength.

Likewise, he knew that He Ao possessed a strength that could threaten him.

The forceful Advent to the Main World was just a facade; the Angel was sacrificing a part of its body to call upon a Great Being from beyond the endless spacetime to descend.

It aimed to directly pull the Divine Being’s gaze to the Main World!

He Ao lowered his head to gaze at the jade pendant enveloped in flickering radiance in his hand.

He gently pushed the door open and stood at the entrance, observing those points of light and illusion in the sky.

The Maiden Puppet carrying a coffin appeared beside him.

Embedded in their orange-gray inverted triangular eyes, a complete figure was sketched out in the void behind his head,

Then he raised his hand, and the Maiden Puppet took the jade pendant wrapped in hazy light into her grasp; this exquisitely sacred puppet flew into the sky, reaching the edge of this layer of the world.

The best way to stop a Descending Ceremony was to kill the Organizer before the ritual was completed.

The Angel Designation within the points of light and illusion in the sky seemed to sense something, as a vast and magnificent gaze crossed time and space to reach them.

Terrifying pressure and corruption exploded in He Ao’s mind in an instant, his breath and life rapidly weakening.

The old-fashioned train in the sky emitted creaking and groaning noises.

Standing at the train door, the young man merely closed his eyes gently, slowly raising his hand.

Fragments of broken memories surfaced in his mind.

These were the knowledge he had gained from Fragment 001 the last time he ’controlled’ it.

The Angel Puppet in the sky raised the jade pendant above her head, her eyes instantly collapsing into endless fragments.

The Eye of Truth granted sharpness, the Light of Purity imbued sanctity, the jade pendant provided strength, and with the Maiden Puppet’s Angel Designation, it mimicked the display of Mysticism sketched by Fragment 001.

An invisible hand, as vast as the sun and blotting out the skies, reached out from among the stars, synchronized with the young man’s movements.

Splendid blood gathered within that giant hand, forming into a massive, twisted, incomprehensible red Array.

He Ao’s clone watched the giant hand in the sky and smiled, his vision filled with blood as well.

Suddenly, a dazzling radiance filled the entire cosmos, piercing through the planet with a diameter of a thousand kilometers.