In an instant, everything went black before his eyes.
Countless scattered perspectives surged forward.
Inside the collapsed hospital were hollow eyes robbed of luster and spirit, fading lives, and cold corpses. Fractured walls, falling dust, and piercing screams carried in from the distance.
"Please try again, Doctor! Just one more try!"
A patient covered in tumors tugged futilely at the doctor's hem. The equally bedraggled doctor froze in place, lips trembling, and bowed his head in exhaustion, unable to voice those words.
"It doesn't matter if I die... Just, please, save her..." On the sickbed, a despairing patient used the last ounce of his strength trying to clasp his wife's hand on the adjacent bed, but he fell just out of reach.
The patient in the other bed had long since stopped breathing.
And so, he broke into agonized wails.
He met death amidst his mournful weeping.
The shrill crying echoed, yet drew no one's attention.
In the chaotic, ruined hospital, nobody even turned to look... because such sorrowful cries had already engulfed everything.
In a makeshift operating room, the lead surgeon's hands paused, and he set down his scalpel.
"Massive hemorrhage. There's no saving her. Call it."
"B-but... there are still patients..."
"We're out of medicines, out of equipment! Where's the rescue team?! Where are the supplies they promised?!"
The enraged doctor roared, eyes bloodshot as he demanded, "What am I supposed to save her with? What am I supposed to save all those patients outside with? By lying to them?
"Everyone is begging me, begging me to hold on just a little longer... I've tried my best! I've given it everything I have! But who can tell me just how much longer I have to keep up this lie?!"
No one answered. There were only faint, broken sobs.
The sound of tears dripping onto the floor.
That dim, fragmented light vanished into the dust, like a soul leaping from the edge of a cliff—reaching for the sky, only to plunge into the abyss.
Tears mingled into blood, reflecting the crimson heavens.
Flames spread. Billowing plumes of thick smoke rose like pillars, propping up the ashen sky.
The sound of falling resounded.
As if heaven and earth were tearing apart.
The world plunged into darkness, never to return.
Here, only lingering echoes remained.
***
Yacheng, torrential rain.
Ten minutes after the Chrono Ruin entered Beishan District, a speeding off-road vehicle pulled up outside the tightly cordoned-off plaza.
The moment Wen Wen leaped down from the vehicle, she looked up and saw it amidst the pouring rain: a faint, hazy vortex emerging through the heavy curtain of water.
It had already been shackled by a force field manifesting in midair.
It could advance no further.
This was the entrance to the Chrono Ruin.
Under the direction of artisans from the Security Bureau's Third Department, engineering vehicles were clearing a path to rapidly complete the evacuation, preparing to tow the bound Chrono Ruin away toward an uninhabited zone.
The worst-case scenario had been averted.
She let out a breath of relief.
"Where's the search and rescue team?"
Wen Wen waved off someone offering an umbrella and walked straight toward Tong Shan at the front. "Have they deployed yet?"
"At present, the Chrono Ruin is in lockdown. Its internal cycle has already initiated, so I'm afraid it won't reopen until it runs its course."
Standing beneath the vortex, Tong Shan let out a soft sigh. "The good news is that after inspection, the Chrono Ruin's alert level is roughly at the Metamorphosis tier. It hasn't reached Regeneration or Exaltation yet.
"What's more, A-Hua's condition is still safe; the life lock at home hasn't triggered. The Star Core Association lent a hand, and Fourth Uncle just rushed back from Chaocheng. If the life lock is tripped, he's ready to provide assistance at any moment."
"Cut the preamble."
Wen Wen knew Tianyuan's habit of softening the blow all too well. Irritably flicking her lighter open and shut, she said, "Give me the bad news straight."
"The bad news is that while the Chrono Ruin's detachment might have been an accident, its arrival in Yacheng was not."
Tong Shan finally turned around, his expression deadpan. "When its drift as a Chrono Ruin began, the Haizhou Warden had already made arrangements, and the Chuancheng Security Bureau was responsible for execution.
"Yet initially, it headed out to sea, not toward Yacheng at all. As a result, the personnel from the Ring of Taiyi and Chuancheng boarded ships and went out to sea only to find nothing.
"Midway through, it abruptly took a turn and came straight for Yacheng."
"Is there something in Yacheng attracting the Chrono Ruin?" Wen Wen frowned.
"Impossible."
Tong Shan shook his head firmly. "Attraction requires an observable 'gravitational pull' between them. Over such a vast distance, if a pull strong enough to effortlessly drag an entire drifting Chrono Ruin here had appeared in Yacheng, the Star Core Association would have sounded alarms long ago. All of Yacheng might have been temporarily converted into a Border Realm.
"According to its trajectory, it should have headed straight for the Municipal Plaza. But for some other reason, it deviated from its path and was intercepted by us on the outskirts of Beishan District."
Wen Wen's expression gradually turned cold.
"In other words... someone did this deliberately?"
Someone wanted to steer it into Yacheng, into a densely populated area, and then let it thoroughly detonate once it deteriorated... By then, at least two districts would be leveled to the ground, and half of Yacheng contaminated.
No, perhaps it wasn't just Yacheng.
"Ten minutes ago, the Chaocheng Security Bureau also sent an urgent dispatch," Tong Shan said. "Another Chrono Ruin appeared within their city limits. But with Yacheng's crisis happening first, they had prepared in advance and successfully intercepted it. However, they cannot enter the Chrono Ruin for now and must divert personnel to monitor it to ensure the worst doesn't happen.
"There's abnormal movement in Chuancheng and Jiangcheng as well. The smaller cities don't have incidents yet, but fearing total destruction, they've already begun requesting aid from the surrounding major cities.
"They're holding the lives of ordinary citizens across all of Haizhou hostage to tie down the Security Bureau's manpower... Just two incidents have thrown the entire state into widespread panic.
"Who does that kind of handiwork remind you of?"
Wen Wen said nothing. In silence, she bowed her head and took a drag of her cigarette.
The flickering ember was doused by the rain.
It was crushed and shredded between her clenched fingers, the crumbs falling into the rainwater and flowing along the churning, murky torrent into the foul darkness.
The sound of pouring rain suddenly ceased.
Leaving only dead silence.
"The Evil Transmutation Cult..."
Wen Wen's eyes were pitch-black. She looked up at the raindrops frozen and suspended midair within the Stasis Zone, letting out a voiceless sigh. "First the Dragon Cult, and now these lunatics.
"Why is it that vermin like this just never stay dead?"
***
All that had passed vanished without a trace.
After merely a brief instant, Ji Jue staggered back a step, gasping for breath.
Returning from the records of the past to the interior of the Chrono Ruin.
He raised a hand, stopping Tong Hua before she could speak.
"Back to the office first."
Once the two of them returned safely and smoothly to the office, Tong Hua watched as that bastard Ji Jue immediately latched the chain onto the door.
Next, he pulled a vial of blood from his pocket and drew the skull spiritus cage from his waist—the light in the skull's eyes was glowing green to the point of turning red, making one wonder just how much he had pocketed for himself.
Using the blood, rich in vitality and spiritus, as ink, Ji Jue dipped his fingers and began splattering it across the walls.
His fingers, enhanced in their material properties, were closer to metal. Reinforced by Masterwork Nature, he used his fingertips as chisels, carving a ring of spiritus circuits directly into the walls from left to right, top to bottom.
He didn't even spare the floor or the ceiling.
In just a few minutes, the originally clean, austere office was transformed into what looked like the clubhouse of an occult cult, dripping with blood and covered in crimson patterns.
If someone were to claim that this place was set up for a sacrificial offering to an evil god or a Vile Folly, people would probably believe it without hesitation.
"Drastic times call for drastic measures. A quick patch job will have to do."
Finished, Ji Jue dusted off his hands and placed the skull right at the nexus of the spiritus circuits. In an instant, spiritus surged and spread, sealing off the office inside and out.
For a workshop isolation ward, such a slipshod measure would be laughable, but if the goal was merely privacy and warding off prying eyes, it was more than enough.
"All right, you can talk now."
Ji Jue asked, "What else did you discover in those fragmented records?"
"This Chrono Ruin drifted over from the Quancheng Catacombs."
Tong Hua sighed, organizing the chaotic findings in her mind. "If I'm not mistaken, where we are right now was the final hospital before Quancheng was destroyed decades ago.
"Yet half a month ago, it was merely a nest harboring numerous monsters. Its Chrono Ruin transformation must have begun only recently."
"..."
Ji Jue fell silent, understanding her implication.
If this hospital had been nothing more than ruins for decades, why would it suddenly metamorphose into a Chrono Ruin? Perhaps within the environment of the Catacombs, quantitative changes had led to qualitative ones, tangling Sovereign Virtue with Vile Folly until irreconcilable contradictions and distortions arose.
But the real question was: even if it became a Chrono Ruin, why would it abruptly begin drifting and come straight to Yacheng to launch an assault right in their faces?
Even if Cousin had yanked the dungeon straight over...
How had it drifted all the way into Yacheng's territory in the first place?
Yacheng was by no means close to the ruins of Quancheng; in fact, they were practically at opposite ends of Haizhou. Instead of drifting toward Chuancheng, which was closer, or Chaocheng, which had far better access, it bypassed smaller cities like Jiangcheng and came straight for Yacheng?
Ji Jue remembered Zhao Zhou, who had dissolved before his eyes.
Wasn't he an outsourced contractor hired by the Security Bureau to patrol the perimeter of the Quancheng Ruins?
There were too many riddles, but they were far too distant from Ji Jue right now. He had no time to ponder their meaning; merely surviving inside the Chrono Ruin was already demanding everything he had.
Even now, he had only managed to secure temporary peace under the crushing pressures of hospital rules, superiors, colleagues, and patients.
As for the existence of the Lord and the core, he still didn't have a single clue.
After a moment of thought, he took the Soul-Calling Bell from his pocket.
With the surgery over, before Director Qian could come knocking again with more trouble, he had finally earned a brief respite. But that hardly meant he could rest easy.
The priority was to map out the entire hospital's layout.
Sending living people to do that was far too risky. After all, nobody knew what kind of horrors lurked in the depths of the hospital, or whether those attending physicians had territorial instincts...
He needed expendables.
*Ding—*
A crisp chime resonated through the sealed office. The blood-red spiritus circuits on the surrounding walls flashed brightly, confining the ring of the bell entirely to the room.
And then, Ji Jue began to feel glad that he had done enough prep work...
Within the previously empty office, countless spectral figures materialized one after another. Overlapping, muffled wails arose, inducing waves of dizziness.
Just inside this single office, there were already this many fragments of remnant souls.
Then, Ji Jue gave the bell a second ring. The many remnant spirits converged into the bell, winding around its clapper. And when the third ring sounded, translucent spiritus spiders the size of a finger began dropping out of the bell one by one.
At first, they were the size of a palm or a fist, but the later ones grew tinier and tinier until the last ones were the size of a fingernail, utterly unremarkable.
"Eek—"
Tong Hua instinctively pushed her chair back a bit.
Ji Jue was now surrounded by crawling, bizarre spiders of all sizes. The density alone was enough to make anyone with arachnophobia scream on the spot.
Inheriting the ferocity of the remnant spirits, the agitated spiders could barely suppress their urge to attack and devour Ji Jue's soul. Yet the moment they crawled onto his body, they recoiled frantically as though scalded by fire, desperate to keep their distance. Bound by the bell, however, they could not escape.
"Record tome."
Ji Jue reached out his hand. "Give me two pages. Ordinary ones will do, but make them stable."
Tong Hua didn't bother asking what he was up to. Taking a deep breath, she grabbed a notebook and tore out two sheets. With a surge of spiritus, a sliver of silver light briefly emerged across both pages before quickly fading away; the moment one held them, an instinctive urge to write crept into the mind.
Taking them, Ji Jue decisively tore them to shreds.
Aided by Non-Offensive's forging and the assistance of Primacy of Mind, every tiny shred retained the essence of the record tome, though their quality plummeted to the absolute limit—just a hair's breadth from useless scrap.
Then, Ji Jue raised his hand and pointed upward.
Immediately, the spiders swarmed over the fragments, gripping the scraps with their legs. They scrambled up the walls, pushed aside the gypsum ceiling tiles, slipped out through an opening in the spiritus seal, and vanished into the darkness.
Only a rustling sound like fine rain receded into the distance.
Ventilation ducts, ceilings, central air conditioning, wiring conduits... Omnipresent, the spiders scattered in all directions.
Ji Jue let out a regretful sigh.
Unfortunately, he hadn't brought his quicksilver vial inside. Without quicksilver as a medium, pure spiritus constructs had a very limited lifespan and could only be used in this crude fashion.
He had to be quick.
Constrained by his own capacity, he couldn't manually control every single spider. He could only issue vague commands, sending them in different directions to crawl through the ducts. If discovered, they were to self-destruct immediately. Before their spiritus ran out, they had to imprint their routes onto the paper scraps and deliver them to designated locations.
Half an hour later, Ji Jue rang the Soul-Calling Bell once more. This time, a slender centipede climbed out along the ceiling, soon returning with the scraps that had been stashed in the lobby's ceiling tiles.
However, only three-quarters of the paper scraps sent out were retrieved.
The rest had either been discovered, caught, or met with mishaps, failing to reach the rendezvous point.
Still, it was enough.
Relying on the retrieved scraps of the record tome and Tong Hua's deciphering, every ten minutes, the general outline and layout of the hospital's main outpatient building took shape on the paper before them.
From the seventh floor roof down to the basement mortuary and equipment rooms, only a handful of scattered areas remained blank—spots worth monitoring or probing later.
However, not a single spider sent to the inpatient building had returned.
Through the window, the flesh-covered inpatient building still resonated with wails and screams, shrill and desperate, as though they would never cease.
"We're currently on the fourth floor, Obstetrics and Gynecology, sharing the level with Dermatology and Healthcare."
Ji Jue recalled the elevator buttons and the directory board by the elevator entrance, attempting to fill in the departments he remembered. But Tong Hua clearly possessed superior memory and observational skills; swiftly, she wrote out the floor directory she had glanced at only once, labeling the side of each floor: Internal Medicine, Emergency, Surgery, Acute Care, ENT...
The hospital's main structure gradually became clear.
The first floor was entirely in ruins. A portion of the second floor was occupied by some unknown monstrosity, and the whole floor was sealed off.
Parts of the third floor still had operating departments. The fourth, fifth, sixth, and seventh floors were relatively well-preserved, with numerous departments and divisions arrayed across them.
That left only one urgent direction for further investigation...
The two exchanged a glance, instantly arriving at the same thought.
—The archives!
Chapter 159