Surprise and Shock

In the snap of a finger, boundless thunder and lightning erupted from within the clouds. Intangible arcs of lightning condensed into solid form, manifesting into shapes of sabers, spears, swords, and halberds beneath an outpouring of inner malice. Stripping away all stray aftershocks, they poured sheer destruction into that dreamlike expanse of crystals. Spiritus shaping! Uniting one's own soul with the workings of the world, turning one's own spiritus into a vessel for heaven and earth's transformations, and executing the destruction of the mortal realm through one's own will! At this moment, myriad thunderous crystals materialized out of thin air between her outstretched hands. And then, from within the storm blanketing more than half the Federation, an endless, vast heavenly might descended with the torrential rain. The terrifying destructive power crowning the Twelve Virtues manifested here— Matrix: [Yingyuan], all out! All that could be seen were beams of blazing light piercing through heaven and earth in an instant, condensed and unyielding, showing no sign of collapse even as they plunged deep into the earth. No screams or wails could be heard; no blood or corpses could be seen. Thunderclaps and lightning flashes blanketed everything! In such thunderstorm weather, the Entropy path, whose destructive power was already the most exaggerated, swelled even further as a matter of course. There was no need to gather lightning or construct yin and yang; she only had to squander this destructive might at will. The humid air instantly filled with the stench of charred rot. The foul reek of ionized air and countless faint, emerald-blue arcs of electricity rippled outward in waves. It sounded as though someone was shouting something at the top of their lungs, yet nothing could be heard clearly. Writhing phantoms swiftly collapsed and scattered within the lightning, desperate to flee. Yet after exhausting every effort to break through the thunder cage, they slammed headfirst into a towering wall of stark black ink. "More, more! Keep going, keep going!" Lou Yanyue laughed wildly. Her laughter grew more shrill alongside the thunderclaps. In the communion between celestial and human, her innate nature blended with the madness of lightning—so thoroughly exhilarating. With casual flicks of her fingers, bolts of lightning fell crisscrossed like whips, crushing everything in sight to dust. And still, it wasn't enough. Even when torn to pieces, she didn't stop, continuing to grind bones and scatter ashes. Only when the last charred traces disappeared, and all the clouds within this domain were completely squeezed dry and emptied, did she stop in annoyance. She gradually descended. Stepping barefoot onto the melted, scorched soil, she spat disdainfully at the patch of burn marks. "Three old fogies put together aren't even as durable as a single Desolate Ruins. With just this pitiful bit of skill, they dare peddle their wares? If you ask me, Little Tong, you still need to train." Tong Shan sighed. He wisely refrained from asking what on earth was up with the nickname 'Little Tong,' merely nodding. "Good work." "Hey! We're all bros, what's with the courtesy?" Lou Yanyue waved her hand, stood on tiptoe, patted his shoulder, and planted her hands on her hips with a smug grin, exuding total loyalty. "Give me a call if anything comes up, ya hear!" "..." For a moment, Tong Shan looked at that clearly underage face, words dying in his throat. 'I was still more used to how you were when you were disabled. At least you were quieter back then...' "No, thank you." Facing the mint stick thrust in front of him, he waved his hand reflexively. Lou Yanyue then skillfully tore open the wrapper herself, popped it into her mouth, and began crunching loudly. "Calculating the time right now..." She pondered for a moment, then suddenly said, "That kid should have reached Kunwu by now, right?" "Yeah, he arrived yesterday. Heard he caused quite a ruckus again." Tong Shan sighed. "Tiancheng's nearly driven mad over it. They're the first of the four factions to be eliminated. If they aren't willing to swallow that, they'll probably try to stir something up." "All that talk of scheming and fighting, doesn't it just come down to life and death in the end?" Lou Yanyue scoffed. "So much manpower is being redeployed toward Longyuan right now... Once fighting breaks out again, there'll probably be some fun to watch. Yacheng hasn't been peaceful these past couple of days either, has it? Heard an Aether Celestial-Human is stirring up trouble in the shadows? Can you hold out?" "It's just a bit chaotic. Fighting chaos with chaos, that's all." Tong Shan shook his head. "A bunch of treacherous, insatiably greedy bastards. After feeding them for so many years, it's about time for a purge." "What about Lyu Yingyue?" Lou Yanyue asked casually. "I heard that vixen is coming back?" "..." Tong Shan gave her a side glance, and she glanced back without a care in the world, showing not the slightest guilt for badmouthing someone behind their back, which left Tong Shan feeling all the more helpless. After all, such was her reputation... As a subordinate, it was hard for him to correct her anyway. Since she didn't care herself, let people say what they liked. "Yeah." Tong Shan looked up toward Midtown in the northwest. "Should be in the next three or four days." Dense clouds hung overhead; the rain was endless. Midtown was nowhere to be seen, only an unending gloom. "Tell me, if I head back today, will everyone be surprised?" At this moment, on an airship slowly rising outside Midtown, Lyu Yingyue set down her teacup and asked with a smile toward her side. "Whether they'll be surprised, I don't know, but shocked for sure." The young secretary sighed, exhausted in body and mind. After suffering for so long alongside the bureau director in Midtown's mountain of paperwork and sea of meetings, struggling daily against endless meeting minutes, and frequently getting worn down by the director's habit of casually tearing up schedules... Every time Lyu Yingyue had an impromptu brainwave, his torment began; he had developed full-blown PTSD. At such a critical juncture, Lyu Yingyue had secretly departed Midtown without warning. What calculations lay behind it, he truly dared not imagine. In any case, he knew some poor wretch was definitely going to suffer through hell. Besides, things you shouldn't know or understand were best left unpondered. Even thinking about it was a crime. Even aboard the airship, work continued. It wasn't until he finally organized part of the records on his screen that he realized no one in the cabin had spoken for quite some time. Total silence. Puzzled, he looked up across from him. On the sofa, Lyu Yingyue held her teacup, quietly gazing out the window. Ever-shifting fractured light washed across that elegant, poised face, yet left no trace behind. "What are you looking at?" "Midtown, of course." Lyu Yingyue smiled faintly, looking down at the countless flickering lights outside the window. "Every time I look, I just think... it really is massive." Hearing this, the secretary curiously looked out the window, and then he, too, fell silent. Amid the dim night and the patter of light rain, everything seemed blurred, yet the lights shone all the more distinctly and brilliantly. Looking down from the heavens right now, it resembled an endless ocean. Along street after winding street, countless lights flowed silently, illuminating inner and outer reaches alike. Outlined by the illumination, everything concealed during the day grew ever clearer. Nine tiers of heavenly palaces, imposing as mountains, towered into the clouds. Even while airborne, gazing upon the myriad lights ascending straight into the heavens still imparted a sense of that lofty majesty—and indeed, of one's own insignificance. Like an ant. "Look, we are right at the giant's feet," Lyu Yingyue mused, then suddenly asked, "If you had to be a cell, what would you want to be?" "Huh?" The secretary blinked, bewildered. But noticing Lyu Yingyue's serious gaze, he thought for a moment before tentatively offering, "Uh... a platelet?" "How adorable." Lyu Yingyue smiled, leaving the secretary all the more baffled. "Then what about you, Director? A neuron? Or gray matter?" "I don't know." Lyu Yingyue shook her head without hesitation. Enjoying the secretary's speechless expression, she said slowly, "When I was young, I harbored plenty of unrealistic fantasies. But arriving at this age, all those grand ambitions have pretty much vanished. "Because I know my own nature too well, I can't even foster the slightest expectation. Scheme as I might, I can never become good medicine, yet struggling in vain, I'm unwilling to devolve into virulent poison. Turning in circles until the very end..." She thought for a moment, her smile growing even more cheerful. "If I'm not treated as a cancer cell, that counts as success." The secretary fell silent and said nothing more. Nor did he ask further. He lowered his head and resumed working. Just like that, through the drifting night rain, the airship climbed steadily, surmounting the clouds of thunder and lightning to return beneath the gaze of the stars and the bright moon. And so, it drifted into the distance. Until it was swallowed by the fiery light of an explosion. Two hours later, the Air Traffic Control Bureau issued a notice: Private airship D7660, suspected to have encountered a high-altitude thunderstorm, had lost contact. At the same time, in Liangcheng of Longyuan, someone uploaded a video captured by chance: the clouds laced with thunder and torrential rain burned searing red like a fracturing iron curtain, where some colossal behemoth seemed to loom, churning the storm and the clouds. In the end, the burning, shattered framework of an airship plummeted from within. Slowly gliding toward the earth. Amid a deafening roar, it sprayed countless flames and fragments. And prior to this, the night sky of Yacheng in Haizhou had already been illuminated by firelight. Flames atop the power plant danced fiercely in the downpour, while the city rapidly plunged into darkness. Without warning, the massive blackout began. *** In a narrow cavern among the mountains, beneath layers of covert spiritus seals, Little Niuma rested quietly in the darkness. In the rear compartment, an enormous firearm lay dismantled on a propped-up table. Parts large and small were sorted into categories across the tabletop. Some required maintenance, while others were utterly warped and damaged, fit only to be scrapped and replaced. The price of relentlessly pursuing muzzle velocity and firepower was sacrificing everything that could be sacrificed. After a single shot, the entire firearm was pushed to the brink of being scrapped. Without maintenance and repairs, it would be completely unusable. With a magnifying eyepiece wedged over his eye, Ji Jue bowed his head and meticulously polished the barrel workpiece in his hands. His hands were steady as vises, slowly and carefully cutting the rifling. Fine shavings of iron drifted down from his fingertips, piling into a small hill on the table. "Don't touch that." He warned without turning his head. A Quicksilver limb suddenly materialized behind him, whipping out to swat at An Ning's restless little hand, rescuing his bolt from imminent peril. "Stingy! Just let me see!" An Ning sprawled on the edge of the table, slowly poking her head forward as she looked over the assorted parts, still eager to try. "What's the harm in teaching me? Maybe I'll pick it up right away!" "Teach you? Sure." Ji Jue replied without hesitation, his Quicksilver limb pointing at her phone. The screen lit up abruptly as countless characters and formulas scrolled past. "This volume one of *Mechanics of Materials* is the secret lore of our lineage. I'm passing it to you today. Once you've memorized and mastered it by tomorrow, we can start on *Non-Standard Design* and *Advanced Structural Mechanics*. "Study hard and pay attention. Once I finish up here, there'll be a pop quiz. For every wrong answer, I'm confiscating one little mouse." Instantly, the White Stag academic dunce let out an uncultured wail. She was just about to say something when she saw Ji Jue's movements freeze abruptly, as if turning to stone. "Something's wrong." He lifted his head, as though straining his ears to listen. "Does it seem like... the rain is getting heavier?" Not just that. In that very moment, a distant cracking sound seemed to echo in his ears. It was so faint as to seem like an illusion, virtually indistinguishable, yet it set his spiritus instinctively surging. As if... Some glass bottle had been shattered? The gale howled on, the downpour never ceased, and the distant roar of raging landslides and mudflows remained loud. Yet for some reason, amid the chaotic clatter, a strangely familiar lingering undertone suddenly emerged. When he listened closely, the wind was shrill, the rain furious, seeming as though nothing had changed. Yet within it, a weeping wail arose with unmistakable clarity, like a choked sob. And it made everything completely different. The subtle shift he had experienced countless times surfaced once more in his perception. The moment the anomaly appeared, Ji Jue felt his spiritus become astonishingly active, like flames leaping up from smoldering firewood. So familiar. That was... corruption taint! In that instant, as fissures spread, an endless black storm erupted like a gusher from the shattered bottle, surging into the sky. Wails and laments spread through the rain, blanketing the mountains. Kunwu plunged into darkness.