It was as though angels of legend had suddenly descended.
Wings of radiant light sprouted from behind those silhouettes. Their features were handsome and flawless as works of art. Clutched in their hands were swords and spears as they gave chase in a furious rush. With careless swings of their weapons, they carved deep ruts into the earth or set off impacts and explosions like artillery strikes.
On the ground, a battered convoy fled in vain, occasionally returning fire with guns or hoisting RPGs, but to no avail.
The bullets struck the angels' faces, managing at most to make them stumble.
They didn't even pierce their defenses.
It was merely a futile delay, incapable of outrunning the figures that continually swooped down from the vault of heaven.
The foremost angel dove straight down, easily tearing open the compartment where Ji Jue lay and peering inside. The instant it caught sight of Wen Wen and Ji Jue, its golden eyes snapped crimson.
—[Enemy of God], spotted!
Without a second thought, it lunged inside!
And then... it went out the exact same way it had come in.
To be precise, not quite the same.
Its head was gone.
Wen Wen threw a punch. The barging angel shattered like an egg smashing into a rock, tumbling backward out of the car.
Ji Jue could faintly see the headless, mangled corpse tumbling in the wind and crashing to the ground. Yet shockingly soon, it crawled right back up.
Its head rapidly sprouted anew.
A punch like that hadn't killed it?
Above its contorted skull, an eyeball dangling from its socket remained fixed on the direction they were fleeing, screeching at the top of its lungs to summon its kin.
"Don't let your guard down! Speed up!"
Wen Wen rapped on the cabin partition, urging the driver on before shouting into the walkie-talkie, "Everyone else scatter! I'll be the decoy! Don't go head-to-head with these things! Once you confirm you're safe, regroup at Point Four!"
Voices of acknowledgement chimed in one after another.
Across the wilderness, the ramshackle vehicles quickly scattered in every direction.
Only a scattered few remained in convoy, driving straight ahead.
"What on earth are those?" Ji Jue frowned.
"What else could they be? A pack of bliss-addicted mad dogs. Literal winged hounds."
Wen Wen's expression was grim. Accustomed as he was to her mature appearance, looking now at her youthful, somewhat tender teenage face felt jarring and strange.
Yet there were far too many bizarre things around them—Sister Wen suddenly shrunk down to a young girl, and himself reduced to a petrified, limbless stump...
In these few brief seconds, Ji Jue had checked himself once more. His blessings and matrices had completely ceased responding; no, it was as if they had never existed at all.
That made sense. In this false dream, everyone manifested purely as consciousness. Blessings and matrices couldn't be brought in here, and even the abilities he had awakened were dulled.
What was more, his own state was fractured and incomplete.
Wait. If everyone manifested as consciousness, that meant...
"They can't be killed?" Ji Jue asked in shock.
Wen Wen turned her head in surprise, not expecting him to grasp the crux of the matter so quickly.
"That's right."
She nodded with a sigh. "In here, no one can be killed... Even if you die, you just regenerate somewhere else. But sometimes, being unable to die is worse than death."
Death wasn't always frightening.
Faced with a reality of torment, ending it all in death was sometimes the simplest way to say goodbye.
Yet if one had no choice to die, one was condemned to face hell forever...
"Time—"
Amid the violent jolts, Ji Jue caught onto an even more crucial question. "How much time has passed?"
How much real time had slipped away while he was trapped in dreams for so long? And how much time had passed within this phantasm?
"Time has no meaning here."
Wen Wen shook her head wearily. "Ten years? Twenty? I can't remember at all... Oh, right, your thing. I almost forgot. I need to give this back to you."
She pulled open her collar and drew out a necklace from beneath, looping it around Ji Jue's neck.
"Thanks to this, otherwise I wouldn't have even known where you were locked up, let alone managed to rescue you."
Hanging from the slender chain was a crystal clear and translucent. Kept close to her skin for so long, it carried a familiar scent and warmth, yet right now Ji Jue felt not the slightest romantic frisson.
All he could smell was blood.
And spreading beneath her collar was crimson—blood, wounds, fractures along her arms, scorched burns, and faint traces of blackened blood winding down from her fingertips.
"No big deal. You get used to it."
Noticing his gaze, Wen Wen grinned faintly, utterly unfazed.
The small crystal touched Ji Jue's body and dissolved in an instant, vanishing from sight. Yet in that moment, Ji Jue felt an inexplicable sense of fullness and serenity.
As if his self had been replenished.
Complete once more.
—[Chunjun]!
"So this is where you were?"
Understanding dawned on Ji Jue.
As spiritus poured into his soul, a vast flood of memories returned, filling every gap that had been missing. And with his consciousness rendered whole, his broken body seemed to gradually firm up; the brittle, shatter-at-a-touch fragility stabilized, and the fissures across his face and chest began knitting closed.
Regrettably, he still could not sense any blessings.
It was, after all, the spirit of the true self born of his own soul, protecting Ji Jue's soul and consciousness around the clock with absolute vigilance.
And when necessary, it made critical decisions in Ji Jue's stead!
When Chunjun determined that it couldn't stop the pull of the Huangliang Relic, it had detached itself from Ji Jue's soul without hesitation and thrown itself toward Wen Wen.
It had even excised a portion of his critical memories to prevent any leak of intelligence, leaving Ji Jue incomplete.
Yet it was precisely because of this missing piece that, when reflected in the dream, everything became slightly off and uncanny, allowing Ji Jue to spot the flaws and awaken once more.
Otherwise, Ji Jue shuddered to think how absurd his dream would have become if the sin fiend parts and various corruption alchemy techniques had been present!
And it was by relying on the resonance between Chunjun and Ji Jue that Wen Wen had been able to track down his trail across long, wandering hardships and extend a vital helping hand.
Now, with Chunjun's return, the world in Ji Jue's perception grew increasingly clear. In moments of focused concentration, he could even see through the facade, discerning the traces of desire and spiritus circulating within this illusory bubble—and it seemed as if he could simply reach out and...
BOOM!
The earth suddenly convulsed, rippling and heaving like a wrinkled blanket.
Screams rang out.
Above the gloomy sky, the clouds shattered, and a beam of dazzling golden light beamed straight down. Everywhere it passed, it cleaved a deep chasm through the barren ground.
Effortlessly, it sliced right through the middle of the surviving convoy.
Amid horrific shrieks, one vehicle was vaporized in an instant, cutting the convoy in two. The truck at the very rear slammed frantically on the brakes, screeching to a halt on the precipice of the abyss by a hair's breadth.
Immediately after, several battered figures crawled out from it.
Before long, they were trampled beneath the feet of several descending angels. Looking down with disdain like giants, the angels drove their spears downward without mercy.
Agonized howls tore through the air, piercingly shrill.
As if putting on an intentional display for the survivors, the person impaled by the spear convulsed violently, twitching and shriveling as though hollowed out, collapsing into ashes.
And upon the ornate embellishments of the spear, a twisted face of eternal torment was added.
"Big Sis, they caught up again!"
A panicked voice came through the walkie-talkie. "We're out of fuel!"
Wen Wen was silent for a beat, then hardened her resolve. "I'll—"
"No, don't stop!"
The voice on the other end trembled. "I... I still have an exorcism wedge!"
"Ahye!" A terrified female voice cried from the driver's cab, trembling, "Wait, don't—"
"...Goodbye, Linka."
Inside the modified car following behind the lead vehicle, through the broken window, a bearded man seemed to grin, blowing a kiss toward the front.
He slammed on the brakes.
Then, the entire truck snapped in half.
The driver tumbled out, only to be yanked up by an angel. Clawed fingers clamped around his neck, tightening inch by inch. His face flushed crimson as he struggled in vain, but all of a sudden, the corners of his mouth curved up.
As if smiling.
Drawing a wooden stake hidden in his jacket, he drove it into the angel's arm. In an instant, the angel's radiance rapidly dimmed, cracks spread, and the wings on its back withered.
The angel shrieked, clawing to wrench out the stake.
Yet the driver pressed the final button.
Flames and blast erupted toward the heavens!
In an instant, the driver was blown to pieces, vaporizing like a bubble. The wounded angel was engulfed in fire, reduced to charred cinder, convulsing and twitching violently.
Yet soon, Ji Jue saw a mangled silhouette push itself upright amidst the billowing flames, finally tearing the stake from its wrist.
Flesh regrew, and its wings unfurled once more.
Crimson eyes glared fixedly at the car racing into the distance.
In the sky behind it, one, two, three—innumerable points of golden light gave relentless chase as the vanguard closed in.
A futile sacrifice had bought less than a minute.
From the driver's cab came choking sobs that could no longer be contained, beating against the steering wheel in wailing grief.
Wen Wen cast her eyes down, gritting her teeth so hard they nearly cracked.
The remaining partition panel in her grip twisted and crumpled into a ball of scrap metal.
Her mind was made up.
Finally, she glanced back at Ji Jue, nodding with a faint smile as though saying goodbye.
"Linka, don't stop," she said softly into the walkie-talkie to the girl in the cab. "Run. Take him and go. Don't worry about me."
"...Big Sis?!"
"Relax. A handful like this can't do anything to me. I'll regroup with you later."
Wen Wen rolled her wrists and offered an easy grin. "Everyone's sacrifice won't be in vain."
BOOM!
A female angel diving from above froze mid-air—its head seized in an iron grip.
Held fast.
Struggling in vain.
Even caught in an enemy's grasp, the creature showed not a speck of fear; instead, its flushed face brimmed with eager anticipation, staring hungrily at Wen Wen.
It let out an impassioned moan.
The smile on Wen Wen's face faded away, leaving only chilling detachment. "No matter how many times I see freaks like you..."
"—it makes me sick to my stomach!"
Crack!
The skull burst between tightening fingers, bone fragments and brain matter splattering. Wen Wen had already snatched the spear from its grasp.
Dragging the headless corpse behind her, she leaped from the truck.
Landing on the ground, she raised her head to stare at the flock of diving angels. The spear howled as it trembled, then snapped forward in a fierce throw.
Thunder roared as shockwaves billowed outward.
A rain of blood sprayed down as the three angels impaled along the shaft were blown to shreds, flesh and bone ground to paste.
Yet more came—though numbers made no difference!
Even without blessings, even stripped of matrices, the moment that slender, frail-looking body clenched its fists, pure, unstoppable force burst forth.
Like dry branches before a raging storm, she crushed one surrounding angel after another into dust. Any that tried to bypass her in pursuit were obliterated by hurled weapons.
She was practically like...
Superman!
Yet in that very split second, Wen Wen went flying backward.
Carving a deep ditch into the dirt, she tumbled and crashed into the rocky hillside, vomiting blood.
Across the vault of heaven, brilliant radiance flared. An ornate gateway slowly swung open. Amid blinding golden light, holy hymns resounded, followed by a mountain of a hulking silhouette stepping out from beyond the gate.
"A-A Heavenly General..."
A terrified scream burst from the walkie-talkie, steeped in hysteria and despair.
From beyond the portal, the Heavenly General's hand reached out.
A fist crashed down toward Wen Wen!
As though crushing a tiny ant.
Yet soon, she pushed herself up once again, just as she always had.
With total defiance, she hooked her finger toward the sky.
"Bring it!"
The Heavenly General's fist descended once more. A hurricane of blast waves rippled out, turning into a tide that swept across the plains, flipping countless bits of dust and weed.
Even the truck carrying Ji Jue went flying like a dead leaf, crashing, rolling over, and shattering to pieces.
Amid dizziness and pain, blackness swam across his vision.
He struggled to breathe.
Flames spread. Trapped beneath the truck bed, he couldn't move. Yet through the haze, he heard choked weeping. A hand grabbed him, dragging him along as someone stumbled out.
A voice cried unfamiliar names over and over in hoarse screams, meeting only silence.
Until finally, despair took over completely.
Tears could no longer be held back.
"It's all your fault! All because of you!"
Linka dropped Ji Jue and seized him by the collar. "Fuck, say something! Say something! Why?! Aren't you a demon?! Aren't you the Enemy of God?!
Do something useful!
Do you have any idea how many people died because of you?!" Linka wailed through her tears. "My brother, my uncle, and Ahye... they're all... every single one of them is already..."
Ji Jue said nothing.
He looked at her, his face devoid of expression.
Rather than coldness, it was utter detachment.
From beginning to end, he remained calm as stagnant water.
Crying?
Would that solve anything?
Ji Jue drew back his gaze and glanced at the angels sweeping toward them. "Instead of saving your breath to blame me, you'd better spend it on the enemy."
Linka stared blankly, wanting to scream at him but unable to find her voice.
Then, she heard the voice beside her.
"Gun," Ji Jue said. "Pick up your gun."
A gun?
Linka was almost pushed to bitter laughter. Looking down at the weapon at her waist—which served as little more than a comfort object—she could hardly restrain her fury.
Was a toy like that going to do anything?!
Yet pinned by those eyes, she froze.
They were calm and indifferent, like someone gazing at raw materials laid across a workbench. Devoid of emotion, he gave the order as a matter of fact, as if her obedience were simply natural law.
Before her mind could even catch up, her body moved on instinct.
Subconsciously, she drew the gun.
"Right. That's it. Hold onto that hatred. Hold onto that despair. Picture the people you lost—your family, your lover, your everything..."
Words like a devil's whisper drifted into her ear, carrying a serpentine chill and enchantment. They felt like unseen fingers digging brutally into an open wound, milking out more blood.
Yet within her consciousness, a black hole seemed to open up.
Her pain, sorrow, hatred, and rage were all siphoned away, drained to the very last drop.
"Very good," Ji Jue murmured softly, raising his severed arm.
For a fleeting moment in her daze, Linka thought she saw a faint, shimmering hand materialize from his broken elbow, its outline subtly shifting.
A phantom finger of spiritus lightly tapped the pistol.
A touch and release.
"Shoot," Linka heard the command.
She pulled the trigger.
And then... amidst the storm and deafening noise came a piercing roar, like thunder cast down from high heaven, shaking all across the mortal world.
The pistol disintegrated in an instant, collapsing into dust.
Blood gushed from Linka's lacerated hand, cuts running deep enough to expose bone.
Yet she had no leisure to care about such trifles.
Heaven and earth, all things, everything plunged into silence.
Dumbfounded, she lifted her head and stared, bearing witness as a dreamlike flash of light leaped from the barrel. It effortlessly pierced through the foremost angel and tilted upward into the sky,
slicing the entire world in two.
Immediately after, terrified shouts and screams erupted in rapid succession.
They couldn't comprehend what had just happened...
They couldn't believe what their eyes were seeing!
Right before everyone's gaze, the foremost angel—an immortal, indestructible messenger of the gods—froze permanently in mid-air.
Its face was locked in an expression of zealotry and a sneer.
And just like that, inch by inch, it reduced to ash!
When the breeze brushed past, the angel was gone, leaving not a trace behind.
Dead.
The exalted messenger of the Holy God, an immortal being that could neither be killed nor deterred, had actually died!
Every angel could feel it: their struck comrade had been completely annihilated, leaving no possibility of resurrection or reshaping...
As if it had never existed in this world to begin with!
In momentary stupor, the solemn, icy angels were shaken awake from their illusion of immortality. Staring once more into the face of immediate death, they were swallowed by a chill that welled up from their souls.
Like headless flies, they descended into chaos.
Some halted in terror and climbed frantically in altitude; others turned to flee without a second thought.
Only half a mangled wing of light, wrapped in crimson flame, drifted slowly down from the burning onto the ground, dissolving utterly into nothingness.
Dead silence.
Amidst the dead silence, Linka stiffly turned her head toward what lay behind her. She finally saw Ji Jue—his face, his expression.
That trace of a mocking smile.
Like a true devil sitting enthroned in hell, savoring the pathetic sight of gods tumbling from high heaven.
Laughing silently.
Chapter 498