Inside the black commercial van, Brother Red Chicken took out a pair of dark red gauntlets. As he slipped them on, he rolled his neck, baring his teeth in a grin. "Are those evil classes out of their minds? Do they want an all-out war? Just as well. The fight last time wasn't enough to satisfy me. Tonight, I'm going to cut loose."
Sitting across the aisle, Sun Miaomiao gazed out the window at the empty, silent streets, her brow furrowing. "Something feels off about tonight. Whether the evil classes want to provoke us or force an all-out ceasefire, there's no reason to hit hospitals, schools, and tourist spots. Striking police precincts directly would make far more sense.
"My gut tells me they're causing trouble on purpose. God knows what they're plotting."
Tianxia Guihuo nodded, then shook his head. "As long as they create chaos and disrupt order, it counts as a provocation to the authorities. Still, the evil classes are definitely up to something."
A thought suddenly struck him. "Where's Jumang?"
Everyone turned toward Guan Ya.
In the front seat, Guan Ya kept her eyes fixed on the road ahead. As a Scout, she could sense their gazes without turning around. "Don't worry about him. Head to Hudson River Park in fifteen minutes."
Though puzzled, no one pressed further. Some closed their eyes to rest, while others focused on getting into fighting form.
Guan Ya fished out her phone and called a Scholar on the support team. "Shut down all surveillance around Hudson River Park."
***
Under the quiet glow cast by downy-yellow streetlights, Zhang Yuanqing drove a commercial van toward the deserted highway along the Hudson River.
Manhattan had Hudson River Park, a place bustling during the day with tourists and sightseers. But because there were no residences or shops nearby, the riverbank grew deserted at night.
Coupled with the biting river winds after dark, even homeless people couldn't be bothered to wander over. Fighting here posed the least risk of catching ordinary people in the crossfire.
Behind him trailed another commercial van, driven by a yin corpse. The Five Elements Alliance's reinforcement team—comprising both Saints and Transcendents—totaled nearly twenty people. Even after excluding the Scholars and Musicians ill-suited for direct warfare, well over a dozen remained, far too many for a single van.
He had worried that if the performance looked too contrived, Bacchus and Hecate wouldn't take the bait. To reach the peak Saint level, the two had to possess abundant experience and cunning.
The van raced down the riverside highway, separated from the Hudson River only by a two-meter-wide green belt and a guardrail. By day, tourists loved leaning against that railing for photos as cargo ships drifted across the water.
After driving for fifteen minutes, the riverside park appeared ahead.
Suddenly, Zhang Yuanqing saw the riverside streetlights go out one by one in his rearview mirror. A dense shroud of darkness was pursuing the van, the dying lamps marking its footfalls.
Before long, the van driven by the yin corpse was swallowed by the dark, and Zhang Yuanqing lost his connection to it.
The corpse's presence had been shielded entirely, hidden even from the master who held its imprint.
*Here they come.* The corner of Zhang Yuanqing's mouth curled up. He eased off the accelerator and actively threw himself into the embrace of the dark.
A thick, deep darkness enveloped the van, dimming even its headlights.
The commercial van Zhang Yuanqing was steering suddenly lurched out of control and careened into the riverside guardrail with a loud crash. The front bumper crumpled, and the guardrail cracked.
Zhang Yuanqing pulled the handbrake, cut the engine, and shoved the door open.
Peering into the darkness behind him, he spotted a middle-aged man with a bulbous red nose, a bulging potbelly, and a full beard, walking side by side with a clean-cut youth whose face was dotted with freckles.
"Bacchus, Hecate!" Zhang Yuanqing said in a low voice.
"Oho, you recognize us." Bacchus patted his gut with a chuckle. "The second and fourth names on the Class A bounty list teaming up to hunt you down—piss your pants yet, boy?"
Hecate remarked lazily, "A top-tier item. Too bad the Five Elements Alliance team isn't here, or it would be two..."
Trailing off, he glanced toward the two empty commercial vans and frowned. "No one else?"
Why was there no one else? If the vehicles were empty, why had Jumang been driving two empty vans along the riverbank?
Both men instantly sensed that something was wrong.
Zhang Yuanqing swiftly drew his pistol, pulling the trigger repeatedly at the pair while stoking their sense of urgency.
The bullets flew into the sky, struck the asphalt, or slanted into the river, missing Bacchus and Hecate entirely. Before an Alcoholic, trajectories were naturally chaotic.
Though the bullets couldn't threaten two peak Saints, the offensive action, combined with emotional manipulation, successfully inflamed their urge to finish things quickly.
"Quit wasting words with him. There are Wind Mages patrolling overhead—kill him fast," Hecate said, reaching into empty air and pulling out a jet-black coffin.
Leaping inside, he instructed, "Guard me!"
The coffin lid slid open, and once he was inside, it snapped shut.
The next second, transparent ripples emanated from the coffin, radiating outward in concentric waves that washed over everything in the vicinity.
Zhang Yuanqing in the distance and Bacchus nearby both stumbled. A tidal wave of exhaustion slammed into them. Their eyelids felt heavy as lead, and even the strongest willpower struggled to keep them conscious.
Bacchus swayed unsteadily, forcing his eyes open. He unhooked a small tin flask from his waist, took a deep swig, and spat a fine mist toward the distant Zhang Yuanqing.
The liquor dispersed into a dense spray carrying an intoxicating, heady drunkenness.
*Thud!*
Unable to hold out any longer, Zhang Yuanqing flushed crimson. His knees buckled, and he collapsed into a dead sleep.
*Thud!*
Bacchus dropped right after him. Before losing consciousness, he chuckled softly. The moment Jumang failed to stop Hecate's slumber, the fight was already won.
After all, shouldn't three peak combat classes hunting down a standard Orderly class be a guaranteed victory?
***
Inside the dreamscape, the freckle-faced Hecate stared in astonishment at the cold, imposing Sect Master Tongtian.
"What are you doing in my dream?" Remembering the two empty vans, his expression suddenly shifted. "Wait, you..."
Sect Master Tongtian curled his lips. "Want to see a meteor shower?"
He raised his hand and snapped his fingers with a sharp *clack*.
The next instant, crimson fire blazed across the murky gray sky, and a dense shower of meteors rained down, completely blanketing Hecate.
"Traitor! You traitor!" Hecate shrieked in fury before his figure was consumed by the falling stars.
A dozen seconds later, the bombardment subsided. Zhang Yuanqing waved a hand to clear the kicked-up dust and found Hecate lying motionless on the cratered ground, fast asleep.
He wasn't dead. His consciousness had turned translucent, lingering somewhere between reality and illusion. It was this state that had shielded him from the meteor shower and kept him alive.
Zhang Yuanqing wasn't surprised. This was the passive trait of the Eternal Night class: when subjected to a fatal attack, the body and soul entered a state of void.
In that state, they were immune to all harm!
This skill couldn't be cancelled at will. It required a Spirit Realm walker of the same class to awaken them, or they had to wait until they woke up on their own.
In the latter case, the waking time was entirely unpredictable—it could take a day, several days, a year, or even longer.
Among Spirit Realm walkers, the Eternal Night class was extremely peculiar and heavily specialized. They practically abandoned offensive power to pursue a single core concept: sealing.
All their skills were derived from sealing, and forcing sleep was merely one such offshoot.
A class that abandoned every form of offense was bound to possess survival mechanisms. Having reviewed the intel on the Eternal Night class, Zhang Yuanqing had long anticipated this.
"Sleep tight, then!"
Zhang Yuanqing withdrew from the dreamscape and returned to reality, just in time to see his true body and Bacchus waking one after the other.
Bacchus blinked his eyes open, expecting Jumang to have been dispatched. Before a grin could spread across his face, he saw the figure collapsed on the other side scrambling back to his feet.
*Not dead? If he isn't dead, why did he wake up...* Bewildered, Bacchus glanced back at the black coffin.
That single glance sent a prickling chill crawling across his scalp. Inside the coffin, Hecate lay motionless, his body semi-translucent.
As a local peak Saint from the evil camp, Bacchus naturally recognized that Hecate had been forced into his passive, which was why the slumber curse had broken.
Yet just moments ago, both he and Jumang had been unconscious. Within the slumber curse's range, anyone short of a Dominator—even reinforcements from the Five Elements Alliance or Heaven's Punishment—would have instantly succumbed.
The only possibility was... Bacchus turned his gaze to Sect Master Tongtian standing beside the coffin.
Like a proper villain, Sect Master Tongtian curled his lips into a sinister grin.
"The one who should be pissing his pants is you, old boy."
With that, he threw back his head and unleashed a piercing shriek.
Mental Strike!
Bacchus felt as though a sledgehammer had slammed into his brain. Warm blood trickled from the corners of his eyes and his nostrils.
Sect Master Tongtian was a traitor—a plant placed inside the Hunter Guild by Heaven's Punishment! Damn it, hadn't that little bitch Catherine thoroughly vetted him before recruiting him?!
Enduring the splitting agony in his head, Bacchus chose not to fight Sect Master Tongtian and Jumang. He wheeled around and bolted toward the Hudson River.
Killing two peak Saints in short order was impossible, especially with a mole among their ranks. Elite operatives from Heaven's Punishment were likely lying in ambush nearby.
"You aren't going anywhere." Zhang Yuanqing pulled the Night Box from his inventory and popped it open, releasing the darkness within to thicken the shroud around them.
Next, he brought out the long-unused matchbox, struck a match, and made a wish against the pea-sized flame: "I wish for the seal of the Night Box to be flawless and unassailable!"
The flame flared brilliantly before burning out in a flash. The wish had taken effect.
From this moment on, the barrier of the Night Box functioned like an absolute rule. Beneath the Dominator level, no one could break it.
Bacchus found his path blocked by impenetrable darkness. He tried using his "loophole" ability to twist the rules and escape the restriction, only to find the barrier solid and flawless, leaving no cracks to exploit.
This was precisely Zhang Yuanqing's goal. Alcoholics excelled at exploiting loopholes and could warp rules to a degree; a Saint-grade Night Box alone would have struggled to contain him.
Reinforced by the matchbox, however, the barrier of night became unbreachable.
"I don't have much time," Zhang Yuanqing smiled. "Whatever trump cards you've got, use them now, or I'm afraid you won't get another chance."
Bacchus fell silent for a few seconds, then let out a heavy sigh. "I didn't want to drag us both down, but if you're begging for death, I'll grant it. Even if Heaven's Punishment surrounds and guns me down today, so be it."
With that, he pulled a vividly multicolored oil painting from his inventory. The scene on the canvas was twisted and chaotic: a river drifted in the sky, clouds were plastered to the ground, the sun and starry heavens hung from tree branches, and human-like figures walked upside down...
This was Bacchus's ultimate trump card—an item of Dominator quality.
As one of the strongest Saints beneath the Dominator rank, surpassing even the likes of Osmond and Hoover, he might have lacked the power to slay a Dominator, but he possessed a genuine Dominator-tier item.
Without mastering Dominator-level strength, how else could he stand among the very peak of the Saint stage?
The colors within the oil painting tore free of the frame, spraying outward in every direction. Intense pigments stained the ground, the green belt, the sky, and the surface of the Hudson River, bleeding outward at terrifying speed.
Soon, reality turned into an oil painting, and the inverted, warped imagery manifested in the real world.
"Holy crap..."
The avatar barely managed a curse before his body distorted bizarrely. His hands and feet swapped places, his head relocated between his legs, and his buttocks appeared on his chest.
The internal organs inside him underwent a similar transposition.
With a heavy thud, he hit the ground. His pupils went dull and lifeless as all signs of vitality vanished, and his form dissolved away.
"Huh?"
Bacchus felt not the slightest bit of joy, only astonishment. Sect Master Tongtian being killed by a Dominator item was well within his expectations, but what followed his death was completely unforeseen.
Under such circumstances, it could only mean that Sect Master Tongtian wasn't a real person!
In an instant, countless possibilities flashed through Bacchus's mind. He whipped around toward Jumang, only for his vision to be filled by a figure clad in purple-gold armor, wearing a matching purple-gold visor.
Every inch of his body was covered in armor.
"Who doesn't have a couple of Dominator items?" Jumang's soft chuckle filtered through the visor.
The Dominator-grade armor had absorbed the reality-warping inversion of the oil painting for him.
Right after, Bacchus saw the enemy pull a short blade with contrasting black and white faces from his inventory. Before he could react, the armor-clad foe threw back his head and let loose a shrieking wail.
Bacchus's head buzzed violently, as though struck by lightning, and warm blood sprayed from his nose once more.
*He... why does he know Illusionist skills? Isn't he a Beast King? Sect Master Tongtian wasn't the main body—he is?!* In his muddled daze, Bacchus still grasped the truth.
Even so, he couldn't comprehend how an evil class could possibly infiltrate Heaven's Punishment.
Without hesitation, Zhang Yuanqing triggered his Soul Steal skill, coating the short blade in dark light. Raising a hand, he made a clawing motion toward Bacchus, dragging out a translucent phantom before chopping down with full force.
Already reeling from the mental strike, Bacchus suffered another catastrophic blow to his soul, half of his spirit body instantly reduced to ashes.
His abilities—distorting perception, inducing motor ataxia—fell like clay oxen into the sea, unable to leave any mark on his opponent.
Bacchus let out an agonizing, bloodcurdling scream. The agony of his soul's annihilation caused his brain to crash completely, plunging him into unconsciousness.
Zhang Yuanqing used Star Escape, vanishing and reappearing behind him. Flipping the blade to its white face, he drove it straight into the man's back, piercing his heart.
Bacchus's body shriveled rapidly as the essence of his flesh and blood was devoured by the Form and Spirit Annihilation Blade, reducing him to a desiccated corpse in an instant.
At their stage, relying purely on intrinsic strength would have dragged a duel into a prolonged, bitter battle. Deciding life and death was harder still; even if one couldn't win, they could usually rely on rich experience and class traits to slip away.
With Dominator items involved, however, determining life and death became simple.
Sect Master Tongtian could be obliterated in one hit, and so could Bacchus.
Such was the chasm between a Dominator and a Saint.
Zhang Yuanqing yanked out the short blade, and Bacchus's corpse collapsed alongside the oil painting in his hand.
Paying no heed to the body, Zhang Yuanqing quickly snatched the painting into his inventory, then hurried over to the coffin. Time was running short. While the Night Box masked sounds, presences, and images, a patch of deep darkness capable of swallowing streetlight glow was an anomaly in itself.
The moment a Wind Mage cast their gaze here, they would spot an area of pitch black outside Hudson River Park that even the Eye of the Wind King couldn't penetrate, and they would immediately recognize it as the handiwork of the Eternal Night class.
Right now, Wind Mages were bound to be patrolling the vicinity of Manhattan.
He had to figure out how to handle Hecate. Otherwise, once the Wind Mages arrived, they would take custody of him, exposing Sect Master Tongtian as a double agent.
*With Hecate in this state, I have no way to kill him. If I can't finish him off...*
Zhang Yuanqing frowned, studying the person inside the coffin. After a few seconds of thought, an idea struck him.
If he couldn't silence him permanently, he would just take him away!
As for how to move an untouchable Hecate, Zhang Yuanqing noticed that while the man was in a void state, he remained resting inside the coffin without falling through the bottom.
The coffin seemed capable of holding the physical form of an Eternal Night class.
With that in mind, he bent down, picked up the lid, and fitted it snugly over the coffin, then tried lifting the whole thing.
Hecate's body didn't fall through; it remained inside.
He tried storing the coffin in his inventory, but the attempt failed.
The inventory didn't accept living people.
Thus, Zhang Yuanqing took out Little Red Riding Hood and gave it a shake, releasing Commandery Princess Yinyao. "Take this coffin and travel by water. Find an uninhabited spot, hide it well, and await my word."
He pulled out the Yin-Yang Robe and tossed it to her.
Obediently putting on the robe, Commandery Princess Yinyao hoisted the coffin onto her shoulder, leaped into the Hudson River, and vanished beneath the rolling waves.
Zhang Yuanqing waited quietly for a moment. Only when the ripples on the surface smoothed out did he retrieve the Night Box, dispersing the curtain of night so the princess could slip away safely under the river.
*Whoosh...*
The moment the night receded, the whistling of air currents echoed from the sky. Several Wind Mages, riding fierce gusts, descended upon the battlefield.
Chapter 700