The roar of explosions caused the floor beneath his feet to shake violently. A fierce battle was clearly underway inside the New York County Bank building. Tuning his senses, Zhang Yuanqing felt the violent surge of spiritual energy—lightning, wind, toxic mist, chaos... It had turned entirely into a battleground for Spirit Realm walkers.
Aside from the commotion downstairs, tremors and loud booms reverberated through other areas as well, with the greatest disturbance coming from the top floor—the 108th floor.
That was where the rule-based item, the Eye of the Sky, was sealed.
Evidently, the evil faction had invaded the Heaven's Punishment branch not just to slaughter official walkers out of vengeance, but also to seize that rule-based item.
He turned his gaze toward the window and saw a thick blanket of purple mist enveloping the bank building, completely cutting off the interior from the outside world.
Walking to the window, he reached out and touched the purple haze. With a light sizzling sound, dense blisters broke out across his fingers. Seconds later, the blisters vanished, and his palm restored itself to normal.
Even with the immunity granted by his Body of the Sun and the boost from the Unyielding Will pill, blisters had still formed. The one releasing this toxic smoke was, without a doubt, a Great Monster at the Dominator stage.
Toxic mist from a Dominator had locked down the entire building.
Snap!
He snapped his fingers and stepped through into Guan Ya's room next door.
A scene of utter devastation met his eyes. Sword marks scored the walls, floor, and bed. Guan Ya's constellation plushies were partially torn to shreds, with sections coated in pale, petrified stone.
On the floor, Zhang Yuanqing found several patches of blood.
Guan Ya had been attacked in her room, and after a fierce struggle, she had fled while wounded.
The Dominator-level battle was on the top floor. Guan Ya and the others were only Saints; meddling in a clash of that caliber would be suicide, so they shouldn't be up there... With that thought, Zhang Yuanqing snapped his fingers at once, transforming into starlight and descending to the lower floors.
What greeted him below was an open-plan office that looked as if a hurricane had ripped through it. Desks and chairs lay smashed, while documents, stationery, and loose sheets of paper littered the floor. Exposed wires dangled from the wrecked ceiling, crackling with intermittent sparks.
Charred patches from lightning strikes were visible everywhere, and a faint purple haze drifted in the air.
Bodies of civilian staff lay scattered across the ground, either killed by poison or brutally butchered. Two attractive female clerks lay completely stripped of clothes, evidently having suffered horrific violations before their deaths.
Three combatants were locked in confrontation. One was an Aberrant covered in scales with the head and tail of a fish; another was a powerfully built Siren overlaid with illusory fish scales.
Facing off against them was a young man in a suit. He had sustained a piercing wound through his left shoulder and leaned against the wall in exhaustion, his right hand clutching a dazzling sphere of lightning. His expression was fierce, ready to stake his life at a moment's notice.
Notably, the puncture wound on his left shoulder oozed black blood—he was clearly poisoned.
"Just wait two more minutes, and the kid will drop dead from the venom."
"We don't have time to wait. Morality Points are back! Kill him quickly, then clear out the rest of the survivors."
The Siren and the Aberrant exchanged words. The former was wary of the Lightning Mage's dying counterattack and preferred to let the poison do its work, while the latter was unwilling to waste time.
In the Free Confederation, fallen members of the orthodox classes were by no means rare.
When the despairing young man saw starlight flare, hope initially flared in his chest, but catching sight of Zhang Yuanqing's face left him stunned. It seemed as though he had seen this face before...
The next instant, his eyes widened in sheer astonishment and shock.
After exiting the killing trial, Zhang Yuanqing had stopped using disguises, reverting to his original appearance.
"Trying another trick?" Seeing the enemy's reaction, the Aberrant snorted. The scales at the back of his head split open to sprout a bloodshot eye that peered behind him.
He saw an unfamiliar youth conjure a brilliant golden bow and arrow, aiming straight at him.
A chill ran through the Aberrant. Instinctively, he tried to dodge, yet his mind suddenly turned placid, devoid of any urgency or sense of crisis. He could only watch helplessly as the golden arrow streaked through the air, piercing clean through his heart.
The golden arrow burst into raging flames, reducing him to a scorched skeleton in an instant.
Zhang Yuanqing immediately drew the bow again, loosing an arrow that struck down the Siren under his terrified gaze.
"Y-Yuanshi Tianzun?!"
The suited Lightning Mage finally blurted out, looking as if he had seen a ghost. Then, his tone hardened with suspicion: "Who on earth are you? Why have you disguised yourself as Yuanshi Tianzun?"
Zhang Yuanqing ignored him, walking up to the two corpses as thick, dark energy surfaced around his eye sockets.
Neither corpse contained any residual soul.
Targets slain by solar divine power had their souls directly purified? Tsk, talk about domineering. The upside was that he would never have to worry about an enemy's spirit escaping in the future—both form and spirit were utterly annihilated. The downside was that he couldn't extract intelligence through Spirit Devouring... Zhang Yuanqing had only just stepped onto the path toward Lord of the Sun, and there were still many properties of solar divine power he had yet to grow accustomed to.
Left with no choice, he turned to the Lightning Mage, quietly casting an Emotional Pacification on him before retrieving the Mountain God Scepter to heal his wounds and purge the poison.
"What is the situation in the branch right now?" Zhang Yuanqing asked.
"The branch building was invaded by the evil faction. There are two Dominators among the enemy, and while we haven't counted the Saints, they brought plenty of top fighters..." The suited Lightning Mage regained his composure and rapidly delivered his report.
Once Morality Points vanished, terrorist attacks erupted across New York County—striking police stations, government buildings, banks, wealthy neighborhoods, and more.
Evil classes engaged in rampant burning, killing, and looting, while some civilian rogues fished in troubled waters.
Chief Prosecutor Winnie had led the enforcement officers out to eliminate the evil classes. Little did they expect that the moment she departed, the bank building would come under assault from the evil classes. The prosecutors stationed inside promptly activated the defensive formations and sent an emergency distress call to the field team.
Winnie had no choice but to rush back with her team, engaging the enemy in guerrilla warfare within the bank building.
"Most of the ordinary civilians in the building are dead. Very few clerical workers or Spirit Realm walkers from the branch are left alive, either." Pain and hatred twisted the young man's face. "Those bastards from the evil faction!"
"What about the members of the Five Elements Alliance?" Zhang Yuanqing asked in a deep voice.
The suited youth shook his head. "I haven't run into them. It took about ten minutes between the evil classes invading and the Chief Prosecutor returning to support us. The Five Elements Alliance members are all high-level, so they shouldn't be dead yet."
Zhang Yuanqing cast another pacification spell over him. Then, a blazing golden sun flared behind his head.
Sizzle!
The thin layer of toxic haze drifting through the office dissolved in the radiant sunlight.
With a snap of his fingers, he vanished from the office.
Zhang Yuanqing phased in and out across different floors, searching for any trace of Guan Ya and the others.
Toxic smoke permeated every corner of the building. For Aberrants, the bank building made an ideal hunting ground, but for orthodox walkers, it was a lethal trap.
Observing the aftermath along the way, the scene was just as the prosecutor had described: the white-collar workers in the bank building had fallen victim to the evil classes' rampage.
Some had mutated into abominations, wandering corridors, cubicles, and restrooms to hunt down surviving civilians.
Others had been brutally slaughtered, their blood and severed limbs staining the walls and floors red.
The attractive women had without exception suffered horrific degradation, dying stripped of clothing with wide, staring eyes. Female staff members of the Heaven's Punishment branch had been targeted with particular cruelty.
The evil classes harbored deep-seated hatred for official factions. That accumulated enmity drove them to exact vengeance on Heaven's Punishment's walkers and staff through the most sadistic means imaginable.
Zhang Yuanqing spotted several people he recognized, some of whom he had even been on good terms with, dead and mutilated, their corpses being gnawed on by mutated monsters.
After putting down a portion of the abominations and rescuing several Heaven's Punishment members who were locked in combat with evil classes, Zhang Yuanqing finally located Guan Ya and the others on the 106th floor.
In an office strewn with wreckage and corpses, Yuan Ting and Brother Red Chicken stood frozen in a corner, turned into stone statues.
Zhao Chenghuang had mutated into a massive lizard, retaining only his human head. He lay motionless on the ground, devoid of any soul fluctuations.
Sun Miaomiao, Tianxia Guihuo, and Guan Ya were soaked in blood, leaning against the wall and gasping for breath.
Around them lay scattered debris and the corpses of over a dozen evil classes and mutated creatures.
Brother Red Chicken and Yuan Ting were petrified; if more than two hours had passed, even a deity couldn't save them... Zhao Chenghuang's soul was gone... Suppressing his rising panic and agitation, Zhang Yuanqing used Star Escape to materialize beside Guan Ya.
The three exhausted figures instinctively raised their guard, but seeing Yuanshi Tianzun emerge from the starlight, pure relief and joy blossomed across Guan Ya's worn face.
Sun Miaomiao and Tianxia Guihuo's eyes lit up, brimming with the surge of hope and excitement that came from surviving a desperate situation.
"You cleared the killing trial?" His mixed-blood girlfriend forced herself upright despite a severed Achilles tendon.
Zhang Yuanqing caught Guan Ya to steady her. "Why haven't you healed yourself?"
He took out the Mountain God Scepter, activated its healing function, and asked in rapid succession, "What happened to Yuan Ting and Brother Red Chicken? Did Chenghuang... sacrifice himself?"
Sun Miaomiao rushed to explain, "Yuan Ting and Brother Red Chicken were petrified by a Great Monster. We fought desperately just to drag their bodies out. Zhao Chenghuang had his name called and mutated into a beast, but he isn't dead—I used the Ghost Mirror to draw out his spirit body."
As she spoke, she retrieved a round mirror containing Zhao Chenghuang's vacant, frozen spirit.
This Ghost Mirror was the very treasure acquired back in the First Emperor's underground palace.
Zhang Yuanqing let out a sigh of relief. "How long have they been petrified?"
"Almost an hour."
Almost an hour... Zhang Yuanqing frowned. While killing the caster could undo the petrification, there was a strict time limit. If too much time elapsed, even slaying the caster might not bring them back; it all depended on the victim's physical constitution.
Yuan Ting is a Night Wanderer with abundant vitality, and Brother Red Chicken is a Fire Master with a sturdy frame. Hopefully it's not too late! Crouching down, Zhang Yuanqing pressed his palm against Zhao Chenghuang's scale-covered chest, releasing a pure, limpid golden radiance.
The scales on Zhao Chenghuang's body peeled away at visible speed, his long tail snapped off, and his thick, distorted limbs shifted back into human hands and feet.
Before long, his human form was restored, entirely stark naked.
Yuanshi has advanced to Dominator... Complex emotions of wistfulness and envy flickered in Sun Miaomiao and Tianxia Guihuo's eyes.
From Extraordinary to Saint, they had walked the path together, but the gap had finally opened up, placing them in two different worlds.
Going from Saint to Dominator was a leap across classes.
"You've finally become a Day Wanderer," Guan Ya said, her voice filled with quiet delight.
Tianxia Guihuo took a deep breath, suppressing an envy so intense his cells practically felt like they were undergoing plasmolysis, and spoke gravely:
"The bank building has been sealed; nobody can get out. Two Dominators arrived from the evil faction, and Prosecutor Winnie is struggling to hold out on the top floor. The situation is critical.
"I heard she was already injured when she came back to reinforce the branch."
"Understood!" Wasting no more words, Zhang Yuanqing shifted into starlight and vaulted toward the 108th floor.
The moment he arrived on the 108th floor, a barrage of lightning and toxic smoke surged forward to engulf him. Peering through the dense purple haze, Zhang Yuanqing saw a Kromi Demon and a three-headed hellhound ganging up on Winnie Berrent.
Wielding a blade of lightning and maintaining an electromagnetic barrier, Winnie Berrent alternated between clashing up close with the two Great Monsters and dissolving into lightning to slip away from their converging flames, poisonous mists, and petrification rays.
At a glance, she seemed to maneuver with room to spare, but in truth, every escape was a hair's breadth from disaster. She was merely holding on by relying on the numbing shock of her lightning and her electromagnetic defense; the moment her spiritual energy ran dry, defeat and death would follow.
Zhang Yuanqing noticed slight aberrations creeping across Winnie Berrent's body. Her light-brown eyes had shifted into golden vertical pupils, fine fish scales had sprouted at the corners of her eyes, and through her torn garments, what showed was not fair, tender skin, but dark greenish sinew.
"Winnie Berrent, how about we make a deal? Hand over the key, and we'll open the barrier to let you walk out," the Kromi Demon sneered, vibrating his membranous wings as he slashed wildly with a broadsword forged of blue flames, his strikes falling like driving rain.
Every strike unleashed crisscrossing arcs of fire that slammed into the floor and walls, rattling the building's structure.
A Dominator's destructive power could effortlessly level the entire skyscraper, but they were also capable of channeling their force with pinpoint control. Naturally, thanks to the barrier enveloping the building and the defensive formations activated by Heaven's Punishment, the bank building was able to remain standing amidst a clash between three Dominators.
Shooting beams of petrification light from nearby, the three-headed hellhound gave a sinister laugh:
"If you refuse, we'll turn you into an abomination and keep you as a sex slave. Morality Points may have returned, but the Sea God Church, Merchant Guild, and Association of God of Beauty have their hands full trying to save themselves. Nobody is coming to rescue you."
Winnie Berrent remained silent, concentrating entirely on parrying her enemies' onslaught. Her expression was cold and resolute, tinged with a streak of grim finality.
The New York County branch had already lost one Dominator during the faction war, and when crisis struck the headquarters later, Chris was reassigned, leaving her as the sole Dominator in the entire branch.
The incoming Chief Executive had not yet arrived when the inexplicable disappearance of Morality Points triggered widespread chaos. Winnie Berrent was left to fight alone, and no matter how unyielding her will, a despairing death wish had begun to take root in her mind.
Just then, sensing the arrival of a powerful aura, all three combatants halted in unison and looked over.
As starlight flared, they caught sight of a young man who looked both familiar and strange.
Chapter 804