"I can see the core of this domain—it's right above your head, that face of the Demonic Infant!"
Clear light swirled within Yang Shining's eyes as she shouted loudly.
Instantly, a flash of blue-violet light passed through the demonic spider's eight deep-set eyes. Its vision focused on the ceiling above!
It saw a charred, infantile face staring at it with a venomous, spiteful gaze.
But in the next second, as if sensing something, the face sank into the black liquid and reappeared on the side wall. When the demonic spider's aura locked onto it again, it vanished once more, emerging from a different spot. Over and over, it evaded the demonic spider's perception.
"Damn it. Even out of control, this evil thing still retains the instinct to evade danger and seek survival."
A cold, sharp gleam flickered through Yang Shining's eyes. In that case, what could they do?
Bang bang bang!
Yang Shining hurled out a large number of micro-explosive talismans. Her beautiful, oval face was instantly illuminated by the orange-red glow of fire. One of her fair hands slipped into her collar, and from between the two warm, soft mounds, she pulled out a black crystal pendant still carrying her body heat.
She gazed at the black crystal pendant in her hand with a complicated look.
At this point, she had to prepare for the worst-case scenario...
Just then, Yang Shining was suddenly seized by a shudder of terror deep in her heart, her mind simultaneously consumed by an immense, primal fear!
She abruptly lifted her head to look at that eerie, bewitching spider silhouette amidst the web.
It was a fear without origin, without form, without foreseeable consequence—a fear utterly inexpressible and indescribable.
That sensation awakened the deepest, most ancient memories embedded in her very genes.
She felt as if she understood, viscerally, what it was like for humanity's earliest ancestors, in the age before fire and plow, to find themselves in the pitch-black heart of a primeval forest—surrounded by deathly silence, watched coldly and mercilessly by pairs of eyes brimming with menace.
And herself, powerless to resist, unable to cry for help, incapable of transmitting a sound—enveloped by a darkness as tangible as substance, even more suffocating than the deep sea, teetering on the brink of death...
Not even when she had entered that dark sewer and been surrounded by the evil domain had she felt such terror!
She stared fixedly at that spider. Every trembling cell in her body told her, without exception, that it was the source of the fear and the darkness.
"Meow..."
The Nine-Tailed Spirit Fox fared no better. It directly crossed its two snowy-white front paws over its nose, covering its eyes and trembling violently.
In that moment, the eight blue-violet eyes—like deep and unfathomable nebulae—flashed with crystalline light. Instantly, Yang Shining lost all her senses, as if she had already died.
She could not hear, could not see, could not smell, could not touch, could not taste, and could not feel—save for the fear of the unknown.
The Eternal Night had arrived. All things fell silent.
This was precisely the effect of the demonic spider's skill: The Eternal Night Descends.
However, this sense of primordial chaos did not last long.
Yang Shining's pendant floated into the air of its own accord, radiating a dazzling brilliance that actually dispelled the boundless Eternal Night!
"Hah... hah..."
Her five senses and six perceptions instantly returned. Yang Shining, like a drowning victim who had just been plunged into the abyss ten thousand meters deep a moment ago and now had fresh air, gasped for breath—urgently and gratefully, panting hard.
The mysterious, wondrous light from the pendant likewise flowed into the Nine-Tailed Spirit Fox, helping it escape the abyss of the Eternal Night.
...
While the girl and her fox felt as though they had been granted a new lease on life...
Not far away, at the center of the "Worm Hell," Bai Jie had already achieved his objective.
Through the skill·The Eternal Night Descends, the Demonic Infant's face could no longer sense Bai Jie's aura locking onto it. Oblivious to the impending doom, it even forgot to move, simply hovering stupidly in place, no more than ten meters from Bai Jie.
To ensure the Demonic Infant's face had nowhere to flee, Bai Jie had extended the range of "The Eternal Night Descends" to encompass the entirety of the "Worm Hell."
This also meant that after unleashing this area-of-effect skill, Bai Jie's spirit power had been depleted by well over half.
Combined with the "Worm Hell" relentlessly devouring his spirit power, he was on the verge of being genuinely "drained dry."
He couldn't help but marvel at how monstrous this skill was. If the "Worm Hell's" domain range had been any larger, he might have lost even the possibility of destroying its core.
His mind focused, and his killing intent solidified.
As his spirit power circulated, rippling blue-violet currents erupted wildly, then converged and concentrated into a single point—like a thousand bolts of lightning lancing down viciously upon the Demonic Infant's face.
Black blood splattered, and a miserable shriek rang out.
That bone-chilling face transformed into smoke, slowly fading from the mortal world.
"The suffering of the mortal world—better never to have come at all!"
Bai Jie could almost still hear the harrowing shrieks and painful sobs echoing in his ears. A line flashed through his mind.
The effect of "The Eternal Night Descends" also ended at this time.
Bai Jie was just about to breathe a sigh of relief when he noticed something was wrong.
"Uh... the surroundings... don't seem to have changed?"
He was dumbfounded...
The withered, yellow hands were still clawing wildly at the air. The worms kept twisting. The faces opened their mouths in silent agony.
It hadn't been destroyed in the slightest.
"What?! Why hasn't it ended?!" Yang Shining's eyes widened as she cried out in shock.
In the next second, the black liquid covering the entire sewer shook violently, as if an earthquake had struck.
"I understand now. The 'Worm Hell' drained away too much spirit power. Now that the core is destroyed, that excess spirit power is still sustaining the 'Worm Hell's' existence."
"Nyx!" Yang Shining shouted toward Bai Jie again.
"The domain is about to spiral out of control! As long as we destroy the existing evil manifestations—without spirit power to sustain them—we can get out!"
Hearing this, black lines drooped down Bai Jie's forehead.
You were the one saying that destroying the core would make things safe. And now you're slapping your own face.
Can you be a little more reliable?
More critically... my spirit power is now scraping the bottom, you know...
Just as Bai Jie was about to use Foot-Blade Cut and Razor Spider Silk—neither of which consumed spirit power—he sensed streams of pure, profound energy surging toward him through the air.
That was... spirit power!
The pink spirit fox's nine tails fluttered skyward, radiating a shimmering glow. Those invisible streams of spirit power were precisely being transmitted from those tails.
"Who'd have thought—this stinky fox also has the divine ability of a power bank."
Bai Jie was instantly delighted. In the span of a breath, his spirit power had already recovered by ten percent, and it was still rapidly climbing.
Bzzt... bzzzt bzzzt bzzzt...
The demonic spider's heart swelled with the confidence of absolute control. With a single thought, countless arcs of blue-violet electricity spread along the layer upon layer of spider webs, creeping into the "Worm Hell."
In that instant, the dense, snowy-white webs were saturated with blue-violet lightning, serving as conductive carriers, frenziedly blasting the evil entities connected to the silk.
In that very moment, the entire dark, foul environment shimmered with blue-violet radiance—as if the most disgusting urban sewer had transformed into a beautiful cosmic nebula.
But Yang Shining and the Nine-Tailed Spirit Fox weren't feeling so beautiful.
Because even though Bai Jie had deliberately held back, the arcs of electricity still fried both the girl and the fox to a charred crisp.
Yang Shining's pretty face had turned as black as coal. Her once-cute pajamas were wrecked inside and out. The pink fox's coat of pink fur had all turned jet black. Only the black crystal pendant remained unscathed.
"Cough cough..."
Yang Shining coughed violently, puffing out plumes of smoke from her mouth.