[Alert: Host Vitality continuously decreasing]
Perhaps because the Dark Young had vanished, more nanites shifted their attack target, causing the rate of Vitality decline to accelerate again.
[460], [430], [400]
[...]
The mechanical alert voice grew louder and louder, but Bai Jie's consciousness grew hazier and hazier...
The searing pain had gone numb. He could barely hear the system's voice anymore.
In a daze, he heard Bai Huahua's call: "Sister Bai Zhi, you mustn't fall asleep."
What a pity. Dying himself was one thing, but he had even dragged Bai Huahua into this.
What an utterly, irredeemably stupid snake...
Vaguely, Bai Jie also heard several other worried voice transmissions:
"Lord Bai Zhi!"
"Lord Bai Zhi?"
"Lord Bai Zhi..."
Aside from Wang Miaoyin, who was closest, there were also Long Ge and Lin Binbin transmitting to him through the spider familiars...
Wait, there seemed to be another voice, that seemed to be...
Yang Shining?
...
"It's over."
"Yongan City's source of the anomaly is finally about to be eliminated." Jian Xin let out a heavy breath, wiped the blood off his long blade, and sheathed it on his back.
"But devoured by that many nanites, I won't even get a single hair of Bai Zhi's. My Wu Gu Clan lost so many Gu insects in vain, and of my two Gu, one is dead and the other injured." Long Bingheng said coldly.
"Enough, Elder Long. Our Secret Keeping Bureau also lost an A-rank operative. We'll give part of Bai Zhi's corpse to your Wu Gu Clan, but only if the Bureau and your clan are the only ones involved. Once the military gets involved, we can't guarantee Bai Zhi's intactness."
"As for your losses, the Federation will compensate you." Gui Yu said flatly.
Zi Chen glanced at Long Bingheng and said, "The government didn't just lose over a thousand enforcer mechanoids—even the Axe-Bearer Xing Tian is basically scrapped. Do you know how expensive a single Axe-Bearer mecha costs to manufacture?"
"Not to mention that the Heaven's Punisher's mechanical insects lost over half their numbers just to barely achieve this victory."
Long Bingheng snorted coldly and said no more.
"Wait! Look over there, Wang Miaoyin, she..." Li Wang suddenly pointed in a certain direction, his voice stunned.
Wang Miaoyin?
In this situation, what kind of waves could she still stir up?
Zi Chen looked over with doubt—
His pupils instantly dilated.
...
In an unnamed alleyway in the eastern district of Yongan City,
A man of average build with an upright posture, dressed in formal attire, walked through the alley. Strangely, his body was soaking wet, as if he had been caught in a downpour.
Thud.
He suddenly stumbled and fell to his knees.
"L-Lord Bai Zhi..."
Lin Binbin's knees were pressed against the ground, one hand supporting himself while the other carefully protected a bracelet.
His entire body trembled violently like a withered leaf, gasping heavily. His lips were pale, his teeth clenched and chattering, and beads of sweat the size of soybeans rolled down his forehead.
At this moment, a gold and a purple spider crawled out, pacing restlessly over Lin Binbin's body.
In his eyes, a blue-violet light flickered on and off. Though his face was twisted in pain, he still maintained a worried gaze toward the rear mountain within the campus.
Lord Bai Zhi... is in danger!
...
Xingchuan University, halfway up the rear mountain.
Long Ge's vision went black, his face turned deathly pale, and he collapsed to the ground at once, supported by his fellow disciples. He muttered something unintelligible under his breath.
"Long Ge? Long Ge?"
No matter how his peers called out, he couldn't regain clarity, as if possessed by an evil spirit.
At the same time,
On the rooftop of an academic building within Xingchuan University,
A mature woman in a trench coat withdrew her gaze from the rear mountain and turned to leave.
But in the next second, she suddenly halted her steps.
The pink-purple light in her eyes flared intensely. Her red lips parted slightly, her expression a mix of surprise and a trace of anger.
"It's you?"
...
"Wang Miaoyin! What on earth is going on with her?!"
Zi Chen's voice trembled, his finger pointed at that figure beside the black mist, his pupils quaking.
Gui Yu, Jian Xin, and Long Bingheng also looked toward the distant Wang Miaoyin, their gazes freezing as they held their breath.
They saw Wang Miaoyin enveloped in a crimson aura. Her red dress was tattered to shreds, the torn fabric fluttering as glimpses of spring peeked through. Her waist-length black hair, in the blink of an eye, was entirely dyed blood-red, drifting weightlessly like flames even without wind.
In those beautiful eyes, two blood moons had surfaced—cold, demonic, and enchantingly seductive.
The moderate-dose signs of mutated venom infection had completely vanished.
Not only that, the sky had thoroughly darkened. The sun set and the moon rose—this moon was blood-red, in a waxing crescent phase, radiating a strange aura, shining down upon the cold human world as if doomsday had arrived.
"Damn! Has this woman lost control? She actually looks pretty hot though..." Li Wang swallowed hard, his voice raspy.
"She is very dangerous right now," Gui Yu said with deep gravity.
"Good thing you failed to capture Wang Miaoyin back then, or killed her on the spot. Otherwise, you wouldn't have been able to handle her going out of control."
"So what?" Jian Xin shook his head. "Even if she's lost control, at most she's a Fierce-rank anomaly. Could she possibly deal with the Heaven's Punisher?"
At that moment, as if she could hear their conversation, "Wang Miaoyin" turned to look at them with profound meaning.
Her exquisitely sculpted lips curved into an intriguing, meaningful smile.
"Heh. Humans."
...
"Sister Bai Zhi!"
"Wake up!"
Within the endless darkness,
Bai Huahua's pain-filled calls kept transmitting into the demon spider's consciousness, but the latter had sunk into a state akin to half-sleep, half-dream, utterly unable to fully awaken or respond.
Suddenly, a voice of incomparable allure, soft and coy, penetrated into Bai Jie's heart, like parched terraced fields welcoming a gentle spring rain.
"Bai Zhi..."
"Awaken."
At the same time, as if influenced by this voice, Bai Jie heard a system alert:
Ding!
[Talent: Mystic Forbidden Domain awakening progress increased to 20%]
Some kind of mystical transformation occurred.
Bai Jie awoke.
The moment it awoke, it discovered that the nanites had eaten it down to nothing but half a ruined head, four blue-violet eyes, and a little snake coiled on top of that head.
Ding!
[Detected: Host has entered "Near Death" state]
Bai Jie instantly understood that in the next second, or this very instant, it could die at any moment!
But in this moment, Bai Jie's heart was incomparably calm. It was now able to face the outcome of death with equanimity, to serenely step across the abyss of death.