The Decaying World

'A monster like this shouldn't be on the surface! Aren't they normally supposed to show up in space?! Help!!'

Kong Yu's strength was actually quite impressive. Even as the monster smacked her around like a rubber ball, she still had the energy to roar into their mental link.

Seeing that Kong Yu really couldn't hold on much longer, Ding Luo grew anxious and quickly came up with an excuse for Lin Hui.

"You stay here and hide. My stomach suddenly hurts... I'm going to the restroom!"

"Okay, go ahead. I'll be here. Be careful," Lin Hui said with an understanding nod.

He had known for a while that she was from the Divine Race. This was a perfect chance to finally see what she was capable of.

Without stopping to see if Lin Hui actually believed her, Ding Luo quickly crawled out from under the desk and darted out of the office.

She ran into a restroom stall, pulled the door shut, sat down on the toilet, locked the door, and leaned back.

Poof.

Her body went limp as a slender, golden-armored female figure suddenly burst forth from her chest.

Like Kong Yu, a wheel composed of white runic chains slowly spun behind her back.

Except she didn't just have one wheel; she had two, overlapping each other.

"I hope no one discovers this," Ding Luo said, glancing helplessly at her physical body. She then turned, became ethereal, and passed through the stall, the walls, and straight out of the building, charging toward the Scorpion Tail monster and Kong Yu, who had already been lured high into the sky.

She accelerated rapidly in mid-air, instantly transforming into a streak of golden light that slammed into the Scorpion Tail monster with a BOOM, breaking it in half at the waist.

'So fast...'

Lin Hui was still in the office building, and he was slightly astonished as he perceived the scene.

He had originally built his power on Body Technique and Sword Speed, so he was extremely sensitive to velocity.

By roughly calculating the distance and time, he judged that her strike velocity was at least approaching his own normal speed without using a sword technique. She had covered over a thousand kilometers in an instant.

Moreover, she didn't generate any air resistance. It was clear that, just like him, she was using a special method to eliminate airflow obstruction.

'This place really is a bit over the top. The Energy Levels are extremely high. But then again, if the Energy Levels were low, it would be impossible to suppress this world's level of human military technology.' He found it understandable after a moment of thought.

In space, distances were casually measured in light-years. If you were too slow, you couldn't even catch up to your enemy, let alone suppress human technology.

So in reality, her speed wasn't even that fast.

「High above the city.」

Ding Luo had taken over the fight with the Scorpion Tail monster, replacing Kong Yu.

A golden streak of light and a black one crossed paths at high speed, their collisions scattering clouds of black, gaseous debris and golden fragments of light.

The black debris fell to the ground, staining it in dark patches. In response, the golden fragments of light acted like living things, actively seeking out the blackened ground to purify it and restore it to its original state.

From below, Lin Hui perceived that the bodies of some unlucky people struck by the black debris would rapidly decay and mutate, transforming them into twisted, zombie-like monsters that preyed on the normal people around them.

This was clearly the so-called "pollution."

'A battle at this level is much stronger than the Heavenly Immortals from the last world... If a small city were too close, it wouldn't even be able to withstand the aftershocks and would be utterly destroyed.' Lin Hui roughly assessed the Energy Level and made a calculation.

If that Scorpion Tail monster were allowed to rampage freely, this major city of over ten million people would be destroyed and turned to ruin in less than a minute.

The battle began quickly and ended just as fast, lasting only a little over ten minutes in total.

Ding Luo herself had only been fighting for less than a minute before it was all over.

BOOM!!

A massive golden explosion turned into a sun in the sky above the city, illuminating everything.

The brilliant golden light simultaneously purified the remaining polluted humans below.

Everything returned to tranquility.

「High in the sky.」

Most of the Scorpion Tail monster's body was completely vaporized by the blast. Only its head remained, which was sent flying by the shockwave, shooting off into the distance.

Ding Luo was about to give chase, but after flying only a short distance, she saw the head crash into a forested mountain and disappear behind the trees and earth.

She hurriedly swooped down, only to find that the head had unexpectedly vanished!

SWOOSH!

Another golden-armored figure, this one appearing as a young girl, instantly appeared behind her.

"What happened? I just saw it smash into the ground here. How is it gone already?"

"I don't know," Ding Luo frowned. "But it didn't show any signs of regeneration. A monster like this only needs a few seconds to fully restore its body. They don't have much intelligence, so it's unlikely it could have planned an escape. It must have been purified by the last of my Divine Power, right?"

"That's the only possibility. Otherwise, there's no way to explain the complete lack of any activity," Kong Yu nodded.

"Forget it. Let's not worry about it. The monitoring field is active, so we'll know immediately if there's any disturbance." Ding Luo couldn't be bothered and turned to look at Kong Yu.

"How are you?"

"I'm okay. I won't die, but I'll need to go back and rest up for a while. Thanks so much this time, Luo. If it weren't for you, I would have been a goner."

"If you want to thank me, then show some sincerity. Try to handle your own assignments properly and don't make me remind you all the time," Ding Luo said, annoyed.

"Yep, yep, I get it. This one was my fault. I'll do better next time, I promise!" Kong Yu said with a grin.

"By the way, what's the situation with Xia Weizhao? She broke the rules and gave her Divine Power to her three children. That's bound to cause huge trouble, right?" Kong Yu asked, changing the subject.

"The Divine Army has already been dispatched, and the roundup has begun. It's highly unlikely the three demigods will escape. Things like this have happened before, and they usually end with the demigods being completely purged. I really don't know what she was thinking."

As they spoke, the two of them transformed into streaks of golden light and flew off into the distance.

After they left, a white light silently erupted from the ground, shot away, and vanished into the forest.

Half a minute after the white light had completely vanished, a mysterious man and woman dressed in black and wearing dark sunglasses appeared silently in the woods.

"It's gone. The test subject," the man said in a low voice.

"Someone intercepted the head ahead of time," the woman agreed.

"Forget it. It's not important. Inform the Dragon Court that next time they make a move, they need to properly estimate the defenders' strength. Tell them to stop doing things half-assed," the man said, dissatisfied.

"Yes. I'll coordinate with them."

The two turned and vanished into the forest, leaving no trace of their presence.

*

*

*

「Inside the Heart Source Demon Palace.」

A holy form of Lin Hui, made of white light, flashed into existence on the first floor of the Demon Palace.

The holy form ignored Fusheng as he turned his head, raised a hand, and tossed out a black head it was holding.

The head had become listless the moment it entered this place, its regenerative power seemingly suppressed by some kind of force.

It was now immobilized by the Demon Palace's formation, suspended motionlessly in mid-air.

"What is this?" Fusheng asked curiously.

He had never seen such a thing. It looked like a head, but at their level, external appearances were never important.

What mattered was its inner essence.

"I don't know. I caught it in the world you located for me. It's said to be capable of rapid regeneration, but its power seems to be suppressed by the formation here," Lin Hui replied.

"This thing... it looks a bit like an advanced form of the Power of Ashes..." Fusheng said thoughtfully, studying the head.

"The Power of Ashes?"

"Yes. All the various Source Calamities have higher-level manifestations from the Fusion Sect. This thing looks a lot like an advanced monster born from the Power of Ashes," Fusheng nodded.

"You said the Fusion Sect?" Lin Hui narrowed his eyes.

"Ah, yes. You didn't know? Many monsters are actually members of the Fusion Sect who lost their sanity and awareness, mutated completely, and could no longer even maintain their own form. Originally, the Source Calamities contained nothing at all..." Fusheng sighed.

Lin Hui fell silent.

His main body was still in the office building. This was just a holy form controlled by a sliver of his consciousness, sent to deliver the goods to the Demon Palace first. After all, it was an experimental specimen he had gone to great trouble to snatch at the right moment; it had to be stored properly.

"I'll leave it here for now. I'll be back to study it later." After leaving this message, Lin Hui quickly withdrew his consciousness from the holy form and returned to the office building.

Just then, Ding Luo, having already returned to her body, was coming back from the restroom. She was in the middle of crawling back under the desk where he was, butt in the air.

"How is it? Are you okay? Did the monster leave? Why is it so quiet?" Ding Luo asked, pretending she didn't know anything.

"...I think it left," Lin Hui replied, playing along with her act.

"Then... should we go out and take a look?" Ding Luo didn't want to stay under the cramped desk for another second.

After that fight, she was mentally and physically exhausted. She wanted nothing more than to go home, collapse into bed, and sleep for a very long time.

"We should be quick, then. I saw in an old documentary that this is usually when the police arrive to register survivors and take statements. It's a huge hassle that wastes a lot of time. If we're not fast, we might not be able to leave," Lin Hui said quickly.

The two of them immediately hurried downstairs, found their hover car, adjusted its altitude, and sped back home.

Many other people were doing the same. Although the number of casualties was not small, in this era, injuries could be healed and disabilities could be fixed with prosthetics if necessary. The number of people who were actually crushed to death, with no life left in them, was ultimately very small.

Besides, with attacks from supernatural monsters happening at any time and any place, everyone had long grown accustomed to this strange rhythm of sudden evacuations followed by swift returns to normal.

Soon, automated cleaning bots began to appear, hauling away the rubble from smashed buildings and the wreckage of vehicles.

The wail of police sirens grew rapidly closer.

Not long after the two of them had left, a little girl with golden hair crawled out of a wrecked truck trailer. Her face was covered in blood as she looked up with a resolute expression in the direction where the Scorpion Tail monster had appeared and fought.

"You didn't want to get your own hands dirty, so you deliberately let in a monster from the Dragon Court, trying to kill me with a borrowed knife? The Third Divine Army... I'll remember this...!"

A flash of hatred passed through her golden eyes. She turned and quickly trotted off in a certain direction.

Others might not have known, but as the sole survivor of the three demigods, she knew very well that this disaster was, in fact, a so-called "accident" manufactured by the Divine Army of the Divine Court. Their goal was to eliminate the spread of Divine Power to ordinary humans.

This "accident" coincidentally disabled the large-scale force field that had sealed off this area and maintained its safety for over a decade. And "accidentally," a Ring Level, cosmic-grade monster entered right during the small window when the field was down.

Everything was just too perfect.

Visit and read more novel to help us update chapter quickly. Thank you so much!