As soon as Lingren finished speaking, a beam of light suddenly appeared on the horizon.
Solid and massive, wrapped in illusory grains of wheat, the golden beam tore through the dark red sky from the direction of the cemetery and shot straight toward the manor's perimeter.
The beam was over three meters in diameter. Liquid gold seemed to flow within it as countless plump, sacred grains of wheat spun and collided. Though they were not physical objects, they still made a rustling sound.
Where it passed, the tainted air was forcibly purified. It pierced through the dark red vortex of clouds, leaving behind a passage that had briefly returned to clarity.
Then, before anyone outside the manor could react, the beam crashed into the swarm of butterflies.
The dark green butterflies dissolved like snowflakes touching a hot iron the moment they came into contact with the golden light.
Their wings, bodies, compound eyes... every part of them disintegrated in an instant, turning into tiny golden specks that were absorbed and assimilated by the spinning grains of wheat within the beam.
Thousands of butterflies were annihilated by that single beam. The scene was magnificent and eerie, as if an invisible giant hand had wiped them away, leaving a clean, fan-shaped gap in the swarm.
At the edge of the gap, the butterflies that had narrowly escaped a direct hit beat their wings frantically, trying to flee. But the golden specks clinging to their wings spread over their bodies like a bone-deep affliction, turning them into motes of light within seconds.
The beam's attack lasted about five seconds.
When the golden light faded, only a faint scent of wheat lingered in the air, along with an unusually clean passage on the ground—purified and entirely barren.
Nearly a third of the active butterflies