The night was as black as iron, casting a heavy shadow over the Spirit City.
The roars of 100,000 people and the explosions of their Soul Skill during the day have now been completely absorbed by a deeper, thicker silence.
This silence is not tranquility, but rather a vacuum-like, heart-pounding wait left after all the noise has been removed.
Shrek Academy's headquarters.
Xiao Wu leaned against the cold wall and slowly slid down to sit on the ground.
Before her was Tang San's tightly closed door.
There was no light or sound coming through the crack in the door, as if it were not a room, but a filled-in deep well.
She raised her hand, her fingertips stopping an inch from the door, trembling slightly.
She wanted to knock on the door and ask, " Third Brother, does your hand still hurt?"
I wanted to tell him, "We won."
But the sight of his retreating figure during the day, those emotionless eyes...
Like an invisible barrier, thicker and colder than the stone wall she was leaning against,
She froze all her words deep in her throat.
In the end, she simply rested her forehead lightly against the door and closed her eyes.
Her perception, honed by Hundred-Thousand-Year Soul Beast, allowed her to "hear" the extremely faint, almost non-existent breathing behind the door.
Regular, steady, yet as cold as the undercurrent at the bottom of a frigid pool.
That wasn't the breathing of someone asleep; it was a deeper state, akin to "dormancy" or "internal strife."
At the other end of the corridor, the door to the medical room was ajar.
After treatment by the tournament's healers, everyone's injuries were mostly healed.
Dai Mubai looked down at Zhu Zhuqing's lowered eyelashes, which seemed to be covered with a very thin layer of moisture, as if evaporated by the candlelight.
He extended his uninjured right hand and gently brushed the corner of her eye with the pad of his thumb.
There were no tears, only a dry, warm expanse.
Zhu Zhuqing paused for a moment, without looking up, but instead pressed her face closer to his bandaged chest.
After a long while, she spoke in an almost inaudible voice:
He's gone.
Dai Mubai knew who "he" was.
His Adam's apple bobbed, as if he wanted to say something, but found that all words seemed pale and powerless at that moment.
In the end, he simply tightened his arms, pulling Zhu Zhuqing closer into his embrace, yet carefully, his chin resting on the top of her head.
"Hmm," he responded, his voice hoarse.
The sense of victory was diluted at this moment by a deeper unease.
They beat Dai Weisi, breaking the family's shackles, but something seemed more important.
It was quietly slipping away in that teammate who left alone, in a way that they could neither understand nor stop.
Huangdou Academy's headquarters.
There were no lights on in Chen Jieqi's room.
He stood by the window, his right hand slightly clenched, a wisp of extremely condensed holy light flowing and changing in his palm.
Sometimes Simulation the trajectory of the Clear Sky Hammer tearing through the air as it falls.
At times, it outlines the key Soul Power meridians within the Star Luo Empire Hell White Tiger's body that were "seen" by the Purple Demon Eye.
Within the silver-white Soul Ring, Sheng Hui's form was clearer than ever before, his silver-white mane moving without wind.
"Did you see clearly?" Sheng Hui's voice rang out directly.
"I see it clearly," Chen Jieqi responded in his mind.
"His 'seeing' is different from my ' Holy Light Perception '."
I sense the flow and intensity of energy, while he... sees directly through the 'structure' itself.
How is Soul Power woven, how are nodes connected, and how are weaknesses created?
Therefore, his hammer strikes not with 'force,' but with 'reason.'
" Sheng Hui's tone was unusually solemn,"
"In your words, it is the 'Tao'."
What's even more troublesome is the 'source' within him that drives all of this... I smelled the scent of ' Asura ' in that dark red Soul Ring."
" Asura?"
"An ancient deity, in charge of slaughter, judgment, and... the end."
Sheng Hui paused for a moment.
"His power is being corrupted, or rather, drawn to, by this thing, and with each use, he sinks deeper."
Your opponents tomorrow won't just be that girl Hu Liena and her team.
Chen Jieqi silently dispelled the holy light from his palm.
He turned and looked at the golden feather with burn marks on its edges on the table.
"I know," he said calmly.
"But having come this far, there's no reason to turn back."
"For the girl whose feathers you gave yourself?"
Chen Jieqi did not answer.
Very light footsteps came from outside the door and stopped at the entrance. It was Dugu Yan.
She didn't come in, nor did she speak; she simply stood silently with her back against the wall outside the door.
After a while, she gently pushed a cool water pouch under the door through the crack, then turned and left.
Chen Jieqi bent down to pick up the water bag, held it in his hand, and found the water was warm.
Spirit Hall Team, Tactical Preparation Room.
The bright lights cast long shadows of Hu Liena, Xie Yue, and Yan onto the wall.
On the huge tactical board, Chen Jieqi's image was enlarged separately.
The surrounding area is densely covered with annotations of all available battle data from the preliminaries to the present, as well as speculations about the characteristics of "Holy Light" based on today's observations.
"... In summary,"
Hu Liena tapped the paddleboard with a thin, long pointer, her voice calm and devoid of any emotion.
"His 'light' possesses extremely strong defensive and purifying properties, as well as an absolute restraint against the forces of darkness and filth that we have not yet fully understood."
"Xie Yue's Moon Blade, physical attacks might not be able to break through the first layer of his shield's defense."
"So?" Xie Yue crossed his arms, his eyes sharp.
"Therefore, the core of the tactic is not 'breaking the shield,' but 'overload.'"
Hu Liena's pointer moved toward the symbol representing fire.
"Yan, your Flame Lord, possesses the strongest sustained area-of-effect Soul Skill output in the tournament."
Within the first 30 seconds, I need you to use ' Hellfire ' to cover the entire field, not to aim for breaking through enemy defenses.
The only goal is to deplete his Soul Power by maintaining a large-scale holy light shield, forcing him to 'contract'.
She then pointed to the line connecting herself and Xie Yue:
"As he tightened his defenses and concentrated his power to deal with Yan's direct pressure, my brother and I activated our Martial Soul Fusion Skill, ' Demonic Charm '..."
It will approach the issue from the perspective of 'spirit and soul,' which is the most difficult aspect of Holy Light defense to balance.
His light energy can purify negative states, but can it withstand the impact of high-intensity flames?
"Defending against the ' Demonic Charm ' domain control remains to be seen."
Yan stared at Chen Jieqi's image on the screen, his fists clenching unconsciously.
"What if... what if he withstands it? What if his Soul Power reserves far exceed our estimates?"
Hu Liena put down her pointer, turned around, and her beautiful face remained expressionless.
"Then let's proceed with the 'final solution'."
She said, her gaze sweeping over her brother and teammates, "
Using what we prepared for the finals, we buried him in the semifinals.
His Holiness the Pope is watching, the Golden Generation... cannot lose.
Yes, for the glory of the Spirit Hall!
The Pope's Palace, the innermost secret chamber.
The dark gray mist, as if alive, slowly crawled across the stone walls and the ground, emitting a nearly silent, viscous sound.
Bibi Dong stood in front of the Rakshasa altar, with her back to the entrance.
She had removed her magnificent Pope robes and was now wearing only a simple black dress.
Her skirt was submerged in the swirling mist, as if being swallowed by the darkness, or perhaps she herself was part of that darkness.
At the center of the altar, the gray light beat slowly like a heart, each flicker causing the shadows in the secret chamber to distort and lengthen.
"... Light... I hate the light..."
A vague, hoarse thought, filled with endless malice, entered Bibi Dong's mind intermittently; it was not language, but rather fragments of emotion.
Bibi Dong slowly opened her eyes; her deep purple pupils gleamed eerily in the gray light.
"Quiet."
She spoke softly, her voice echoing in the sealed stone chamber.
That light... would make excellent firewood.
Whether it's used to ignite an even more intense darkness,
Or... as a whetstone to test the sharpness of another 'knife'.
Tang San's dark red fifth Soul Ring and the platinum-gold mark throbbing between Chen Jieqi's brows reappeared before her eyes.
Light and darkness, burning and cold, inheritance and alienation... two weapons with diametrically opposed properties.
However, they all possess the "weapons" with the potential to disrupt the existing order.
As night deepened, the lights throughout Spirit City went out one by one.
It seems they are waiting for the next day to arrive!