Under the Lunar Eclipse

She stretched out her hand and pointed towards the archway. "Come on, I'll take you in. But I can only take you to the city gate; I'm not authorized to go inside."

Yun Jingheng frowned. "Grandma, this is enough for you. I can walk the rest of the way myself."

"No."

The old woman interrupted him, her tone suddenly becoming very firm, "I must take you to the city gate."

She looked at Yun Jingheng, and in those eyes that shone brightly, unlike those of an old man, Yun Jingheng saw the same expression he had seen last night.

confirm.

Let's go.

She started walking towards the archway.

Yun Jingheng followed behind, stepping on the stone slabs trodden by her gray-white cloth shoes, keeping pace with her every step.

There were no guards under the archway.

This puzzled Yun Jingheng. The Outer Circle towns all had two guards at their gates, but this clearly more important inner city had no guards.

But he didn't have time to think about it.

Because the moment his foot crossed the line between light and shadow beneath the archway, the moment he stepped into the inner city, everything changed.

The ground began to shake.

It wasn't the violent, up-and-down shaking of an earthquake, but a low-frequency, muffled tremor coming from deep underground, as if something was turning over underground.

The tremors grew stronger and more pronounced, and the gaps in the stone pavement began to widen, with silvery-white mortar being shaken out from the gaps, like silver snakes crawling across the ground.

Yun Jingheng instinctively steadied himself, ready to summon his Martial Soul at any moment.

The old woman stopped two steps in front of him.

She didn't turn around, but leaned forward slightly, as if she were also feeling the vibrations beneath her feet.

Then Yun Jingheng heard the sound.

It didn't come from the ground; it came from afar, from the palace in the very center of the city.

It was a sound he had never heard before, not a roar, not an explosion, but a sound like a sigh, deep and long, like a breath that had been suppressed for millions of years finally finding an outlet.

The sound lasted for three seconds, then stopped.

Then, the beam of light appeared.

--The palace at the very center has an arched floor.

The entire palace floor seemed to be lifted up from below by an invisible giant hand; the stone slabs, foundation, soil—everything rose upwards at the same moment, forming a huge, arc-shaped bulge.

The bulge rose higher and higher, becoming rounder and rounder. The palace walls began to collapse in all directions, and huge stones broke off from the dome, crashing to the ground with a dull thud.

Dust and gravel flew in all directions, forming a grayish-white cloud of smoke that churned and expanded like a gray flower blooming on the ground.

Then, at the highest point of the bulge, where the smoke and dust were densest, a beam of light shot out from beneath the ground.

The light was deeper than red and darker than purple; it was like a solidified, thick, dark radiance somewhere between black and red.

A beam of light shot into the sky, tearing apart the dome, the last remaining ruins of the palace, and the clouds, shooting straight into the heavens and exploding with a deafening roar.

After the explosion, it did not dissipate, but instead transformed into a dark red halo that spread outwards from the center of the explosion in all directions.

The halo spread extremely quickly, so quickly that Yun Jingheng only had time to blink before it expanded from the very center of the city to above his head.

Then it passed by Tian Apo.

In that instant, Yun Jingheng saw Tian Apo's expression.

She was stunned.

It was a kind of stunned silence he had never seen before, not bewilderment, not fear, but more like... the emptiness that follows the shattering of one's cognition.

She turned her head and looked at Yun Jingheng.

Her lips were moving, as if she were saying something, but the sigh that had burst forth with the beam of light had turned into a continuous, low-frequency hum, and Yun Jingheng couldn't hear what she was saying.

He only caught a glimpse of her lip movements.

Two words.

Run!

When the old woman called out those two words, Yun Jingheng saw her eyes.

The pupil is changing.

The pupil, which was originally black and normal, began to emit a dark red light emanating from the center outwards.

It wasn't bloodshot eyes; it was a deeper, more subtle color change that seeped outwards from the inside of the eye, as if something was growing, spreading, and taking over inside her eyes.

Her body began to tremble, not with fear, but with an uncontrollable tremor, as if something was awakening within her.

At that moment, the old woman raised her hand, trembling, and pushed it towards Yun Jingheng.

The movement didn't seem like pushing him; it was more like pushing him outwards, using the last of his strength to push him out of the danger zone.

Then she became alienated.

The old woman's head suddenly turned at an impossible angle, not to the left or the right, but as if an invisible hand had twisted it from above, rotating it almost 180 degrees around her neck, with her face facing backward and her body facing forward.

Her mouth opened wide, to a extent that a human mouth could never open, the corners of her mouth torn to her ears, revealing jagged, blackening teeth inside.

She lunged at Yun Jingheng.

She moved so fast that the ground beneath her feet cracked, and pebbles and dust flew backward from the soles of her shoes.

Yun Jingheng reacted even faster.

The moment Tian Apo mouthed "Run!", he was already mobilizing his Soul Power.

The instant the old woman's head began to turn, his finger traced a silvery arc in the air.

A silvery-white, translucent Moon Blade, formed from pure Soul Power, took shape at his fingertips. Without hesitation or doubt, the Moon Blade precisely sliced towards the direction from which the old woman was lunging.

But he missed.

Because his body moved on its own.

It wasn't under his control; something inside his body took control.

The complete authority that had been dormant deep within his Martial Soul, which he had never truly understood, suddenly trembled.

The vibration was so faint that he almost mistook it for his own heartbeat, but the direction of the vibration was different from that of a heartbeat.

The heartbeat radiates outward from the chest cavity, while the vibrations are transmitted from the spine to the limbs.

In the instant of the tremor, he felt as if his body was being pulled back by an invisible force, shifting him to the left by less than a palm's width.

It was that one palm's distance that allowed him to dodge the old woman's attack.

The bite landed where his neck had been, and the sound of the jaws colliding was like two stones hitting each other, crisp yet dull.

Yun Jingheng's body flipped in the air, his toes touched the wall, and he used the momentum to propel himself forward, creating a distance of more than ten meters between himself and the old lady.

When he landed, the Moon Blade in his hand had vanished, replaced by his subconscious activation of his Martial Soul.

The light released by his Martial Soul in that instant illuminated the entire street. The silvery-white, pure light, like condensed moonlight, surged from his chest and spread out behind him.

The light was so bright that the old woman paused for a moment after landing, having missed her target.

Her head remained at that impossible angle, her mouth, torn to the roots of her ears, was still open, but she did not lunge forward again.

She was looking at the light emanating from Yun Jingheng.

No, she was looking at what was in the light.

Yun Jingheng did not notice the old lady's pause.

Because he saw something more, something more terrifying, something that made his scalp crawl.

On the streets, everyone is becoming alienated.

A middle-aged man carrying a shoulder pole slipped off his shoulder, causing two baskets to fall to the ground, their contents scattering everywhere.

His hands were turning black, not from the skin itself, but from beneath the skin, a dark light emanating from them, as if a black lamp was lit in his palms.

His Martial Soul seemed to be undergoing a transformation, twisting, collapsing, and reforming from a blurry mass of light and shadow into a Dark Moon, hanging heavily on his chest like a black sun about to fall.

His eyes turned blood red, his mouth opened, and he let out a low growl like a wild beast before lunging at the nearest target.

The target was a woman.

The woman's Martial Soul was also changing. Unlike the middle-aged man, her Martial Soul transformed into a crescent moon covered in cracks, from which dark golden liquid seeped. The liquid dripped onto the ground, corroding the stone slabs and creating smoking pits.

Her pupils were completely dilated, and a grayish-white membrane covered the surface of her eyeballs, beneath which were constantly writhing, dark red blood vessels.

When the middle-aged man lunged at her, she didn't dodge, but instead met him with the same frenzied speed. The two collided and instantly began to wrestle.

It wasn't fighting, it was biting.

They no longer attacked with their hands and feet, but with their teeth, their claws, and anything else they could use to tear each other apart.

Yun Jingheng's gaze passed over them and looked towards the street further away.

A taxi driver in armor stood on the side of the street. His body had swelled up, and the armor was torn, revealing muscles covered with black veins underneath.

His helmet had fallen off somewhere, revealing a face that was no longer recognizable as human. His features were distorted and misaligned, as if an invisible hand had pinched his face into a ball and then rolled it back together, but in the wrong way, with all the organs in the wrong positions.

A Blood Moon floated above his chest, its surface pulsating with Blood Moon vessels. With each pulsation, his body would twitch and then swell slightly.

He turned around and "looked" in Yun Jingheng's direction.

Yun Jingheng wasn't sure if he was being looked at, because his eyes were no longer in their original positions; one was on his forehead, and the other on his chin, and both eyes were moving, but in different directions—one to the left and the other to the right.

Both eyes froze the moment they saw Yun Jingheng.

Then he started running.

No, it's not running, it's crawling.

He landed on all fours in an impossible posture, charging madly towards Yun Jingheng on all fours like a wild beast.

Yun Jingheng's Soul Power exploded within his body, and with a push of his toes, he soared into the air.

Behind him, the old woman also restarted from her pause, her torn mouth open, letting out a hoarse, piercing scream from deep in her throat, as she lunged at him.

Above his head, the dark red halo was still spreading, having already reached the city wall from the city center, creating visible ripples above the wall before continuing to spread outwards, like a drop of ink falling into water, the ink slowly spreading outwards.

Beneath his feet, the entire city was falling.

Those who hadn't yet been affected by the aura began screaming, running, falling, getting up, and continuing to run the moment they saw the Mutant. But the aura spread much faster than they could run, and wave after wave of people were caught by the aura, then transformed within seconds, joining the frenzy.

Yun Jingheng landed on the roof of a three-story stone building, his feet on the gray tiles, and he crouched slightly.

He looked down at his hands.

The silvery-white Soul Power was still flowing from his fingertips, pure, quiet, and without any abnormality.

He was the only one who was unaffected.

Why is this happening?

Why am I the only one unaffected?

besides...

What the hell is going on?!

But he didn't have time to think about it.

The tiles beneath our feet were shaking, the entire city was trembling, and a dark red halo was spreading outward from the center, like the scythe of death, reaping the sanity of everyone layer by layer.

He took a deep breath and forced himself to calm down.

Evacuate first.

Find a safe place, figure out the situation, and then think of a solution.

He ran swiftly across the rooftops, his toes lightly touching the tiles, leaping more than ten meters to land on the roof of the next building.

He practiced urban parkour in Shrek City, but it was just for fun back then; he never imagined he would use it to escape.

"Help--ah--"

A scream came from the alley on the left, then stopped abruptly.

Yun Jingheng did not turn his head to look.

He cannot look, cannot stop, cannot think.

His feet landed on the roof of a two-story stone building, and just as he was about to jump again, he suddenly saw a familiar building.

That Teleportation House.

It was that drab building that he Tian Apo had teleported over to; half of the roof had collapsed, and large patches of plaster had peeled off the exterior walls, revealing the blackened bricks and stones underneath.

The Teleportation House door was wide open, and a heart-wrenching roar came from inside.

Yun Jingheng paused for a moment.

Then he saw someone stumble and run out of the door.

Half of his face was covered in blood, and his left eyeball had turned pure black, with the pupil and iris completely fused together, like a hollowed-out artificial gemstone.

His right hand was bent at an impossible angle, the bone piercing through the skin at the elbow joint, the white bone fragments exposed, but he seemed to feel no pain at all.

His other hand was frantically digging at the ground, his fingernails were all flipped up, and his fingertips were bloody and mangled.

The moment he saw Yun Jingheng, an extremely bizarre expression appeared on his distorted face, a mixture of ecstasy and fear. His mouth stretched wide, but tears streamed from his eyes.

"God... Yue Shen... Save... Save me..."

His voice was so hoarse it sounded inhuman, like sandpaper rubbing against glass.

Yun Jingheng's body stiffened.

He remembered a few minutes earlier, when this middle-aged man knelt before him, sweat and tears mingling and dripping onto the gray stone slab.

And now, this man is transforming before his very eyes.

Yun Jingheng gritted his teeth, turned around, and jumped off the roof.

We can't stop.

If it stops, it will die.

He landed on the main road outside the city gate. There were already many Mutant on the ground, scattered in twos and threes. Some were tearing at corpses, some were wandering aimlessly, and some...

They were rushing towards him.

Yun Jingheng took a deep breath, and his Soul Power surged from his dantian into his legs.

His body became light, as if an invisible hand was supporting his back, and each step he took was farther, more stable, and faster.

A Moon Blade condensed in his palm, its silvery-white light slicing through the dim air and precisely targeting the foremost Mutant.

Then, at the very last moment before it was about to hit, the Moon Blade missed.

It wasn't him who was biased; it was Moon Blade himself who was biased.

Just like when he dodged Tian Apo's lunge, his body moved slightly on its own, and the Moon Blade also shifted slightly.

A silvery-white light grazed the Mutant's shoulder, slicing off a piece of fabric and a small chunk of flesh, but without causing fatal damage.

He sensed it; his Martial Soul was protecting "them," but... why?

The Mutant didn't even feel pain and continued to pounce on him frantically.

Yun Jingheng gritted his teeth and condensed another Moon Blade.

Crescent Slash.

His first Soul Skill has never failed since the day he awakened his Martial Soul.

The silvery-white Moon Blade spun, contracted, and condensed in his palm into a small, silver crescent New Moon, its edges sharp enough to cut through steel.

He raised his hand and aimed at the Mutant's chest.

Then he saw the Mutant's face.

She was a young woman, in her early twenties, with disheveled hair and her face covered in blood, but her originally delicate features were still discernible.

A red string hung around her neck, with a small jade pendant attached to it. The pendant fluttered up and down as she ran frantically, reflecting flashes of green light.

A few minutes ago, she might have been tidying up goods in a shop on the street, discussing today's vegetable prices with her neighbors, or waiting for her husband to come home for dinner.

Now, she lunged at him, letting out a beast-like roar.

Yun Jingheng's Moon Blade hovered in his palm, unable to be swung out.

He knew he had to take action.

If he doesn't kill her, she'll kill him.

She was no longer human; her mind had been devoured by that damned dark red aura. She was now just a shell driven by madness.

He knew all of this; he was perfectly clear about it intellectually.

But he just couldn't bring himself to do it.

Because just a few minutes ago, she was still alive.

Like the guard at the town gate, like Tian Apo, like the innkeeper, like the man riding the ox and horse, they are all living, breathing people with their own names, their own stories, and people they care about and who care about them.

How could he?

Damn it!

Yun Jingheng abruptly sheathed his Moon Blade, leaned back, and dodged the woman's attack.

Her fingernails brushed against his clothes, leaving a faint mark.

After landing, Yun Jingheng did not hesitate any longer. He activated his full power and shot out like an arrow. In a few leaps, he shook off the Mutant behind him.