Energy Tide

Deep within the quiet chamber, the Spirit-Gathering Formation turned faintly, its cool aura barely soothing Xiang Yi's taut nerves. But this calm was as thin as paper.

In the corner, Ming Shiyin sat motionless before the floating Armillary Sphere. His gaunt fingers unconsciously stroked the slowly revolving star tracks, his brows tightly furrowed, as though he were maintaining the last fragile thread between the outpost and some invisible abyss.

A sudden change struck without warning!

Buzzz—!

A terrifying shriek that tore at souls and twisted cognition exploded within the outpost's core without warning!

The floating Armillary Sphere suddenly erupted with blinding white light! Then came the teeth-grinding screech of twisting metal! The Purple Forbidden Imperial Star representing Xiang Yi's fate star flickered madly as surging gray-black clouds of destructive energy viciously tore at it!

"Pfft—!" Ming Shiyin's eyes snapped open, and he sprayed a mouthful of scorching heart's blood onto the Armillary Sphere, where it rose in pungent black smoke. He clutched the edge of the artifact tightly, his knuckles white, his voice hoarse as a broken gong. "My lord! The dimension... is tearing! Two... transcendent powers are colliding! The aftermath... is here! Quickly... defend!" His bloodstained finger trembled as it pointed deep into the mountain.

The impact arrived!

Buzzz—! The soul-rending shriek suddenly intensified!

Every precision instrument within the outpost instantly spat sparks. Their screens went black, and the stench of burning filled the air!

The dual formations of "Cognitive Interference" and "Energy Shielding" around the outpost's outer perimeter were forcibly activated! Faint blue Xuan Weizi threads appeared in the air, weaving themselves into a massive net. But an invisible force was savagely ravaging that net! The threads stretched and twisted into sharp, grotesque shapes, as though space itself were being kneaded to pieces!

Crack! Crack-crack!

The energy-node crystals embedded in the rock walls burst one after another! Defensive runes across the walls and ceiling became covered in spiderweb cracks before dimming instantly!

"Urgh—!" Xiang Yi felt as though an invisible pair of giant pincers had clamped down on his skull, boiling his brains and turning his vision blood-red. A heavy taste of rust surged up his throat. He clenched his teeth hard enough to keep himself from screaming. Under this impact, his twelve-year-old body was as fragile as a paper boat in a storm, every bone groaning. Warm blood streamed uncontrollably from his nose and mouth. The icy sensation of rejection pressed down on his soul like the crushing pressure of a ten-thousand-ton deep sea! This frail shell was nearly grinding the will of his adult soul to pieces!

"Urgh!" Guiguzi's figure solidified amid the turbulent currents. There was nothing left of his immortal bearing, only grave shock. He could clearly sense that this destructive energy contained vast laws far beyond their understanding, crushing everything in its path!

"We can't resist it head-on! We need to 'imitate' it! Find its rhythm... attach ourselves to it!" Guiguzi's beard and hair flared as he spread his arms sharply, his sleeves snapping in the wind!

A desperate gamble for survival!

Hundreds of millions of Xuan Weizi surged madly from his body and the remaining nodes, becoming the most precise probes. They vibrated, reorganized, and frantically scanned the incoming torrent of violent energy at beyond-limit speed! Their target—one relatively stable fluctuation carrying a cold sense of order: The Ancient One's Vishanti Power!

"Found it!" A brilliant light burst from Guiguzi's eyes as his hands carved afterimages through the air! The Xuan Weizi Network instantly shifted formations, fully simulating and resonating with the captured Vishanti frequency! The outpost's remaining energy fluctuations began to "disguise" themselves as the natural leakage of that supreme power!

At the same time, he guided the vast majority of the chaotic, greedy, corrosive dark energy—Dormammu's Power—like someone diverting a deadly flood, sending it raging along the resonant path toward a known weak point in the crust beneath the outpost!

A brutal price!

This was far from easy! They were using the "low-dimensional energy" of the King of Glory World to simulate and attach themselves to the highest laws of the Marvel Universe! The calculations were terrifyingly immense, and the drain on his mental strength and origin was ruinous! Guiguzi's gaunt body shook like a sieve. His clouded old eyes were bloodshot, his pupils unfocused from the agony of overloaded calculations and his tearing origin. He held up the fragile resonance network through sheer obsession with protecting them. Every vibration and reassembly of the Xuan Weizi was like carving a piece of flesh from his dried-up life! Fine streams of blood wound down from his seven orifices! The Xuan Weizi Network flickered uncertainly like a dying candle in the wind!

"Mr. Guiguzi!" Xiang Yi roared, enduring the splitting pain in his head and the dizziness of his soul being torn apart. Wiping the blood from his nose and mouth, he shouted, "Hold on! Lanling King! A Ke! Protect Mr. Ming!"

Lanling King and A Ke appeared like phantoms beside Ming Shiyin. Blood had already seeped from beneath Lanling King's mask where he had bitten his lips. His cold dagger looked so powerless before the torrent of shattered laws that he could only turn himself into the final shield of flesh, standing firmly before Xiang Yi and the unconscious Ming Shiyin while invisible shockwaves tore at his armor and will. A Ke's twin blades hung low. Her knuckles had turned white from gripping them too tightly. Never before had she hated her own "uselessness" so much. She could only watch every possible breakthrough of turbulent energy like a trapped beast, suppressing a low growl in her throat.

Xiang Yi's gaze remained locked on Guiguzi's tottering figure. He could clearly "see" that the light of a crucial Xuan Weizi Network node was rapidly fading, and the simulated frequency was about to collapse! If it fell, the disguise would fail, and the dark torrent would instantly devour everything!

A decision! Pain like carving flesh!

Pain tore through his nerves, but deep within Xiang Yi's consciousness, the coldness of the "chess player" instantly overwhelmed every emotion. The outpost destroyed? The heroes falling? Or...

Five hundred Energy Points?!

Lanling King had earned them through bloody battles at the Yunnan Outpost, while A Ke had fought at the edge of her blade to cover their retreat, stealing them from between ninja poison darts and blades! They were the hard-won capital Guiguzi had gathered by exhausting himself and Ming Shiyin had obtained through blood-spitting divinations! This damned, frail body! Why did it have to be now?! The roar of his adult soul violently clashed with the physiological limits of his twelve-year-old body, and his consciousness felt like torn rags.

"Exchange!" A soundless roar, carrying the resolve of a final gamble, exploded within his soul!

An object the size of a pigeon egg instantly appeared in his hand. It was completely transparent, its interior resembling a precise honeycomb crystal prism, and it radiated a strange sense of stability.

"Go!" Xiang Yi exhausted the last of his strength, his arm muscles bulging as he hurled it precisely toward the node on the verge of collapse!

The instant the crystal prism touched the chaotic energy, it blossomed without a sound! A layer of absolutely clear, absolutely stable honeycomb force field unfolded at once! The torrent of chaotic energy capable of tearing apart space crashed into it like raging waves striking an ancient reef, silently smoothed, broken down, and guided away! At the instant it endured the extreme impact, an almost imperceptible golden pattern of extraordinarily complex structure flashed across the prism's surface before disappearing. The Xuan Weizi threads that had nearly snapped suddenly stabilized!

Buzzz—!

The pressure on Guiguzi abruptly lessened. Seizing that breath of respite at the critical moment, his hand seals changed wildly as he rapidly chanted ancient syllables, forcibly stabilizing the network! The dark torrent was guided more smoothly into the depths of the earth veins!

Xiang Yi's price!

That throwing motion drained the last of his strength. The agony of five hundred Energy Points evaporating instantly and the extreme weakness of his soul struck him together. His vision went completely black. With a thud, he collapsed to the ground. Violent coughing brought up more blood, and the edges of his vision blurred and darkened.

The violent shaking of the outpost and the blinding torrents of energy finally began to weaken. The cracks in the walls stopped spreading, while the cold current and destructive white light receded. Only smoke and the scorched stench of energy remained.

Just as the aftermath was about to subside—

At the breach in the outpost's most severely damaged outer wall, space resembled a shattered mirror. On the other side of those fragments was reflected a battlefield of annihilation:

Beneath a dark-purple sky, the cracked earth flowed with magma-like energy. The Ancient One floated in the air, her golden rune shield blazing like the sun. With an elegant wave, she sent a golden torrent capable of annihilating stars crashing forth, completely pulverizing the tentacles of the dark-red mass across from her—a Dormammu projection howling with countless anguished faces!

At the instant the annihilation was complete, the Ancient One slightly turned her head.

Her gaze pierced through the chaotic, shattered mirrored space, through the outpost's crumbling barrier, ignoring the separation of time and space as it landed with absolute precision upon Xiang Yi, collapsed on the ground with blood spilling from his nose and mouth!

Souls froze!

It was not that they had been "seen." It was as though they had been stripped bare and nailed to an icy plain. From their souls to their thoughts, from the alien "system" core within Xiang Yi to the incompatible "origin imprints" of every King of Glory hero, everything was mercilessly dissected and analyzed in that instant by a cold, invisible force beyond comprehension! Time froze, and countless scenes rewound under that gaze: the summoning within the shadow vortex, the otherworldly formations built by Xuan Weizi, Ming Shiyin's bloodstained divination hexagrams, even... the cold core deeply embedded in the origin of his soul that radiated an otherworldly aura, along with the links connecting several powerful yet utterly incompatible "alien-star imprints" to this world! Every disguise was laid bare!

An uncontrollable terror born from the instinct of life instantly froze the souls of everyone in the quiet chamber!

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Lanling King/A Ke: Their bodies stiffened like stone statues. Their instincts for concealment and killing intent were locked and frozen by absolute power, and their thoughts came to a halt.

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Guiguzi: The resonance network he had maintained completely collapsed the instant that gaze swept over it! The simulated frequency was mercilessly denied by higher-dimensional laws! As though struck by a heavy blow, he sprayed blood again. His aura withered to its lowest point, and Xuan Weizi scattered out of control.

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Ming Shiyin: His unconscious body convulsed violently, and his faint connection to the Armillary Sphere was brutally cut off and "silenced."

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The Ancient One's gaze was as calm as the deep void of the universe. There was no emotion, only absolute, icy insight. Yet within that ultimate coldness seemed to pass a faint, nearly imperceptible fluctuation that saw through everything—like a chess player unexpectedly glimpsing, in a chaotic corner of the board, a piece... that had leaped beyond its original path? Carrying a trace of faint... understanding? Or perhaps... interest?

It was only a glance lasting one-tenth of a second.

Her gaze moved away, turning toward the shadow battlefield.

The shattered space closed like ripples. The cold rocks of the Kunlun Mountains returned to view. The annihilation battlefield and that fleeting glance seemed like an illusion.

The lingering might was like a prison!

Within the outpost, the sensation of frozen souls did not fade. An invisible spiritual pressure weighed upon everyone's hearts like heavy lead, making even breathing incomparably difficult. Only the howl of cold wind pouring through the breach tore at the dead silence.

Aftermath of the disaster

The silence was broken by Xiang Yi's violent coughing. He coughed up great mouthfuls of clotted blood, his vision repeatedly darkening. His twelve-year-old body felt as though it might fall apart at any moment. He used every ounce of strength in his body, digging his nails deep into the cold metal wall, to barely prop up his upper body. Leaning against the broken wall, every breath pulled at the agonizing pain in his organs and the weakness of his soul.

The outpost had become a half-paralyzed ruin: the energy nodes were destroyed, the main defensive formation was completely scrapped, and most monitoring and experimental equipment had become charred scrap metal, trailing wisps of smoke. In a shattered cultivation tank in the corner, several carefully raised Kunlun Snow Lotus seedlings meant for later energy experiments had completely withered and carbonized under the violent energy radiation, becoming useless handfuls of black ash. The air was filled with a strange stench of burning, blood, scorched energy, and rotting plants. Only the core life-support system and the most basic communication module retained a trace of function through the buffers and Guiguzi's final efforts. Their energy reserves had been exhausted. The material cost was horrifying.

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Guiguzi: He sat cross-legged on the ground, his face pale as gold paper and his aura weak. The backlash from forcibly simulating higher-dimensional laws had severely damaged his origin. More than half of his ability to control Xuan Weizi was temporarily crippled, and he closed his eyes in exhaustion.

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Lanling King/A Ke: They broke free from the freezing, terror still lingering deep in their eyes, but they instantly suppressed it. Lanling King immediately carried the unconscious Ming Shiyin onto his back. A Ke flashed to the wreckage of the control console. Her hand pressed against its cracked remains, whose edges had even half-melted under the intense heat. Her fingertips sank deeply into the scorching synthetic material from the force she used. Icy metal fragments pierced her skin, yet she paid them no mind. Her eyes were sharp as blades, waiting only for an order.

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Ming Shiyin: He remained unconscious, his robe soaked in blood, his breathing weak and chaotic.

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Xiang Yi's gaze swept over this tragic "victory," over the carbonized snow lotus seedlings. The weight in his heart far surpassed his physical pain. The flesh-carving pain of five hundred Energy Points, the half-destroyed outpost, Ming Shiyin's severe injuries, Guiguzi's damaged origin, the complete loss of their earlier investments... Yet heaviest of all was the shadow left behind by that icy gaze. She had seen everything! Why had she not acted? Indifference? Or... tacit approval, perhaps a test?

They had to leave immediately! This place had become a dead end!

Fear and questions swirled through him, but cold resolve overwhelmed them all. He spoke hoarsely, his voice ragged and broken, yet carrying unquestionable iron-blooded determination:

"This... is the Sorcerer Supreme... She saw... everything."

He paused, gathering the last trace of strength as his voice abruptly rose:

"This place... cannot be kept! Mr. Guiguzi... can you still move? Prepare... to activate the 'Zeroing Protocol'!"

His nails scraped harshly across the metal as he nearly roared the final two words:

"Immediately!"

Lanling King secured Ming Shiyin more firmly on his back. A Ke's hand tightened sharply on the control console, her knuckles turning even whiter from the force. Her eyes were sharp as blades, ready to carry out the worst plan.

Among the Xuan Weizi partially scattering out of Guiguzi's control were several extremely faint particles glimmering with strange golden traces of order. Like sparks in the wind, they quietly attached themselves to a charred fragment of an instrument core. This tiny fragment of a rule-ripple, faint as a spark, contained a trace of the mystery left behind after the collision and guidance of this world's highest powers. It slept quietly amid the ruins and cold wind of the Kunlun Mountains, like a seed buried after catastrophe, waiting for its chance to break through the earth and be reborn—and waiting for... the chess player's eyes that could turn it into a blade.