The darkness struck back again and again, but could not extinguish it. The blood-red flames did not bring outside light into the darkness—they set the shrine itself ablaze.
For a moment, Gao Ming could not tell whether he was seeing blood-red flames or blood-red armbands. He seemed to see an invisible tide sweeping away the gangs and forbidden zones.
The flames rose, illuminating figures who had sunk into the darkness and struggled within it. Some were outsiders, but the vast majority were citizens who lived in the Dark City.
Wearing blood-red armbands, they suppressed the malice in their hearts and repelled one gang assault after another. They expanded outward from the Seventh District, unafraid of death and immune to the darkness's corruption. Their resolve was like a fluttering blood-red banner, snapping beneath the night sky!
They crushed every injustice and swept away the Dark Order. They never used drugs to suppress their malice. Everything they did was for a dream so elusive it might never come true—to illuminate the Dark Shrine.
The sacrifices of the outsiders and Dream Ghosts had stripped the shrine's master of all ability to interfere with the Dark City. For the first time, the people there had a chance to decide their own fate.
Even as their bodies mutated and became deformed, their resolve remained unchanged. After paying a tremendous price to eradicate the gangs in every district, the people wearing armbands turned their attention to the Dark Forbidden Zone.
The out-of-control forbidden zones were like festering sores spreading a plague. To deal with the darkness once and for all, these citizens devised a specific plan for each forbidden zone.
Unlike the gangs, they no longer simply sealed off the forbidden zones. Instead, they searched through case files, uncovered the reason each zone had appeared, and