The sky over the distant outskirts suddenly flashed, as though someone had pulled the pin on a flashbang behind the clouds. A muffled boom followed, and a tremor crawled from the ground through Li Jie's soles and up his spine, chilling his blood.
Fuck, again??
The ground jolted violently without warning, sending the police car veering sideways. He slammed on the brakes, instinctively wanting to jump out.
But a second later, he realized it wasn't an earthquake. Unlike that sustained, swaying motion, this felt more like a giant had stamped hard on Gotham.
An explosion!
The thought of an explosion immediately reassured him. But when he looked up, a thick column of smoke had already risen over the horizon. A mushroom-shaped cloud with dark red flames inside slowly billowed upward, like an enormous flower unfurling.
He stared at the cloud for three seconds, then swung the car around and floored the accelerator, switching on the radio as he went.
"All officers, attention! Possible terrorist attack in Gotham! All personnel, emergency status!"
Candle Man had retreated to the edge of the clearing. Its flames were much dimmer now, as though a layer of something invisible had been stripped away.
The dark-purple-haired girl standing in the shadows had used magic to tear away part of its connection to this world. It felt trapped in a net. Her spells weren't violent, but they steadily drained the foundation of its existence. Each spell lowered its flames a little more, as though it were regressing from an "entity" into a "concept."
It couldn't wait any longer.
A reddish-black beam lunged at Raven. She didn't move. A shadowy shield appeared around her, deflecting the beam into the sky without suffering any damage.
It didn't care whether that strike landed. It only wanted a moment's opening