The Fall of Kongoukaku, Starting from the Celestial Dragons and Forging Amazon Lily

Mumei avoided the patrolling samurai and arrived at a secluded corner, where she saw a familiar figure.

That man stood with his back to the moonlight, his posture straight and a sword at his waist; he was none other than her cherished older brother, Mima Karyotori.

"Older brother!" Mumei's eyes lit up as she hurried forward.

Mima Karyotori turned around, and a gentle smile, soft like moonlight, appeared on his handsome face.

He reached out and gently pressed the top of Mumei's head, asking softly, "Have you been well these days?"

Mumei nodded vigorously, then, as if remembering something, her expression turned somewhat grave as she told Mima Karyotori the news she knew of the station city's fall.

After listening, Mima Karyotori's smile remained unchanged, but his tone grew low: "I came here for this very reason. Mumei, I need you to do me a favor."

"What favor?" Mumei asked without the slightest hesitation.

"Help me open the drawbridge of the city gate and let a steam train in."

Mumei froze for a moment, asking with some confusion, "Now? But entering the city at night requires advance notification..."

"Trust me." Mima Karyotori interrupted her, his deep eyes gazing at her. "Do you trust me?"

Mumei looked into those eyes she trusted immensely and nodded vigorously: "I trust older brother! I'll go right away!"

She turned and ran quickly down the city wall, heading toward the control room of the drawbridge.

She did not see that the moment she turned around, the smile on Mima Karyotori's face slowly faded, turning into a chilling indifference.

In the night, on the distant tracks, an armored train without any lights illuminated was silently driving toward Kongoukaku.

Through the gaps in the carriages, grayish-white arms reached out, swaying feebly in the moonlight.

That was a train fully loaded with Kabane.

A moment later, amidst a heavy sound of turning hinges, the drawbridge of Kongoukaku slowly lowered, spanned across the moat, and landed on the ground of the opposite bank.

That train in the darkness did not slow down at all, roaring as it charged into the interior of Kongoukaku.

"Boom-!"

The train crashed head-on into the platform, producing a deafening roar.

The carriages deformed, the sheet metal twisted, the doors were blown off by the immense impact, and countless Kabane poured out from the carriages like an open sluice gate, roaring as they lunged in all directions.

The samurai on the platform were stunned by this sudden turn of events, but soon, alarm sirens echoed throughout Kongoukaku!

"Kabane-! Kabane have entered the city-!"

Mumei stood at the entrance of the control room, staring blankly at the wrecked train, at those roaring monsters pouring out of the carriages, and at the samurai frantically raising their Steam Rifles to fire.

Her pupils were trembling, her mind a blank.

She finally understood that her respected older brother had her lower the bridge to let these monsters in.

Why?

Mumei did not know, but she had no time for self-blame and remorse.

She gritted her teeth, snatched a Steam Rifle from a fallen samurai nearby, and her petite figure rushed toward the wave of Kabane like an arrow released from a bow.

"Bang-!"

Gunshots rang out, and the head of a Kabane burst in response.

Mumei's figure shuttled flexibly through the pack of Kabane, the Steam Rifle in her hand continuously spewing fatal projectiles, knocking down one Kabane after another to the ground.

More and more samurai rushed to the scene, attempting to organize a defense line, but the number of Kabane was simply too great.

They poured in endlessly like a breached flood, and the defense line of the samurai was quickly overrun.

Just as everyone fell into despair, two massive figures descended like heavenly soldiers, crashing heavily into the area where the Kabane were most dense.

"Boom-!"

The ground trembled violently, and rubble and dust soared into the sky. A dozen Kabane at the landing point were directly smashed into minced meat, with blood plasma and bone shards splashing in all directions.

Immediately following, two flashes of silver crossed through the dust.

Those were two huge naginata, and wherever the blade light passed, a dozen Kabane were cut in half at the waist, their upper bodies sliding to the ground while their lower bodies still twitched and crawled forward a few steps before finally falling.

The dust slowly dispersed, and everyone looked closely.

They saw two tall figures standing in the center of the platform, holding naginata, with their backs to them, resembling two insurmountable city walls.

"It's the divine envoys! God has sent divine envoys to save us!"

Someone shouted first, and the morale, which had already been on the verge of collapse, instantly perked up.

A glimmer of hope reignited in the eyes of the samurai; although their legs were still weak, at least they gripped the guns in their hands more steadily.

Sandersonia did not look back, saying in a deep voice, "Go and evacuate the civilians; guarding here will only get in the way."

Several samurai still wanted to say something, wanting to stay and help, wanting to prove they were not cowards afraid of death.

But Sandersonia and Marigold did not waste words with them at all; their bodies began to swell rapidly, muscles bulging, dense scales appearing on the skin surface, and their lower bodies rapidly stretching and fusing, transforming into two thick snake tails.

In the blink of an eye, their height surged to nearly ten meters, a huge shadow enveloping the entire platform as two massive snake heads looked down from above.

Those samurai who had still wanted to stay swallowed all the words at the tips of their tongues upon seeing this scene.

They involuntarily took a few steps back, their Adam's apples bobbing up and down, cold sweat beading on their foreheads.

Although they knew these two were divine envoys, seeing humans transform into such behemoths with their own eyes still brought an irrepressible instinctual fear.

No one dared to say another word, and they turned one after another, scrambling and tumbling as they ran to assist in evacuating the civilians.

On the platform, the two giant snakes into which Sandersonia and Marigold had transformed firmly guarded the main passage through which the Kabane poured.

Marigold opened her mouth, and a thick, dark green venom sprayed out like a water column, landing on the ground and producing a sizzling corrosive sound.

The venom spread rapidly, forming a bubbling poison pool. The legs of the Kabane that stepped into the poison pool were corroded and dissolved within seconds, charred bone stumps exposed at the severed limbs as they lost their balance and collapsed to the ground, only to be trampled into minced meat by their own kind behind them.

With the two of them garrisoning here, the defense line in the direction of the platform was finally stabilized.

Mumei broke free from the group of Kabane, her body stained with black tainted blood, breathing slightly heavily.

She glanced back at the two giant snakes slaughtering all around, bit her lip, and then turned, running swiftly in the direction of the city wall.

She was going to find Mima Karyotori; she wanted to ask him face-to-face why he did this.

Chapter 36: The Fall of Kongoukaku

At this moment, on a highland outside the city of Kongoukaku, Mima Karyotori was quietly overlooking the fortress below, which had plunged into a sea of fire, together with his Hunters members.

The firelight reflected on his face, making his expression look flickering and unpredictable, difficult to discern.

At his side, a tall female named Mebiki knelt on one knee, awaiting orders.

She was the only female member among the Hunters, reticent and extremely disciplined, and she was one of Mima Karyotori's trusted aides.

Mima Karyotori retrieved a syringe from his bosom, the tube filled with pitch-black liquid.

He squatted down, aimed the syringe at Mebiki's neck, and slowly pushed it in.

The moment the pitch-black liquid was injected into her blood vessels, Mebiki's body jerked violently, and then she began to spasm intensely.

She clenched her teeth, but the excruciating pain, as if it were tearing her entire body apart from the inside, still made her unable to hold back a suppressed scream.

One could see a large amount of black mucus beginning to ooze from the surface of her body; that mucus, as if possessing life, writhed and spread, rapidly covering her entire body and then extending outward, entangling the wandering Kabane nearby.

The moment those Kabane were touched by the black mucus, as if captured by some powerful gravitational force, their bodies began to melt and decompose, transforming into clumps of black mud that merged with the mucus on Mebiki's body.

More and more Kabane were pulled into it, and that clump of black mud, with Mebiki as its core, continuously expanded, reorganized, and shaped.

In the end, a behemoth towering over ten meters slowly stood up on the wilderness outside the city.

It was an aggregate formed by the fusion of countless Kabane, the surface of its body covered in flowing black mucus, with countless distorted faces looming beneath the mucus, emitting silent wails.

Its size was almost as tall as the city wall of Kongoukaku, and with every step it took, the ground produced a dull tremor.

The aggregate took heavy strides, charging fiercely toward the city wall, and then...

Boom-!

With a heaven-shaking roar, the city wall was forcefully battered open, creating a huge gap.

Rubble flew and dust filled the air; the samurai on the city wall were shaken to and fro, and some were even blown directly away, falling into the group of Kabane outside the city and instantly being submerged.

The Kabane outside the city poured in wildly from that breach like a breached flood.

Sandersonia, who was garrisoning the platform, heard the commotion and whipped her head around.

When she saw the black giant that was a whole head taller than her, her pupils contracted slightly.

"Gurude! Over here!"

She called out, her massive snake body rapidly pivoting direction and slithering toward the breached gap.

Marigold followed closely behind, two giant snake shadows rapidly cutting through the firelight.

But once they left, a vacancy appeared in the defense line toward the platform, and the ordinary Kabane underneath lost their obstruction, spreading into the city like a tide.

They could no longer worry about that; they had to eliminate that greatest threat first.

Sandersonia rushed in front of the black aggregate, her naginata sweeping out with the force of a landslide, slicing off one of the aggregate's arms at the shoulder in a single blow.

The severed black arm fell to the ground, turning into a pool of writhing black mud.

However, that pool of black mud, as if possessing life, rapidly spread out, entangling the running Kabane around it and dragging them into itself to re-fuse.

In just a few breaths, a brand-new arm grew out from the aggregate's stump, even thicker than before.

Marigold followed up by spitting a mouthful of venom, the dark green venom splashing onto the aggregate's trunk and producing a sizzling corrosive sound, eating a large hole into the surface black mucus and exposing the distorted, writhing flesh inside.

Soon, however, more black mucus surged from around to fill the hole, and the wound healed back to normal at a speed visible to the naked eye.

The aggregate swung its arm fiercely, sweeping horizontally toward Sandersonia.

Sandersonia crossed the shaft of her naginata, taking the blow head-on.

With a dull thud, she felt a massive force transmit from the weapon shaft, and her massive snake body was jarred back sliding several meters, plowing two deep trenches in the ground.

She steadied her stance, her golden slit pupils glaring fixedly at the self-repairing monster before her, understanding in her heart that this would be a fierce battle.

Compared to the fires of war and roars igniting everywhere in Kongoukaku, Saint Dio's residence was serene and leisurely.

Saint Dio leaned lazily against a soft couch, the lower half of his body covered with a thin velvet blanket.

If one did not look closely, they would only think he was taking a nap, but upon close observation, one could notice that the blanket had a slight and irregular undulation.

He stretched out his slender fingers and casually flipped open the thin blanket.

Beneath the blanket, a head was revealed.

It was Ayame Yomogawa.

With her hair disheveled and her cheeks flushed with an abnormal flush at this moment, she was savoring it just like tasting some peerless delicacy, greedily sucking with a slurping sound of saliva.

Looking at her naive yet engrossed appearance, Saint Dio felt not the slightest bit of pity, his gaze entirely calm at the bottom of his eyes, and his waist thrust forward fiercely-

"Cough! Cough-cough-blech..."

Caught off guard, Ayame was instantly filled to the brim in her throat, a thick plasma suddenly bursting inside her oral cavity and choking her into a violent fit of coughing. Tears instantly welled up, and white turbid fluid flowed down the corners of her mouth, her cheeks, and even the tip of her nose, thoroughly messing up her entire face with the sprayed turbid fluid, turning her originally delicate face into a complete mess.

Saint Dio looked at Ayame, whose face was covered in milk-white fluid, leisurely tidied his collar, and said flatly, "It seems outside is very lively."

Ayame, who was holding a rag and frantically wiping her face, froze upon hearing this; the inexplicable sentence left her somewhat dazed.

She subconsciously walked to the window, looking outward through the gap.

What came into view was soaring firelight, panicked crowds running everywhere, and countless Kabane tearing apart living people.

"Kabane... invaded?!"

Ayame panicked instantly, turning her head violently to look at Saint Dio, only to find that he had already dressed neatly, Jörmungandr at his waist was also equipped, and he was preparing to push the door open and leave.

Seeing his calm and collected appearance, Ayame's pounding heart settled down slightly.

She did not dare to delay, wiping away the stains on her face indiscriminately, hastily putting on her clothes, with only a single thought in her mind: to find her father; her father must have a way!

She stumbled toward the main hall, wanting to find Munechika Shikishima, yet the moment she pushed open the grand doors, the scene that entered her view made her feel as though she had fallen into an icy abyss.

Corpses littered the floor inside the main hall, and blood flowed like a river.

Those other station city leaders who had come together with her father to plead for reinforcements had all fallen in pools of blood, their deaths tragic.

And right in the center of the grand hall, her father, Munechika Shikishima, was impaled through the chest by a samurai sword, hoisted high in midair.