Lian continued moving through the devastated landscape, his steps deliberate and focused. His hands worked efficiently — searching pockets, pulling rings from lifeless fingers, collecting anything of value from the corpses scattered around him. Storage rings, credit chips, rare pills, small artifacts, weapons that survived the destruction. He took it all without hesitation.
But unlike before, his expression had changed.
A genuine, wide smile stretched across his face. It was rare, almost foreign on his usually cold features. Joy — real, deep joy — filled his chest for the first ti in what felt like forever. Every new ring he claid, every valuable he secured, sent a quiet thrill through him. This was what he had been fighting for. Resources. Power. A real path forward. The kind of opportunity most people only dread about in their final monts.
He smiled wider as he slipped another storage ring onto his finger. The weight of it felt good. Promising. He had already gathered more than he ever imagined possible in one night. Credits, cultivation resources, techniques, weapons — enough to fuel months, perhaps years, of rapid growth. The joy bubbled inside him, warm and addictive. He had suffered for so long. Starved. Scraped by. Been looked down upon. Now, the universe was finally giving him sothing back.
He kept smiling as he worked.
Kharvax Pri was no more.
Nothing was standing. The once-thriving city district had been reduced to a complete wasteland. Towering buildings were gone, reduced to scattered rubble and dust. Structures that had survived earlier clashes had finally collapsed under the final shockwave. The ground was a broken mosaic of deep craters, fissures, and overturned earth. Fires burned unchecked across the ruins, sending pillars of black smoke into the fractured sky. The massive wound splitting the planet lood in the distance like an open wound on the world itself, glowing with magma and raw planetary energy. The air was thick with ash, the sll of death, and the tallic tang of destruction. What had been a bustling hub of trade and power was now a silent graveyard.
Lian didn’t care.
To him, it was simply the aftermath of strength. The strong fought. The weak died. And the survivors took what was left.
Elara, anwhile, had moved a short distance away. She was helping the few survivors she could find — pulling people from under lighter rubble, offering basic first aid with what little supplies they had scavenged. Her alloy limbs made the work easier, lifting heavy debris that normal humans couldn’t move. She worked quietly, focused on doing what little good she could in the middle of hell.
Then, near her position, a large pile of rubble began to shift.
Stones and broken concrete moved with a low grinding sound. Soone was trapped underneath. Elara imdiately turned toward it, her expression determined. The area looked dangerous — a deep but not bottomless hole filled with unstable rubble and twisted tal. She approached carefully, stepping over sharp debris, testing her footing before putting weight down. She reached out with her alloy hand, trying to clear so of the larger pieces to reach whoever was trapped below.
As she got closer and started descending into the hole, moving slowly and cautiously to avoid a collapse, she suddenly froze.
A voice drifted up from the rubble.
It was the Eternal Veil Syndicate representative’s voice — weak, pained, but unmistakable. Cold and filled with lingering fury.
Elara stopped in her tracks.
Power Scale / Cultivation Realms (Quick Reminder)
Foundation Realm (Layers 1–9): Body forging, no external Qi.
Circuit Awakening Realm (Early–Peak): First Qi loop, internal bursts.
Core Condensation Realm (Early–Peak): External Qi release, short flight.
Stellar Circuit Realm (1–9 Stars): True flight, Qi armor, energy projection.
Nebula Dominion Realm and higher: Domain control, galaxy-level power, etc
Power Scale Reminder
Lian Yu: Stellar Circuit Star 1.
Elara Voss: Core Condensation Middle
Keep it as reminders
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