Decaying World Chapter 266

Soon, the Night Mist descended. An imnse, formless force swept the horde of monsters within the Mist to the edges of the battlefield.

As the densely packed Destructive-level monsters and Divine Descendants surged into their second general offensive, Lin Hui finally understood why even beings as powerful as Mistborn and Blood Ancestors could do nothing but hold their cities—never expand them.

The number of Divine Descendants besieging him quickly rose to eight. Over a dozen more pushed in from behind to form a ranged vanguard, constantly harrying him and cutting off his attempts to close. Their speed was extre—Mistborn-level Super Divine Speed. Their azure power, known as Mist God force, carried a destructive capability that far exceeded Void Force or Internal Force, and fell no short of his own Disaster Energy.

On top of that, the Divine Descendants' bodies were nigh-indestructible, their toughness rivaling even a top-tier Blood Ancestor's.

Aside from poor regenerative ability and the limited duration of their Mist God force, these Divine Descendants had almost no weaknesses.

Lin Hui could already sense Blood Ancestors returning to the field, reviving from the Moon Tower after being cut to pieces. Blood Ancestors' regeneration was extraordinarily potent—nearly impossible to kill permanently—and that was the only real advantage their side held.

The battle raged day and night without pause, an all-out slaughter from the very first mont.

Days bled into one another...

Black Cloud's defensive line contracted sharply, driven back to half its original size. Lin Hui and Hong Lingxiao stubbornly held the line around the Third Mountain, blocking any Divine Descendants attempting to break through and wreak havoc. Low-level monsters were instantly eradicated before them, and even Destructive-level beasts t the sa fate.

The Divine Descendants, however, were a completely different story.

Hundreds of them had surrounded the two, stacking negative status effects wave after wave. Under the cumulative drag of these debuffs, Lin Hui's base speed was forcibly suppressed to a tenth of normal. In addition, these Divine Descendants bore damage-reflecting, hardening, and etherealization auras—each type stacked dozens of tis over, becoming terrifyingly dense.

Hong Lingxiao had completely lost the ability to fight back—reduced to a human punching bag, she died again and again. Die, detonate, scatter the enemies, revive—only to be bound and suppressed again, then die and detonate once more. It was an endless, grinding cycle.

On his end, even his three basic seals had been forced outward, floating visibly at his back. He had long since activated the Typhoon Sword Technique's special effect, Micro-Flash, to minimize his physical stamina drain.

After Lin Hui slaughtered another dozen or so in rapid succession, the Divine Descendants learned their lesson. Their fastest fighters plunged into close-quarters combat, unleashing cascades of interference and speed-reduction effects, while the ranged attackers coated him in strange, viscous substances to pile on more weight.

Faced with Mist God force—a power capable of contending with Disaster Energy—Lin Hui found himself in a temporary predicant. He had no choice but to fall back on Micro-Flash and Surrounding Wind, weaving between strikes and barely holding himself together.

After so many days of slaughter, even he felt the creeping fatigue.

"It's been five days. Under normal circumstances, how much longer will this kind of naval battle last?" he asked Hong Lingxiao via sound transmission.

"I'm not sure. Last ti it lasted over a month. The ti before that was two months. But don't worry—once they've exhausted their accumulated Divine Force, they'll pull back on their own. Our regeneration is exceptional; we can afford to grind this out!" Just as Hong Lingxiao finished speaking, she initiated another self-detonation, forcing back the Divine Descendants attempting to close in.

Left speechless, Lin Hui watched as she rapidly regenerated, entered a new Blood Ancestor state, and resud the slaughter.

He surveyed the field. The sky was strobed with red and blue flashes of battle. The ground was littered with craters, fissures, severed limbs, and swathes of blood. Even the sea's surface had been dyed from green to a bizarre, murky grayish-black; the blood and viscera of a dozen races and species had bled into it, their mingling staining this stretch of sea that uniform, sludgy gray-black.

Large monsters were almost nowhere to be seen at this point. Everywhere, isolated battlefronts had ford between the more powerful small and dium-sized Divine Descendants and Blood Ancestors. From a distance, the shockwaves of their clashes looked like soap bubbles of every color and size—sotis colliding, exploding, intersecting, and rging; sotis slowly drifting apart; sotis a victor erging and snuffing the other out entirely.

"Hold on—we're entering the second phase. The cannon fodder has pulled back; now the Divine Descendants themselves take the front," Hong Lingxiao added hurriedly before being blown apart again, reduced to a mass of minced flesh.

"..." Lin Hui activated Micro-Flash, evaded several sabers and spears, and forced a Divine Descendant back with a backhanded slash.

There was simply no end to the killing.

He had been constantly trying to select a suitable species for his Sacred Form of Destruction. But even if he did, unleashing a stronger trump card would only invite heavier suppression and encirclent.

The most infuriating thing about these Divine Descendants was the stackable nature of their Divine Force effects.

Not yet... The Divine Descendants have moved, but the Mist God hasn't shown itself... I can't force anything, or the pressure will tip completely against . He steadied himself, refraining from activating the Clear Source Law Body, the strongest moves of the Typhoon Sword Technique, or the Star Breath Sword Canon. Relying solely on other special effects and his recently enhanced physical constitution, he kept Micro-Flash active and persevered.

Ti flowed on, day after day.

No food, no drink, no sleep, no rest.

Lin Hui truly witnessed the terrifying endurance of the Blood Ancestors. The Divine Descendants cycled through wave after wave, fresh units replacing spent ones—but the Blood Ancestors held, unchanged. At first, everyone could still fight back with real force, but as ti wore on, they relied almost entirely on self-detonation and reassembly to hold the line. Deterred by the terrifying power of the self-detonations, the Divine Descendants—after suffering over fifty percent casualties—eventually found a rhythm to maintain balance.

The Outer City region of Black Cloud, facing the three warfronts, had been almost entirely reduced to ruins. They clung to the Inner City's great white walls as the last barrier against the invasion. The civilian population had long since been evacuated to the districts on Black Cloud's far side, still untouched by the war.

Just as Lin Hui thought this stalemate would continue until the end of the war...

The Mist God finally appeared.

The sea erupted with a thunderous roar. A monstrous humanoid figure—tens of thousands of ters tall—heaved itself from the depths. It was a muscular giant wearing blue fish-scale leather armor and a golden coral crown. Standing at full height, his upper body was swallowed by gray clouds. He wielded a small platinum rhombus shield and a giant sword burning with blue flas. With pitch-black, hollow eyes, he viciously raised the blade and swung it toward the first suspended mountain peak.

The giant sword was nearly five thousand ters long. In its descent, it blazed like a bolt of blue lightning crashing from the sky.

In the shadow of this Mist God giant, monsters and Divine Descendants alike were scattered like toys—flung aside by the enormous air pressure and waves churned up as he rose. The speed of his sword strike was utterly terrifying, exceeding even the reaction limits of an ordinary Mistborn's Super Divine Speed.

"Stop him!"

Lin Hui was just evading the curved saber chops of two Divine Descendants when discordant roars rang in his ears. The next mont, a giant white hand flew out from the first mountain peak, eting the descending blue-flad giant sword head-on.

Boom!!

A terrifying shockwave erupted from around the first mountain. The surrounding two suspended mountains were caught in the blast, swaying in mid-air. Lin Hui and the others were shaken by the massive impact, staggering backward. Already bogged down by the Divine Descendants' debuffs, he imdiately lost his balance.

The next instant, a flash of golden-red blazed toward him. It was a golden-armored woman with massive twin wings sprouting from her back, wielding a golden spear, golden arcs of electricity sparking in her wake. The golden trail she blazed held firm even through the shockwaves of Blood Ancestors detonating nearby.

"A Mist God!! Watch out!!"

Hong Lingxiao's warning barely reached him before it was too late. He watched as the opponent appeared before him as if teleporting, thrusting her spear straight for his chest. Her speed matched his own at full power under normal conditions. Had he been unencumbered, he could have handled it—but hundreds of Divine Descendants' stacking debuffs had already ground his speed down to a tenth of normal.

Looks like there's no other way...

Lin Hui's eyes turned a vivid, pure blue.

An instant before the spear could touch his chest, his body surged upward—blue markings blazing across his skin. His long hair turned a semi-transparent blue. The Wind Disaster's Disaster Energy erupted from within him, instantly burning away the bulk of the negative status effects. That eruption forced the golden spear to stall for a fraction of a second. In that mont, Ruyi swept upward, forcing the golden spear aside by the shaft.

Clang!

Spear and sword rebounded away from each other.

Lin Hui no longer dared to hold back, executing the Typhoon Sword Technique with all his might. Swirling black clouds rapidly manifested in the sky above him. The next mont, he vanished from where he stood, closing into direct combat with the golden-speared, winged Mist God.

Every thrust of her golden spear brought forth massive explosions of golden electrical arcs that ignored all defenses, forcibly paralyzing Lin Hui's mind-spirit reactions. Though he was clearly faster, the constant paralysis left him barely holding the upper hand. When he channeled tornadoes, the Mist God would disperse them with a casual thrust. When he accelerated for a flanking strike, she would simply detonate a wide burst of golden electricity to seize him up. When he executed Micro-Flash to seize an opening, her body proved terrifyingly hard; Ruyi could only carve thin, shallow scratches across the surface. Combined with the battle array of hundreds of Divine Descendants, the Mist God forcibly suppressed Lin Hui to the point of utter frustration.

Fortunately, Divine Force lacked endurance. After another three days of continuous, bitter fighting, the electrical arcs on the golden-speared Mist God gradually diminished. Seizing the opening, Lin Hui instantly unleashed dozens of rapid sword slashes upon a single point on her body, finally injuring her and forcing her back.

With the Mist God falling back, the Divine Descendants also dropped their engagent and quietly withdrew.

Lin Hui was utterly exhausted. No longer able to maintain the Clear Source Law Body, he deactivated the form. His body swayed—he nearly collapsed into sleep outright, his mind-spirit scraped nearly bare. It wasn't just him; the rest of the Blood Ancestors were also worn to the extre. So of them had cycled through death and revival hundreds of tis or more. The physical body could continuously restore itself, but the depletion of the mind-spirit was irreversible. Even Blood Ancestors could not circumvent this fundantal law.

"Rest for a bit..." Li Hanzhang flew over from afar, wearing a tattered outer robe he had hastily thrown on, his expression imnsely fatigued.

"How long until the next phase begins?" Lin Hui asked, exhaling a long, heavy breath.

"Usually, we get half a day of rest at most." Hong Lingxiao appeared not far beside him, completely naked—though Void Force distorted the light around her, making it impossible to see her clearly. This was the concealnt thod chosen by the majority of Blood Ancestors. Though they were open-minded, that didn't an they were willing to bare it all in front of everyone.

"Half a day... That's too short..." Lin Hui smiled bitterly. "I need at least three days before I can—"

Thud—

A woman's hand, pure white as jade, suddenly shot out from the empty air beside him, driving hard toward his heart. At the sa mont, a man's hand reached out from mid-air on the other side, seizing the Ruyi sword Lin Hui swung to parry.

With a dull boom, Lin Hui was wrenched off his feet by both hands at once, dragged into the void, and vanished—leaving Hong Lingxiao and Li Hanzhang staring after empty air.

…

Thousands of miles away, in the depths of the Jade Sea.

Two exquisite Relics resembling compasses shattered simultaneously on Tuyue and Xie Jun. At the sa mont, a human figure was forcibly dragged out of the void into the seawater before them.

"It's done! It's done! Hahaha!" Tuyue burst into laughter, her eyes alight with triumph and barely-restrained madness. Standing beside her, Xie Jun reached out and wrapped an arm around her waist, his expression tender.

"His condition is at its absolute worst right now. We must act imdiately—seal him and take him away. Otherwise, once Xie Chang'an reacts, we'll both be in trouble."

"It's a pity about this pair of Spatial Wonder Jade Disks we got from that old geezer Song Xingdao," Tuyue said regretfully. The reason she'd gone to Xingdao and lowered herself to that old lecher's service was precisely for this. Otherwise, did anyone really think she was fiercely loyal to the Federation? Her city was gone, yet she was supposed to help fend off disasters?

"He should currently be in a comatose state from my Evil Energy and the shattering of the Relics. Hurry up and secure him," Xie Jun urged.

Tuyue nodded. Floating forward in a flash, she appeared before Lin Hui and reached out to grab his head. The dark red phantom of a massive Longevity Wheel silently surfaced behind her.

Smack.

Suddenly, her hand paused—caught fast by another hand.

Tuyue froze. She looked down the arm and found a pair of bizarre, bright eyes glowing with a faint blue halo.

"You—!?"

"Retreat quickly!!" Xie Jun's anxious voice ca from behind.

But it was already too late.

Lin Hui's body surged—his hair blazed blue, and a hazy white humanoid figure flared into being behind him, flickering once before rging into him entirely.

"I am very happy to see you again."

Lin Hui gently held Tuyue, as if cradling his most beloved. But Ruyi, in his other hand, had already pierced through her abdon, the blade protruding from her back.

An indescribably massive sense of oppression expanded from behind him. From Tuyue's perspective, she could see an expanse of pitch-black starry sky—spreading outward...