His gaze hardened slightly.
"It’s worth it."
Without another second of hesitation, he raised his hand.
"Purchase."
The screen flickered.
[Gold Coins: 9023 → 3023]
For a brief mont, everything went still.
Then, it started.
Outside the villa, the stone walls surrounding the town trembled.
At first, it was subtle.
A low vibration that ran through the ground, barely noticeable unless soone was standing close enough to feel it beneath their feet.
Then the sound ca.
A deep, grinding noise, like sothing ancient waking up after a long sleep.
Beyond the garden, past the quiet greenery, the outer walls began to change.
The solid stone didn’t crack.
It shifted.
The surface rippled as faint black veins spread across it, thin at first, then thicker, branching out like roots digging through the structure, seeping into every part of the wall as the color slowly darkened from dull gray into sothing deeper.
Sothing dead.
The air grew heavier.
Necrotic energy, thin but constant, started to gather around the walls, drawn in as if the structure itself was breathing.
Then the transformation accelerated.
Chunks of stone pushed outward, reshaping, stretching, as jagged bone structures forced their way through from within, not breaking the wall, but rging with it, reinforcing it, turning smooth surfaces into layered plates of hardened bone and darkened rock.
Spikes ford along the top.
Not clean.
Not uniform.
Each one uneven, twisted, like ribs growing out of a carcass.
Along the length of the wall, hollow gaps began to appear, small at first, then widening into openings shaped like empty eye sockets, deep and black, as if sothing inside was staring out.
Aiden stepped forward slightly, his gaze fixed on the sight.
"Wow, what a beautiful sight."
He could feel it.
The wall wasn’t just changing.
It was responding.
The necrotic energy in the surroundings began to flow toward it, thin streams at first, then more, feeding into the structure as the transformation completed itself piece by piece.
The ground at the base of the wall shifted next.
Bones, old ones. Buried deep beneath the soil.
They rose slowly, pulled upward by the sa unseen force, embedding themselves into the foundation, reinforcing it further, locking everything in place.
The grinding noise faded.
And what remained was no longer the sa wall.
It stood taller, dark.
The surface no longer looked like stone alone, but a fusion of bone and sothing far more unnatural, with faint pulses of energy running through it like a heartbeat that never truly stopped.
Then one of the hollow openings twitched.
A faint glow appeared deep inside.
And from within, sothing shifted.
A skeletal figure slowly ford inside the wall itself, its shape barely visible, like a shadow pressed against the other side, waiting. Dormant, watching, and ready.
Aiden exhaled slowly.
"...Good."
A faint smile spread across his face as he looked over the transford defenses surrounding his territory.
Now, even if soone ca.
Even if an army marched straight toward his gates.
They wouldn’t just be facing walls.
They would be walking into sothing that was waiting for them to die.
----
Three days passed. Although, quiet on the surface. But violent beneath it.
By the ti the fourth night fell, three more towns had vanished from the map, leaving nothing behind but empty streets, broken walls, and the faint, lingering traces of sothing that shouldn’t exist.
Out of the seven, five were gone.
No resistance that lasted.
But the last two towns were different.
They didn’t wait.
The mont the first refugees arrived, broken, shaking, their voices filled with fear as they spoke of swarms, of dead, of sothing that didn’t fight like n but erased everything in its path, the leaders of those towns didn’t hesitate.
They ran.
Entire populations abandoned their hos, taking whatever they could carry, forming long, desperate lines along the roads as they fled toward the only place they believed could protect them.
Valen City.
The domain of the Clear Water Sect.
----
Inside the city, the atmosphere had already changed.
The gates were open, but heavily guarded.
Lines of refugees stretched inward, their faces pale, their clothes stained, their voices filled with panic as they spoke over each other, trying to explain what they had seen.
"Monsters!"
"They ca from the ground!"
"They ate everything!"
"No, it wasn’t just monsters... there were dead... an army!"
The guards didn’t respond.
They simply let them in.
But the news had already spread.
And it reached the top quickly.
---
At the center of Valen City stood the sect hall.
Tall.
Calm.
Untouched by the chaos outside.
Inside, a large chamber was filled with silence.
Twenty elders sat in a wide circle, their expressions serious, their auras restrained but heavy, each one carrying the strength of a Body Tempering practitioner.
At the head sat the Sect Master.
An older man, his posture straight, his presence calm yet oppressive, the kind of person who didn’t need to speak to be heard.
Peak Body Tempering.
His eyes moved slowly across the room.
Then he spoke.
"...You’ve all heard the reports."
His voice was steady.
Controlled.
An elder to his right frowned slightly.
"Refugees tend to exaggerate," he said. "Panic spreads quickly. It’s possible the situation isn’t as severe as they claim."
Another elder shook his head.
"No. I spoke with one of the town lords myself before he fled. He wasn’t panicking. He was... afraid."
That word lingered, and silence followed.
Then another elder leaned forward slightly.
"What exactly did he say?"
The one who spoke earlier didn’t answer imdiately.
As if recalling it.
"He said the towns didn’t fall to an army."
A pause.
"They were consud."
A faint shift passed through the room.
Not fear.
But tension.
"That doesn’t make sense," one of them muttered. "Even if it was a beast tide or so rogue cultivator group, five towns in three days is too fast."
"Unless it’s organized," another added quietly.
The Sect Master finally moved.
His fingers tapped lightly against the armrest.
"Continue."
The elder nodded.
"He described insects. Large ones. Swarms that couldn’t be stopped. And dead beings, like skeleton, and moving corpses."
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