Chapter 597: Chapter 580: Crimson Omen

Red Leaf Town was an ordinary town under the jurisdiction of the Seventh Administrative District.

As evening approached, the setting sun dyed the streets a warm orange. Mine workers getting off their shifts walked in twos and threes along the concrete roads. Some carried rations from the distribution station, some looked down to check their Contribution Points ranking for the week, and others stood by the roadside, discussing whether they could afford a new household Golem next month.

Two civilian security patrol Golems marched along the main road at a steady pace, the blue indicator lights on their chests flashing rhythmically.

Peaceful and orderly—this was the everyday life in the Divine Kingdom of Ten Thousand Machines.

But in the next second, the air in the center of the street soundlessly twisted and tore like a crumpled piece of cloth. A ring of visible spatial ripples spread out in all directions, like the ripples radiating from a stone tossed into a lake. A figure stepped out from the spatial rift.

More accurately, it was a figure without skin.

The exposed muscle fibers gleamed with a moist sheen under the setting sun. Every muscle bundle was clearly visible, looking like a specimen that had just walked off a dissection table. Lidless eyeballs rolled slowly in their deep sockets, while exposed teeth and gums formed a spine-chilling smile. An overwhelmingly nauseating stench of blood accompanied the figure, instantly filling the entire street.

A young man who had just finished work stopped by the side of the road. The lunchbox in his hand dropped to the ground, splashing soup all over his shoes.

"Run!"

Screams immediately erupted.

The crowd fled in all directions. The cries of children, the shrieks of women, and the furious curses of men blended together. Someone was knocked to the ground and, just as they tried to scramble up, was trampled by the surging mob behind them.

The indicator lights on the chests of the two patrol Golems abruptly turned red. They pivoted simultaneously and raised their arms. The Magic Power Emitters in their palms began to charge, completing their target assessment within 0.7 seconds.

[Magic Power Fluctuation Level: Unable to assess. Exceeds sensor range limits. Threat Level: Maximum. Automatic reporting directive dispatched.]

However, the figure didn’t even glance at the Golems. The contours of the muscle fibers roughly indicated her gender. She brazenly strode forward, her bare soles stepping on the concrete, leaving shallow, blood-seeping footprints with every step.

"To think a planar defense was established this quickly..." Her lipless mouth opened and closed at a grotesque angle. "Not only did he reinforce the planar barriers, but he also invested in building up these natives. The White Wizard sure is rich..."

The two patrol Golems fired simultaneously. Two blue-and-white rays of Magic Power accurately struck her body, only to be blocked by a faint layer of flowing blood on her surface. For these two mass-produced patrol Golems, which weren’t even at the Advanced Apprentice level, it was like two ants trying to push a mountain with their antennae.

"Good thing I left a backup plan," she muttered to herself, completely ignoring the two Golems still firing relentlessly. She raised her head, her lidless eyes rolling upward as if sensing something.

Her Spiritual Power spread out instantly in all directions like an invisible net, centering on her. Twenty kilometers. Within this radius, every living being was enveloped by her perception. She was searching for something—a mark of Soul Fragments hidden deep within the blood, so faint it was almost imperceptible.

"Found it." The smile formed by her exposed teeth and gums seemed to widen. "So it shattered into thousands of pieces... How pitiful."

She raised her hands high, and an invisible force surged from her body like a tidal wave. Within a twenty-kilometer radius around Red Leaf Town, miners, peasant women, blacksmiths, children, and the elderly all simultaneously felt something awakening in their veins.

A young mother fleeing with her child suddenly stopped in her tracks. She looked down at her arm; the blood vessels under her skin were bulging and twisting at a visible rate. The veins turned dark red, like writhing snakes. She opened her mouth, wanting to scream. But before a sound could escape, her body exploded. Flesh and blood curled outward like a scarlet flower. All the blood in her body broke free in an instant, transforming into a crimson pillar of blood that shot into the sky.

Tens of thousands of blood pillars rose simultaneously.

In the mines, workers carrying ore exploded one after another, pillars of blood erupting from their shattered bodies. In the residential district, an old man walked toward the dining table, carrying food he had just taken from the Rune Preservation Cabinet. His wife exploded right in front of him, followed closely by his daughter-in-law. His six-year-old granddaughter was swallowed by the scarlet glow before she even realized what was happening. The bowl in the old man’s hand shattered on the floor, sending porcelain shards flying. Before he could make a sound, his body also began to swell.

Tens of thousands of blood pillars curved and converged in the air, like thousands of tributaries merging into a single great river. More and more scarlet liquid pooled in the sky, blotting out the setting sun as it sank below the horizon. In just a few breaths, an inverted sea of blood appeared above the town.

The sea of blood churned. The stench of blood was so oppressive it made it hard to breathe, and even the sunset was dyed dark red. The streets, rooftops, mines, and distant mountains were all bathed in a bloody shadow.

A Golem Squad stationed near Red Leaf Town, consisting of three combat-type Golems, activated their combat protocols the moment the sea of blood formed, rapidly converging toward its center. At the same time, sharp sonic booms echoed from the horizon as the nearest Storm Falcons arrived.

But before they could even get into formation, the sea of blood suddenly swelled upward. The scarlet liquid acted like the gaping maw of a Giant Beast, swallowing the combat-type Golems and the Storm Falcons whole.

The blood, carrying the corrosive power of the Law of flesh and blood, seeped into the Golems through armor gaps, joint hinges, and energy interfaces. Large dark red stains surfaced on the metal. These stains spread rapidly. The hard armor began to soften, transforming into a scarlet tissue with a fleshy texture. In less than five seconds, the Golems lost all mobility, frozen in the viscous scarlet liquid like insects trapped in amber. Their signals in the Celestial Net System went out one by one.

The woman did not look back. With her hands still raised high, she manipulated the sprawling sea of blood, causing it to slowly rotate in the air. It formed a massive vortex, its center dipping downward as if a gigantic scarlet eye was staring at the earth. Pulled by the Law of flesh and blood, the thousands of Soul Fragments hidden within began to converge toward the center of the vortex.

A blurry humanoid silhouette gradually manifested in the core of the vortex. First the shoulders, then the arms, and finally the head. The edges of the phantom constantly dissipated, only to be yanked back into place by the Law of flesh and blood. His facial features became clearer bit by bit.

It was an arrogant and tyrannical face.

Kesuga.

The Blood Sea Monarch had been reborn in the blood of tens of thousands of innocent lives!

His consciousness had barely recovered when his sense of pain woke up a step ahead. Every shred of his spirit felt as if it had been crushed and then roughly stuffed back into place. Immediately following that, fragmented memories flooded his mind: the white Angel in the Holy Blood Square, the spear nailed into the Holy Mountain, the destructive pillar of light descending from the sky. And finally, that single touch. The power of "End" and "Decay" that pierced the Material Realm and directly crushed his Soul origin.

His soul instinctively trembled.

"You... Sara?" Kesuga’s voice was hoarse and weak. His new body was still unstable. He looked at the skinless woman in front of him, taking three seconds to find the corresponding name from his chaotic memories. "So I actually died once..."

He looked down at his hands, his expression shifting between bewilderment and fury. "That cowardly... Golem Wizard..."

Kesuga’s voice grew louder, waves of Magic Power slamming into the surroundings ring after ring.

"He controlled that white Angel puppet... no, it wasn’t just an Angel, there was a fleet behind it... He destroyed my Law Altar!

"I spent a hundred years—a hundred years!"

His voice went from stumbling to a full-blown roar.

"If I catch him, I swear I’ll rip out his soul, soak it in a Blood Pool, and peel it apart drop by drop—"

"Hah." Sara’s skinless face formed a sneer, a short puff of air escaping between her teeth and gums. "Beaten to this state, yet still talking big."

She tilted her head, her lidless eyes scanning the teetering Kesuga up and down. "Shattered into thousands of pieces, lingering on its last breath in the blood of mortals, unable to even maintain independent consciousness. If those ’Holy Blood Marks’ you planted in these livestock back then hadn’t coincidentally served as containers for your Soul Fragments, do you think you’d still have the chance to stand here and talk to me?"

Kesuga choked back his roar. He fell silent for two seconds. Then, the unstable fluctuations on the surface of his soul body began to retract. His fury was forcefully suppressed, and gloomy calmness returned alongside his intellect. What Sara said was a fact; he really had died once, and she was the one who brought him back. In the world of Wizards, debts had to be paid.

"What now?" When Kesuga spoke again, his tone had shifted into a cautious probe.

"Serve the Skeleton Duke." Sara spoke calmly, as if merely stating a finalized arrangement. "It took a lot of effort to borrow the Boundary-Breaking Device from him." She raised her right hand. A bone-white, thumb-sized diamond crystal hovered there, its surface rippling with faint spatial waves. "This thing is only good for two uses. Once to come here, and once to go back."

Kesuga stared at the crystal for a few seconds. "The Skeleton Duke..." He chewed on the name. "What does he want?"

"Your enemy’s life." Sara withdrew the crystal and glanced into the distance at the rapidly approaching Magic Power signals from the direction of Cybertron. The Celestial Net System had already completed its emergency dispatch; at least five Golem Legions were mobilizing toward the Seventh Administrative District. "Or more accurately, he wants this Plane."

"Is the Skeleton Duke going to act personally?"

"Of course. That White Wizard has been a bit too active in the Gray Channel lately, so he... Let’s go!" Sara suddenly looked up, her tone changing abruptly. "He’s already reacted—hurry!"

In that very instant, a low, rolling rumble of thunder echoed from the ends of the sky. A streak of silver light appeared on the northwestern horizon, trailing a blazing white sonic boom wake that stretched for dozens of kilometers. Its speed was so fast that the naked eye could only catch a fleeting speck of light. This was followed by a continuous, deafening wave of sonic booms that detonated sequentially along its flight path like falling dominoes.

That streak of silver light was diving straight toward Red Leaf Town at Mach 12.

"Tch—" Sara cursed. The bone-white diamond crystal in her right hand suddenly lit up, and a spatial ripple spread out from beneath her and Kesuga. At the same time, Sara’s left hand slammed downward. A surge of the Power of Laws drilled into the ground, destroying the spatial coordinate anchor she had buried years ago. The spatial ripples swallowed the two figures, and they vanished.

One second later.

A body of Spiritual Remains Steel dragged a blazing white trail through atmospheric friction, plummeting toward the earth like a silver meteor hurled by God.

BOOM!

With her at the center of the landing point, the hard concrete road shattered into powder, forming an impact crater over fifty meters in diameter and three meters deep. The reinforced concrete buildings on both sides were rattled with dense cracks by the shockwave. Rubble and dust were pushed outward along the ground, and the blood on the street was instantly blasted apart, vaporizing into a scarlet mist of blood.

No. 18 stood up straight. Her short golden hair fluttered in the blood mist, and her ice-blue pupils coldly scanned her surroundings. There was no trace of the enemy, no living targets. There was only an ankle-deep river of scarlet blood and a dead, silent block.

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