The heavenly fire was held at bay in the sky by the Kunpeng and the barrier, yet the air in Xindu City was still thick with the acrid stench of burning.
“Form ranks—!”
Standing atop the collapsed city wall, a commander shouted in a voice hoarse to the point of being nearly indistinguishable. His armor was scorched black by the heavenly fire, and his hand gripped a tattered Zhenbei Army battle standard tightly.
“Protect the commoners! First Squad, search and rescue the East Market! Second Squad, follow me to halt the spread of the flames at the South Gate! Move!”
Not a single person hesitated.
A conviction etched into their very bones allowed those soldiers, whose legs had trembled in terror before the heavenly fire, to overcome the fear within their hearts.
They carried buckets of water, dragged sandbags, and beat at the remaining flames with broken wooden planks, darting back and forth through fire and thick smoke.
A young soldier knelt on the ground, frantically clawing away at the rubble with her bare hands until her fingers were raw and bloody. As she dug, she shouted, “Is anyone down there? Call out to me!”
A faint knocking sound came from beneath the rubble.
She redoubled her efforts like mad, and the surviving townsfolk nearby rushed over as well, digging with their hands and prying with wooden sticks.
“Hold on, child! Just hold on...”
When the little girl, her face coated in ash, was finally lifted out, everyone wept at the sight of her blister-covered arms.
“Don’t cry, General Sister... Yaya doesn’t hurt...”
The soldier’s tears splashed against the child’s hair.
“Good girl, good girl.”
The military doctors arrived swiftly.
“Quick, quick, get her onto the stretcher!”
With natural disasters striking incessantly over the past few years, the Zhenbei Army from top to bottom possessed abundant disaster-relief experience.
Countless commoners were rescued from the inferno by the Zhenbei Army and handed over to the medical tents for treatment, swift and orderly.
In the sky, the Kunpeng circled round and round, its resonant cry echoing across the expanse of the earth.
The heavenly fire crashed relentlessly against its body, hurting worse than undersea magma, yet it neither dodged nor flinched.
Zhuzhu had told it to protect those two-legged beasts. If it left and the barrier broke, it would mess up what Zhuzhu entrusted to it again, and Xiao Funi would be angry.
Meanwhile, within the peach blossom grove.
Yun Shu wiped the blood from the corner of her mouth, pushed herself up from the ground, and smiled faintly as she watched the images in the water mirror.
Her left shoulder had been pierced by some unknown weapon, a dazzling blossom of crimson blooming across her white robes, yet she stood firm.
“You see? Even without my presence, they can rely on their own strength to save others and save themselves in a catastrophe.”
The Great God was injured far worse than she was.
The little fox skin covering its body had been violently torn away by her, laying bare its true form beneath.
It was a humanoid mechanical shell, with a dark-gold core embedded in its chest that was now covered in spiderweb-like cracks, a small amount of golden liquid oozing out from within.
“Yun Shu, have you really not noticed that you are growing weaker? Your power comes from this world’s faith in you! The more independent and self-reliant they become, the less they depend on you, and naturally their faith in you will diminish! Let’s see how much longer you can hold out!”
“You’d better worry about yourself instead,” Yun Shu said as a long blade materialized once more in her hand. She charged toward the Great God, peach blossom petals rustling down from her shoulders. “I’d love to see just how much energy you have left to waste on me.”
She could easily manifest heavy firearms and thermal weaponry to destroy this menace of a Great God outright.
However, doing so would inevitably shatter the entire domain.
Once the domain broke, the energy within would spill out, and the outside world would be swept up in it and reduced to ruin.
Thus, in her fight against the Great God, her disadvantage lay in holding back to avoid collateral damage, whereas the Great God held no scruples whatsoever.
The Great God had clearly seen through this as well.
The six wings behind its back unfurled once more, its metallic body transforming into a silver-blue afterimage as it met Yun Shu’s assault.
Yun Shu sidestepped, slashing downward at an angle.
The edge of her blade struck the base of the Great God’s left wing. Metal collided with scarlet blade-light, bursting into a shower of blinding sparks.
“Damn you!” Howling in pain, the Great God swept its right wing across. The blade-edge grazed Yun Shu’s back, opening a bloody gash.
Yun Shu let out a muffled grunt, yet she pressed forward instead of retreating. Shifting her blade from a slash to a thrust, she drove it straight into the core on the Great God’s chest.
Fragments shattered and flew; golden liquid sprayed forth.
Screaming in agony, the Great God collapsed into a sphere of light.
It panicked completely.
It knew full well that if it continued fighting Yun Shu, it would either die from depleted energy or perish beneath her blade.
“Yun Shu, do you really have to be so relentless?” It secretly channeled all of its remaining energy.
“Me, relentless?” Yun Shu sneered, mercilessly cleaving the orb of light in two. “Are you even human?”
Under her relentless strikes, the sphere of light grew smaller and smaller.
“Then all of you can die!”
Expending the last vestige of its energy, the Great God briefly tore open the domain Yun Shu had erected, breaching the barrier of this world.
“Hahahaha! So what if you averted the natural disaster? Did you think I could only cleanse and reset this world with disasters?”
Its voice dripped with madness.
Yun Shu’s heart sank. She snapped her head toward the water mirror, only to see an earthquake suddenly tear through Xindu City.
Immediately after, countless black holes appeared in the sky, and grotesque, twisted monsters crawled out from within them.
Some resembled humans but had limbs growing in reverse; some resembled wild beasts yet bore human facial features; others were merely writhing masses of flesh sprouting eyes.
They clambered onto the Kunpeng, tearing and gnawing at its flesh.
Under their violent impacts, fractures spread across the barrier.
Before long, the first breach appeared. Monsters swarmed through, falling from the sky one after another to tear apart the people on the ground.
“Yun Shu, this civilization you speak of cannot withstand a single blow before absolute power! I was the one who was right!”
The Great God laughed triumphantly. “These aberrations are bred from a half-finished real world! While they cannot compare to organisms nurtured in a true world, devouring a rabble of mere flesh and blood is more than enough for them—”
Her face icy, Yun Shu seized the Great God in her grip.
Just as she was about to drag the Great God out of the domain, an unexpected scene unfolded within the water mirror.
Beneath the breach, the Zhenbei Army formed a wall of human bodies.
Leading at the very front were Shen Jue and Feng Chunya.
“Behind us stand millions of our people! Even in death, we do not retreat! Follow me and slay these monsters!”
“Kill—!”
The Zhenbei Army charged forward without fear of death.
Blades hacked into the aberrations’ flesh, black fluid spraying across their faces.
A lanky soldier was knocked down, but the soldier beside her thrust a spear through the aberration’s back and hauled her to her feet.
From among the commoners, many rushed forth as well.
“At worst, it’s just death!” the crowd roared. “No need to fear these beasts! We can’t let them into the city!”
Standing firm beneath the breach in the barrier, they used their flesh and blood to block the ferocious horde of aberrations.
As soon as one fell, another stepped forward to take their place.
“How could this be?!” The Great God watched in disbelief as its army of aberrations was stopped dead outside Xindu City.
Rims of red tinged Yun Shu’s eyes.
At this moment, the resolve in her heart solidified even further.
“Didn’t you want to get out? I’ll take you out!” Gripping the Great God, she soared out from the peach blossom grove.
“Wh-What are you going to do?! Let me go!” For the first time, genuine terror crept into the Great God’s voice.
Yun Shu did not answer.
She stood quietly high above Xindu City.
The wind blew fiercely, whipping her bloodstained white robes around her.
Beneath her feet lay the devastated earth. The barrier was already in tatters, and the Kunpeng had been mauled to the brink of death.
Across the sky, the black holes continued to expand.
The world’s barrier had been shattered by the Great God. Once the black holes grew any larger, chaotic void currents would swallow the entire world whole.
Yun Shu glanced down at Xindu City. More and more people were falling, yet the Zhenbei Army still held fast, fighting bitterly.
“This time, I shall be a true Divine Lady for once.” Her gaze settled on the sphere of light in her hand.
“Yun Shu, you lunatic, you—”
Before the Great God could finish speaking, Yun Shu clenched her fingers abruptly, a formidable force crushing it to pieces.
Moments later, the five-colored stone coalesced in her grasp, its kaleidoscopic glow dispelling all darkness in an instant.
Lifting her hand, she bore the five-colored stone aloft and shot straight into the firmament, slamming it into the black hole. Radiance exploded outward, leeching all color from creation.
The black holes sealed shut, and the aberrations dissolved into smoke, vanishing completely.
“Divine Lady...” Everyone stared unblinkingly upward at that figure suspended amidst the heavenly light.
Yet before their cheers of victory could ring out, they saw the Divine Lady plummet from the sky, her body beginning to fracture.
Specks of golden light rained down upon the mountains and rivers. Tender green sprouts poked through the charred soil, incinerated trees put forth fresh buds once more, and dried-up rivers began to flow anew...
Yun Shu unleashed every skill from all her outfits and left behind for this world the library she had created together with the system.
Then, she could hold on no longer.
Back then, she had joked with the system that once this world no longer needed a Divine Lady, she would stage a demise just as Luo Daoqing had suggested, and then take it home with her.
Who could have thought those words would truly turn into prophecy?
Her only regret was that she failed to bring the system home.
The destructive power of the chaotic void currents was far greater than she had imagined.
“Damn it all, this hurts like hell.”
“Still, at least I did it.”
“Mom, Dad, Brother, Sister... Xiao Shu remembered everything you taught her. I didn’t let you down...”
Her consciousness grew dimmer and dimmer.
Innumerable voices seemed to drift in from every direction, but she could not hear them clearly, nor did she have the strength left to see who they were.
Down upon the ground, thousands upon thousands of believers watched helplessly as the Divine Lady in the sky shattered into countless pieces, like fractured jade.
“Divine Lady!”
The Divine Lady had fallen, and all living beings mourned in unison.
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