The domain continued to expand outward, infiltrating corridors and floorboards, passing through the outer walls of the Polymath Tower to spread across the night sky. Within a hundred-meter radius, every light source was devoured.
The area around the Polymath Tower became a zone of absolute darkness; the only light came from eyeballs.
Every inch of the surface the Guardian gazed upon began to grow.
Eyeballs squeezed out from the cracks in the flagstones and from shattered crystal fragments, their pupils rotating once before fixing their gaze.
They covered the floor, carpeted the walls, and hung in rows from the ceiling. Those pitch-black pupils cast a cold light in the otherwise lightless space.
The entire Main Control Room had transformed into a writhing, living entity.
K struggled frantically within that all-encompassing gaze, his liquid body constantly deforming and contracting as he tried to find even a single corner that wasn't covered.
Every surface his liquid form touched was staring back at him. Even from within his liquefied body, denser clusters of black eyes began to push upward, their coverage growing until the sheer density crushed his ability to flow.
A distorted tremor vibrated through K’s liquid form. It was the sound of him using his liquefied body to speak, but it was so raspy that the words were unintelligible—whether he was calling for help or cursing, no one could tell.
He could no longer return to human form, nor could he flow.
The Guardian stood in place, and hundreds of eyeballs turned simultaneously toward K.
Locked down completely by the dense eyes on his surface, the black liquid lost its fluidity, transforming from a living puddle into a solid black mass of eyeballs.
One by one, the pupils stopped rotating and lost their luster. When the last pupil fixed in place, K’s aura dissipated completely.
K, the last member of the Grey Covenant’s stronghold in the Bronze City, had died at the Guardian’s hands.
While the Guardian was still dealing with K’s remains, Kraus had already turned and run toward the other end of the corridor.
He didn't rush into the Main Control Room. The Guardian’s domain covered the entire room; going in wouldn't help and would only serve as a distraction.
Kraus pulled a communication crystal from the inner pocket of his trench coat and pressed his thumb against the surface, channeling a short burst of transcendent energy into it.
“Margaret, the Guardian’s suppression potions—send them all to the Polymath Tower. Send as many as you have.”
The crystal’s surface flashed twice, and a short, decisive response pulsed back.
Margaret had received the message.
Kraus knew all too well that the Guardian’s condition was already on a countdown. After going all out, the process of turning into an eerie would only accelerate. Potions were the only means of delaying the inevitable.
Inside the Main Control Room, Arthur had rushed in the moment the Guardian deployed his domain.
The defense arrays were shattered beyond recognition. The rift in the Sea of Knowledge was blocked by the Guardian’s massive eyeball, temporarily eliminating the risk of the channel collapsing.
Arthur ran to the sarcophagus and pressed his hands against the energy light-beam ports embedded in the old Dean’s limbs. His fingertips channeled inscriptions as he began to cut them off one by one.
A ghostly blue beam detached from the old Dean’s left wrist, leaving the skin at the port charred black.
The second beam was withdrawn from the right wrist, causing the old Dean’s body to convulse violently. Then the third and fourth were pulled from his ankles.
Arthur’s hands were shaking. Every time a beam was severed, the inscription array within the sarcophagus fluctuated wildly. He had to simultaneously adjust the balance parameters of the energy circuits to prevent a secondary collapse as the channel closed.
The final beam was embedded in the old Dean’s temple. Arthur’s finger hovered over the port for three seconds, and after finishing the circuit adjustments, he yanked it out.
The old Dean’s body went limp. His chest rose and fell with extremely faint breaths, but his face was deathly pale. A charred round hole remained at his temple, the surrounding flesh already necrotic.
His eyes were tightly shut, and his lips twitched constantly, uttering silent murmurs. Both his mind and body had suffered catastrophic damage.
Whether the old man could be saved was something Arthur didn't dare contemplate.
He lifted the old Dean out of the sarcophagus and laid him on the floor, then turned and threw himself at the main control console to begin the forced shutdown of the harvesting program.
“Sir! You must hold on for at least a few more minutes!”
Arthur shouted toward the Guardian.
Shutting down the harvesting required severing the energy circuits in stages. An abrupt interruption would cause the residual energy to go on a rampage within the pipes. A buffer of several minutes was essential.
Every minute the Guardian spent blocking the rift above was another minute of operating time for Arthur below.
The Guardian did not look back.
The eyes on his body did not retract even after K’s aura vanished. Hundreds of black pupils rotated in different directions simultaneously, maintaining the pitch-black domain that shrouded the Polymath Tower.
The massive eye above the tower remained as well, its pupil fixed on the rift in the Sea of Knowledge, swallowing the last fragments leaking from the channel.
In the corridor, Hilde opened the copper box, took out two intact silver needles, and hurried toward the Main Control Room.
...
At the sinkhole exit in the Old Council Square.
Lu Yuan was crouching by a low wall, organizing his notebook, when the light in the sky changed.
He looked up. The fluorescent glow of knowledge fragments that had been drifting around the Polymath Tower was suddenly cut off.
A massive, pitch-black eye hung high in the sky above the Polymath Tower, occupying half the night sky, its pupil aligned with the overflowing rift of the Sea of Knowledge.
Variegated fragments vanished the moment they hit its surface. The end of the river of light was blocked, and no more new fragments drifted into the sky.
Lu Yuan’s movement to close his notebook stopped mid-air.
He recognized this thing.
Back in the narrow street, when the Guardian had arrived, the eyes drifting in the pitch-black aura were the same as the massive black eye in the sky.
The Guardian was taking action.
But Lu Yuan also knew the Guardian’s condition.
Kraus had said the Guardian was “about to completely turn into an eerie.”
Going all out meant the countdown had jumped forward significantly.
Lu Yuan stood up, put away his notebook, and turned toward the Polymath Tower.
“To the Polymath Tower.”
The Blue Knight, leaning against a stone pillar, moved slightly. Her grey-blue eyes shifted toward the tower. She didn't speak, but half a second later, she was following him.
The Great Ascendant’s silver-grey pupils constricted, and the metal parts on his face rotated for two seconds before he stepped forward.
The Ascension Society wouldn't miss an event of this magnitude.
Old Archbishop Adrian pressed his hand against the holy emblem on his chest. After a second of silence, he closed the tome on his lap and stood up to follow.
Lake said nothing and followed immediately.
Margaret was no longer there; after making rapid arrangements, she had gone somewhere unknown.
Agnes stood by, supporting the nun. The two of them watched the group’s silhouettes disappear around the corner of the square.
Lu Yuan, Lake, the Great Ascendant, Adrian, and the Blue Knight—the five of them rushed toward the Polymath Tower.
The silhouette of the Polymath Tower was barely visible in the night, its surroundings within a hundred-meter radius shrouded in an unnatural darkness that even swallowed the faint glow of inscriptions.
The massive black eye hung above the tower, its pupil rotating slowly in the night sky.
The night wind blew in from the direction of the copper walls, pinning Lu Yuan’s coat against his body as he quickened his pace.
The footsteps of the five people sounded hurried on the flagstones of the Bronze City. The wind carried the distinct metallic scent of the copper walls.
Lu Yuan ran near the front of the group, with Lake to his left, his coat flapping in the wind, and Adrian to his right.
The Blue Knight led the way, her grey-blue cloak pressed against her back, her footsteps so light they were nearly silent.
The Great Ascendant brought up the rear.
The Polymath Tower drew closer. The unnatural darkness enveloped the tower and its surroundings, so thick that even the building's outline was mostly swallowed.
At the peak of the darkness, the massive black eye still hung in the sky, facing the rift in the Sea of Knowledge. However, the edges of the eye were blurrier than when they had seen it from the square; its outline was slowly dissipating.
Grey-white text surfaced at the edge of his vision.
【High-risk pollution source detected. Please stay away immediately.】
The text vanished for two seconds before jumping out again.
【High-risk pollution source detected. Please stay away immediately.】
By the fifth time it appeared, Lu Yuan’s gaze slid past the text and landed on the edge of the darkness ahead.
The domain was shrinking. When he had left the square, the darkness had extended to the second row of buildings around the tower; now, it had retreated within the first row.
The black wall at the edge, which had been too thick to see through, was thinning. The outermost layer now allowed a faint glimpse of the stone walls behind it.
The contraction wasn't fast, but it showed no sign of stopping. The Guardian’s power was failing.
Kraus had said the Guardian was the Bronze City’s final trump card—a fifth-rank transcendent who was about to turn completely into an eerie.
When he had visited the clock tower, the grey-white text’s assessment had been “slight loss of control” and “might be able to linger for a while longer.”
That had been days ago.
Now, the Guardian was going all out, blocking the rift above and killing in the tower below, with a domain spanning a hundred meters. This level of exertion wasn't something “lingering” could withstand.
Lu Yuan quickened his pace even more.
The Guardian couldn't fall here.
If he turned completely into an eerie at the Polymath Tower, half of the city’s transcendent defense system might collapse with him—from the seals beneath the copper walls to the inscriptions still running on the surface, all would lose their highest-tier deterrent.
The five of them reached the edge of the domain.
Seeing the darkness up close was entirely different from seeing it from afar.
Light simply vanished the moment it touched that barrier, with no transition at all. One step, the inscription patterns on the flagstones were visible; the next was pure black.
But the density of the darkness was indeed decreasing.
Lu Yuan stared at the barrier for two seconds. The outermost layer had thinned enough to reveal the inscription patterns on the stone walls behind it. The patterns were dull and lifeless, extinguished after being crushed by the Guardian’s aura.
No new power was being poured into the domain; it was maintaining its final form through inertia, dissipating layer by layer from the outside in.
Lake didn't stop. He channeled a stream of dark red insects from the cuff of his coat toward the wall of darkness.
The moment the front of the swarm touched the darkness, the surface of the outermost insects was scorched with a singe mark, their dark red shells blackening and curling, but they didn't disintegrate.
Lake retracted the swarm and brushed off the scorched outer layer.
“We can enter,” he said, his voice urgent.
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