But before he could think of a way, the copper wall beneath his feet suddenly went mad.
The golden light that had been slowly seeping out from the cracks suddenly surged, and one beam of multi-colored light after another erupted from the crevices, scattering as they struck the cliff face.
The sinking speed of the copper wall suddenly accelerated, and the entire wall vibrated violently, causing even the threads to shake in response.
The golden inscriptions on the wall cracked and peeled off layer by layer, shattering into specks of light that scattered in all directions, exposing the dull bronze beneath.
Lu Yuan had no time to think; his first instinct was to leave this place.
He manipulated the threads to yank them upward, carrying the Blue Knight along the sloping cliff face as they rushed back toward the way they came.
The Blue Knight remained incredibly stiff. The hands resting on his shoulders did not budge, and she hung on his back like a lifeless object.
Lu Yuan had no idea what was wrong with her, nor did he have the time to think about it. He repeatedly grabbed upward with the threads, kicking off the cliff face to climb desperately.
But they were not fast enough.
The outward slant of the copper wall became their greatest obstacle during the ascent. While they could easily slide down during the descent, going back up was a life-threatening ordeal.
Previously, he had the Blue Knight's assistance, but now Lu Yuan was left to control this transcendent weapon alone. Already unaccustomed to it, he scrambled up a dozen steps in a flurry, but his speed plateaued.
The golden light below continued to chase after them.
Gritting his teeth, Lu Yuan scrambled up another stretch. When his peripheral vision swept past the Blue Knight's face, he finally noticed a golden shimmer hovering above her head.
His movements paused for a brief second.
That shimmer had emerged on its own from the top of her head—a small golden crown, semi-material and semi-illusory, hovering an inch above her. The crown itself radiated the exact same golden light as the copper wall below.
She had also been pulled into the same illusion, and the crown was currently assimilating her.
Lu Yuan's heart sank. He did not understand what the golden crown signified, but he knew he could not wait any longer.
If anything really went wrong with the Blue Knight, he would without a doubt be the first to die.
He summoned the Knowledge Worm from the depths of his left eye.
The little creature poked its head out from beneath the key, colorful light flickering across its body.
Lu Yuan pushed a thought through their symbiotic link while simultaneously pulling on the key, causing the Authority of the Sea of Knowledge to tremble slightly in the depths of his left eye.
Combining the power of the Knowledge Worm and the Authority, an intangible connection extended from him and linked to the Blue Knight's body.
He wanted to drag her out.
But the moment the connection was established, it was shut out by something.
Lu Yuan's consciousness was clean-cut blocked on the outside, unable to enter.
Although it did not pull Lu Yuan inside, he could still see what was happening.
Through that blurry, rejecting barrier, the scene within the Blue Knight's dream materialized before his eyes like a picture.
It was a majestic building, low on the outer edges and towering in the center, tapering upward layer by layer until it reached a conical spire at the top.
The walls were embedded with stained-glass windows, and the greyish-black stone walls gleamed with a cold, hard luster under the light, looking half like a grand hall and half like a castle.
The interior of the hall was vast, with three towering stone pillars standing on either side, and the floor was paved with intricately patterned stone tiles.
The stained glass on the dome and high walls depicted armored knights. Light shone through from behind, casting a blend of golden and multi-colored light directly onto the center of the hall.
The Blue Knight sat right there.
She sat tall upon a massive stone seat, completely enveloped in the interwoven golden and multi-colored light, looking incredibly solemn.
A massive golden crown hovered above her head.
High outside the hall hung a sphere of golden light.
Through the blur, Lu Yuan could see clearly that the sphere of light was the true form of the crown, pouring its power into the hall.
In the corridors on both sides below the throne stood armored figures whose faces could not be seen, all bowing their heads toward the Blue Knight.
The Blue Knight's gaze fell upon the floating golden crown before her.
She slowly opened and closed her palm, feeling some sort of power flowing through her fingertips.
Her face was exceptionally calm in the golden light, yet Lu Yuan could read a trace of longing from the slight tightening of her knuckles.
Putting on the golden crown would allow her to ascend to Rank 5.
Lu Yuan did not know what the Blue Knight was thinking, nor did he know what price must be paid to wear the golden crown. However, he knew that making a deal with the thoroughly mutated crown below was definitely worse than dealing with the Man on the Wall.
The Blue Knight sat on the throne for a moment.
She averted her gaze from the golden crown, swept it across the bowing knights in the corridors, and finally let it rest on the sun-like light outside the hall.
She stood up.
The armored silhouettes remained bowed. The Blue Knight stepped down from the throne, walked through the corridor, and stood right at the entrance of the hall.
The golden light struck her body, casting her shadow extremely long.
She looked up at the golden light, staring at it for a long time.
Then, she raised her hand and removed the golden crown hovering above her head.
Her movement was swift, without the slightest hesitation.
She gripped the golden crown, flung it outward with a swing of her arm. The golden crown flipped in mid-air, its light scattering everywhere.
The six eyes on the golden sphere of light outside the hall snapped open simultaneously, their resentful gazes locking onto the Blue Knight.
One of the gazes shifted slightly, falling upon Lu Yuan, the bystander watching through the window, carrying a malice that was bone-chillingly cold.
The vision shattered abruptly into a flurry of golden fragments, dispersing into nothingness.
Lu Yuan's consciousness snapped back instantly.
Before his eyes were still the cliff face and the swirling eerie inscriptions.
The commotion below was even more violent than before.
Golden light continued to erupt from the cracks of the copper wall, and the scent of flesh welled up from deeper below. The two forces tangled together, spreading frantically along the cliff face.
The tremors beneath them were so violent that the threads kept slipping and detaching.
The Blue Knight was still frozen on his back.
Gritting his teeth, Lu Yuan controlled the threads with one hand and clawed at the cliff face with the other, climbing upward with everything he had.
But the Blue Knight's protection had weakened. Because she was trapped in the dream, the power of her transcendent weapon was heavily compromised.
After all, this was a Rank 4 weapon, not something a Rank 2 Knowledge transcendent like him could fully control.
Seizing the opportunity, the surrounding eerie inscriptions closed in on him again. The dizziness in Lu Yuan's vision intensified sharply, slowing his climbing speed once more.
He was nearing his limit.
Just then, the legs locked around his waist suddenly tightened.
The Blue Knight was back.
Her fingers dug hard into Lu Yuan's shoulders as she snapped out of her rigid state.
In that same instant, the threads exploded outward from her, wrapping the two of them in a flash.
The oppressive pressure of the inscriptions that had taken advantage of his weakness was instantly swept away, and the dizziness in his vision vanished completely.
Before Lu Yuan could even feel relieved, the Blue Knight had already made her move.
When Lu Yuan controlled the threads, he used his thoughts and fingers. It worked, but it was far from smooth.
In the hands of the Blue Knight, however, the threads came alive, spreading out from her fingertips to her toes in one breath. Every single thread was positioned with absolute precision, executing wall-grabs, launches, and direction changes in one seamless motion.
Their speed climbing along the cliff face surged by more than twofold.
Carrying Lu Yuan, the Blue Knight rushed upward, the threads drawing light blue arcs across the cliff face.
Lu Yuan didn't need to do anything other than block the swirling eerie inscriptions to prevent them from touching the Blue Knight.
The golden light below refused to give up, still chasing after Lu Yuan.
Flesh squeezed out from the cracks of the copper wall. Dark red thread-like substances climbed up the cliff face, tangling with the golden light as they spiraled and lunged toward them.
A towering voice echoed up from the bottom of the abyss. It was muffled and laden with intense malice and resentment, reverberating throughout the entire space.
Above ground, the mutation of the Bronze City's walls also intensified sharply at that exact moment.
The Blue Knight did not look back.
Carrying Lu Yuan, she burst past the edge of the cliff face in one breath. The threads snapped away above the gap, and the two of them flipped onto the ground of the pipe network layer.
The moment they landed, the Blue Knight raised her right hand.
The golden crown, whose luster had not yet fully faded, was still hovering semi-illusorily above her head.
The Blue Knight grabbed it, flicked her wrist, and flung it toward the abyss.
The golden crown traced an arc in the air, flipped a few times, and plunged into the darkness below.
The Blue Knight withdrew her hand, her face exceptionally calm.
Yet the entity at the bottom of the abyss did not settle down despite her rejection.
The golden light and flesh churned together, continuing to erupt from the gap. The tremors in the ground did not stop for a single second.
The towering voice below rumbled once more, deeper and heavier than before, as if some colossal entity beneath the earth had rolled over.
The corridors of the pipe network layer trembled, and the remaining bronze patterns overhead went out section by section.
At the other end of the pipe network layer, Kraus was directing several Nightwatchers to move the nearby wounded out. When a violent disturbance suddenly rippled from the depths beneath his feet, he stopped abruptly, his face darkening as he looked toward the sinkhole.
At the foot of the southern section of the inner city wall, the white fog had grown thicker than before, hanging grey and heavy over the ground.
The Great Ascendant stood on a patch of charred, empty ground.
His massive mechanical body was motionless, his silver-grey pupils staring at the wall before him.
This wall was the first to suffer, and its contamination was the most severe.
The precisely arranged inscriptions on the wall had mostly gone dark. Dark red flesh was seeping out thread by thread from within the wall, spreading along the paths of the inscriptions to both sides, wrapping the bronze and stone in a sticky membrane.
Standing behind the Great Ascendant were seven or eight Descendants. Their bird-beak masks reflected cold light in the white fog, and the mechanical joints beneath their black robes clicked occasionally.
Further back, a group of Ascension Society researchers was busily working around several pieces of equipment of various sizes.
The Ascension Society had deployed a massive amount of manpower this time, placing people at all four city walls. The Great Ascendant personally oversaw the southern section, which suffered the heaviest contamination.
“Begin,” the Great Ascendant’s voice squeezed out from his mechanical vocal cords, so low and flat that no emotion could be detected.
The Descendants immediately scattered, each taking up their designated positions.
Not a single person approached the wall. They all operated the machinery from over twenty paces away, working remotely.
Their bodies contained copper; if they got too close to that flesh, they would instead become its food.
The Ascension Society had tried several methods in succession.
They used mechanical drills to cut in from both sides of the wall, attempting to carve a horizontal groove at the base of the wall to completely sever the path of the flesh climbing up from the foundation.
The moment the drill penetrated, the flesh inside the wall surged toward the cut, sticking to the drill and making it impossible to pull out.
The second method was to make a complete rubbing of the inscriptions on the wall, discard the contaminated wall, and rebuild it with other materials using the rubbing as a blueprint. However, this was clearly impossible, as they could not understand the inscriptions at all.
The third method was to cut the wall in half and insert other metals into the gap as a barrier while keeping the inscriptions uninterrupted, hoping to block the flesh. The very bad news was that although the flesh was indifferent to other metals, it could still swallow them.
Since none of the three methods worked, the Ascension Society ultimately chose the crudest and most direct approach.
A massive steam flamethrower was wheeled directly in front of the wall.
The apparatus was mounted on an iron platform fitted with four wheels. A thick nozzle extended from the top of the platform, connected to two half-man-high copper storage tanks behind it.
The Great Ascendant raised his hand to signal, and a ball of white light suddenly flared at the tip of the nozzle.
Steam rushed out first, immediately followed by flames exploding from the white light, as a thick pillar of fire slammed onto the surface of the wall.
Rate on N.U.
