Chapter 147: Die!
As soon as the words left her mouth, one of Ye Yan’s attacks shot straight toward Xu Zhi’s face. But Xu Zhi, in a rare move, didn’t dodge or raise her blade to block. She simply shifted her body slightly, avoiding the fatal spot, and allowed the blow to land squarely on her left shoulder. Instead of retreating, she stepped forward—moving straight toward Ye Yan.
When the distance between them had shrunk to less than a meter, Xu Zhi’s left shoulder seemed to be sliced by an invisible blade. Blood splattered from the wound—Ye Yan hadn’t held back at all, nearly cleaving her shoulder in two. But even with such a severe injury, her expression didn’t waver in the slightest. She stepped in closer and raised her right hand, placing it firmly on top of Ye Yan’s head.
Ye Yan was young, and due to stunted growth in the past, he was a full head shorter than Xu Zhi. So pressing her hand down on his head didn’t take much effort.
What was hard came next.
Xu Zhi clenched his head tightly with all five fingers. If not for Ye Yan’s own abilities and his allies having already worn her down, she might have crushed his skull outright. As it was, she couldn’t quite do that—but even so, Ye Yan’s head began to distort under the pressure.
The pain was unimaginable. Ye Yan instinctively tried to raise his blade to sever her hand and escape. But before he could move, Xu Zhi forced his head up so he was staring straight into her eyes.
And in that instant, Ye Yan saw them—gray eyes, and from deep within them, a gray moth took flight.
His physical struggle halted instantly—not because he no longer wanted to resist, but because the battle had shifted from the physical to the mental.
Xu Zhi remembered very clearly: the ability of the Moth wasn’t just mental control—it also caused attribute conflict.
That’s why she’d previously refrained from using the moths too heavily against the Transcendent residents in the district.
However, now that her moths had evolved, she could control whether or not to trigger an attribute clash. That didn’t mean clashes wouldn’t happen—just that she had control over them.
And right now, was exactly the time to use it.
She couldn’t win in a three-on-one physical fight against three archbishops. But in a one-on-one battle of mental power?
She was invincible.
Xu Zhi poured a massive surge of Moth-type Transcendent energy into Ye Yan, forming a moth that burrowed straight into his body. It joined the moths that had already been lying dormant inside him. Under her guidance, they surged toward Ye Yan’s continuously flowing Cup-type ability.
The attribute clash happened in an instant.
For an archbishop-level Transcendent, their internal power was immense. Causing an attribute conflict wasn’t easy. But Xu Zhi’s move was like pulling out the supports from beneath a structure—and it came at a high cost to herself.
What gave her confidence was that she understood the Cup attribute—she could even see the pathways along which the energy flowed. That allowed her to trigger the clash with precision.
This was a killing move she came up with in the heat of battle.
After all, before this actual confrontation, she had no idea what abilities the archbishops would have. Everything had to be improvised.
And when Ye Yan’s body stiffened—
Xu Zhi knew she had won.
Even if her physical body couldn’t take on all three, in a mental duel, she was unmatched.
Moreover, once the attribute conflict began, any external Transcendent powers would only worsen the clash. If Ye Yan couldn’t withstand it himself, then he was finished.
And Xu Zhi was standing right in front of him. How could she possibly let him survive?
The gray moths stirred up a storm inside Ye Yan, clashing against his internal abilities. At some point, the light in Ye Yan’s eyes faded. He didn’t even realize Xu Zhi had let go of him.
Through the Eye of Secrets, Xu Zhi could clearly see the irreversible damage caused to both body and mind when Cup and Moth clashed inside Ye Yan. It reminded her of the pain she’d experienced after surviving Midnight.
Even she had struggled to endure it—Ye Yan certainly wouldn’t fare better.
And indeed, as Xu Zhi suspected, Ye Yan had already lost the ability to think. Under her careful manipulation, the attribute clash erupted faster than usual. The searing pain mixed with the backlash of losing control of his abilities knocked him unconscious in an instant.
Once Ye Yan passed out, the spell formation he had maintained began to flicker. Within seconds, it completely collapsed.
Just as his mind and body were being ravaged by the clash, something strange happened—a phantom, miniature blood-colored staircase appeared in Ye Yan’s mental world. It was like a last defense, slowly stabilizing his shattered psyche.
Xu Zhi raised an eyebrow. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”
What the hell?
He’s really getting protagonist-level treatment now?
Her gaze sharpened. “Trying to ruin my kill?”
With a snap of her fingers, she summoned a handful of high-level Lamp-type cores from her inventory and stuffed them into Ye Yan’s mouth.
Just in case it wasn’t enough—she added another handful of Moth-type cores.
“Let’s see if this doesn’t kill you.”
She then commanded her moths to charge toward the blood-colored staircase in his mind.
Shoving Lamp-type cores into Ye Yan’s mouth was pure sabotage. Everyone knew that Lamp and Cup were mortal enemies. And the effect was even better than she’d hoped.
As soon as the Lamp energy entered his body, it “smelled” the Cup and lunged straight at the blood-colored staircase.
Though the Lamp attribute energy was far weaker than the massive Cup energy that formed the staircase, it didn’t need to overpower it. It only needed to crack it.
Once the Lamp-type opened a fissure, the Moth-type energy surged in.
That staircase wasn’t a real structure—it was a phantom. More precisely, it was the foundation of Ye Yan’s power as an archbishop.
Xu Zhi’s level now surpassed his. After absorbing the shard, her own foundation was no weaker than his Cup-empowered base. Once the moths infiltrated the wound pecked open by the Lamp attribute, the red staircase began to turn gray—one step at a time, corpses of moths adhered to it, leeching the color out of it like decay.
When the entire staircase had turned gray, it finally crumbled into fragments of stone—and with that, Ye Yan’s defeat was sealed.
This time, Xu Zhi didn’t force him to kneel.
He simply couldn’t stand anymore—he collapsed to his knees on his own, head bowed, with moths still writhing beneath his skull.
If someone could look inside his brain, they would find no organs left—only moths. His entire head was packed with them.
And in the moment Ye Yan fell, countless gray moths burst from his now lifeless body. In the dim lighting, they shimmered with a soft, eerie glow—strangely beautiful in their grotesque emergence.
It was as if a swarm of gray butterflies had emerged from his corpse, breaking free from their cocoon.
