Chapter 182: The Shadow of “Timing”
After the being’s corruption of the black mist reached a certain threshold, it began ravenously devouring the mist — as though trying to replenish some missing energy within itself.
Xu Zhi had a faint intuition. Perhaps from the very start, its plan to gather the black mist around Cloud City had been precisely for this — to make its feeding easier.
The rate at which it absorbed energy was terrifyingly fast. The black mist that had once blotted out all light from Cloud City now swirled into a massive vortex centered on the being, thinning rapidly as it spun.
Xu Zhi’s eyelid twitched. You’ve got to be kidding me.
She was supposed to fight this thing next? How was that even possible?
Yet rather than despair, what filled her mind was the question the Narrator had posed — that mysterious word: “Timing.” What was this “Timing”? How could it possibly turn such an all-powerful being into something she could even hope to confront?
Very soon, she saw the shadow of that timing.
It was not easy for the Midnight Realm to manifest in Cloud City. As the shadow of Midnight slowly solidified, the being’s massive body began to show signs of strain. Each of the eyes covering its form wept streams of filthy blood, and some could no longer bear the pressure — bursting one after another into chunks of flesh that rolled down from its skin.
Though its towering form did not tremble, Xu Zhi could clearly hear countless cries and screams of agony in her mind.
It was as though those eyes were suffering in its place, enduring some kind of excruciating punishment. The shrieks never ceased, each wave sending fresh pulses of psychic corruption that battered Xu Zhi’s consciousness.
Frowning, she instinctively wanted to cover her ears — but she knew it would do no good. This kind of mental contamination couldn’t be blocked by something as simple as sound.
The sound waves took on visible form — expanding ripples of distortion spreading outward through the mist, radiating across every inch of Cloud City.
Each time one of those invisible waves struck her body, Xu Zhi’s vision warped; distorted colors flashed before her eyes, and she heard the harsh static crackle of a broken television. Blinking hard, she activated her [Moth]-type transcendent energy, dispersing the invading corruption from her body. The world cleared again.
For her, these outbursts of corruption were bearable — but only for her.
Thankfully, every time another eyeball burst, the maddening screams weakened, and the rippling waves became unstable.
As the eyes shattered one by one, the heads attached to its body also began to crack — some even splitting open completely, dissolving into foul, rotting flesh that rolled off its body and piled at its feet. The once-constant waves of psychic pollution finally began to subside.
But as more black mist poured into its body, the cracks in those heads began to mend, and the shattered eyes reformed once again.
Xu Zhi didn’t even need to open her Eye of Secrets to know: to truly destroy this thing, she would have to eliminate every single head and eye it possessed.
Those pieces were taking the damage for it.
Even with the immense energy Cloud City provided — enough to feed its gluttonous absorption — its regeneration still couldn’t keep pace with the backlash of forcing the Midnight Realm into reality.
The rotten flesh that fell from its body piled up into mounds at its feet, rivers of blood flowing down the heaps and seeping into the city streets, merging Cloud City and Midnight ever more tightly together.
As the phantom of Midnight grew denser, Xu Zhi noticed something different from the last time she entered that realm.
— The trees in Midnight had decreased.
Or rather, the gravestones had.
Recalling what the black cat once told her — about the sacrifices in Midnight — Xu Zhi grimaced. Oh great… Don’t tell me they used the buried remains of the dead as offerings…
Probably not just the bones either. In Midnight, many transcendent beings had been buried or lain dormant — their souls never fully extinguished. The sacrifices might have consumed not only corpses, but souls as well.
“To bring yourself back to life, you erase even the souls of others?”
Xu Zhi wasn’t condemning, just quietly lamenting. In a world ruled by the law of the jungle, even death offered no peace.
After all, who could say when someone might dig up your grave and scatter your ashes for their own gain?
Then — at the very instant the shadow of Midnight solidified into something real — a familiar sensation pierced through Xu Zhi’s body. It was the same as the first time she’d crossed through the “door” between the world and Midnight: that strange stillness, the abrupt change in the air, like stepping through a barrier.
The feeling was… like suddenly walking from summer straight into winter.
And in that exact moment, the shrieking voices ringing in her ears fell silent.
She looked up — and saw chunks of flesh sliding off the creature’s body like a mountain collapsing in slow motion. When it was done, its once-smooth form was pitted and uneven, like a cob of corn with a quarter of its kernels ripped away.
Those “kernels,” of course, were its heads.
The moment Midnight fully descended, the creature suffered an enormous backlash — losing nearly a quarter of its heads in the process.
Its once-steady, mountainlike figure wavered.
Anyone could see — it was injured.
But a heartbeat later, the black vortex surrounding it spun even faster. Within seconds, the dense fog blanketing Cloud City began to thin. For the first time in ages, people could faintly see through the mist — and glimpse the Federation beyond.
The barrier between Cloud City and the Federation had vanished.
And then, suspended in the heavens above, the black sun came into view for the city’s residents.
“…What is that thing?”
The transcendents of Cloud City, who had never seen it before, stared up in confusion and fear.
“Not good — the array’s energy consumption just tripled!”
someone cried out.
The pale golden barrier above their heads wasn’t anyone’s personal power but a defensive formation — one sustained by a massive amount of transcendent energy, particularly of the [Lamp] attribute. Now, faint golden shards were peeling away from the barrier, scattering into the air and fading.
At the report, Zhong Lingfan’s expression did not change. She merely said,
“Feed in all the [Lamp] attribute cores.”
Even then, it probably wouldn’t last long. But even if the cores were gone, there were still [Lamp]-type transcendents left to draw from.
Most of Zhong Lingfan’s efforts had gone into defense — keeping people alive. As for the counterattack…
Her gaze drifted beyond the golden barrier, toward a tall building in the distance. There, a lone girl stood — Xu Zhi.
That was her last card. Her all-in gamble. Her final strike.
Until the moment of counterattack arrived, all she could do… was buy them time to survive.
