Mei Gon fought bravely against the beasts that assaulted her and all other survivors without end. She felt an unpleasant sticky feeling on her back and discovered wounds she suffered during her struggle, oblivious to them while her adrenaline was still at its peaků Yet, with the time passing, she was no longer oblivious to her pain and exhaustion. Her fear was going out of control and right when she was about to panic, running away from the beasts, not caring that it would only lead to claws and teeth tearing through her back, she was suddenly hugged by another female fighter next to her.
Her first impulse was to push the crazy woman away, but she found out that her strength was insufficient to do that.
"Shhh, be calm my love. You have been blessed by master's attention." Sweet voice entered her ear and Mei Gon realized a few oddities about the clingy woman, the greatest one being that the freak was almost naked under her loose robe, which the lady used to hide her from the outside world, except for the top of her face.
"What are you.. ?"
"Be silent, or I won't be able to protect you." The strange person said in a more serious voice and Mei Gon observed as abominable creatures surrounded the survivors struggling for their lives. Some of the creatures walked on tentacles, some had no eyes and all of them were giving off a dangerous vibe, a feeling of wrongness. Most of the beasts around them decided to avoid to fight the group of horrors, heading further towards the city.
"Thank you. Thank you, you saved my life." Mei Gon started tearing up, but the women reprimanded her harshly.
"Be quiet woman, have you not understood my words? There will be no escape if they see you." She growled in a slightly hostile manner, as if even she was getting nervous and Mei Gon immediately fell silent, ducking even lower under the person's robe.
And truly, the real enemy had finally arrived. Creatures similar to those that were tightly surrounding the survivors appeared all around them like a flood. There was a level of madness felt from them that made Mei Gon nauseous. Their hordes flowed all around her, their group being like a stone in the middle of a wide river, ignored by the swift, thundering stream of death. Was the woman hugging her a part of them? She surely looked like some of the more humanoid creatures that rushed further towards Jinsheng, but Mei Gon felt differently about the ones that were tightly encircling the small group of humans on top of the ruins of Fort Orlov.
She did not dare to make a sound or even move and silently watched the armies of insanity to siege the slums she had always cursed under her breath and payed to burn to ashes. For the first time in her life, she prayed that the slums would hold, protected by the high wall of the city.
* * * *
"Are you sure none of them is capable of sniping us? The many eyed abominations do possess a weird power." A tall figure standing on the top of the city wall asked his companion on his right side that stood in the middle of three veiled figures. They held their cloaks tightly to their bodies with an obvious intention to hide their presence as much as possible. Despite that, many could guess based on the black and white hair of the person on the far right who the three were, their inconspicuous retinue of bodyguards being another clue of their identity.
"Does it even matter? This is no ordinary incident, there will be nowhere to hide at this rate." The man in the middle replied with contempt while observing the situation below them, where the last remnants of the beast tide fought a desperate battle, stuck in between the two forces of chaos and the cultivators who had retreated behind the inner wall of the city.
"There is nobody but us to halt this filth. Let's get on with it." A woman's voice spoke, her irritation apparent, a dangerous sparkle appearing in her black and white eyes, each one of a kind. The unending horde of vermin was not the sight for those faint of heart and even the three immortals of Jinsheng wanted to finish the battle quickly. Every second spent in the conflict presented a danger to their ageless existence.
"With the three of us combined, we might even reach the edge of the outer wall." Immortal Wu Zayed assessed the situation from the middle of them before the trio prepared their combined move.
The three figures held their hands while facing the hordes of chaos, their aura quickly permeating the space around them. Their personal guard and all top cultivators present tensed, ready to defend against an assassination attempt that was bound to come. It was only natural to expect a fierce retaliation after what was about to happen.
The presence of the three Immortals turned heavy, the people around them feeling like autumn leaves that were long overdue to fall and rot on the ground. When the chilling, unnatural feeling reached almost an unbearable level of intensity, an invisible ripple shot out of the three, claiming the lives off all who were deemed unworthy to live by them.
The legendary power of the Immortals to lord over life and death, the Death Domain.
All the abominations in front of the wall of Jinsheng began to fall, like puppets who no longer felt the strings of their puppeteer attached, their performance ending prematurely with an eerie silence of no blows exchanged. Masses of chaos minions fell to the ground, leaving the few still resisting human fighters in front of the wall staring with blank faces at the dead enemies that had been just about to overwhelm them.
However, not all of the fallen were only enemies.
It was one of the reasons why the Death Domain was used only when necessary. It was simple to target a few enemies, but with increasing numbers, the difficulty with delivering the deadly blow to only the designated enemies increased and there was always collateral damage proportional to the power deployed.
"That is better than expected." Immortal Yang Zhi smiled and gazed firmly in the direction of the outer city wall, her mesmerizing voice gaining a harsh undertone. "Come, filth! We can do this all day!"
The cheers and laughter was heard again from the top of Jinsheng inner wall, the noises of the invaders silenced abruptly.
The joy of the defenders was short lived, an intense tremor sending low-frequency vibrations through their bodies. Some of the exhausted people even staggered and fell down, taken by surprise by the unexpected retaliation.
"What was that?" Anxious murmurs sounded from inside the city, quickly interrupted by Immortals' response to prevent the panic from spreading further.
"I do not know who that is, but it is coming from that direction." Wu Zayed was pointing in the direction of new chaos monsters that were slowly replacing the dead ones.
"Whatever, as long as they are mortal, it does not matter!" Yang Zhi shouted and another ripple rushed in the direction of the minions of chaos.
Before the vanguard of the enemy forces was hit, a huge red pillar shot up into the sky on the horizon. Its distance was unclear, but the size of the purplish-red pillar was beyond all reason, its top reaching far above the tree tops of the surrounding forest and still growing. With the sound still not reaching the spectating cultivators, it seemed like they were watching a movie with no audio, but the terror looming over them made its presence known in a different way.
The ripple of the Death Domain quickly washed over the forces of chaos, but this time a thin red barrier flashed on top of their skin, leaving the prized ability of the Immortals powerless to do anything.
"How?! What is this thing?" Yang Zhi stepped forward and gripped the walls' edge, her eyes looking at the incoming hordes with disbelief.
"Seems like the puppeteer does not like having his strings cut." Wu Zayed looked at the alien pillar that seemed to be made of flesh, his humor ignored by all present, their brains occupied by processing the severity of their situation.
"What, what now?!" Yang Zhi asked in panic, but the answer of her Immortal colleague chilled her to the bone.
"Now? This was just its defense and I do not think this thing is a toothless baby." Wu Zayed said and her hands began to tremble and swiftly let go of those of her Immortal peers.
With his words, a thunderous sound caused by the distant entity's sudden appearance finally reached Jinsheg's wall, forcing all present to cover their ears with their hands. When they recoiled and lifted their heads back up, the eyes of everyone stared at the many kilometers high tower of flesh that had suddenly grown up in the distance and it did not seem its height was final.
Suddenly, the structure that threatened to pierce the heavens tilted in their direction.
"It will fall! The tower will fall on top of us! Run!" There were shouts of panic, but everyone knew that running was meaningless.
* * * *
Karl Gulden was currently running while being escorted by his strongest minions. They were making their way through the darkness of his tunnels that were connecting his new domain with the old.
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"Ah, the memories. I remember making the original Labyrinth." Karl was quickly heading to a Building with limited functionality. He had long found out that trying to stop the legions of chaos with his meager troop was an exercise in futility and decided to make a difference where he could. At the only place that provided him with enough power to turn him into an absolute force in its area.
The Temple of Earth.
He prayed that it had not vanished along with all the Void Buildings, but based on the fact that his other Buildings remained, it should be only the Void structures that had met the unfortunate end.
"Finally!" Karl's five-eyed minion reached the unorthodox structure of the temple and established his connection with the temple while trying to reconnect with some minions he had left on the surface for monitoring purposes.
"Let's see how is the situation on the surface. It could not get much worse, eh?" Karl thought, but was shocked how wrong he had been when his senses finally synchronized with one of his surface minions that was positioned near the outer city wall. There was an enormous thing reaching the clouds that looked like a tower build by ten thousand people during a period of time of ten thousand years.
Except it had not been there a moment ago!
Karl swore that he spotted a drop of sweat on his black surface when he noticed the towering tentacle started moving in his direction. The motion seemed slow, due to the immense size of the mass of flesh, but he knew that it was not. The tip of the enormous tentacle neared Karl and he was able to see more and more details on its surface.
"I have not signed up for this!" He started rising a few kilometers long wall of rock with the power granted to him by the temple.
When the wall was two hundred meters high, he was able to guess the overgrown limb's width and extended his wall a little to match the dimensions of the attacker.
"Wait, it will hit mostly flat on its top. I need to make it thicker!" At this point almost feeling like bathing in his sweat, Karl began to increase the wall's dimensions in all directions as much as he could before the exaggerated tentacle struck.
The instant before the limb of the unknown enemy struck, it seemed like the time stopped, the battle pausing while even the abominations of chaos gazing at the glorious attack of their master.
All of them roared in pleasure, even those who were directly under the tentacle and might be squashed like flies under its weight.
The tentacle finally connected with the enormous stone wall that had been risen to face it and a tremor of monstrous intensity could be felt, all the fighters be it human, beast or a monster falling to the ground. An earthquake caused by the hit of their ultimate enemy made buildings in the center of Jinsheng crumble and damaged all the city walls on multiple places.
Although the wall erected in their defense held the immense weight of the attacker, half of it crumbled when the tentacle slowly lifted back into the air to build up momentum. Karl trembled along with all the earth around him and knew that the next hit would be the Jinsheng's downfall, even if his wall held. The earthquake caused by the collision was simply too strong.
Everyone knew that the second hit would be the last.
Karl mobilized the powers of The Temple of Earth again and repaired all the cracks that the hit had created. Stabilizing the temple, he noticed that the whole region of the temple sunk by a few centimeters after the hit, its lowered terrain covered by a sticky, black substance.
"Disgusting, what is that?" Karl looked at the black mucus through the eyes of his minions which were still alive on the surface and realized it had fallen from the tentacle when it hit.
"Disgusting thing!" His wall was being slowly renewed while the tentacle had risen to its original vertical position, regaining its height. Karl despaired, knowing that it would not take long before all of Jinsheng was destroyed, with his heroic efforts being in wain.
"God help us all." The black stone sighed, knowing that there was no victory against an enemy like they faced. It was simply out of their league.
* * * *
In a pitch black space there were whispers carried by the wind. It was not an ordinary wind made of air, it just was, as if an inevitable feature of the space itself. Following the whispers to their source, there was a terrifying spherical being hovering in front of a small, circular hole that seem to be out of place in this realm of horror.
The whispers intensified and one of the huge tentacles of the thousand eyes being pushed its tip thought the shiny portal. Being stuck only after a few meters due to the tentacle's width, the eyes screamed out their irritation and pushed hard. Something broke and the tentacle was pushed inside the way between the worlds along with specks of corruption, spores of unclean creatures and the malevolent substances residing in this bleak realm.
The pinnacle of abominations expanded his limb inside the newfound realm, whispering its eternal lullaby to where only at this moment it had gained access. It yearned to explore new forms, ways, rules, colors, sounds and mix them all up until everything would die and is born anew at the same time in an eternal chaotic cycle of life. Life that would despair when thriving and finds joy in its decay.
Suddenly, the sacred work of the God of Insanity, QiXrcRlr, was disrupted by a huge golden hand that intruded into its domain. The whole realm screamed with rejection as the enormous hand that shone with blinding light gripped the spherical body of QiXrcRlr and yanked it away from the Gate. In the next moment, the hand gripped the squealing god tight, squashing it in its palm like it was just a bug.
Horrendous noise spread thought the corrupted realm, as the God of Insanity was intertwined with the realm itself and the sphere with the thousand eyes was just his manifestation, his avatar.
"Senseless fool, your cycle has ended." A voice from outside penetrated into the realm, its sound hurting what was left of the fallen god of chaos with every syllable.
"A lie! Don't lie! You are dead! You are not a true immortal!" The voice of the dead god shouted, his thousand voices truly unified for the first time.
"I am dead and I am alive. Reborn anew." The voice answered, not deeming necessary to have the debate they had many times before once again. "Vanish and be forgotten, until your seed of malice is squashed once more by my hand."
The enormous golden hand of the reborn Godly Emperor of The Nine Point Three Heavens gripped the corrupted realm of chaos and all the worlds and universes connected to it and lifted it up. Then the emperor, who truly ruled over more than just the Nine Heavens. put it in his Heavenly Chest of Drawers, where everything he did not want to see with his godly eyes rested.
Satisfied, the emperor sat down on his new golden throne nearby and stared at the new humongous golden door, reminiscing about his eternal struggle with those that reached immortality through breaking the cycle, the insane gods of chaos.
In their eternal struggle, they could never be truly killed, the same way as he would always rise again through reincarnation. In a sense, both of them were eternal, but he walked the path of sanity and divine might at his peak, where they were fated to forever rot in their everlasting insanity, refusing to let go and be born anew, always striving for infinity that could never fully exist as no infinity could, be if of matter, spirit, or information.
"To break the cycle? To endlessly accumulate?" The emperor laughed out loud in his room filled with brightness and light. "The path of everlasting insanity."
* * * *
Karl felt like in a dream, when he saw the enormous, overgrown tentacle that threatened to flatten them all to violently disappear back into the portal during just a few seconds. He could not even comprehend the speed the tentacle had to reach while performing its hasty departure from their realm. All that it left was a massive gust of wind and a sonic boom that reached them soon after.
Dazed, Karl kept switching his attention between all his surviving minions and all of them saw the same picture of a clear sky. At first, everyone stood like statues, not able to comprehend the situation, but slowly, shouts of glee and exhilaration started to fill the air.
The city survived.
The Immortals, cultivators and small folk alike cheered as one in a rare occasion of unity, before the strife and struggle of everyday life would consume them again. For the last time, the three Immortals employed their ability to clean up the rest of the vermin, this time without the protection of their disappeared master.
In the back of everyone's mind, there was fear of the humongous abomination returning to the battlefield to finish what it had started, but their fear slowly faded away with the archenemy nowhere to be seen. The giant tentacle never returned, its fate and origin remaining a mystery forever.
Karl Gulden began slowly returning under Fort Orlov that had been destroyed even more during the intense struggle. Before, it was just a ruin, but at this point there were only couple of large boulders left with the foundations of its tower and keep.
"This cannot stand, I will rebuild it! I will make the greatest structure ever seen both on the surface and under!" Karl imagined his future plans in a good mood. It might be a headache to make it happen, but he believed that Jinsheng had survived its greatest crisis. He was not afraid of human interference any longer. Humans could be reasoned with, or reasoned with some more with gold and promises of power as he had done before.
When he reached his destination, he decided to exit the underground, carried again by his most presentable minion, the priestess. He was sure she would not do anything untoward during the festive occasion of their victory.
They made their way through the collapsed tunnels with Karl using his most practical dungeon spell to dig a new entrance. He remembered how he feared using it because of the wrath of the Heavens.
"Still no Heavenly Tribulations for me it seems. Has the Heavens really fallen as the say?" Karl thought while blasting his way forwards with his once forbidden spell. His worry completely forgotten, he overused his spell to reach the surface and joined the small crowd that was shouting their joy to the sky. Naturally blending in among the few boulders that used to be the cozy Fort Orlov. He remembered his teenage thugs that in the same way as these people lived by the moment, forced by their circumstances to ignore the bigger picture that was too gloomy to accept.
He felt similar, due to the forces he witnessed at play and decided to forget everything for the moment and enjoy the occasion. Karl felt thrilled by their victory, it was a wonderful feeling. He listened to all the voices around him and let the victory take root in his brain.
"We have won!"
"Long live the Purple Lotus Sect!"
"We are the mighty people of Jinsheng! We can beat anyone!"
"There are no gods, only pretenders! Trust no one! They are all fake!"
"We have survived!"
"Look up, reach the Heavens! Ever higher! Above anyone and anything!"
Jinsheng would thrive and he would eternally stand by to watch and guard its progress. Observe its society mix and thrive to a bright future.
* * * *
Mei Gon stood in a daze, starting at the suddenly empty sky above her. Awaking her power in the middle of the fight was her greatest and the most scary experience at the same time. She vaguely remembered that cultivators tried to experience a lot while inducing different states of mind to try and forge their connections with their true souls. Unintentionally, she had successfully done just that and was no longer just a simple person.
She giggled while tying her messy hair back into a ponytail. She was no longer a simple girl from slums and it felt phenomenal, the same as surviving the madness of the last few hours.
Looking around her, she noticed a few boulders lying randomly around and recognized the place that always induced a mix of contradictory feelings in her. However, now there was only joy inside her, as she had not expected to live through the terrible slaughter that had just taken place at the outskirts of Jinsheng.
She heard shouts of the survivors around her and laughed with them.
"We have won!"
"Long live the Purple Lotus Sect!"
"We are the mighty people of Jinsheng! We can beat anyone!"
"We have survived!"
She shouted along with everyone, not paying attention to a veiled female figure that stood a little bit aside, staring in the direction of Edo while squirming in ecstasy, whispering a difficult to pronounce name under her breath.