“Josephine! Glenda! Come back out! We’ve gotta leave right now!” Jianmen yelled as he ran to the metal door. And while he was running, a gentle, shimmering glow started forming around his body. Though gentle and harmless looking, the darkness, dirt and even the solidified dark liquid around him on the ground and walls seemed to be turning into smoke and dust when touched by the light.

“Boom!” Something exploded from underground and shook the entire hall.

“What’s happening?” Josephine Wong and Glenda Grimes stopped proceeding through the tunnel behind the metal door and asked Jianmen: “Was that you?”

“No, it’s something else.” Jianmen shook his head: “We’ve gotta go, now.”

“Your aura - what - what did you do?” Josephine Wong looked at Jianmen up and down with a worried look: “You used one of the tokens? Why? I thought you needed them for your way …”

“There’ll be plenty of time to collect more. Now, we’ve gotta leave.” Jianmen raised his meat cleaver, which was glowing in an orange and golden light, then he swung it down and struck the ground.

“Ting!” A few slivers of stone flew off from the point of impact between the meat cleaver and the ground, Jianmen’s Xuanli shot into the ground, but did not do much damage to the structure of the building around them at all.

After around one second, there was a small explosion somewhere deep underground, and a few of the protective arrays of this castle were disabled, including the ones that functioned as disruption and barrier against any magic that creates portals or any other teleportation gateways.

“Okay, time to go.” Josephine Wong waved her hand and started conjuring a portal: “Let’s get back to your inn first.”

“No, get back to the academy first.” Jianmen said as his eyes glowed in orange and golden light as well: “And tell everyone, the timeline with which the Defilers would be at our doorstep just got expedited. Somebody used a Stone of Negation, if you sensed that strangeness in the energy fields all around, that’s because there’s a fucking hole in the very fabric of the universe and the entire reality.”

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“Okay.” Josephine Wong asked as she completed the special portal connected to the Anderson Plaza of the Grant Academy, something only ones with permissions from the Grant Academy administrations and enough power could do: “How long do we have?”

“I’ll try my best to buy everyone two days.” Jianmen sighed and rushed Josephine Wong: “Go!”

After making sure that Josephine Wong and Glenda Grimes reached the Grant Academy safely. Jianmen closed the portal for Josephine Wong, knelt down where he was and started chanting a long spell.

As the chant went on, a pre-recorded message of his started resounding in Xianshi Inn: “Dear extinguished guests of Xianshi Inn, we are facing a catastrophe of worldly proportions, therefore we won’t be able to serve you as an inn. In the next ten minutes, you will be transported to your places of safety. If you have provided this information when you made the reservation, you will be transported there. If you haven’t, you will have time to provide this information by dropping it in any readable form into the mailbox close to you. If you choose to stay, you will be automatically transported into the safety bunker and you will no longer be able to leave at will.”

At the same time, the tower at the top of the bunker started to glow, an intense flame was released by the tip of the tower, and a golden liquid rose up from beneath the bunker and flowed towards the tower’s tip via various troughs carved on the exterior of the bunker and the tower.

When the liquid reached the tip of the tower, the flames became brighter and more intense, and within just a few seconds, a blinding beam of orange and golden energy shot from the tip of the tower and into the sky above.

A giant portal with orange and golden edges opened up in the sky in a distance not that far above the top of the tower, redirecting the beam of energy to a spot in the sky right above the Hellinger Castle.

“Boom boom boom…” the thick and dark liquid flowing inside the Hellinger Castle exploded and turned into ash and small pieces of stone when they came into contact with the energy beam, while the beam itself just pierced through the entire castle like hot knife through butter.

The orange and golden beam of energy was finally stopped, by a dark orb with pale grey energy exterior at the center of where the underground bunker was. The dark orb shook violently and jumped around like a high energy marble, but the beam of energy had locked it in place and prevented it from leaving the position or expanding. One could see that as long as the beam of energy was not exhausted, the dark orb would not be able to escape or change in size.

When the ten minutes passed, almost all guests in Xianshi Inn were transported away, and the few that stayed were sent to the safety bunker just as announced. A short moment later, the bunker in the parking lot started floating towards the sky, along with the beam of energy and the portal above. Before long, the bunker was completely separated from the inn’s parking lot. Then with a flicker of the entire body of the bunker, it traveled to a completely different realm, along with the beam of energy as well as the portal.