"Deep sea rock... As I thought, it’s related to the Deep Sea Serpent."
Shangyuan Zi’s bloodline ability was incredibly complex. She didn’t understand it herself, let alone Guan Tong.
This was especially true after she killed Mizusawa Chun, as she seemed to have absorbed the other half of the Great Serpent bloodline that Mizusawa Chun had possessed. Now, with two portions of the bloodline combined within her, the development of her abilities was greatly accelerated. This was also why scales were now rapidly covering her entire body.
As they spoke, Shadow carried the two of them into Yunhua City.
They landed on the roof of a building that had yet to collapse and looked down upon a scene of utter devastation.
Guan Tong looked toward his home. The once-grand North Street Avenue had been reduced to a gray belt of crushed stone. Broken glass and splintered wooden signs were strewn everywhere, all of it caked in dried seabed sludge, transforming the street into what looked like a river of garbage.
A grayish-white salt frost, left behind as the seawater receded, coated every visible surface in a thick layer. It was as if a bleak, monochrome filter had been laid over the world, and under the sun’s rays, the city emanated an air of desolation.
In a city that had first been abandoned, then destroyed by an earthquake and a tsunami, there were no signs of life, save for a few specks of green sprouting in the corners with the arrival of spring.
Guan Tong couldn’t see or hear anyone. The only thing that reached him was a faint, cloying, rotten smell in the air. It was impossible to tell if it came from animal or plant matter, or a mixture of both wafting through the ruins.
"How are we supposed to find one person, who may or may not even exist, in a city this massive?" Shangyuan Zi asked. "Wouldn’t it be better to have that young friend of yours with the Perception Ability help us out?"
"I thought about asking Chen Na for help, but she’s out on a mission. This time, we’ll have to rely on ourselves."
As he spoke, Guan Tong commanded his shadow to split.
One shadow split into two, the two became four, the four became eight... In no time, hundreds, even thousands of shadows had appeared.
"Go."
With a wave of his hand, the shadows glided off in every direction, exploring every corner of the city for him.
Guan Tong, for his part, sat down on the spot and closed his eyes.
Shangyuan Zi knew that his shadows could share their senses with him, but processing images from so many of them at once would place an immense strain on the brain. It was like one person trying to watch hundreds or thousands of security monitors simultaneously—an impossible task for any ordinary person.
Fortunately, Guan Tong was no ordinary person.
Shangyuan Zi stood silently to one side, keeping a vigilant watch over their surroundings.
More than half an hour passed before Guan Tong opened his eyes, a look of disappointment on his face.
"Didn’t find anything?"
"Nothing." Guan Tong stood up. "I’ve explored almost every building that’s still relatively intact and habitable. I didn’t find anyone."
"Could you have missed some spots? This is a huge city, after all."
"There are definitely places I missed, but checking them all would take more than a day or two."
For him to conduct a thorough, city-wide search of a place like Yunhua by himself would take at least ten to fifteen days. That would eat up the entire interval between Rule Stages.
Shangyuan Zi had no objection; she had nothing better to do, anyway.
Having come to an agreement, the two decided they would spend the next ten-odd days doing nothing else but investigating the city and searching for this person.
...
The half-month interval passed quickly.
During this time, the Human Federation made frequent moves, focusing primarily on striking the Fire Worship Cult and the Parasites.
During the previous Rule Stage, both of these anti-human groups had launched their own offensives, causing considerable damage. Now that the Rule Stage had ended, the Human Federation decided to retaliate with overwhelming force.
But before retaliating, they had to root out the traitors in their midst.
Major, top-secret decisions made by the Human Federation had been leaked time and time again. Each time, they spoke of investigating the member nations, but these efforts were consistently ineffective.
This was partly due to a lack of resolve, and partly due to inadequate investigative methods.
This time, however, the damage caused by the mole was significant. Not only did the decapitation strike fail, but the leak of intelligence about the "Demon Race"—information that could be neither confirmed nor refuted—thrust Shadow into the crosshairs of public condemnation.
Being overly critical of a top-tier Ascender could easily incite turmoil, a fact that had the upper echelons of the Human Federation nations deeply concerned. They worried that if Shadow, out of resentment, decided to defect to the Fire Worship Cult or turned his animosity on ordinary people and other Ascenders, the consequences would be dire.
Fortunately, the North Star Faction announced that they had spoken with Shadow, which put the other nations slightly more at ease.
To prevent such incidents from reoccurring, the Human Federation decided to alter its decision-making process by implementing a whitelist system. From now on, only members on the whitelist would have access to crucial, classified intelligence.
This way, if intelligence were to leak again, it would drastically narrow the scope of the investigation to find the traitor.
The whitelist was comprised of the Human Federation committee members from each nation and a handful of high-ranking, official decision-makers. Shortly after being added to the list, these individuals passed a joint resolution.
The resolution called for a large-scale bombing campaign against Liluo’an City.
They had refrained from doing so before due to widespread opposition. Opponents argued that many of the Cultists were likely under Mind Control, and an indiscriminate bombing campaign would harm the innocent. This was one of the reasons they had previously opted for the plan to assassinate the Pope; some believed that by killing the Mind Controller, a large number of Cultists would revert to their normal selves.
But after the crisis in the city of Soloma, with its population of over a million, all nations had come to agree on the "Federation Citizens First" principle. They would no longer place the citizens of Human Federation member states in danger for the sake of other, uncertain factors.
Thus, the bombing plan was approved. Using satellite surveillance, nations led by Soloma would unleash long-range artillery on Liluo’an City, where the Fire Worship Cult was concentrated. The goal was a saturation bombing campaign aimed at wiping out the Cultists’ combat forces.
Unlike Black Banner Country, Liluo’an City didn’t have numerous caves and forests for cover, and the Cultists weren’t nearly as resilient as the Parasites. After several rounds of bombing, on top of the casualties inflicted by the Annihilators previously, the Fire Worship Cult was left completely devastated.
Once the bombing campaign proved effective, Soloma announced it would soon dispatch armed ground troops to completely eradicate the remaining forces of the Fire Worship Cult, ensuring the cult’s final extinction from Celestial Water Star.
However, compared to the Cultists, the Human Federation’s most dangerous enemy remained the Parasites.
During the last Rule Stage, these monsters had used the power of the Rules, coordinating with numerous hidden moles to deal a heavy blow to the front-line allied army.
Though it seemed like a major victory for the Parasites, it only strengthened humanity’s resolve to exterminate every last one of them.
After the old allied army was withdrawn, a New Alliance Army was rapidly assembled.
And unlike the old one, every member of the New Alliance Army underwent secret testing to ensure that no Parasites had infiltrated its ranks.
North Star Country provided the testing. While the identities of the testers were kept secret, the method was not: North Star openly revealed that it had restarted the Mind Network.
This classified intelligence was shared only with the Human Federation’s whitelisted members and was not released to the public. The number of Ascenders capable of restarting the Mind Network was currently far too low—some smaller nations couldn’t even find a single one. Announcing it publicly would have no benefits and would only serve to alert the Parasites.
Thus, every soldier in the New Alliance Army was guaranteed to be human, with no Parasite moles lurking in the ranks. Furthermore, the member nations had dispatched large numbers of official Ascenders to join them, making the overall strength of this new army a full tier higher than the last.
Faced with the formidable New Alliance Army, the Parasites did not engage in a direct confrontation. Under the command of their "Prophet," they abandoned the bases they had captured, taking all their combat and living supplies deep into the mountains. Their intention was clear: to wage a protracted war of attrition against humanity.
Meanwhile, the online firestorm sparked by the "Demon Race" affair gradually died down. With government officials giving it the cold shoulder and Shadow refusing to make a statement, public interest waned over time. But everyone knew that if the "Demon Race" were to ever truly appear, the controversy would reignite in an instant, a thousand times more intensely than before.
Amidst this blend of contradiction and chaos, time marched steadily onward into April.
But unlike humans, who were prone to delays, the Fire Thief never missed its cue.
At 9:00 a.m. on April 1st, a new Apocalypse Rule was announced right on schedule.