Chapter 29 — A Flick of the Shadow

Boom—!

The half of the gravity halberd hurled by Gar—using his residual divine power and berserk blood qi—transformed into a blinding gold-red death-light piercing heaven and earth. Carrying an absolute gravity that swept aside all obstacles, it tore through the entire concave plaza! Countless waste lead armors were smashed to pieces!

Within a dozens of meters along its path, the scrap iron statues, carburized lead explosion-proof plates, and muddy ground were instantly blasted back and crushed into powder under this violent gravitational pressure! The gold-red death-light aimed straight at "Vespera," wearing a rough cloth dress in the shadows of the ruins!

Wherever the spear's gravitational gleam passed, the molecular structure in the air was compressed by the high pressure into visible glassy dents. The ear-piercing sonic booms of the air made the mortals' eardrums bleed!

"No—!"

Behind the high platform cover, Lyra let out a despairing, tragic scream. The girl's eyes were instantly filled with terror. She desperately tried to struggle up to block it, but was firmly smashed into the mud by Gar's berserk gravity, her eyes bloodshot, blood spilling from her mouth! Veteran Caleb also roared in despair. His mechanical iron arm slapped the ground frantically as he watched helplessly as that destructive gold-red death-light blasted toward the frail, harmless girl in the dark!

However, the first on the battlefield to make a frantic reaction was Elias, who had just horizontally cleaved two divine envoys!

"Bastard! Give me... stop—!!!!"

Above the high platform, Elias's gaze swept across Lyra coughing blood from the gravitational pressure, and the thin, helpless "Vespera" enveloped in the death-light. In that instant, the boy's eyes burst with violent, bright red blood vessels! He could absolutely not allow his companion and this frail girl to be slaughtered by a god right under his nose!

Rumble—!

Elias completely ignored his recently damaged meridians and the torn wounds on his back. The [Anomaly Frequency] in his blood vessels erupted to its absolute maximum speed in a split second! The boy's feet stomped heavily on the waste lead high platform, causing the entire platform to collapse with a boom beneath his step! The boy's figure was like a blood-bathed cornered beast. Transforming into an incredibly violent black lightning bolt, he disregarded everything to cross a distance of dozens of meters, flying horizontally through the air!

He raised the heavy industrial cutting knife, stained with divine blood, high in the air. Frantically channeling all the black-extreme negative energy in his body, he intended to use his flesh and battle knife to firmly block the explosion-proof wall, forcibly withstanding Gar's fatal gravity halberd that was capable of destroying a fortress!

In this perilous, dead-end situation where hanging by a thread—

Facing that gold-red spear gleam piercing heaven and earth, and the blood-colored boy flying desperately through the air to intercept it, "Vespera" acted exactly like a thoroughly paralyzed mortal woman frightened out of her wits.

The high-and-mighty God of Darkness, Umbra, as the ultimate high-dimensional master who calculated without omission, could never allow herself to expose her identity in the lower realm in such a crude manner. Much less would she allow this mortal boy desperately protecting her to die at the hands of a mere divine envoy of Aries.

In the dead corner split second when the gold-red spear gleam and the flying Elias were only ten centimeters away from her—

"Ah—!"

A frail, sharp cry carrying a girl's panic and despair came from behind the scrap iron pile!

"Vespera"'s frail body seemed to "trip over her feet" due to extreme terror and exhaustion. With a tragic cry, she wretchedly stumbled and fell into the deep shadows of a dead corner filled with airtight black lead exhaust barrels and violent thick smoke behind the explosion-proof wall!

And Elias, flying horizontally through the air, the sky-filling shattered scrap iron, and the violent lead-gray thick smoke instantly formed an absolute line-of-sight cover in the air!

In the one-in-a-ten-thousandth-of-a-second blind spot where everyone's line of sight was obscured by the thick smoke and Elias's flying figure!

Fallen deep in the pitch-black shadows, "Vespera," on that originally panicked face, gently hooked the corners of her mouth into an extremely cold, teasing, high-dimensional arc.

Her slender, fair fingertips, hidden deep within the wide sleeves of her rough cloth dress, hooked slightly in an extremely concealed, elegant manner.

Hum—!

A strand of high-dimensional microscopic dark pulse—as fine as a hair, pitch-black as ink, and embedded with the supreme dark law of judgment—followed the high-microfrequency electromagnetic dead corner, violently and silently ejecting from the black shadows!

[Dark Law: Microscopic Annihilation Pulse]!

That was a supreme tier of destructive rule that surpassed mortal imagination, surpassing the realm of understanding of an ordinary divine envoy! Wherever the dark law reached, the molecular bonds and microscopic structure of objects would be directly reduced to zero on a physical level! The pulse precisely grazed the gravity polarization node of the golden halberd; even the most sensitive high-dimensional detectors could not capture its origin.

Whoosh—!

There was no earth-shattering explosion. The thrown golden gravity halberd of Gar, the moment it touched that strand of pitch-black pulse, the gravity runes and high-density alloy on the spear tip strangely melted and dissolved silently in a split second, like thin ice meeting ten-thousand-degree magma. Then, it was directly evaporated into absolute zero-dimensional physical dust! That insufferably arrogant pillar of gravity light dissipated instantly!

Clack-boom—!

The flying Elias swung his knife and hit empty air, landing heavily in front of the scrap iron explosion-proof wall. He gritted his teeth, maintaining a defensive posture meant to forcibly block the death-light. His figure was pushed back several steps by the violent air currents, the black-extreme negative energy smashing the surrounding rubble to pieces. Even he thought it was his energy impact reacting violently with the mineral veins deep underground in the Deadzone!

However, after evaporating the halberd, that strand of extremely microscopic dark pulse followed the broken spear's energy backflow trajectory. Like a venomous snake flowing backwards, it viciously pierced through the right arm of Advanced Divine Envoy Gar, who had descended from high in the sky!

Sizzle—!

Divine Envoy Gar's high-dimensional right arm, covered in silver holy armor and thick muscles, was instantly swallowed completely as if by an invisible black hole, evaporating and melting out of thin air! Not even a sliver of flesh or bone fragment remained! High-dimensional divine blood sprayed like a violent fountain from the clean wound!

"Ahhhhhhhhh—!"

Advanced Divine Envoy Gar let out the most heart-rending, tragic howl imaginable! His entire right arm, along with the silver shoulder armor, vanished into thin air in an instant. High-dimensional divine blood sprayed frantically from the wound of the severed arm like a ruptured volcanic geyser! The extreme backlash of high-dimensional trauma caused this high-and-mighty divine envoy to twitch and roll violently in the mud and scrap iron debris on the ground. His arrogant divinity was thoroughly shattered at this moment!

"Captain! Captain Gar! Your hand! The runaway high-energy mineral veins deep beneath this Deadzone have experienced a strong magnetic storm detonation and law backlash!!"

The last surviving junior divine envoy was so terrified his legs gave way. He fell heavily to his knees in the mud, both hands gripping his trembling golden battle lance tight. His eyes bulged, filled with boundless fear and mental collapse! In the cognition of a low-level divine envoy, this could absolutely never be a method possessed by a low-dimensional mortal. The only explanation was that Captain Gar, by overloading the gravity halberd, unfortunately triggered a residual Old Era planetary core high-energy mineral vein deep beneath the Deadzone's radiation blind spot, suffering a violent detonation backlash from macroscopic physical laws!

"Retreat! Quick, retreat to the patrol boat! Activate the ground-cleansing gravity cannons! Level this ruin completely!"

The crippled Gar roared wildly on the ground, reflecting the golden blood. That voice was filled with hysterical, venomous resentment and despair.

At this time, beneath the scrap lead explosion-proof armor plates behind the defense line.

Veteran Caleb didn't even bother to wipe the blood from the corners of his mouth. That high-precision military electronic prosthetic eye flashed violently, staring fixedly at Gar's evaporated severed arm, his mouth open wide enough to fit a fist.

"Holy shit! The magnetic storm in the mineral veins deep beneath this Deadzone actually overloaded and sympathetically detonated right at this critical juncture, forcibly blowing off that divine police officer's arm?!" The veteran heavily spat out a mouthful of bloody saliva, his tactical gloves tightly pulling the trigger of the explosion-proof anti-aircraft cannon. "Brothers! Divine envoys know physical pain too! Their blood is red too! Take his life while he's sick! Open fire!!"

Rat-tat-tat-tat-tat—!

Dozens of scar-covered mortal warriors roared and lifted the explosion-proof curtains. The wasteland heavy machine guns modified from starship scrap and the armor-piercing pulse rounds transformed into a storm-like barrage, frantically pouring toward the panicked, retreating divine envoys! Golden divine blood and black gunpowder smoke violently intertwined in the night sky!

Lyra, fallen behind the scrap iron pile, also struggled to wipe the bloodstain from the corner of her lips. The girl clenched her jaw tight. Her long, ice-cold fingers firmly pressed on the calculation compass, pushing the final few energy storage crystal cores into the extreme gravity deflection array, pulling up a faint physical barrier for the defense line.

And as the rolling dust and smoke behind the explosion-proof armor gradually cleared...

"Vespera" stumbled and crawled out from behind the scrap iron barrels. The linen dress on her body was stained with ugly black ash and mud. Her small face was written full of the "panic and bewilderment of a narrow escape from death." Her hands tightly covered her frightened chest, her small body shrinking by the iron barrel, shivering, acting without a single flaw.

However, above the high platform, Elias standing in the ambush corner... the pupils of his eyes contracted violently to their absolute limit in an instant!

Relying on the [Anomaly Frequency]'s high-microfrequency perception that surpassed mortals, in the thousandth of a second gap when Gar's right arm was pulverized, he extremely clearly captured that flashing black pulse frequency band within the shadows of the dust and smoke! The boy's heart felt as if it had been viciously struck by a heavy hammer!

Elias stared fixedly at the "amnesiac refugee" huddled behind the scrap iron, "shivering, face pale." The seed of suspicion profoundly took root in the boy's soul at this moment—a mortal refugee without any cultivation, why would the extreme microscopic amplitude of a dark-attribute high-dimensional law flash in the shadow where she fell? Was it a coincidence, or was she hiding an unspeakable, earth-shattering secret?!

That destructive frequency band, pitch-black as ink...

Although it was only a fleeting flash, he absolutely could not have felt it wrong! That was absolutely not a power an ordinary low-dimensional refugee could come into contact with.

In the boy's perception, just now when Gar's sure-kill golden halberd smashed toward the explosion-proof wall, that girl called "Vespera" clearly looked like she fell backward subconsciously. But the instant she fell into the mud and the dead corner of rolling black gas, that extremely tiny black pulse shot out with a deflection trajectory that defied physical common sense!

It was impossible for mortals to possess this kind of power. Even elite infiltrators trained by warlords could absolutely never unleash such terrifying high-dimensional dark-attribute annihilation laws out of thin air!

"Who... exactly is she?"

A highly hoarse, low growl issued from Elias's throat, his eyes sharp and dead-silent like an eagle's.

This amnesiac woman before his eyes—whom he had rescued from the escape pod ruins, who spoke softly and gently, who even let him hold her hand in the middle of the night to channel out negative energy... was absolutely no ordinary wasteland refugee! She must have concealed a terrifying true identity, perhaps even possessing some ancient and dangerous high-dimensional dark law relic!

This heavy cloud of suspicion was like a sharp dagger, viciously stabbing into Elias's mind.

If she hid such an astonishing high-dimensional method, why did she pretend to be a frightened, weak woman lurking in their ranks? What unspeakable motive did she have for staying in the Embers Camp?

Infinite mysteries and heavy doubts boomed and surged in Elias's heart, making the boy's already bloodstained face appear increasingly cold.

But in the current dead-end situation amidst gunsmoke, although Gar had lost his right arm, the patrol boat's main cannons and the remaining divine envoy were still a fatal Sword of Damocles hanging over the camp! Elias had to first completely annihilate these descending divine envoys before he had the right to pursue this secret hidden in the dark!

The boy violently wiped the divine blood from his face, suppressed the violent tremors in his heart, and forcibly pressed that bone-chilling suspicion into the deepest part of his marrow.

And in the shadows of the mud, "Vespera," seemingly "shivering," slightly gathered her legs hidden beneath her long dress.

The high-and-mighty God of Darkness, Umbra, deep in her high-dimensional eyes that were pitch-black as the night, calmly reflected the boy's violently contracted pupils and suspicious gaze. She understood mortal perception too well; she knew Elias's extremely high Anomaly frequency band just now must have captured the pulsation of the dark energy.

But she didn't care.

This was precisely the most interesting development of this high-dimensional chess game—a mortal ant holding a battle knife, in a dead-end situation of blood and fire, had for the first time developed a profound and dangerous suspicion toward this mysterious woman beside him.

The blizzard of the dark night howled madly over the camp. The life-and-death decisive battle between mortals and divine envoys completely marched toward an irreversible, climaxing dead-end!