Erosion

Lu Yuan didn't think twice.

He nodded with a smile. "I'm staying."

Seeing that Lu Yuan had made up his mind, the Tianming Sage didn't press the matter. He gave a nod. "In that case, stay."

With a casual gesture, he opened a spatial gate. "Yeye, head back first."

Yeye nodded, glancing at Lu Yuan. "Be careful."

Lu Yuan grinned. "Don't worry."

After Yeye left, the Tianming Sage turned to Lu Yuan, his expression grave. "I need to locate the source of this Aberration first — if it spreads, other areas could be affected. In the meantime, you can handle the King Grade and Battle Venerable-ranked Aberration Feral Beasts. If you encounter Emperor Grade ones, fight if you think you can win, flee if you can't — I'll leave that judgment to you. You have capable spatial Combat Techniques; I don't need to spell it out."

Lu Yuan's expression grew equally serious. He nodded. "Understood."

"Mm." The Tianming Sage nodded, then gave Lu Yuan a measured look. "Stay safe. Don't be reckless. You're still young."

*Actually, the Tianming Sage isn't half bad,* Lu Yuan thought. He nodded. "Thank you for your concern, My Lord Saint. I'll keep that in mind."

The Tianming Sage vanished on the spot, leaving Lu Yuan alone.

In the distance, Feral Beasts had begun drifting closer, one after another.

Lu Yuan eyed the approaching beasts and let a slow grin spread across his face. "Come on, then."

The Great Solar Spirit Body surged to full power. Golden radiance blazed across his entire body — brilliant as a sun, golden flames crackling — as a tremendous aura swept outward in all directions like a pressure wave.

"Time to tear this place apart."

Greatsword in hand, he charged toward a Black Demon Tiger whose aberration had progressed to a horrifying degree — extra legs had erupted from its body, alongside a mass of writhing tentacles.

Youming Palace plaza.

A spatial gate shimmered open, and Yeye stepped out to find the square unusually quiet.

She glanced around. Everyone was staring upward with grave expressions.

Three luminous screens floated in the air above. Two of them showed nothing but rampaging Feral Beasts. In the third, Lu Yuan blazed with golden light, locked in fierce combat — his destructive force was staggering, stone walls crumbling around him, the ground reduced to ruin.

Ye Jing and the elf beside him stared at Lu Yuan's terrifying power in silence.

Yan Liang's fist tightened. Cold light settled over his handsome face, his eyes flickering. A moment passed before he slowly spoke:

"...He's something else."

Ye Heng nodded beside him, exhaling softly. "Too strong. How is he possibly this strong?"

They'd had no way to observe Lu Yuan during the trial itself, but through the screens the Tianming Sage had left behind, the truth was impossible to ignore — Lu Yuan was significantly stronger than either of them.

They were all Battle King Rank, all geniuses on the Prodigy Rankings. The gap in raw power was staggering.

For Yan Liang — once the name atop the Prodigy Rankings — it was a genuine shock, something he could barely bring himself to accept.

But the evidence was right before him, and Yan Liang was not the kind of man to deny reality.

Yeye glanced at the group, then looked away, her gaze fixed on the screen.

Small White stepped up beside her. "Your Highness — Lu Yuan, is he...?"

Yeye didn't take her eyes off the screen. "He decided to stay and help."

Small White parted her lips as if to say something, then thought better of it and nodded quietly instead.

Nearby, Yemu and the others had worn grave expressions ever since the Aberration first appeared.

Yemu spoke deliberately. "Third Uncle, please take some men and check the areas around Youming City — see whether any other Aberration outbreaks have emerged."

An older Cat-kin man gave a slight nod, his face somber. "Understood."

He vanished on the spot.

Yemu continued. "Ye Yu, you stay and watch over Youming City. Everyone else — we're heading to the Valley of Night."

A beautiful Cat-kin woman with a striking figure nodded. "I'll keep a close watch here, Imperial Brother. Go ahead."

Yemu nodded and disappeared along with the others.

The Valley of Night was some distance from Youming City. Without the Tianming Sage's terrifying ability to tear through space outright, they couldn't simply rip open a gate — but at a Battle Emperor's speed, the journey wouldn't take long.

Before long, of all the powerful Cat-kin who had been present, only Ye Yu remained. What was left were the younger generation — peers like Yeye — some of whom hadn't even reached Battle King Rank yet.

The younger Cat-kin were whispering among themselves as they watched the screens.

"Imperial Sister Yeye's friend is incredible — look at him, taking out King Grade Aberration Feral Beasts like they're nothing. Imperial Brother Ye Jing couldn't even dodge one earlier..."

A pretty young Cat-kin girl spoke breathlessly, her eyes glittering as she watched Lu Yuan on the screen.

Across the plaza, the corner of Ye Jing's mouth gave a sharp twitch, and his expression darkened immediately.

Ye Heng's lips curved slightly. He shot Ye Jing an odd look, then turned back to the screen with a quiet sigh.

Another Cat-kin youth fixed the screen with a sharp gaze.

"I want to be that strong someday."

"Wasn't that Lu Yuan guy the top genius on the Prodigy Rankings? Come on, Ye Xiao — worry about getting *onto* the Rankings first before you start dreaming that big..."

Compared to Yemu and the others who had already departed, the younger Cat-kin were remarkably composed, without a trace of anxiety.

As far as they were concerned, with the Ancestor present, the Aberration was nothing to worry about.

In a location the screens couldn't reach, a strange, warped spatial rift hung suspended in the air. From within it seeped threads of sinister green light.

Even now, the rift was slowly closing — as though some invisible force were pressing it shut.

Darkness stirred. The Tianming Sage appeared without warning.

He studied the slowly narrowing rift, his brow gradually furrowing.

"As I feared... it's already eroded this far."

His expression hardened. Streams of black radiance began flowing around him — a darkness-element power far deeper and more profound than anything Lu Yuan commanded.

Layer upon layer of that abyssal darkness enveloped the rift.

The invisible force that had been squeezing it shut seemed to receive a tremendous boost — the process accelerated sharply. At this rate, the rift would be fully sealed within ten seconds.

Then a beam of devastating green light shot toward the Tianming Sage.

He stood perfectly still as it struck him dead-on.

His body dissolved into black mist. The beam, undiminished, slammed into the stone wall beyond.

**BOOM!!**

A thunderous detonation rang out, and green light flooded every corner of the space. When it finally faded, the formerly narrow passage had been hollowed into a colossal void — stretching nearly a hundred kilometers across, containing nothing but the spatial rift at its center.

A massive horned tiger materialized. Behind it, tentacles had fused together into a pair of flesh-forged wings, densely covered in blinking eyes that glowed with an eerie green light.

Darkness churned. The Tianming Sage coalesced back into existence.

He studied the grotesque creature before him, eyes narrowing to slits, a cold smile touching his lips:

"Merely Emperor Grade. However far the Aberration has twisted you, the gap between that and Battle Saint cannot be bridged."

Dark mist billowed around him — and he vanished. An instant later, before the massive tiger could react, it simply exploded.

Flesh and blood sprayed across the void. But in the next instant, every shred of it froze in place, then slowly drifted back toward the center, coalescing once more into a single mass.

The tiger's form was gone entirely. In its place sat a lumpen mass of congealed flesh — covered in eyes, mouths, and a writhing tangle of tentacles.

The tentacles churned, the mouths opened and closed in a cacophony of screams and whispers, and every eye blazed with that same unsettling green glow.

The Tianming Sage's brow slowly furrowed, his expression growing colder.

"...No wonder it's managed to erode all the way to the Lower Layer. It's no weakling, I'll grant it that."

Darkness began seeping from the Tianming Sage's body, gradually consuming the entire void.

Even Lu Yuan, with his Emperor Grade genes, would have been rendered completely blind the moment he stepped inside — every sense stripped away in an instant.

Within that darkness, flashes of green light flickered at irregular intervals, punctuated by thunderous reverberations — the signs of a battle too fierce to witness directly.

Elsewhere, Yemu arrived at the entrance to the Valley of Night alongside more than twenty Cat-kin Battle Emperors.

The entrance was an underground passage.

Rows of Cat-kin warriors stood guard outside, and at their head was a powerful Battle Emperor-rank summoner. His Staff swept in wide arcs, calling forth wave after wave of Feral Beasts to hold back the tide of aberrated creatures hammering at the entrance. His expression was tight with focus.

Upon seeing Yemu, he straightened, his face grave. "Your Majesty — something has gone wrong in the Valley of Night. The Feral Beasts inside appear to have aberrated."

"I know."

Yemu nodded.

Just then, a ferocious roar erupted from the passage, and the faces of those around Yemu shifted as they turned toward the sound.

A massive Earth-Armor Dragon came barreling toward the entrance. Enormous claws jutted from its body, each strike capable of tearing a summoned beast apart outright, as it ripped through the beast cluster and charged headlong for the passage.

Yemu's brow creased.

"An Emperor Grade beast has aberrated. Kill it first!"

"Yes, Your Majesty!"

Lu Yuan's greatsword swept horizontal. A golden sword-light hundreds of meters long bisected an aberrated One-Horned Demon Wolf in an instant.

A thread of unknown energy flowed into him.

**"ROOAAR!!"**

A frenzied roar split the air. Lu Yuan vanished. A green beam blazed through the space where he'd been standing a heartbeat before.

**BOOM!!**

The beam struck a stone wall and shattered it apart, blasting a massive cavity into the rock.

Lu Yuan reappeared nearby and glanced back at the aberrated giant python behind him, frowning slightly.

Emperor Grade. The aura radiating off it was terrifying.

The Emperor Grade aberrated python lunged toward him. Without hesitation, Lu Yuan disappeared.

Finding its prey gone, the python swept its senses across the surroundings — and came up empty. It erupted in a furious roar, the countless eyes along its body firing green beams in all directions, reducing the terrain around it to rubble.

Tens of thousands of kilometers away, Lu Yuan reappeared.

He began scanning for a new target.

*Emperor Grade Aberration Feral Beasts — he could fight them if he had to, going all out. But they were more trouble than they were worth. Too inefficient. And pushing that hard would expose too much.*

*With the Tianming Sage already here, the Tianming Empire had clearly mobilized. There was no reason to push himself to the front.*

*Hunting King Grade beasts and steadily collecting unknown energy — that was enough.*

There was no shortage of prey in the Valley of Night: Battle Venerable and King Grade creatures were plentiful, while Emperor Grade numbered barely over twenty. He and Yeye had already killed a handful of Emperor Grade beasts before the Aberration broke out, so the count was even lower now.

His chances of running into one were fairly low. He could comfortably cut through wave after wave of Battle Venerable and King Grade creatures, building the foundation for the Evolution Cube's next metamorphosis.

Time passed. After slaying dozens of King Grade beasts and a great number of Battle Venerable-ranked ones, Lu Yuan suddenly heard combat sounds in the distance.

He paused briefly, then flew toward the source.

He quickly spotted two Cat-kin locked in battle against a swarm of beasts — six King Grade, two Emperor Grade, and a mass of Battle Venerable-ranked creatures.

The two Cat-kin radiated immense power. King Grade beasts went down with a single casual strike, left gravely wounded and barely clinging to life. Even the two Emperor Grade beasts were firmly suppressed; it wouldn't be long before they fell as well.

Ice shot down Lu Yuan's spine — not from fear, but from recognition.

*Battle Emperors?*

*Figures. Any faction with a Battle Saint at its head would have Battle Emperors mobilized this fast.*

*And these two probably aren't the only ones here.*

He turned the thought over briefly, then flew in to join them.

"Seniors! Let me lend a hand!"

Both Cat-kin turned at his voice.

At the sight of Lu Yuan, a tall Cat-kin wielding a battle-axe broke into a wide grin. "So it's you, human kid. Watch yourself — Emperor Grade Aberration beasts aren't to be underestimated."

The other Cat-kin — lean and slender, with a composed, indifferent face — gave Lu Yuan a nod and offered a thin smile.

*These two Battle Emperors seem... actually friendly toward me?*

He had no idea why, but he simply smiled in return. "Thanks for the warning, Seniors. I'll be careful."

He shot toward a King Grade beast covered in savage wounds. A flash of golden sword-light — and it was dead.

Wisps of unknown energy seeped into him. Lu Yuan felt quietly pleased.

*Pretty nice setup. With two Battle Emperor heavyweights doing the heavy lifting, all he had to do was land the killing blows. Collecting unknown energy this easily — it felt like being carried.*

He quickly put down all six King Grade beasts. The Battle Venerable-ranked creatures had mostly been caught in the crossfire between the Battle Emperors and the Emperor Grade beasts, and Lu Yuan swept up every scrap of unknown energy they left behind.

The two remaining Emperor Grade aberrated beasts were dispatched by the Cat-kin Battle Emperors shortly after.

Lu Yuan glanced at the fallen Emperor Grade carcasses. Two surges of unknown energy — five or six times greater than what King Grade beasts yielded — flowed into him.

Delight stirred in his chest.

*I've found a very efficient way to farm this.*