The Servant

Imperial Capital, Red Maple Empire.

Inside the Small World that Lu Yuan had previously entered, a mysterious Cloaked Figure stood motionless, their face hidden deep within their hood. Before them, a mass of gray mist hung suspended in the air, eleven black points of light drifting within it.

Beneath the cloak, blood-red eyes gleamed as they watched those eleven lights in silence.

Behind the Cloaked Figure, Tong Shu knelt on the ground. His formerly handsome face was now traced with dark veins, and he looked far older than before.

"My Lord," Tong Shu said, "as you foresaw, a great number of Battle King and Battle Sovereign warriors have left the Imperial Capital to handle those eleven Soul-Devouring Orbs. However... Gu An appears to have received word and realized we had designs on the Underground Containment Room. There should still be a considerable number of Battle Sovereigns and Battle Kings stationed inside."

The Cloaked Figure's blood-red eyes flickered. Their hoarse voice came slow and deliberate: "It seems the little pest from before had a hand in this."

At those words, Tong Shu immediately lowered his head and held his tongue.

"Still, it changes nothing. Their understanding of Corruption is far from complete."

A faint note of contempt ran beneath the Cloaked Figure's rasping voice.

Just then, one of the eleven black lights in the gray mist abruptly dimmed.

The Cloaked Figure's body stiffened. A heavy, muffled grunt escaped them.

Their blood-red eyes blazed with streaks of cold, savage light. Black mist surged in waves around them, and the crushing pressure of that aura left Battle Sovereign-ranked Tong Shu struggling to draw breath. His face drained of all color — he felt like a small boat trapped in a storm, on the verge of being swallowed whole at any moment.

Terror crept across Tong Shu's face. Bowing low, he asked, "My Lord — what's happened?"

A heavy silence fell. Then the Cloaked Figure spoke: "One of my servants has been discovered... and eliminated."

Tong Shu's eyes went wide. "That quickly?"

He knew full well what a Soul-Devouring Orb bearer was capable of — unleashing it allowed the bearer to reach Battle Sovereign rank in a very short time, and with prior accumulation, the process was faster still. A Battle Sovereign-class powerhouse, one who excelled at concealment — how could they be eliminated so swiftly?

The Cloaked Figure fell silent. The black mist around them churned more intensely.

Their blood-red eyes narrowed slightly. "Send word down," they said at last. "Accelerate the schedule."

Tong Shu immediately lowered his head. "Yes, My Lord!"

He then left the Small World.

Outside it lay an ordinary rental apartment somewhere in the Imperial Capital — exactly the sort of place Tong Shu would never have been caught in before. But with his secret exposed, hiding was all he could do.

Tong Shu glanced at the World Stone. A flicker of reverence passed through his eyes. Then the flesh of his face began to ripple and reshape, settling into a completely unremarkable appearance — nothing like the face anyone would associate with Tong Shu. Even his build changed somewhat.

As long as he kept his aura suppressed, no one could identify him.

He took a slow, steadying breath, walked out of the room, and disappeared into the city.

Lu Yuan transported Li Qinghe via spatial jump and arrived above Yunzhou City in short order.

It was evening, yet the city was far from calm. The Aberration had driven ordinary citizens into panic and disorder, while the Night Watchmen and the local great clans were frantically combing the streets for the source.

Lu Yuan surveyed the scene below. It was essentially the same as Xikou City — nearly identical.

Of course, neither the Watchmen nor the clans had an Evolution Cube. If this Soul-Devouring Orb bearer was anything like the one in Xikou City, finding them by conventional means would be extremely difficult.

Li Qinghe studied the Night Watchmen patrolling in every direction and raised an eyebrow. "Looks like they still haven't found the Aberration source. And the Aberration itself hasn't flared up again yet."

Lu Yuan nodded and extended his senses outward. The bearer apparently hadn't been pushing the Soul-Devouring Orb at full capacity — no Aberration had actually erupted — and so the Evolution Cube inside him remained still.

Not that he was anxious. Based on what had happened in Xikou City, the moment the bearer activated the orb in earnest, the Evolution Cube would pick it up without fail.

He couldn't help marveling at that. After each successive evolution, the cube's sensitivity to Aberration phenomena kept growing. Back when Lu Yuan had first arrived in this world, it had been incapable of this.

"Should we head to the Night Watchman branch first?"

Lu Yuan glanced at Li Qinghe.

She smiled and nodded. "Let's go get the lay of the land."

They streaked through the air and touched down at the branch entrance a few moments later. Inside, the main hall was a hive of activity.

Lu Yuan swept his gaze around — most of the people rushing about were ordinary civilians working in support roles. Actual Gene Warriors were sparse.

Understandable. The Aberration was serious, and combing through an entire city the size of Yunzhou would be a monumental undertaking even with every Gene Warrior in the branch. Still, some heavy hitters had apparently stayed behind as a reserve — presumably to guard against the Soul-Devouring Orb bearer deciding to strike the branch directly.

Fair enough.

Li Qinghe spoke with the front-desk staff. After their identities were confirmed, the two receptionists gazed at Lu Yuan and Li Qinghe with barely concealed awe and went to notify the Deputy Director and the Gene Warrior from headquarters stationed there.

Not long afterward, a plain-looking middle-aged man and a gaunt elderly one walked out to greet them.

Lu Yuan recognized the elder immediately — he was an Honorary Elder who had come from headquarters, a peak Battle King-ranked powerhouse named Chapman.

Chapman stared at the two of them, his expression shifting to outright disbelief. "Elder Li, Elder Lu," he said, "I'll be honest — when they told me you'd arrived, I almost didn't believe it. Have you really already handled the Aberration in Xikou City?"

Li Qinghe tilted her chin up slightly, a smile playing at her lips. "Little Yuan found the Soul-Devouring Orb bearer's location in no time at all and took care of them without breaking a sweat. We've already recovered the orb."

Chapman and the Deputy Director both drew sharp breaths. They stared at Lu Yuan, momentarily at a complete loss for words.

The Aberration had the Yunzhou branch completely stumped — not a single lead. And these two had arrived in Xikou City and wrapped everything up already? That fast? It was enough to make anyone feel spectacularly inadequate.

The Deputy Director recovered first and managed a smile. "Elder Li, Elder Lu — you've come to lend a hand, I take it?"

Lu Yuan smiled and nodded. "We have. The sooner the Aberration is dealt with, the better."

The Deputy Director's face brightened. "Thank you both. We're truly at our wit's end — nothing to go on whatsoever."

"Don't rush," Lu Yuan said pleasantly. "We'll work through it together."

Li Qinghe added: "We mainly stopped by to let you know we were here, to avoid any miscommunication. If you could share your intelligence with us, we plan to search for the Aberration source ourselves."

"Of course — not a problem."

The Deputy Director immediately handed over all the relevant materials.

Lu Yuan flipped through them. As expected — nearly identical to Xikou City. The Aberration had appeared the previous day, they'd put in a request to headquarters, and reinforcements had been dispatched.

After reviewing the files, Lu Yuan and Li Qinghe bid their farewells to the Deputy Director and Chapman and turned to leave.

Watching the two figures vanish into the sky, Chapman let out a quiet, wondering breath. "I'd heard the stories about Elder Lu Yuan — how many records he'd broken on Great Qi Star, how he'd even shattered the one that had stood untouched for so long: first place on the Prodigy Rankings. Now I finally believe it. Every one of those rumors was earned."

The Deputy Director beside him nodded gravely. "Let's hope they find the source quickly."

After leaving the Night Watchman branch, Lu Yuan and Li Qinghe split up, just as they had in Xikou City.

This time, there was no urgency in Lu Yuan's movements — if anything, he seemed almost leisurely. No Aberration had erupted, nothing for the Evolution Cube to lock onto. All he had to do was wait for the bearer to make their move. For now, going through the motions would suffice.

Still...

He glanced at the unrest below. People were on edge, and crime was ticking upward in the chaos. He narrowed his eyes slightly and dispersed a large number of Shadow Clones across the district.

Consider it a favor to the local peacekeepers.

By the time dawn broke the following morning, the Aberration still had not appeared.

*Has the bearer actually left the city?* Lu Yuan wondered, rubbing his temples. *Did they run?*

He turned the question over in his mind. Did the Soul-Devouring Orbs share some kind of connection with one another? If they did, last night's kill in Xikou City would already have been communicated back to the others.

In that case, the remaining bearers would be on high alert — and some might already have relocated in secret, moving to cities where no Aberration had yet appeared, triggering another incident, then pulling back the moment reinforcements showed up and moving on again. Hit-and-run. Keep the Night Watchmen chasing shadows.

It was entirely plausible.

Troublesome, if true — but not insurmountable. With spatial jumps, he could reach any scene in moments and begin tracking the bearer from there.

The real nightmare was a bearer going completely dark — stopping all use of the orb and vanishing into the population. That, even he would struggle with.

He kneaded the bridge of his nose. A headache was forming.

The sun climbed. After a full night of searching for the Aberration source — on top of the earlier battles against the Aberration itself — the lower-ranked Gene Warriors were showing the strain. Trainee Warriors and Warrior Rank fighters were visibly exhausted, many forced to step back and rest. The patrols that remained had dwindled to less than a fifth of the original number. High-ranked Gene Warriors were always the minority.

Meanwhile, in Yunzhou City's East District, deep within a commercial block of towering skyscrapers.

Inside a building several hundred meters tall, two office workers chatted amiably as they pushed into the first-floor restroom.

Then threads of black mist seeped from the shadows. Within the darkness, a Shadow surged forward and plunged directly into one of the men.

His body locked up instantly. The color drained from his face — white, then ashen — and he crumpled to the floor in convulsions.

His companion stared. His face went bloodless. He let out a raw, piercing scream, and without so much as a second glance at the fallen man, scrambled out of the restroom on all fours.

High in the air, Lu Yuan's brow furrowed. He stopped dead.

He turned westward — and in the next instant, shot in that direction like a comet.

*There it is.*

Inside him, the Evolution Cube had begun to tremble.

A cold light settled in his eyes.

In the West District, in a stone-floored basement not unlike the one where the Xikou City bearer had hidden, a plain-looking young man stood with his lips pressed together, black mist swirling in his eyes.

He exhaled slowly, worry settling over his face:

"Master told me Signa got found by the Night Watchmen. Someone out there must have a special way of tracking us... I can't drag this out. Ten minutes — no, five minutes, and then I stop, whatever the take. Wrap up fast before the Night Watchmen come knocking. Besides, Master's orders were just to cause chaos anyway..."

While he muttered to himself, he was completely unaware that a shadow behind him had begun to stir — slowly reshaping into Lu Yuan's silhouette.

Golden light flickered faintly around Lu Yuan's form. He materialized directly behind the young man in an instant.

Only then did the young man sense something was wrong. Far too late.

A golden blade of light blazed through the air. The young man's consciousness was swept away, and he fell into darkness.

Lu Yuan sheathed his greatsword. He glanced at the body on the floor, then let Great Solar Spirit Power flow outward — the corpse burned to ash in moments.

Black mist billowed outward amid agonized wails, dispersing into faint wisps. Those were the souls the Soul-Devouring Orb had consumed. With their controller dead, they were freed at last, and quietly faded away.

Within the dissipating mist, the Soul-Devouring Orb drifted slowly upward. Lu Yuan walked over, expression unchanged, picked it up, sealed it inside another black box, and stored it in his Battle-mark Space. Then he was gone.

East District. Commercial street.

The moment black mist appeared, the Night Watchmen received word and alerted every powerful individual they could reach. The force that assembled was substantial: the Yunzhou City branch director, the Deputy Director, several Battle King-ranked Watchmen, Battle King-ranked patriarchs from the great local clans — and one Battle Sovereign, the only one present besides Li Qinghe.

When they arrived and saw the black mist coiling between the towers and Shadows rampaging through the streets, every face in the assembled group went dark.

"Damn it! Clear the mist first!"

The gray-haired Battle Sovereign elder barked the order.

Then the black mist lurched violently — and collapsed on its own. The Shadows weaving between the buildings let out shrieks as they dissolved into nothing.

In an instant, sunlight broke through the clearing mist and fell between the towers once more. The ordinary citizens who had been fleeing in blind panic moments before now stood blinking, dazed, not entirely certain what had just happened.

Not just them — even the Battle Kings and the Battle Sovereign who had just rushed to the scene were staring around in complete bewilderment.

Then Li Qinghe — who had also hurried over — recalled an almost identical moment from the day before. A smile crossed her face.

"It seems the Soul-Devouring Orb bearer is already dead."

"Dead — they're already dead?!"

The crowd turned to stare at her, utterly at a loss.