Yun Mengxi also saw several figures dashing out from the shadows of the auditorium like arrows released from a bow.
Fu Hua's green robe was stained with dust, but her movements were still so fast that only afterimages remained. With her bare hands, she snapped the necks of several "monsters" pouncing on panicked children.
Behind her, the Seven Swords of Taixu formed a formation. Their sword light no longer had the elegance of rehearsal, only ruthless efficiency, constantly cutting apart approaching monsters.
But their faces were also visibly pale. Like Kallen, these people with nearly transparent identities had also suffered from the official's targeted biological restraints and couldn't even make a ripple just now.
Their weapons were damaged, their armor was overloaded, and their personnel were injured.
There was no torrent of steel, no overwhelming firepower, only these scarred people who had just broken free from the "suppressors."
With incomplete equipment, or even with their flesh and blood, they forcibly built a fragile and tragic defense line between the collapsing order and the surging monsters on this grand stage prepared for a long time.
Sounds of killing, roaring, the hum of energy weapons, the dull sound of cold weapons cutting flesh, the rumble of buildings continuing to collapse, the desperate cries of humans... all sounds mixed together, overwhelming Yun Mengxi's last trace of thinking ability.
She just stood there blankly, watching Kallen send a monster pouncing towards the stage flying with a punch, then turn her head and shout something to her. But the voice was blurry in the noise, and she couldn't hear it.
She watched Natasha signaling her to crouch down while shooting; watched Fu Hua sweep past her like the wind, leaving behind a "Follow closely!"
Like a puppet who lost its soul, her wrist was grabbed by Fu Hua and she was dragged away from the center of the stage.
Stumbling, she was wrapped into a small group of survivors—among these people were staff paralyzed by fear, weeping girls, and security guards forcing themselves to be calm.
Qin Suyi's husband, Li Shen, appeared at some point. He held a sword in one hand to protect the flank and tightly held his daughter Li Sushang with the other. The little girl's face was full of panic, but she bit her lip tightly without making a sound.
She seemed to see Liu Zhuohua, but the next moment the other party disappeared again. She saw a pink-haired woman tightly hugging a similarly pink-haired little girl, her face full of the surprise of regaining something lost.
But similarly, in the next moment, they also disappeared from sight.
They struggled in this stage area that had suddenly turned into a Shura field, moving in the brief gaps opened up by those fighting figures.
Yun Mengxi was muddled, her eyes only seeing swaying figures, splashing strange purple blood, broken decorations, and the omnipresent, nauseating sweet smell of blood.
She didn't know where she was going, nor what had happened.
She was just passively pushed and pulled, fleeing this stage that carried her brother's dream but had now become the entrance to hell.
Salvation was underway, staged right beside her in ways and at costs she couldn't comprehend at all.
And she, along with other survivors, was just a bewildered fragment accidentally fished up from this collapsing torrent.
Just when the exit of that narrow passage seemed within reach, shadows poured down from the break in the dome.
It wasn't the absence of light, but the prelude to the arrival of some heavier, more substantial "existence."
Immediately after, in front of the passage—that narrow path pinned with hope of survival—bloomed amidst a series of dull sounds, like a giant beast chewing bones.
It wasn't a physical explosion, more like space itself being rudely kneaded and torn open.
Concrete, steel bars, remains of fire hydrants, and... some warm silhouettes that were running just moments ago, everything was tossed, churned, mixed, and then splashed out under invisible immense force.
Under the pale emergency lights of the passage, a rapidly changing, highly impactful abstract painting bloomed.
The paint was dark red, dotted with deeper patches. The splashing trajectory was uninhibited; some splashed onto the walls like suddenly blooming heterochromatic roses.
Some drew long arcs in the air, like tragic meteor trails.
More spread on the ground, quickly merging into an expanding, shimmering, viscous "puddle," reflecting the swaying lights and the collapsing ceiling.
Screams did ring out, but were soon drowned by another grander sound of material structure collapsing.
What remained was more like a sharp gasp suddenly cut off, briefly crossing the air, then merging into the background noise of that "paint" splashing, becoming a dissonant note within it.
Pain was real, death was concrete, but the way it was presented, in Yun Mengxi's suddenly constricted pupils and nearly stagnated mind, was stripped of details, abstracted into scenes too rich, too vivid, so as to appear fake and terrifying.
Not severed limbs, but flying, irregular red fabrics... not flowing internal organs, but an overturned paint palette mixed with black jewels.
But the cruelty at the core of this artistic, almost silent "blooming of death" pierced the viewer's nerves doubly due to its unconventional form.
It didn't resort to direct horror, but used an almost blasphemous beauty to declare the absolute and random nature of the process of life being crushed and existence being erased.
Yun Mengxi's last bit of strength to drift with the current was also drained by this "blooming."
She didn't go limp, but solidified, like an insect suddenly sealed in amber, stiff in a recess piled with cleaning tools at the corner of the passage.
It wasn't safe here; three thin metal plates couldn't even withstand the collision of a crazy rat. But this cramped corner that barely hid her body provided the last bit of illusory, psychological shelter.
She didn't scream, perhaps her past cultivation preserved the last shred of dignity for her, or perhaps she was so useless that she couldn't even issue a final cry for help.
Through the gaps in the sundries, she watched helplessly as that small team of survivors shattered and scattered instantly like a reflection in calm water hit by a rolling stone.
People fled in different directions, their figures disappearing into deeper darkness or covered by new "shadows."
Fu Hua and those seven sword-wielding figures, almost at the same moment the passage "bloomed," went against the tide of people, facing the descending shadow and the still-expanding "paint" area.
Their movements were still agile, sword lights still biting cold, but in Yun Mengxi's blurred vision, it was like looking through a thick layer of water.
She saw the hem of Fu Hua's green robe brush across a patch of dark red, instantly dyed a deeper color;
She saw the woman holding a heavy sword shout delicately as she slashed a shadow, but was knocked back stumbling by the recoil, fine light chipping off the sword edge like falling stars;
She saw the woman dressed in plain white push a stunned child to a farther corner, but she herself was swept by the aftershock of the shadow, her back hitting the wall with a muffled groan, blood overflowing from the corner of her lips...
Resistance was real, sacrifice was concrete, but all this, along with the continuously splashing "paint," the silently expanding "puddle," and the twisted abstract "remains," constituted a huge, absurd, dynamic scroll of hell in continuous collapse.
And Yun Mengxi was an insignificant, fading smudge curled up in the corner of the frame.