Jane had already mentally prepared herself the moment she saw Qingyi's message, but actually hearing the situation unfold gave her a completely different feeling. Even knowing that the objects in her hands were bombs capable of unleashing immense danger at any moment, Jane had no intention of simply tossing the EMPs aside and fleeing to save her own skin.
Instead, she gritted her teeth and charged desperately toward the upper floors. After all, every floor she ascended meant the impact of the corruption on the civilians below would be that much smaller. At the very least, with her decent Ether resistance, she was absolutely much tougher than the majority of ordinary people on the streets.
Just then, the latest intel from Qingyi came through her earpiece.
"The expert currently handling corruption matters, Grandmaster Yixuan from Yunkui Summit, is nearby. She's received the news and is already on her way."
Hearing this, Jane didn't feel particularly comforted.
"A Grandmaster from Yunkui Summit? How long until she gets here?"
"Master Yixuan happens to be in the Janus District right now, so she only needs two..."
"Two hours?"
"Two minutes."
Instantly, hope sparked in Jane's heart.
At that moment, Jane had already climbed to the twenty-third floor. Now, only the final flight of stairs remained before her.
Although these single-unit EMPs only weighed about thirty catties individually—not too heavy for an ordinary person—multiplying that weight by five created a completely different concept.
Carrying a load of over one hundred and fifty catties while sprinting up twenty floors took its toll. As she struggled onto the rooftop, Jane felt her stamina was already slightly overdrawn.
She had sprinted all the way up with everything she had, managing to scale twenty floors in just three or four minutes.
But just as Jane threw the EMPs down and immediately turned to retreat downstairs, the countdown reached its end.
Accompanied by a short, rapid beeping sound, all the canisters opened simultaneously. High-concentration Ether burst forth in an instant.
Five High-concentration Ether tanks releasing at the same location created a dense fog, the color of solidified blood.
It looked like a barrier cutting off the real world.
Even exerting her full strength, the exhausted Jane only managed to reach the stairwell leading down in that brief window of time.
But this distance wasn't enough. It wasn't nearly enough.
The thick corruption instantly shrouded the entire rooftop of the building, and then, behaving like a liquid, it began to spill down the structure.
In mere seconds, it had spread across the top three or four floors and continued to cascade downward relentlessly.
Jane, who had only managed to run down a little over one floor, was immediately enveloped in the substance-like corruption.
The erosion of the dense corruption immediately began to induce hallucinations.
But what was more fatal was that she soon felt memories appearing in her mind that didn't belong to her. These memories were so realistic that she subconsciously began to exist as another person.
The frequent chaotic memories, combined with her physical exhaustion, delayed her escape significantly. However, the most lethal threat was the intense Ether corruption inherent in the high-concentration filth.
Being basically in the center of the highest concentration, it only took a few seconds for Jane to feel mild Ether symptoms appearing on her body.
Although maintaining different identities in various organizations for years had given her some resistance and experience dealing with this type of mental intrusion, as time passed, the constant influx of new memories made the chaos increasingly severe. For the third time, she forgot that she should be evacuating immediately.
If this continued, it wouldn't take long before she sacrificed herself right here due to Ether corruption.
On the call, Qingyi's voice became anxious; Jane's condition was so poor it was obvious even over the phone.
In this critical moment, the earnest words from Andrew's previous text message seemed to surface in her mind once again.
Jane reached into her waist pouch with a trembling hand and took out a blue fruit, muttering to herself:
"I'll trust you this once... Little Shopkeeper."
She then stuffed the blue fruit into her mouth.
As Jane bit down, the fruit's juice instantly flowed out. In the next second, a sensation of relief, as if she were being purified, washed over her body.
In a flash, the hallucinations and foreign memories brought on by the corruption melted away without a trace, like dew under the sunlight.
Without those memories hindering her movement, Jane immediately continued her dash downstairs.
Fortunately, because this wasn't inside a Hollow, the corruption found it much harder to diffuse after a certain range. With just a few leaps, Jane successfully broke free from the area shrouded in filth.
At that moment, a girl wearing tight leather pants and a fluffy ponytail tied up like a fox's tail rushed up from the stairs below. Seeing Jane, she shouted in pleasant surprise:
"Jane! Thank goodness you're okay!"
After briefly confirming Jane had no serious external injuries, and seeing the corruption getting closer, she immediately hoisted the struggling Jane onto her back and retreated downstairs at high speed.
Just as Jane escaped the corruption, a woman with silver-white hair like silk, wearing a fashionably modified Taoist robe, flew in from the distance at extreme speed.
On her carefully trimmed bangs, she wore a unique black hair clip.
The wings on her back seemed composed of ink, with threads of gold wire acting as the bone structure within them.
Her stunningly beautiful face, combined with her full figure and the red thread tied between them, was eye-catching enough to leave any man overwhelmed the moment they saw her.
This was none other than the thirteenth generation sect master of Yunkui Summit—Yixuan.
With a flap of her energy-formed wings, Yixuan arrived above the scene. seeing the situation on the upper floors clearly, she quickly formed several hand seals.
The next moment, dark gold energy surged out. Under the guidance of this energy, the massive amount of corruption gathered into her palm.
Once all the corruption was collected—even draining the filth completely from the containers—she flicked her finger. The incredibly compressed mass of corruption was lifted by the dark gold energy and tossed straight into the sky.
Massive energy surged continuously from Yixuan to fill the void, completely wrapping the corruption in the air, rotating it, and grinding it down.
In just over ten seconds, the corruption, having nothing to cling to or erode, was gradually ground into nothingness by Yixuan's continuous infusion of mysterious ink energy.
Watching the sky turn clear again, Yixuan couldn't help but breathe a soft sigh of relief. The wings on her back flapped gently, and with a flash, she vanished into the air.
Meanwhile, to protect Jane's identity, Zhu Yuan carried her directly to the building's sealed back exit.
Although it was sealed, there were no other police officers present here.
By now, Jane had recovered some stamina and no longer needed to be carried. Breathing a light sigh of relief, Jane looked at Zhu Yuan beside her.
Zhu Yuan didn't seem to show any expression of fatigue.
Zhu Yuan's physical constitution was already much stronger than Jane's, plus she hadn't been carrying a load on the way up. A round trip, even carrying Jane down, left her merely panting slightly.
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