They were not participants.
They were witnesses.
---
Wang Chen was still tens of kilometers away when he felt it.
A pressure—thick, ancient, and violently malignant—boiled up from the city's heart like a festering wound in the world itself. It wasn't merely demonic qi. It was something deeper, more fundamental, as if the land itself had been infected.
He slowed mid-air.
Perhaps it was his mastery of Non-Existence Authority, or perhaps the distortion of fate that now followed him like a shadow, but distance meant nothing to his perception anymore. His senses pierced space effortlessly, stretching toward the source.
And what he saw made his eyes narrow.
In his vision, the Bodhi Tree stood twisted and monstrous, its once-sacred form drowned in writhing black qi. Roots coiled like serpents beneath the earth, pulsing with corruption, while divine flames and sword light battered it from above in a desperate struggle.
"So it finally surfaced…" Wang Chen murmured quietly.
