Outside, high above the airplane, a red radiance that enveloped the entire aircraft lit up the surrounding sky.
In the next instant the red light shot straight at the plane.
Boom! A deafening explosion rang out; the airplane was instantly reduced to drifting ash.
Whoosh! A figure burst from the blast—Duan Xin, riding a three-meter-wide Energy Puppet bird.
"Whoever dared ambush this humble monk will pay!" Duan Xin was drenched in blood; the strike hadn't been fatal, but it wasn't light either.
After all these years, this was the first time anyone had attacked him—he'd had no guard up at all.
Yet no matter how loudly he shouted, no one appeared.
Thousands of meters above him, amid the clouds, Blood Master still held his attacking posture with his left hand.
He watched the ranting monk below with icy eyes. "Not fleeing but staying—commendable courage."
Clap!
Blood Master pressed his palms together; all three mouths opened, and three red orbs formed at his lips.
'Red Purgatory Slash!'
Whoosh! The three beams burst from his mouths, widening and thinning at incredible speed as they descended.
The edges of the light curtains compressed until they were lethally sharp. When the sky above turned red, Duan Xin threw up his hands.
A five-meter-tall Energy-Puppet Arhat appeared overhead. He roared skyward: "Let this monk see which rat struck from the dark!" But the moment he looked up, he froze. "What technique is this?" Across the heavens, three crimson curtains hundreds of meters long were falling; the entire sky had turned scarlet.
By the time he saw them, the curtains were already slashing down.
Shhk! His Arhat puppet was cleaved in two; the compressed energy at the blades' edges grated against the puppet.
Bang! The puppet exploded under the follow-up force.
'Run!' The single thought in Duan Xin's mind. His bird was too slow, barely able to stay aloft.
He leapt off the puppet bird and dove toward the sea below.
Shhk! The bird was sliced in half, the crimson curtain chasing him faster than he could fall.
"No!" He stared at the pursuing light-blade, terror on his face.
Arhat after Arhat burst from his body to block the slash, yet they were paper-thin before the curtain—cut, then detonated.
"Aaaah!" Amid his screams the red curtain struck, carving his body into pieces that tumbled downward.
The crimson blade vanished the instant its work was done.
High above, Blood Master beat his wings and dived after the falling remains.
That single move had consumed enough energy to drain an ordinary Level Five.
Only his unique cell structure let him store such vast reserves for saturation bombardment, and while airborne he held every advantage; the old monk had nowhere to run.
Whoosh! Three kilometers above the sea, Blood Master snatched Duan Xin's head.
"This weak and you still poke your nose into others' business—who else deserves to die?" A cold smile curled his lips as he studied the severed head.
With a beat of his wings he streaked toward Liyang Country.
At the same moment, casualty figures from Roset City's gray-fog incident appeared online.
Of a million residents, over sixty percent had lapsed into irreversible brain death; the remainder, if they woke at all, bore lasting psychic trauma.
They felt no attachment to reality; all they wanted was to relive the happiness of their dreams.
The revelation spread panic across the internet.
Mystic Elder: "Monsters, gray mist—haha, are we entering a spiritual-energy revival? Are there cultivators?" Ganges Water Is Tasty: "I wonder what those people dreamed, and why the mist vanished—did some unknown force intervene?" Brown Who Longs to See Her Again: "You can't understand—I saw my mother, dead ten years, making my favorite pudding. I want to sink back in; reality is bitter, I don't want to stay."
As online fervor peaked, a flood of posts about Awakened Ones suddenly exploded.
"The terrifying power hidden in the world's shadows—who are the real masters of the planet?"
"Treating human life like grass: are these lofty Awakened Ones even human?"
"Ranking every nation's Awakened organizations!"
"The truth behind the Monsters—the Xuanjian Division's cruel experiments!"
The posts erupted as if pre-planned; moderators couldn't delete them fast enough.
Ordinary people reading them were stunned.
Photos, videos, expert verification—no special effects.
Just as they'd believed they lived in a normal world, the exposé punched them in the gut: only they were normal; the real VIPs had already activated cheat mode.
On the flight back to Nanwu Country, Long Zhengqing's face darkened as he scrolled through the posts and clips on his laptop.
He whipped out his phone and dialed Nanwu's cyber-chief.
Beep—answered instantly. Before the other man could speak, Long Zhengqing snarled: "What the hell are you doing? The net's on fire—why are those posts still up? Do you want your job or not?" "Director Long, we're deleting as fast as we can; we've shut several major sites. But the posts come faster than we can kill them—ban one account, another spawns. It's not just us—every country's hit the same way."
Long Zhengqing's rage cooled, his brows knitting. "Trace the source—find out who's behind this."
He hung up at once.
Behind him, Jiang Ao was also reading the flood of discussion, eyes grim. "Deputy Director Long, an operation this large isn't the work of any single group—there's likely state-level backing."
Long Zhengqing's anger flared again. "Whoever it is, what do they think they'll gain? The fallout will hurt them too."
Farther back, Zi Wen lounged indifferently, playing on his phone—if the sky fell, the tall ones could hold it up. In the cavern, Jiang Yan watched the tide of Awakened intelligence surfacing online.
A cold smile touched his lips. "You splash those Monsters across the feeds every day—now it's your turn. Let's see how you like it."
He'd simply ordered Mirror Demon to do it; with a nation-state's push, the story would circle the globe.
Their cyber-strike launched from overseas, autoposting scripts in place.
Once every insider was silenced afterward, no one would trace it back to them.