"So bright!"
"What is that?!"
"Is something on fire?"
"No way! What fire burns that bright? And Cangnan City doesn't even have a building that tall!"
"Quick, quick! Film it! Post it on Moments!"
"..."
The pillar of light streaking into the sky was simply too blinding. Half of Cangnan City noticed it. Pedestrians stopped in their tracks, excitedly guessing at its cause.
Some said it was an explosion. Some said it was an optics experiment. Some said it was a miracle descending... But only a very few people knew what the appearance of that pillar of light truly meant.
Two minutes earlier. The old town.
On a street empty of people, faint ripples spread through the air, as if someone had lifted a corner of the canvas draped over the old town—and five figures in black-and-red cloaks stepped out from within.
One of them glanced around, walked forward, lifted the "ROAD CLOSED AHEAD" signboard off the ground, and folded it shut.
The instant the signboard was put away, the silent old town shattered soundlessly, like a bubble, and the true old town beneath emerged.
Gruesome blood soaked the aged streets red. Mangled limbs of monsters littered the ground in pieces. Had Lin Qiye seen the scene, he would have recognized them instantly: hacked into chunks and scattered across the road were the very same ghost-faced monsters he was facing!
Dense and numerous—at least thirty-four of them!
"【Unrestricted Airspace】recovered." The one holding the signboard spoke flatly. "You can call in logistics to clean up the site."
"Where's Old Zhao?"
"Went after the two Ghost-Faced Men that escaped."
"...We were careless." The wounded woman pressed a hand over her right shoulder, her spirits low.
"Don't say that, Hongying. Nobody could have known a Ghost-Faced King was hiding in this batch," the man beside her consoled.
"Will the captain be okay, facing a Ghost-Faced King alone?"
"Of course he will. Have you forgotten? The captain is a strong one of the third realm—the 'River' realm. Nothing will happen to him." The man paused. "I only hope... those two runaway Ghost-Faced Men don't cost any ordinary people their lives..."
The words had barely left his mouth when a searing pillar of light shot skyward from another direction, lighting up half the heavens!
All five whipped their heads around, eyes full of shock!
"That's..."
"A Forbidden Ruins has come into the world. That energy signature... it's absurdly strong!"
"That's—that's at least a strong one of the fifth realm, the 'Boundless' realm. No—it might even be the sixth realm, 'Klein'... Why would a strong one like that come to a small city like Cangnan?"
"No. That doesn't look like a human Forbidden Ruins." The man's brow furrowed tight.
Hongying froze—then it seemed to click. "You mean..."
"That looks like the Forbidden Ruins of a god. In other words... a Divine Ruins."
At the word god, every gaze sharpened.
"Which god?"
"Scorching. Holy. Mighty. And that aura of creation... If I'm not mistaken, this is..." The man stared unblinking at the slowly fading pillar of light and pronounced it one word at a time:
"God Code 003. The King of Angels—Michael."
...
Lin Qiye was in agony.
At the center of the golden pillar of light, his body had slipped entirely beyond his control, hanging eerily in midair while boundless energy poured out through his eyes.
Lin Qiye felt as if he had returned to ten years ago—as if, across the boundless gulf of space, he were looking into those eyes once more.
That supreme, sacred presence—he remembered it as vividly as yesterday.
The difference was that ten years ago, the presence had come from the moon. Now, it was pouring out of... his own eyes.
The aura and majesty of the seraph gushed madly from his eyes. His pupils blazed like two burning suns, as if they would melt all creation into nothing.
Ten years ago, the seraph Michael had met his gaze from the moon.
Ten years later, Lin Qiye opened his eyes, and the seraph's power lingering within them erupted in full!
Fortunately, the power left in Lin Qiye's eyes was not so very much. The pillar of light lasted seven or eight seconds before it gradually dispersed, and Lin Qiye's body dropped from midair. He staggered, then caught his balance.
In his eyes, the brilliant gold dimmed and dimmed until only a wisp of pale golden radiance remained.
If the brightness before had been on the order of the sun, what remained now was a candle flame.
The golden light that had just erupted was mighty beyond measure, but it had never truly belonged to him. The faint gold now pooled at the bottom of Lin Qiye's eyes, though—that was his, under his command.
One slender thread of a seraph's power.
Lin Qiye took a deep breath and slowly raised his head.
The ink-black night sky. The run-down streets. The ghastly monsters. Blood pooling across the ground... As this decidedly un-beautiful picture unfurled before Lin Qiye's eyes, he smiled.
He smiled with his whole heart.
Ten years. After ten years, he was finally seeing the world through his own eyes again.
In this moment, to Lin Qiye's eyes, even the blood-mawed monster looked the slightest bit adorable.
The instant the seraph's majesty had erupted from Lin Qiye, both monsters had been crushed flat against the ground by that divine pressure, very nearly pulped.
Only now, with the golden pillar gone, did they come back to themselves. They cast about in momentary confusion—then fixed their gazes on Lin Qiye once more.
Bloodlust seeped back into their eyes.
"SKREEE—!"
One of the monsters shrieked and lunged at Lin Qiye!
Compared to before, Lin Qiye was visibly steadier. The instant the monster so much as twitched, he had already mapped its trajectory in his mind, and he threw himself hard to the side.
Lin Qiye was still far slower than the monster—but his reactions were now shockingly fast, and those few seconds of early prediction were enough to buy him the time to evade.
Not that he could actually see the future. Rather, with his eyes open, his powers of perception had transformed beyond recognition.
First, the range of his mental perception had leapt from ten meters to twenty. It had taken Lin Qiye five years to reach ten meters—now it had doubled outright.
Second: dynamic vision.
Within those twenty meters, Lin Qiye's dynamic vision was nearly three times an ordinary person's, his reflexes flatly monstrous. In close-quarters combat, he came close to genuine precognition.
As for what other abilities these eyes might have granted him, Lin Qiye couldn't feel them yet.
Then again, the current situation left no room for leisurely experimentation.
The monster shot past where Lin Qiye had stood like an arrow off the string, smashing down a great chunk of wall. Its four limbs coiled against the rubble and kicked off, hurling it at Lin Qiye again!
By then, Lin Qiye had rolled clear of its landing point. He flung out a hand beside him and snatched up the broken half-cane where it had fallen!
He scrambled to his feet and dropped into a half-crouch, eyes locked dead on the monster hurtling toward him, both hands clamped around the cane!
The monster dragged streaks of afterimage behind it, the gale of its charge whipping up the black hair on Lin Qiye's forehead.
Its hind legs exploded with power, and its whole body launched into the air!
This time, Lin Qiye did not dodge.
He gripped the half-cane, eyes fixed dead on the monster's own.
"SKREEE—!"
The monster's claws lashed out, raking straight for Lin Qiye's throat.
At the instant it was about to touch him, Lin Qiye's pupils snapped tight!
The faint gold in his eyes flared as if fresh firewood had been thrown on—suddenly brilliant, like two furnaces roaring alight!
Through the medium of his eyes, a thread of divine majesty slammed into the monster's body.
In that moment, the Lin Qiye reflected in the monster's eyes changed—into a supreme god with six spreading wings, radiating terrifying pressure!
And beneath that majesty, its body locked up—one brief instant of rigor.
In that brief instant, the half-cane in Lin Qiye's hands rose high...
and stabbed, precise, into the monster's right eye!