Chapter 235: Dramatic Performance

Whether to protect players or simply because the auditory limit of human ears had been surpassed, as the golden-red lightning began to leap, all prior noise vanished abruptly, replaced by a terrifying shock that paralyzed the body.

Strands of electric arcs danced through the air like serpentine dragons; the entire city's sky resembled a colossal static ion ball, yet the golden-red lightning was far from harmless—each sweep felt as if a celestial deity swung a colossal sword to plow the earth, triggering silent explosions.

This scene lasted roughly three seconds, after which thousands of lightning bolts vanished as suddenly as they had appeared.

But just as everyone thought it was over, a beam of golden light suddenly expanded, swallowing the dust still swirling in the air before it settled; when the dust finally cleared, the surviving players could only see the unrecognizable ruins of the city.

The fortress, as if thoroughly cleansed from within by siege engines, had largely collapsed—but this was not the most severely damaged area, for the true epicenter had vanished entirely.

Like a cake with a chunk scooped out, a hundred-meter-diameter pit, along with a section of the city wall, had been utterly erased, leaving only a pit dozens of meters deep to testify to what had occurred.

"Fuck." The surviving players rose from the ground.

"Fuck?" The surviving players realized something was wrong.

"Fuck!" The surviving players saw the massive pit through the hole in the city wall.

"Is this effect not insane? How do we fight this?"

"Fight? Fight a hammer!"

"This game probably never intended for us to win! I knew the boss bodies in this game world were all insane【beep——】, but this one is just too insane【beep——】!"

Pessimism spread among the players; although this shitty game finally seemed willing to spend money on writers, the numerical designers who had always done a decent job appeared to have quit… This wasn't just adding another zero—it was like moving the decimal point to a comma (Note ①).

Players marveled, and Feng Xue marveled too—he had never imagined that the accumulated Qi from centuries' worth of storage (including within the Jade Seal), once converted into magical energy, could produce such terrifying destruction.

Suddenly, Feng Xue understood why he had been regarded as a powerhouse back in the Folklore World.

Anyone who could unleash that much magical energy, even with minimal control, was essentially a walking missile.

But the experiment was done; Feng Xue naturally didn't forget to wrap things up—he raised his hand, and the demonic army finally began sprinting full speed; the already crumbling city walls were breached in an instant, yet the players remained utterly motionless.

Even if they could wipe out all these demons, the city's fall was inevitable; only those who had just logged in, still too preoccupied to even assess the city's damage, were still clearing minor monsters to earn battle merits.

Although Feng Xue intended to capture a fortress, he never meant to become an invincible boss; now that his might was established, the next act of the script had only just begun!

As the dragon-headed demonic cultivator gloated, watching his demonic minions storm the city and establish nests, chains suddenly appeared out of nowhere.

"Change?" Chen Xuan, who had just logged in and hadn't yet figured out what happened, saw a dragon-headed cultivator entangled by chains materializing from thin air—he knew this was plot, and immediately activated his recording function, zooming in from afar.

Chen Xuan wasn't the only one who noticed the change; players tacitly detached from the demonic battlefield and quietly moved toward the boss's location.

Jokes aside—the city was already breached, battle merits could be farmed anytime, but if you missed this plot performance, who knew if there'd ever be a replay?

One by one, the semi-transparent chains solidified; the dragon-headed boss emitted a furious, echoing dual voice—

"Damn it! Central Plains sorcery! I never expected there'd still be true cultivators here!"

His body thrashed violently, five hues—red, white, blue, black, and yellow—flowed incessantly across his form, yet the chains remained unyielding; he couldn't break free.

Players followed the chains upward and discovered they weren't appearing from nowhere—they were connected to drones…

"Drones? Bullshit! Those are Kongming lanterns!"

"Holy shit, I've seen this episode—next comes the Five Thunderclaps striking from above, then the celestial immortal descending from the heavens, right?"

"That's an ancient movie! And this boss is already a lightning user—what good are Five Thunderclaps?"

"Just because he uses lightning doesn't mean he's immune! Who says that?"

The players watching the spectacle had lost their earlier fear; the detached, observational mindset returned, and their eagerness to watch the drama surged—they all awaited what came next.

Feng Xue clearly didn't make them wait long: as the dragon-headed boss writhed in frenzy, leaking magical energy and blasting the surroundings into chaos, a young man in a Daoist robe suddenly appeared—his face wasn't unfamiliar to the players; it was the cultivation NPC who had stormed off in anger after being provoked by players.

"Holy shit, so this guy's a mainline NPC? I thought he was just like my wife's character!"

"Shh! Don't talk!"

The nearby players immediately silenced him, focusing intently on the distant conversation—

"Damn cultivator! Your predecessors couldn't kill me, and neither can you!"

"I never said I'd kill you!" Feng Xue, in his Daoist robe, and Mo Ying's puppet performed a duet, calmly retrieving from their gourd pouch a ritual table, incense burner, incense sticks, and candles—preparing for a full ritual.

Seeing this, the dragon-headed demonic cultivator's expression changed instantly; he roared—

"Damn sealing technique! It still exists! No wonder the Talismans and Spells were collected so easily! It was you! You deliberately leaked the Talismans' location to those damned adventurers! Aaah—"

"Holy shit, this plot's interesting—so the Talismans and Spells aren't just a new game mechanic, but tied to the storyline too?"

"But it sounds like the story originally had only one set of Talismans and Spells—because it's an MMO, they became mass-produced items anyone can collect, but for NPCs, there's still only one set, so our deaths and item drops made it easier for him to gather them?"

Players analyzed the plot, while Feng Xue completed his ritual altar—he stepped the Seven Stars Pace, reciting incantations; though the players couldn't make out the words, they saw golden light rising from the NPC's body, flowing into each Kongming lantern and merging with the chains.

The chains gradually turned ethereal, as if losing their physical volume, seeping into the dragon-headed boss's body—no, not entirely losing physical volume, but the nature of what they bound had changed!

Bing!

One Kongming lantern suddenly ascended, accompanied by a soft pop like a cork being pulled from a wine bottle; a Talisman and Spell was yanked from within the dragon-headed boss—but the patterns on the Talisman and Spell seemed to have changed?

(End of Chapter)