Chapter 811: Deadly Strike

Lin Chong woke up in the ruins.

His left arm lost sensation.

At least three ribs were broken.

Every breath tasted of iron rust.

He struggled to prop himself up.

Before him lay a collapsed hall.

The patterns on the surface of the dark energy core sphere still flickered wildly, but had lost their rhythm.

Overloaded energy surged out from the cracks, forming twisted violet-black lightning.

At the sphere's center, the cluster of dark-green mist was dissipating at a visible speed.

The fragmented will of the Iron Crow Army's master struggled within it.

【Restart……must restart……】

【Invoke backup protocol……】

【Repair……breach……】

But each attempt triggered a more violent energy backlash.

The sphere's cracks were expanding.

Lin Chong's faint perception of rule vision had not yet completely faded.

He "saw" that at the coordinate of the "breach" injected by the world-piercing cone inside the sphere, a tiny yet extremely deadly "rule singularity" was forming.

The singularity was like a vortex.

It frenziedly devoured the surrounding dark-energy structure.

Where it passed, patterns shattered and energy flows were forcibly twisted.

Worse still, the singularity was still spreading.

From the seventh-layer matrix, it eroded upward into the sixth layer and downward into the eighth layer.

The chain reaction had already begun.

"Success……"

Lin Chong murmured.

But he knew it wasn't enough.

The Iron Crow Army still tried to restart the system.

Once it invoked the backup protocol, temporarily suppressing the singularity's spread, the system might be pulled back from the brink of collapse.

By then, all sacrifices would be in vain.

We must……let the collapse be completed fully.

Lin Chong looked at the sphere.

His gaze fell on the sphere's surface, on the thick energy-transmission "mains" exposed by the overload.

These mains directly connected to the sphere's internal energy conversion core.

If we could, before the singularity spread to the most critical point, artificially create a violent energy shock from outside……

……it might trigger a "resonance".

……accelerating the collapse.

But the cost is——

The impact point will inevitably explode.

Anyone nearby, him included, would have no chance of survival.

Lin Chong lowered his head, looking at his own charred hands.

Then he lifted his gaze toward the direction of the maintenance passage.

Zhao Si and the others should have already withdrawn some distance.

Time was pressing.

He drew a deep breath.

The intense pain blurred his consciousness for a moment.

But he bit his tongue tip, forcing himself awake.

Then he began to crawl toward the sphere.

With each crawl, his broken ribs scraped, producing bone‑piercing pain.

But he did not stop.

Ten steps.

Twenty steps.

The nearest exposed main was still thirty steps away.

Inside the sphere, the Iron Crow Army's master's will emitted a sharp hiss.

【Detected……high‑risk unit approaching……】

【Execute……purge……】

On the sphere's surface, several defense patterns that had not yet fully failed lit up.

They shot dark‑energy beams.

Lin Chong twisted his body and rolled.

The beam grazed his shoulder, taking away a patch of flesh.

He grunted and continued crawling.

Twenty-five steps.

【Error……must be cleared……】

Second wave of rays.

This time it's denser.

Lin Chong could no longer fully dodge.

He chose to bear it with his back.

The energy armor had already shattered.

The rays pierced flesh and scorched bone.

His vision went black, and he nearly fainted.

But his hands continued to move forward.

Twenty steps.

Inside the sphere, the singularity had spread to the fifth-layer matrix.

The disintegration speed was accelerating.

The will of the Iron Crow Army's master began to become chaotic.

【Restart……failed……】

【Backup protocol……cannot be invoked……】

【System integrity……below critical value……】

Fifteen steps.

Lin Chong felt the last energy explosive on his waist.

This is a specially made high-concentration model.

Originally used to create chaos during evacuation.

Now, it has a more important use.

Ten steps.

He stopped.

He raised his head to look at the main vein within close reach.

Purple-black energy surged within it, like a roaring river.

He grasped the explosive in his hand.

He adjusted the detonation mode.

From 'delayed' changed to 'contact trigger'.

Then, using all his remaining strength, he stood up.

Five steps.

He raised the explosive.

Preparing to throw it.

But just then——

Inside the sphere, the singularity had spread to the third-layer matrix.

It touched a critical 'logic node'.

The entire system underwent a qualitative change.

All the patterns on the sphere's surface simultaneously extinguished.

Then, they all overloaded and lit up.

The brightness exceeded a hundred times that before.

An indescribable energy pulse burst from the sphere's center.

Not outward.

But contracted inward.

As if the entire sphere was self-consuming.

The will of the Iron Crow Army's master let out a final sharp, unwilling screech.

【No——】

The sound abruptly stopped.

The sphere contracted to its limit.

Then——

It exploded silently.

No firelight.

No loud noise.

Only pure rule collapse.

With the sphere as the center, space began to fracture layer by layer.

Like a mirror struck by a heavy hammer.

Cracks spread wildly in all directions.

Wherever they passed, all matter——crystal pillars, pipes, walls, remnants of structures——was broken down into the most basic particles.

Then, the particles themselves began to disintegrate.

Returning to nothingness.

The explosive in Lin Chong's hand had not yet been thrown.

He stood at the edge of the disintegration storm.

Watching that ever-expanding "Void" surge toward him.

In Rule Vision, what he saw was no longer energy or matter.

It was "existence" itself being erased.

It was the Nether Energy System built by the master of the Iron Crow Army, starting from the foundation, self-deleting.

"So... this is system collapse..."

He said softly.

Then, he turned around.

Using his last strength, he hurled the blast bomb with all his might toward the opposite direction of the maintenance passage.

The blast bomb arced through the air and flew into the disintegration zone.

It detonated prematurely.

A blue-white explosion light flickered briefly in the purple-black void.

Weak, yet noticeable enough.

"Zhao Si... saw this..."

"He knew... I did my best..."

He had done everything he could.

He turned, facing the void that had surged up to his feet.

No fear.

Only relief.

He closed his eyes.

Waiting for the end.

But the anticipated annihilation did not come.

A gentle yet irresistible force suddenly enveloped him.

It pulled him backward.

Lin Chong stared in shock.

Seeing himself rapidly retreating.

Moving away from the disintegration center.

And the source of the force pulling him was——

The faint link at the other end of Rule Vision.

That link, which should have been severed, the one linking Chen Wen in his coma.

At this moment, it transmitted an extremely faint yet unusually steadfast pull.

"My lord..."

Lin Chong understood.

Before losing consciousness, Chen Wen had preset a final "protection protocol" for this link.

Once it detected that Lin Chong's life was in critical danger and he was in an extreme rule-disruption zone, it would automatically activate, forcibly pulling him back to safety.

This was the last thing Chen Wen could do for this veteran official.

The cost was that the already severely wounded and near-death Chen Wen would suffer an even fiercer backlash.

"No..."

Lin Chong wanted to resist.

But the link's pull was undeniable.

His figure flew backward like a meteor, passing through the maintenance passage and over layers of ruins.

The disintegration storm pursued him closely from behind.

Everything in its path was erased.

The entire Nether Energy Core Area was being "erased" from the world.

And this collapse was spreading outward along the Nether Energy Network's connections.

Secondary hub overload.

Nodes exploded.

Conduits shattered.

The chain reaction spread like a prairie fire, sweeping across the entire Qing.

Iron Wall Fortress.

Inside the Command Tower.

Chen Wen lay on the couch, his breath faint.

But at the moment Lin Chong was forcibly pulled back by the link, his body shuddered violently.

Another mouthful of blood spurted out.

Vital signs plummeted.

"My lord!" Zhang Cheng exclaimed.

Zhu Yuanzhang pressed down on Chen Wen's wrist.

"He is consuming his last life force... to maintain that link..."

"It must be severed! Otherwise he will die!"

"But General Lin..." Liu Ji looked at the monitoring screen.

The display violently fluctuated due to energy interference.

But one could still see that the life signal representing Lin Chong was moving rapidly, fleeing the deep‑purple region that represented the "Rule Collapse".

"He's coming back," Gongsun Sheng said in a trembling voice.

"My lord… he is exchanging his life for his return."

Everyone fell silent.

On the front battlefield,

Xu Da and Chang Yuchun saw an unbelievable sight.

The Qing State Army's offensive suddenly stalled.

The corrosive beasts began to spin in place.

The aberrant walkers lowered their gun muzzles.

The abyssal piercers collapsed like broken puppets.

The emerald‑green light clouds in the sky began to dissipate.

The light curtain spanning heaven and earth—

violently trembled.

Then, starting from Point Seven,

cracks spread like a spiderweb.

They were not minor fissures.

but the collapse of the entire region.

The crimson barrier shattered inch by inch.

Revealing what lay behind—

a expanse of real, undistorted sky.

"The light curtain… broken?!"

Chang Yuchun muttered.

Xu Da gripped his battle blade, fire igniting in his eyes.

"No…"

"It's a prison…"

"that we have bored through."

He raised his battle blade high.

"All forces—"

"Counterattack!"

Inside the Iron Wall Fortress, war drums thundered.

The long‑built counterattack force, like a flood breaking a dam, surged out of the gate.

They charged toward the darkness that was collapsing.

And the origin of all this

lay deep in the ruins of the Yuan Energy Core.

The expansion of the "Void" finally ceased.

Leaving a "Rule Void" over three li in diameter and bottomless.

At the edge of the void, space still twisted slightly.

Like a wound on the world.

And at the center of that wound

a faint emerald‑green glow, like a candle in the wind, barely flickered.

That was the last fragment of the Iron Crow Army Lord's will.

Shattered, chaotic, yet not completely extinguished.

It "watched" everything that was collapsing.

It emitted a whisper no one could hear.

【System……collapsing……】

【But……the procedure……was not completely deleted……】

【Backup……in the deep layers……】

【Restart……requires time……】

【Variable……repair program……】

【We……will meet again……】

The light went out completely.

But deep in the void, something even deeper began to slowly "awaken".

That was an existence older and more essential than the Yuan Energy System.

It was the world's……before it was altered……

the original code.

And as it awakened,

the collapse of the light curtain began to accelerate.

The two worlds, severed for a hundred years, were now reconnecting on a physical level.

Fusion.

And conflict.

About to begin.