Chapter 340: New Era

Liang Wen's pupils contracted sharply.

He understood the meaning of Sai Men's words. The admission ticket—was the pure white light sphere on Jiang Yuan's chest that had fused thirteen Divine Gifts.

Gathering all fourteen, the wish mechanism activates.

The madman never intended to collect them himself; he sat atop the tower watching the spectacle, waiting for the swarm of ants to slaughter each other, waiting for the final winner to obediently bring the loot to his doorstep.

They risked their lives, people died, blood was shed, and in the end they were merely errand workers for this lunatic.

That realization was harsher than any attack, and Liang Wen felt a sour churn rise in his stomach.

No.

Absolutely not!

Liang Wen crushed the blood scab in his mouth and felt a short blade on the inside of his Windcoat with his right hand.

Rewind.

He has only one chance left.

Even if his body were to be completely ruined, even if he returned as a living specimen that only breathed—so long as he could turn the time back, even just ten minutes, he could warn Jiang Yuan in advance and rewrite this entire deception.

Liang Ting is still waiting for him.

The little girl hasn't woken up yet.

He promised her that when she opened her eyes, the first person she saw would be her father.

"Rewind—"

Liang Wen grabbed the hilt with both hands and thrust it violently toward his heart.

Sai Men tilted his head.

"Oh?"

"The ability to rewind? Interesting."

Then he laughed.

It wasn't a sneer; he truly found it funny.

The laugh came from behind the Mask, muffled and resonant, like a large animal's low hum before a yawn.

Sai Men raised his staff.

Casually, he swung it toward Liang Wen.

There was no ripple, no light effect, not even a stir of air.

But Liang Wen felt as if an invisible truck had slammed into him head‑on.

An indescribable pressure surged from the Heavenly Spirit Cover down to his soles; his whole body was flattened onto the cracked floor, his face pressed against cold shattered stones, his spine emitting a series of crisp cracks.

That wasn't the sound of a fracture.

It was the sound of bones being bent to their limit, the joint capsules being forcibly squeezed and bursting.

"Uhm—!"

Liang Wen bit his tongue, and blood squeezed out from between his teeth.

Rewind failed.

No—more precisely, Sai Men never gave him any room to activate it. It was like crushing a mosquito trying to take off.

Easy. Casual. Even with a "that's enough, stop messing around" sort of perfunctory tone.

"Time, that kind of thing," Sai Men crouched, his staff resting across his knees, tilting his head as he looked at the immobilized Liang Wen, his tone like reasoning with a child.

"It's not a toy your level can touch."

Jiang Yuan forced a garbled roar from his throat.

He tried to summon the Shadow legion—but his body wouldn't obey.

Sai Men stood and turned toward him.

The sound of leather shoes treading over shattered stones, one step, two steps, three steps.

Jiang Yuan struggled desperately to retreat, his back already pressed against the wall, with nowhere to go.

Sai Men extended his left hand.

His five fingers spread, pale and slender, the joints distinct.

That hand, half a meter away, aimed at Jiang Yuan's chest.

Then, it retracted.

Jiang Yuan's pupils dilated to their maximum instantly.

He heard a sound from within his chest—not a heartbeat, but something being forcibly torn apart. It was like two welded metal pieces being ripped open.

Pain.

Not the pain of flesh.

It was a soul‑level pain that severs every connection between you and something.

Jiang Yuan opened his mouth wide, but his vocal cords produced no sound. His hand instinctively clutched his chest, his Nail digging into the fibers of his Tactical Vest, his body arched like a shrimp.

The pure white light sphere was pulled out of his chest inch by inch.

The sphere's surface swirled with thirteen distinct patterns, bearing the full power of the thirteen Divine Gifts—and also carrying Lin Fan's trust, Lei Yu's sacrifice, and everyone's final wager placed on him.

Now it hovered in Sai Men's palm, obedient as a freshly plucked fruit.

Jiang Yuan collapsed onto the ground.

He gagged repeatedly, unable to vomit anything, his whole strength feeling as if the power plug had been pulled.

The Shadow legion dissipated. The Spinal Sword lay three meters away, riddled with cracks, no different from a piece of scrap metal.

He even lost the strength of his anger.

That feeling wasn't being defeated.

It was hollowed out.

Su Ming leaned against the far wall base, black blood flowing from his seven orifices, his consciousness fuzzy. But he saw with his own eyes the entire process of the light sphere being taken away; in those eyes, which had become extremely rational due to rebirth, pure despair surfaced for the first time.

All struggle is futile.

Sai Men lifted the pure white light sphere and walked back to the center of the hall.

He pulled from the inner pocket of his suit his pocket watch—the Fourteen Divine Gifts. The watch cover sprang open automatically, the hands spinning wildly as if sensing something approaching.

Sai Men pressed the light sphere onto the surface of the pocket watch.

The moment of contact, the entire TV Tower trembled.

No, not just the TV Tower.

It was the foundation beneath our feet, a string deep within the crust that had been plucked.

Fourteen beams of distinctly different colors burst from the contact point, weaving, entwining, and merging above Sai Men's head, eventually coalescing into a massive halo over ten meters in diameter. The halo hovered above the tower's summit, rotating slowly.

Space began to fold.

It wasn't the localized distortion of a Weird Domain. The entire sky bent, like a sheet of crumpled tin foil. Distant building outlines warped, stretched, twisted into geometries that could not exist.

A will descended.

There was no sound, no form, yet everyone present sensed its presence. The feeling was like—standing in an endless plain, suddenly realizing something on the opposite side of the heavens was looking down at you.

Its size was incomprehensible.

Ancient beyond any temporal coordinates to anchor.

It was scrutinizing.

It was waiting.

It was listening.

Sai Men knelt.

It was not a humble prostration but a devout single‑knee kneel, like a knight receiving investiture. He laid his staff horizontally before him, cupped the pocket watch merged with the light sphere in both hands, and raised it overhead.

"My wish."

His voice changed. No longer mocking, no longer mad.

It was pure, unadulterated—fervor.

"Let the curtain fall."

"Let every ignorant eye see the Abyss."

"Let the old world's rules… all become void."

His body began to glow, spreading from his chest outward, scarlet patterns crawling up his neck and cheeks, spewing from the two eye holes of the Mask.

"Let the Weird… fully, comprehensively, eternally descend upon this world!"

The halo exploded.

It wasn't an explosion.

It was a collapse.

Fourteen colors of light blended together, turning into a single scarlet. That red poured from the top of the TV Tower, like a bucket of Paint overturned, flowing down the tower's body.

Then—spreading outward.

The scarlet wavefront pressed against the ground as it advanced; wherever it passed, the existing Blood Moon Weird Domain shattered into dust. The old rules crumbled, new laws overwrote.

The wavefront's advance speed increased.

In ten seconds it engulfed the entire city.

In thirty seconds it covered the whole province.

After a minute, it crossed the coastline.

Liang Wen lay on the ground, face down, feeling the force skim over his soles. Neither hot nor cold. It was an indescribable sense of "rewriting," as if someone had swapped the base map beneath his feet.

The old Blood Moon Weird Domain began to fracture under the red light, and the Mutation organizations, flesh walls, and Mutated Monsters that had entrenched throughout the city all cracked, peeled, and turned to ash.

It was not eradicated.

It was replaced.

What supplanted them was something deeper, more fundamental, irreversible—a certain thing.

Then, every electronic device still operating worldwide rang simultaneously.

Mobile phones, TV sets, radios, car navigation systems, mall public speakers, Hospital call systems—every sound‑emitting terminal was hijacked in the same second.

Sai Men's voice broadcast from every speaker.

Clear, cheerful, with uncontainable manic joy, like the over‑enthusiastic host at an amusement park opening.

"Ladies and gentlemen—"

"Congratulations to you."

"The old world's shelf life has ended."

"From this second onward, the Weird is no longer an Urban Legend, no longer a classified government file, no longer your idle gossip."

"It will appear in your bedroom, your office, your parents' Hospital."

"It is everywhere."

"And you—seven billion lambs of humanity awaiting slaughter—will face the greatest elimination contest in history."

"The Rules are simple: survive."

"Or be eaten."

"Wishing everyone—good luck."

At the top level of the TV Tower, beyond the shattered floor‑to‑ceiling windows, a scarlet sky was riddled with countless cracks.

They were not gaps in the clouds.

It is the sky itself that is cracking, like a crack in the bottom of a bowl caused by a heavy object, spreading like a spider web in all directions; from the depths of each fissure emanates a faint green, or deep purple, or pitch‑black light.

Jiang Yuan spat out a mouthful of black blood, strained to prop up his upper body, his eyes fixed on that sky now utterly unrecognizable.

In the direction of the Federation, three massive pillars of light shot up into the sky.

In the direction of North America, two.

In the direction of Western Europe, one.

Six pillars of light, six S-Class Anomaly Domains, were born simultaneously.

And this is only the beginning.