The Embers of King's Teyvat Journey

2024-06-23

“Huh, huh.”

In the depths of the desert at night, besides the starry sky, a flowing purple light appeared. This purple light brought destruction, and everything in its path vanished without a trace.

At the source of the purple light, a group of people were pointing and gesturing on a giant, floating doll, creating quite a lively scene...

However, this commotion had nothing to do with Sumeru City. Unless it was a full-scale attack like before, the commotion caused by the God of War deep in the desert couldn't reach Sumeru City at all.

And indeed, the terrain transformation deep in the desert failed to attract the attention of Sumeru City due to the obstruction of the desert mountains and rainforest giant trees.

The panic I felt when I saw the explosion has been soothed by the calm of the past few days. Now, Sumeru City is no different from any other place—the entire city is asleep in the starlight.

At the top of the Sacred Tree, the Church House, which should have been brightly lit, now appeared somewhat dim and colorless. The commotion caused by the battle between the Great Tree King and the Doctor was so great that almost the entire Church House, except for the Pure Good Palace inside, had to be rebuilt.

With Nasita and the Great Tree King yet to return, the Great Sage dead, and all the Sages imprisoned, Sumeru had a host of affairs to attend to, and rebuilding the Order of the Church was clearly not an urgent matter.

The scholars all moved out, and the remaining materials were also transferred. The once magnificent church was now nothing but ruins, and as for lights, they were out of the question.

However, since Jingshan Palace is still relatively intact, there are still quite a few guards here.

"call……"

"Don't let your guard down! Those fools might take the opportunity to sneak back in!"

"understand!"

The patrolling mercenary captain reprimanded the somewhat listless guards behind him, but seeing that his men had perked up, the group began their patrol with renewed vigor.

There aren't many patrol teams like this, mainly because Sumeru has too few available troops.

The Order of the Nation, the highest governing body of Sumeru, surprisingly did not have its own armed forces. The only force that could be considered an armed force was the Discipline Officer, who was specifically responsible for handling internal affairs.

The entire defense of Sumeru was handled by the thirty-man group. Normally, the thirty-man group is enough to handle fights and suppress the Gilded Brigade, but when faced with such a major event, they are short-handed.

Ultimately, the thirty-man group was just a mercenary group, only a larger one. Not to mention that many of the wounded members, healed by Ember and Galura, were still recuperating at home.

Yet now, this crippled mercenary group has to shoulder the heavy burden of searching for the Fools, maintaining order, suppressing the restless Gilded Brigade, and working with the Disciplinary Officer to arrest those involved in this incident... and so on.

It is already quite remarkable that some personnel can still be spared to patrol near Jingshan Palace.

"Tattoo..."

The distant footsteps faded into the distance, and the branches near the Sacred Tree of the Church began to sway slightly.

Under the cover of night, this tiny commotion went unnoticed.

"call!"

"Crash!"

A strong wind blew, and the branches and leaves of the sacred tree rustled. A guard looked up and saw only two bright eagle eyes and the shadow of flapping wings.

"There are so many owls lately. There were some yesterday, and there are some today," the guard muttered, then quickly caught up with his teammates.

"Hmm... they're gone..."

On the top of the palace of Jingshan Palace, a figure wearing a large hat appeared. His face was covered with countless cracks, but the inside of the cracks was pitch black.

It's nighttime now, so what's so strange about the cracks being pitch black? If it were just plain black, it wouldn't be strange, but the blackness within these cracks is flowing.

"Ugh...we need to hurry, or we won't be able to hold on much longer." The skirmisher watched the guards leave, then rubbed his forehead.

Countless distracting thoughts and delirious ramblings were tearing at his mind, and he was on the verge of collapse.

He shook his head violently, and the soldier's vision finally cleared somewhat. He tried his best to control his somewhat sluggish body as he searched for a suitable spot on the palace roof.

Soon, he stopped walking.

Because something unusual suddenly appeared on the emerald green glazed tiles in front of the soldiers.

Upon reaching the unusual tile, the soldier crouched down, reached out and pressed down hard, and the ordinary tile suddenly sprang up and hit him on the head.

The emerald green tiles now feel as soft as living things, and not only that, a series of creaking sounds come from the tiles, as if something is chewing on them.

"呲-"

The emerald green tiles turned black and curled up; they fell from the soldiers' faces and turned into a pool of tar.

"The Queen's orders really work! Perfect! It's time for us to settle this once and for all!"

The stragglers sneered. The black tar seeping from the crack receded. He looked down and saw that the tar had spread out on the tile, corroding a large hole.

Without any hesitation, he leaped into the Jingshan Palace.

……

"despair!"

As the stragglers landed on the ground, the first thing they noticed when they looked up was the building at the very center of the palace.

It was a hollowed-out, emerald-green courtyard, resembling a flower bud about to bloom, and also the residence of the Grass God.

"A birdcage? No wonder it's been locked up for five hundred years." The soldier scoffed. A flower bud? To him, it looked more like an exquisite birdcage.

Looking around, there was only one marble-paved road leading to the courtyard, with a large expanse of hazy greenery on both sides of the marble road.

"It's amazing. I wonder what would happen if I jumped down." The skirmisher stood on the outer edge, looking with great interest at the bottomless green below.

"Then you'll be turned into a pile of scrap metal by the elemental surges in the ley lines." The repulsive voice came from behind, and the skirmisher knew without turning around that it was the Doctor.

"That's quite an interesting method. If I can't find the World Tree, I might jump down and give it a try."

"What do you mean?"

The doctor frowned beneath his mask; he couldn't quite understand what the skirmisher was saying.

"It's nothing. Now that you've been here for so long, you should have found the location of the World Tree by now, right? You should have taken care of things like cutting and manipulating it by now, shouldn't you?"

The skirmisher turned around and smiled slightly at the doctor. However, beneath the cracks on his face, his smile was more like a grimace.

"You truly are my colleague, understanding my purpose so clearly. However, those things you mentioned are things I've only just begun to do."

"Oh? So you do know how to get to the World Tree? Someone like you without a purpose is a monster; if you have a purpose, you're just a slightly smarter person."

"The World Tree! Take me there!"

The soldier's eyes suddenly sharpened, and he twisted his neck as if he were about to burst out at any moment.

"Do you think that's possible?" The doctor asked, half in surprise and half in mockery, looking at the cracks on the skirmisher's face.

"That's why I never intended for you to answer!"

"call!"

The doctor felt a blur before his eyes, and then he found it extremely difficult to breathe. He looked down and saw that the skirmisher had somehow grabbed him by the neck.

"Ha...you...are stronger than my slice...but...so what?"

The doctor, enduring the pain, lowered his head and smiled at the skirmisher. He was indeed stronger than him, but only stronger than this fragment.

Even if my powerful fragments were dealt with by the Abyss Order and the Great Tree King, those countless ordinary fragments were not.

They are scattered across the entire continent, in various locations, posing a threat to life? This is useless to the doctor, because he won't die until all the slices have died.

"So what? Hahaha, what if it's like this?" The skirmisher suddenly laughed wildly, and then the doctor saw that countless cracks had appeared on his arm, and within the cracks, countless black things were rolling around.

"You?!" The doctor's bloodshot eyes widened instantly; he never imagined that the skirmishers had actually tainted the abyss.

"You have a lot of slides, so guess what? Could forbidden knowledge, originating from you, contaminate all of them?!"

Chapter 738 Fire

2024-06-24

"Hahaha...you can...try it..." After his initial surprise, the doctor actually started to mock him like this.

"Is that so?" The soldier's face darkened, and then even more blackness emerged from the cracks.

At first they were just like cracks clinging to the skirmisher's arm, but now they covered his entire arm.

"laugh--"

A faint, eroding sound emanated from the skirmisher's arm, and as the blackness writhed upwards, a rare sight of beads of sweat appeared on the doctor's forehead.

He had never encountered any knowledge of the contraindications for this dosage. In the few experiments he had conducted related to the Abyss, he had always made thorough preparations.

Now, without any preparation, we've come into contact with such intense abyssal power; there's a real chance that forbidden knowledge could spread to all the fragments.

Just as the doctor was considering whether to make a big fuss, he saw the soldier's clenched hand suddenly loosen.

The darkness faded, revealing his face and the fact that his arm, which had been covered by the abyss, was now unrecognizable due to the corrosion.

"World Tree, take me there." The soldier's voice was extremely hoarse, his pupils trembling, as if he were walking on the edge of losing his mind.

"Cough...cough cough!"

The doctor clutched his neck, coughing as he looked at the stragglers with interest.

"You...you're acting like this, you must be adding abyssal power as fuel to your engine, right?"

"Kanria's technology is truly unfathomable. Even though it's not the engine of the Ruins Guardian and the power of the abyss hasn't been stabilized, it can still extract power from it."

"There's still hope. Shall we work together again?"

The Doctor extended another invitation to the Skirmishers to cooperate. Disassembling the Skirmishers in this state would undoubtedly allow him to gain a deeper understanding of how Kanria uses the Abyss as its energy source.

The soldier had only one response to the doctor's invitation.

"boom!"

He kicked the doctor away and coldly replied, "Don't test my patience. Don't make me say the same thing three times."

"Phew... Your... strength... has increased by at least double..."

The doctor wiped the blood from the corner of his mouth, showing no anger whatsoever. On the contrary, the curiosity in his eyes became even more pronounced.

Sensing the renewed danger emanating from the skirmisher, he knew that the skirmisher was no longer someone to be discussed with normally. So he turned around and said to the skirmisher:

"Come with me, the World Tree is located here."

With that, he disappeared into the depths of Jingshan Palace. The scattered soldiers, seeing this, followed without the slightest hesitation.

Once he enters the World Tree, all of the Doctor's schemes will be nothing more than a thin sheet of paper in a storm, easily punctured and torn apart.

……