I fabricated myths to guide the revival of spiritual energy.

"Sizzle... sizzle..."

Seven hundred meters underground in Kyoto, in the joint control room.

Old Zheng's hoarse report, punctuated by heavy breathing, came through the communicator; the static noise was particularly jarring in the deathly silent hall.

"Clatter".

The half-smoked cigarette that Wang Mingyuan was holding fell onto the titanium steel floor, scattering a few sparks.

The cheers that had just erupted in the control room due to the surge in global spiritual pressure suddenly seemed to have been strangled by an invisible hand.

"Lin Feng! Cut the individual body camera of the Seventh Patrol Team in Donghai City!"

Wang Mingyuan strode to the control panel, slamming his hands hard on the table, veins bulging on the backs of his hands. He knew without even looking that the "spores" he had seen slip in on the monitor had finally taken root.

The large screen flickered, and the main view shook violently. Accompanied by the muffled sound of rain hitting the bulletproof helmet, the image finally settled on the black water in the alley, slowly being refined by the pattern of the paving stones, emitting white smoke.

"Amplify the energy wave from just now! Now that these things have come in, why didn't the refining mechanism inside the formation crush them immediately?!" Military representative Lao Li hurriedly unbuttoned his top button and strode over.

Lin Feng's fingers pounded on the keyboard, and a few seconds later, a component recombination analysis chart popped up.

"Professor Wang, Old Li..." Lin Feng swallowed hard, his Adam's apple bobbing rhythmically. "The spores did indeed bypass the first line of defense, but they didn't expose themselves immediately upon landing. Instead, they burrowed into the bodies of homeless people, stray cats, and stray dogs. They completely concealed themselves within the flesh and blood of native Earth creatures!"

Raymond Lam rewound the camera and cut to the murdered food stall owner, drawing a red circle around him.

"The underlying logic of the great formation has no autonomous consciousness. It scans the carbon-based life forms of Earth, so it naturally does not trigger passive refining. It wasn't until Old Zheng blew up the monster's brain and that layer of human 'disguise' completely died and fell off that the great formation captured the extreme yin energy and refined it into black water on the spot."

"Isn't this just a Trojan horse?!"

Old Li's eyes instantly turned bloodshot. He abruptly drew his pistol and slammed it heavily on the control panel. "The worst part is, it's raining spiritual rain outside right now! These beasts, disguised as humans, not only evaded the array's killing intent but are also brazenly taking their tonics right under our array's core!"

"Beep beep beep—!"

As soon as he finished speaking, hundreds or even thousands of glaring red dots suddenly appeared on the circular holographic map in the main control room.

In Jiangnan City, Chengdu, New Chang'an... the lower districts and blind spots of major cities simultaneously triggered alarms for unregistered high-energy biological attacks. The spore rain covered such a wide area that once the incubation period was over, spores bloomed in various locations at the same time.

"Professor!" The head of the formation team wiped the cold sweat from his forehead and stumbled over. "The mutants are using the spiritual rain to accelerate their self-healing, and the light firepower of the regular defense forces can't suppress them at all! We can't use heavy firepower to mow down the city... How about we stop the formation for now? Once the rain stops, they won't be able to lock in their health!"

"fart!"

Wang Mingyuan turned around abruptly, his sharp eyes like those of a hungry wolf guarding its prey.

"Did you gouge out your lungs because there was dust in the air?"

He yanked the wired command microphone and forcefully switched to the army's public channel.

"All military regions and hunter guilds, cancel all leave and engage in street fighting on the spot!"

……

Donghai City, the alley behind the Hongxing food stall.

"Huff... huff..."

Old Zheng leaned against the mottled brick wall, rainwater streaming down his face covered in soot. He glanced down at the military knife in his hand, now only the hilt remained, and with a thud, the hilt fell into a puddle.

"Captain, there's movement at the alley entrance..."

Chen Yu, clutching his broken ribs, staggered over. His face, hidden beneath his mask, was deathly pale as he stared intently at the street outside the alley.

In the thick darkness of the night, several passersby who had run to the supermarket across the street to take shelter from the rain were now walking step by step into the alley in an extremely strange posture.

Their necks were twisted unnaturally, their mouths stretched to their ears, and black tentacles rolled inside their mouths, greedily licking the spiritual rain falling from the air. One of the mutants even dragged a broken lamppost in its hand, the metal scraping against the asphalt with a teeth-grinding "sizzle".

"The bloody scent of that monster just now attracted its kind to the surrounding area."

Old Zheng cursed and reached for the magazine pouch on his tactical vest; it was empty and shriveled.

"Xiao Chen, how much fuel is left in the chainsaw sword?" Old Zheng picked up half a broken brick from the ground and weighed it in his hand.

"Less than 10%... at most another half minute." Chen Yu's voice trembled, and his teeth chattered.

"There's no way out. In a bit, I'll rush up and grab the one holding the lamppost, and you cut its neck. Sever its spinal cord, and they won't be able to move." Old Zheng spat out a mouthful of bloody saliva and arched his body like an old leopard.

Just as the three mutants tensed their hind leg muscles, preparing to pounce, the moment came.

The water in the alley suddenly froze into ice at a speed visible to the naked eye.

That wasn't ordinary ice; it was a layer of black frost exuding a chilling, deathly aura. The rain and wind, which had been mixed with the heat of early summer, suddenly transformed into a bone-chilling cold. Old Zheng's breath instantly froze into white ice crystals in front of his mask.

"Splash... splash..."

A heavy, rhythmic clanging of metal chains seemed to come from deep underground, echoing through the empty street.

Old Zheng was stunned, his hand holding the brick frozen in mid-air.

The three mutants, who were about to pounce, suddenly stiffened. For the first time, a primal reaction called "fear" appeared in their dark eyes. With uneasy growls in their throats, they dropped the iron bars they were holding and began to back away.

A black ripple silently spread across the asphalt pavement in the center of the street.

Amidst the dense, impenetrable yin energy, a group of tall figures clad in heavy, dark armor and wearing masked demon helmets slowly solidified, as if emerging from deep water.

Their footsteps were silent, their boots barely touching the ground; their bodies seemed weightless. Yet, the black chains each held upside down emitted a chilling, eerie blue phosphorescence in the darkness.

"The ghostly soldiers are borrowing a path..." Chen Yu swallowed hard, forgetting even to press the switch on his chainsaw sword.

Leading the procession was a ghostly general clad in dark gold armor. He didn't even draw his sword, merely gazing indifferently through his cold mask at the three retreating mutants.

"roar!"

The mutants seemed to realize they had nowhere to retreat, letting out a desperate roar. Relying on the terrifying self-healing power provided by the spiritual rain, they opened their blood-red maws filled with fangs and charged towards the Yin soldiers' formation in a triangular formation.

"arrest."

The ghost general's voice didn't travel through the air; it exploded directly in Lao Zheng and Chen Yu's minds, making their eardrums ache.

"Here you go!"

Two black-armored ghost soldiers floated forward half a step and flicked their wrists slightly.

"Splash!"

Two jet-black, soul-snatching ropes, like venomous snakes emerging from their holes, drew two dark trails in the air, heading straight for the mutant charging at the front.

What happened next made Lao Zheng's eyes twitch wildly.

The mutant's claws, swung with the force to tear through the air, passed right through the Yin soldier's body as if hitting nothingness, causing no physical damage whatsoever.

The two soul-reaping chains made no dull thud when they touched the mutated creature. They ignored the monster's hard black scales, pierced its writhing flesh, and plunged straight into its chest!

"Click."

A soft sound, yet seemingly locking down some kind of cosmic rule, echoed in the void.

The mutated creature lunged forward, its massive body suddenly stiffening in mid-air before crashing heavily to the ground. Using its momentum, it slid to the feet of the ghost soldiers, splashing up a cloud of mud.

"Rise." The two ghostly soldiers gripped the chains with both hands and pulled them back sharply.

"squeak--!!!"

A piercing, shrill cry, utterly unlike anything a living being could produce, erupted instantly. The sound directly affected the soul, causing the roller shutter of the nearby convenience store to rattle violently.

As the ghostly soldiers dragged it along, a phantom spirit, its entire body a dark purple and constantly changing into various terrifying faces, was forcibly pulled out of the passerby's physical body!

The purple phantom was still twisting wildly, trying to grab the spiritual energy from the sky with its illusory tentacles. But the Netherworld Laws on the Soul-Hooking Rope were firmly imprinted on its core, binding it like a rice dumpling.

Without the "pilot" of this void spirit entity, the mutated body, which was incredibly fierce and frantically healing its wounds just a moment ago, instantly lost all vitality.

With a "splat," the flesh and blood slumped into the puddle like a skeletonless lump of mud.

With the outer shell dead and the disguise torn apart, the refining mechanism of the grand formation was immediately triggered. A blinding white light shone from the cracks in the floor tiles, and with a few hissing sounds, the corpse on the ground quickly turned into green smoke and dissipated, leaving not even a drop of blood behind.

"This..." Old Zheng stared at the other two mutants who had been instantly killed using the same method, the brick in his hand falling to the ground with a "clatter." "Directly extracting their souls?"

The ghost general turned his head and glanced at Old Zheng with his dark blue eyes.

"The living world governs the physical body, while the underworld locks away the soul."

……

Kyoto Joint Control Room.

"Report! Abnormal fluctuations in underground spiritual pressure in Donghai City and Jiangnan City! All the Ghost Gate key points in various locations have been opened!" "Large-scale intervention of Netherworld Laws detected! The number of mutants within the city is decreasing precipitously!"

Hearing the continuous stream of good news, Wang Mingyuan's tense shoulders finally relaxed, and he let out a long sigh of relief.

Just then, deep within the main control room, the "Yin-Yang Connection Array," which had almost never lit up since its inception, suddenly emitted a low-frequency hum. The surrounding temperature plummeted, and a layer of pale, dead frost instantly condensed on the titanium steel control panel.

A wisp of eerie blue will-o'-the-wisp spontaneously ignited from the array's holographic projection slot. The flame had no temperature; as it leaped and intertwined, a grand echo devoid of any worldly emotion directly bypassed the physical equipment, reverberating violently in the minds of everyone in the control room.

That was the decree of the Ten Kings of Hell.

"The chaotic spirits within the city have all been apprehended by the Underworld. Not a single brick or tile of the mortal realm will be destroyed; the remaining empty shells will be refined by the great formation." "The Yin and Yang realms each fulfill their respective duties."

The voice was majestic and cold, exuding an absolute divinity that seemed to reside high above the netherworld. But in the last half-second before the decree was read, the flickering will-o'-the-wisp paused slightly, and a faint chill and sharpness, not belonging to a deity, appeared in the transmission within the sea of ​​consciousness.

"The Yin soldiers are of the extreme Yin nature, reliant on the earth's veins, and cannot ascend into the sky." "If the leaks in the heavens are not mended, the capture of souls will not cease. Matters of the mortal realm are for the living to decide."

"Bang." As soon as the words were spoken, the will-o'-the-wisp exploded, turning into specks of eerie blue starlight and dissipating. The temperature in the control room instantly returned to normal, as if nothing had happened.

Wang Mingyuan watched the dissipating starlight and wiped the cold sweat from his face. He didn't thank the air; he knew very well that the realm lord who held the power of life and death over that realm no longer needed the superfluous formalities of mortals.

"The affairs of the living are for the living to manage." Wang Mingyuan's voice turned cold and hard again. He tapped the keyboard on the main console a few times, and an official document was simultaneously sent to various command posts at the front.

"Old Li! Mobilize the troops!"

"They're already down!" Old Li slapped his thigh and stood up straight. "150,000 reserve low-level sword cultivators, stuck at the peak of Qi Refining and early Foundation Establishment stages, are now wearing Xuanwu exoskeletons and sitting on the airborne transport ship!"

"Fifteen thousand meters above the ground?" Lin Feng stared at the weather and spiritual pressure data on the screen, his voice trembling uncontrollably. "Professor Wang, hundreds of thousands of new recruits who haven't even formed their core... throw them into the stratosphere to plug spatial rifts? The extreme temperatures and violent turbulence there will kill many of them!"

But they will also gradually solidify their foundation in that place where the spiritual rain is most abundant.

Wang Mingyuan looked at the dense green lights rising from various military bases and trailing plumes of flame as they soared into the sky on the big screen, and then reached out and snapped half a pencil off the table.

"The city's security is entrusted to the Underworld. The battlefield in the stratosphere is entrusted to the Defense Force." "Since the great formation has turned Earth into the most fertile training ground in the entire universe, we must grow sharp claws to protect this legacy."

.....