After a thousand years of cultivation, he returns at the pinnacle!

The ashes of the apostles still drifted in the sky, like endless black snowflakes.

Dawn came later than usual in the capital. It wasn't that time was slow; it was that the dark clouds hanging over the city refused to dissipate. The black ice flowers had stopped falling, but the lingering chill still seeped into every brick and every inch of ground, making one feel a chill seep into their bones.

On the desolate plains north of the city, dozens of military trucks and special vehicles from the Bureau of Extraordinary Management lined up in a long procession, their headlights casting a dim yellow glow in the morning light. Rescue workers moved among the ruins; some carried stretchers, some held search dogs, and some used spiritual energy detectors to scan under the collapsed buildings for any signs of life.

"Over here! There are still survivors!"

A hoarse shout shattered the morning silence. Several Awakened Ones in orange rescue suits rushed over and together lifted a steel beam lying across the rubble. Underneath the beam was a person—a young Awakened One in combat gear, covered in blood, his left leg deformed from the weight, but his chest was still rising and falling weakly.

"Quickly! Medical team!"

The stretcher was brought over, and an emergency talisman was applied to stop the bleeding, relieve pain, and stabilize vital signs. As the young awakened individual was being lifted into the vehicle, he suddenly opened his eyes, his cloudy pupils darting around as if he wanted to say something.

"Don't speak, you're safe." A medic held his hand.

The young awakened individual's lips moved a few times, uttering a very soft and indistinct syllable. The medic leaned closer to hear it clearly—"Did we win?"

The medic's eyes welled up with tears, and he nodded vigorously: "We won. All the apostles are wiped out."

The young awakened individual closed his eyes, a slight smile playing on his lips, before falling unconscious. The car door closed, and the ambulance, siren blaring, sped towards the nearest hospital.

Such scenes are being repeated in every corner of the capital.

In the east of the city, in front of a residential building pierced by the claws of apostles, firefighters were using a ladder truck to rescue a five- or six-year-old girl from a fourth-floor window. The little girl was covered in dust, her face streaked with tears, but she was unharmed. She nestled in a firefighter's arms and whispered, "Uncle, are those monsters gone?"

"They're gone." The firefighter's voice choked with emotion. "They'll never come back."

"Did the older brother drive them away? I saw them through the window, so many swords, they were so beautiful."

The firefighter didn't answer, but simply hugged the little girl tighter.

In a makeshift shelter in the south of the city, hundreds of homeless citizens huddled together. Some were crying, some were making phone calls to let others know they were safe, some were wrapped in blankets in a daze, and some were kneeling on the ground praying. An elderly woman with white hair sat in a corner, clutching a family photo in her hand. The photo showed a family of five—herself, her husband, her son, her daughter-in-law, and her grandson.

My wife passed away last year, my son and daughter-in-law went missing last night during the apostle attack, and my grandson is in another shelter.

The old woman didn't cry; she just kept stroking her son's face in the photo.

A young girl next to her handed her a bottle of water: "Grandma, have some water."

The old woman took the water but didn't drink it. She just stared at the young girl's face and suddenly asked, "Whose child is that in the school uniform?"

The young girl paused for a moment, then shook her head: "I don't know. But he's a hero."

"Hero?" The old woman repeated the word softly, her lips twitching slightly. "Heroes are good. Heroes can save many people."

She lowered her head, pressed the photo to her chest, and said nothing more.

-

The Emergency Operations Command Center, three underground floors, of the Capital Awakened Affairs Management Bureau.

Twelve hours after the apostle's arrival, the place was still brightly lit.

On the holographic projection screen, the real-time map of the capital city was divided into six colored blocks—red representing heavily damaged areas, orange representing moderately damaged areas, yellow representing lightly damaged areas, and green representing safe areas. Overnight, the red and orange areas occupied nearly one-third of the entire map.

The surrounding wasteland in the north of the city, the industrial zone in the east, the old city in the south, and the downtown commercial district—all these areas experienced direct impact from the apostles last night. Buildings collapsed, roads were broken, and infrastructure was paralyzed; preliminary estimates put the direct economic losses at over 20 billion.

But even more devastating than the economic losses were the casualties.

In the lower right corner of the projection screen, a number was slowly ticking. Each tick meant that another victim's body had been found, identified, and registered.

873.

This is the official figure as of 6 a.m. But the number is still rising, and everyone knows that the final death toll will be at least three times that number.

Chu Tianxiong stood motionless in front of the projection screen.

He had been standing for a long time. Long enough that his deputy had changed shifts twice, long enough that the coffee on his table had gone cold and been replaced repeatedly, long enough that his left leg had started to go numb from standing for so long, but he did not sit down.

His eyes were fixed on the fluctuating number, his face frozen, revealing no emotion. But those who knew him knew that the more expressionless Chu Tianxiong appeared, the more intense the turmoil within him.

"Report," a technician's voice rang out in the command room. "The cleanup of the ruins in the north of the city is 40% complete. We have found 127 bodies and 39 survivors. The search and rescue operation continues."

"What about the east side of the city?" Chu Tianxiong's voice was hoarse.

"The cleanup of the ruins in the east of the city is 35% complete. There are 203 bodies of victims and 21 survivors. The east of the city is an old industrial area with aging buildings, and the collapse is more severe than in the north of the city."

"South of the city."

"The cleanup of the ruins in the south of the city is 50% complete. There are 89 bodies of victims and 53 survivors. The south of the city is mainly a residential area with a high population density, but the intensity of the apostle attack was relatively low, resulting in a higher proportion of survivors."

"city center."

The technician was silent for two seconds.

"The cleanup of the ruins in the city center is 20% complete. There are 314 bodies of the victims and 7 survivors."

There was a moment of silence in the command room.

In the city center, five 30-meter-tall Apostles appeared simultaneously last night. The Awakened's defenses there were breached first, leaving ordinary civilians almost no time to escape. Three hundred and fourteen bodies have been recovered; how many more remain, buried beneath the deeper rubble, perhaps never to be found?

"Furthermore," the technician lowered his voice even further, "thirty-seven Awakened have been confirmed dead in last night's battle, along with eighty-two seriously wounded, and countless others with minor injuries. Of those killed, twelve were Rank B, twenty were Rank C, and five were—"

He paused for a moment.

"All five are Grade A."

Chu Tianxiong clenched his fists.

Twelve B-rank individuals, twenty C-rank individuals, and five A-rank individuals. Thirty-seven awakened individuals, thirty-seven families, thirty-seven people who were once alive. Some of them were already married with children, some had just graduated, and some were not even adults yet—Zhao Lei, whose name Lin Xiaoyu called out, was twenty-six years old, a B-rank fire-type awakened individual, and his wife was four months pregnant.

he died.

"The compensation for the victims," ​​Chu Tianxiong's voice was heavy, "will be handled according to the highest standards. As for the families, the General Administration will send people to deliver it in person. We must not let any family member of the victims feel that their child, their spouse, their parents died in vain."

"clear."

Chu Tianxiong turned around, his gaze sweeping over everyone in the command room. These people had barely slept for the past twelve hours; some were dozing in their chairs, some were staring blankly at their coffee cups, and some were still processing data on their screens. Exhaustion was evident on their faces, but no one asked for a rest.

"Gentlemen," Chu Tianxiong's voice echoed in the command room, "you all experienced what happened last night. I don't want to say anything fancy, I'll just say one thing—you did a great job. In that situation, no one backed down, no one ran away, no one gave up. You defended the capital, and you protected the lives of millions in this city."

He paused.

"Although we paid a heavy price, we won."

No one cheered or applauded in the command room. Only a few people looked up at Chu Tianxiong, their eyes red-rimmed and their lips trembling slightly.

They won.

But the price of victory was that they carried their comrades onto stretchers with their own hands, dug out the bodies of children from the ruins, and looked at the homes destroyed by the apostles, silently asking themselves – can we win again next time?

"Next," Chu Tianxiong took a deep breath, pressed a button on the table, and the image on the projection screen changed, "there is something more important that we need to discuss."

And this matter is naturally related to Jiang Chen.