Chapter 1353: Collapse

The Jade Expanse.

Wind and sand danced. A massive, overwhelming calamity crashed against the border of the realm. Countless figures surged onto the battlefield from behind, one after another, unleashing divine skills furiously onto the waves of disaster. From a skyward view, a clear, bloody demarcation line stretched between the two forces.

"Damn it, wave after wave! Do they truly never tire?!" a Mianzong member roared, his eyes bloodshot.

"The southeast is about to collapse! Send reinforcements quickly!"

"Understood!"

Several figures immediately disengaged from the battle, preparing to move towards the southeast. But the next moment, several jackal calamities descended lightly from the sky, their red-tinged eyes fixed intensely on the group, seemingly filled with hatred.

As the leading high-ranking jackal opened its bloody maw, a sharp wolf howl erupted instantly!

*Swoosh—!*

The moment the wolf howl echoed, the pupils of the Mianzong members at the forefront instantly constricted. Before they could react, their skin was ripped away from their bodies as if it were mere clothing, leaving behind several horrifying, bloody torsos that stumbled forward and collapsed.

Even then, they did not die immediately. The agony of their skin being torn away wildly stimulated their senses, the intense pain causing them to shriek hysterically!

The skinless figures writhed and screamed. This horrifying sight constantly assailed the minds of the surrounding Mianzong members...

Though they had witnessed such scenes many times on the battlefield, each time still filled them with immense fear.

"Retreat!! Retreat!!"

"Didn't I say to send the puppets first?! Puppets don't have skin; let them lead the charge!"

"After so many days of attrition, we don't have enough puppets! Even with logistics working day and night to produce them, they can't keep up with the rate of depletion, Captain!"

"Damn it..."

"We still lack high-tier combat strength... Where is General Jian? When will General Jian return??"

"I don't know; there's no news of him yet..."

"Find him by any means necessary!!"

As they spoke, Huaimang descended from the sky, landing directly amidst the group of jackal calamities.

"Cleave." Huaimang's robes fluttered in the wind, a cold glint flashed in his eyes, and a sword shadow swept forth, cleaving several nearby calamities in half. "You all continue to hold this position. I'll go reinforce the southeast."

After speaking indifferently, Huaimang soared away again, piercing through the surging waves of calamity and heading straight for the other side of the defense line.

Huaimang's appearance undoubtedly greatly eased the pressure on the Mianzong members responsible for that area. They watched his departing figure, each breathing a sigh of relief...

One young member cautiously stepped forward. Seeing the skinned corpses of his comrades, their bloody flesh and bones exposed to the air, he immediately swallowed hard and rushed to the side to retch dryly:

"What the hell... are these calamities?"

The Crimson Opera Robe walked slowly along the twisted city ruins.

Around him, on the architectural debris, the massive black and red centipede, Wu Yi, moved inch by inch, keeping pace. The man and the insect thus explored deeper into the city amidst the snowflake-like ashes. Aside from the rustling of Wu Yi's many legs, there was only a deathly silence.

Along the way, Chen Ling hadn't seen a single human, not even a corpse... As far as his eyes could see, there were only the material remnants of human civilization.

Buried skyscrapers, shattered roads, abandoned vehicles, tangled wires...

Perhaps the only things related to "people" were scattered articles of clothing.

After a moment of hesitation, Chen Ling bent down and picked up a woman's fur coat from the roadside. Next to it lay a small backpack, looking exquisite and elegant, likely from an expensive luxury brand.

"Do people in this world all love wearing fur so much?"

Chen Ling murmured to himself.

Throughout his journey, about seventy percent of the clothes Chen Ling had seen were fur, and of very high quality: deerskin, mink, and even many animal materials that Chen Ling couldn't identify, possibly even fur from rare animals...

Of course, "rare" was only relative to Chen Ling's world; perhaps in this parallel world, those animals were abundant.

Chen Ling even speculated that the prevalence of fur clothing in this world was due to its extreme climate and underdeveloped textile technology, where synthetic fabrics might even be more expensive.

The deeper he explored, the more Chen Ling realized that although this place was very similar to his own Earth, its technological direction and cultural background were vastly different, and clothing was just one example.

"...Hm?"

Chen Ling suddenly stopped, his brows slightly furrowed. "Wu Yi, do you hear anything?"

The black and red centipede, perched atop a nearby landmark building, also seemed to suddenly sense something. Its massive body instantly tensed, and almost simultaneously, the gray ground beneath it, which had buried more than half the building, began to vibrate violently!

Dust floating in the air, as if drawn by some gravitational force, swirled downwards towards the space beneath Wu Yi, followed by scattered stones on the ground...

Immediately after, the fur coat in Chen Ling's hand also floated upwards, as if someone were pulling the other end of the garment, trying to drag it away!

"No!" Chen Ling felt his own gravity changing and immediately shouted,

"Run!!"

Before Chen Ling could speak, Wu Yi had already leaped from the building. The next moment, spacetime deep within the earth seemed to begin collapsing. A colossal, shadowy black hole slowly rotated, and all surrounding matter, like water rushing down a drain, swept towards it at an astonishing speed!

Crushed stones, clothes, streetlights, signs, vehicles, buildings... Even spacetime itself visibly warped. A terrifying suction force coiled around Chen Ling and Wu Yi, forcibly dragging them towards the black hole!

Wu Yi's hisses rang out continuously. Even with its massive body and eighth-tier strength, it could only barely resist the collapsing spacetime. Its countless centipede legs rapidly churned in the void, resembling a spaceship struggling desperately before a black hole, its propulsion pushed to the limit.

As for Chen Ling, who was nearby, he was almost directly pulled into the black hole by the collapsing spacetime. Fortunately, the moment he shot into the air, his opera robe turned from red to black, his hair strands flew wildly, and a terrifying world-destroying aura directly broke free from the gravitational pull, allowing him to forcefully step into the void and flash outwards!

"What kind of damned place is this?!" the black-robed Chen Ling roared angrily.

The deathly gray-white ashes were shredded by the vortex, continuously converging towards the center. All matter within a radius of several kilometers was swept in, even the very ground was torn up. In a mere ten-odd seconds, the previously chaotic city ruins were scoured into a void, completely empty.