Chapter 314: The Second Phase and Mortal Dust Qi

Fortunately, the crewman had no time to dwell on such matters. He spoke in halting gasps:

“Don’t… go out… Those who fled discovered the cities outside… are in worse shape than the camp! That strange disease spread long ago! The whole city… is nearly a necropolis!”

As if to confirm his words, a inhuman shriek—blending screeching metal and ripping flesh—echoed from a nearby building, then abruptly cut off.

“Captain… I’m so tired…”

Endy stood thunderstruck, frozen in place.

A horrific thought suddenly gnawed at his sanity as he recalled his own inexplicable fatigue.

He could no longer hear the two beside him. Shoving his deputy aside, Endy staggered back into the camp, sprinting toward the warship docks.

Luck favored him; he encountered almost no obstacles along the way, as if even the maddened infected ignored him.

Finally, he reached his vessel and, with his last ounce of strength, activated the emergency symbiosis protocol.

Cold mechanical interfaces pierced his body. The familiar connection returned, but this time it brought not empowerment—only a sensation of spiraling loss of control.

He looked down to see his semi-fluid form metallizing at an unprecedented rate.

The metallization was chaotic, warped, clashing violently with his meticulously calibrated mechanical limbs, as if two warring wills vied for dominion over his flesh.

“Damn… those wizards!!!”

With his final shred of consciousness, Endy roared a curse laced with boundless regret and venom.

The next instant, his mind plunged into darkness.

His body fused completely with the warship, becoming a motionless sculpture of metal and flesh entwined.

Endy, the camp, the city—they were merely the starting point for the spread of the “Symbiosis Calamity.”

Jie Ming’s fungal swarm, slowed by his simplifications, had inadvertently birthed an even greater catastrophe.

…

…

Thousands of kilometers behind the Giant Spirit Realm’s defensive lines, a city named Silverglow still clung to its veneer of prosperity.

Though only a small city, its scale—thanks to the realm’s vastness—rivaled a mid-tier nation.

It served as a haven for officers’ families and elite progeny, far more opulent than many metropolises.

Towering metal spires shimmered with lavish neon; ornate private shuttles crisscrossed aerial lanes. The distant battlefield’s carnage and the creeping plague seemed irrelevant here.

In a soundproofed chamber of a luxurious residence, a diminutive young native nervously ensured every door and window was sealed.

Sneakily, it produced two exquisite vials containing viscous, faintly glowing liquids of differing hues.

With trembling excitement, it carefully poured both into a single cup.

As a slime-species whose reproduction involved fusing portions of their bodies with a partner to conceive offspring, mixing such fluids was considered profoundly vulgar in Giant Spirit Realm culture.

Lost in the act…

BANG!!

The heavy alloy door was smashed inward by tremendous force!

The young native jolted, nearly spilling the liquids.

It stammered to explain, but saw not anger on its parents’ faces—only unprecedented terror!

“RUN!!!” Their psychic scream rang with despair.

The next second, blinding light swallowed its vision.

A deafening explosion roared overhead. The room shuddered violently; the ornate vaulted ceiling cracked and shattered!

Above, the clouds of war had arrived.

Wizard cannon-fodder units, vast as floating mountains, had somehow breached the long-range detection net.

They materialized abruptly over the city, their shadows engulfing the former splendor.

Then, countless beams of witchcraft—each a different hue, all brimming with annihilation—rained from the heavens!

BOOM! BOOM! BOOM…

Skyscrapers twisted and collapsed under the barrage; luxurious airships burst into fireballs mid-flight; meticulously tended sky gardens were reduced to scorched earth.

Against this sudden saturation strike, hastily mobilized anti-air defenses were like mantises before a chariot.

Any craft attempting to flee was precisely targeted and shot down by the wizards, blooming as fireworks in the night.

Jie Ming hovered mid-air, gazing coldly upon the city being rapidly “formatted” below.

After the first wave, he and the other wizards directed their cannon-fodder units to descend.

His black giants acted like demolition crews, their colossal frames wielding irresistible might, flattening entire districts and pulverizing structures to leave no corner untouched.

The “Symbiosis Calamity” fungal swarm Jie Ming had developed far exceeded expectations.

In less than a month, the once-impregnable Giant Spirit Realm defensive lines had collapsed from within.

The plague had shattered the foundation of their armies—those billions of low-tier units.

Fifth-level powerhouses and above could forcibly expel or suppress the fungi with their immense energy and willpower, but their numbers were negligible compared to the civilization’s scale.

Without the vast legions to support them, even these elite fighters were powerless against the wizards’ hyper-targeted sorcery.

Thus, the war entered its second phase: systematic physical eradication.

With each sixth-level wizard as a core, vast wizard legions advanced like combs through hair.

Their objective was clear: raze every strategically vital or populous city and stronghold in the Giant Spirit Realm, utterly extinguishing its war potential.

Jie Ming was executing precisely such a mission.

As the black giant legion violently cleared the area, high-level natives hiding in rubble or underground bunkers were forced into the open, fleeing in panic.

But the moment they emerged, they were locked onto by surrounding wizards and obliterated in focused barrages.

At that moment, Jie Ming’s peripheral vision caught a figure writhing in terror within the shadows of a collapsed wall, attempting to escape.

His attention had just shifted…

Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh!

Four lethal strikes, infused with do-or-die resolve, erupted from the shadows directly below!

Energy blades, corrosive fluids, psychic lances, high-frequency shockwaves—assailing Jie Ming from four cunning angles simultaneously.

Yet not a ripple crossed Jie Ming’s face.

“Crude tactics.” He didn’t even bother assuming a defensive stance.

During the initial landing battles, such ambushes from shadows or blind spots had indeed troubled the wizards.

But with repeated engagements, the natives’ abilities had been thoroughly analyzed by logistics wizards, yielding myriad counter-detection spells and early-warning arrays.

Almost the instant the attacks launched, the largest black giant leader beside Jie Ming moved.

Its innate ability activated, distorting the flow of time around it!

Its own speed exploded within the temporal chaos field, while the incoming assaults slowed as if mired in sludge.

Four muffled explosions rang out nearly in unison.

The black giant leader ghosted to the four ambushers’ sides. Its massive palms, sheathed in liquid metal, crushed three assassins—along with the shadows they hid in—like popping bubbles!

As it seized the last, a fourth-level native whose aura was unmistakable, the desperate slime unleashed a furious, bewildered psychic roar:

“Why?! Why invade us?! What did we do wrong?!”

Jie Ming glanced at the thrashing slime, his eyes holding no pity—only disdain and indifference.

He saw no need to explain the wizard civilization’s doctrine of preemptively crushing potential rivals, nor to dredge up the Giant Spirit Realm’s own dark history of enslaving dozens of planes and evolving by plundering others’ limbs.

In the infinite void, the law of the jungle was foundational.

Right or wrong often depended on whose side you stood.

Many times, the very concept of justice didn’t exist.

Relations between civilizations were more akin to a food chain in an ecosystem.

One civilization devouring another was as natural as a creature feeding.

“If there’s a problem,” Jie Ming murmured to himself, “it’s that you were simply unlucky.”

The black giant leader’s fingers closed. The final assassin’s psychic fluctuations ceased, reduced to a puddle of slime mingled with metal shards.

Looking up, Jie Ming saw that wizard squads in other sectors had faced similar acts of desperate resistance or suicidal ambushes.

But under the wizards’ prepared detection, warning, and countermeasures, these efforts were futile—serving only to inflate casualties and underscore the natives’ hopelessness.

Toward remnants who hid and refused to emerge, the wizards adopted a laissez-faire attitude.

So long as they didn’t interfere with the mission, the wizards wouldn’t waste energy on carpet searches.

Their priority was leveling cities, demolishing strongholds, erasing all infrastructure that could sustain war.

Jie Ming’s focus soon shifted from the skirmish, delving into his inner space.

There, a special talismanic seal flickered with subtle, ethereal light. Wisps of Mortal Dust Qi—laden with the obsessions, desires, and traces of civilization—were being drawn from the ruins of the devastated city below, converging upon it.

The Giant Spirit Realm’s advanced, populous civilization had, after so long, provided him with an abundant harvest of high-quality Mortal Dust Qi.

“A pity. The battlefield spans too vast an area; much lies beyond the effective absorption range of my ‘Mortal Dust Lure’ seal,” Jie Ming thought with regret.