Nine Mysteries Descend Upon the World (Part 1)

Every man who stayed behind bought the elderly and the weak fleet another few dozen breaths, a quarter-hour, an incense stick’s time.

A few dozen breaths might seem like nothing to ordinary mortals, but to the desperate dragon clansmen rowing for their lives aboard that fleeing fleet, those few dozen breaths were the difference between life and death.

When the news reached the southern border army of the Eastern Wastelands, the garrison commander of Zhennan Pass was standing on the city wall, gazing toward the southern sea.

The garrison commander’s name was He Lanyue. He was a veteran general from the Great Xia’s northern border army, who had fought for twenty years on the grasslands against the northern barbarians and the anomalies. His body bore more scars than an ordinary soldier had eaten meals. Six months earlier, Wang Hao had transferred him from the northern frontier to the southern frontier, and He Lanyue had been nursing a grudge ever since—he thought Wang Hao was demoting him.

Then he saw the black mist on the southern sea.

“Damn it,” He Lanyue cursed. “His Majesty wasn’t demoting me—He was setting me to guard the gates of hell.”

He turned to his deputy commander and gave the order: “Send word to all coastal watchtowers. Full combat readiness. Arm every Armor-Breaking Crossbow. Fully charge all formation plates. Activate the city’s grand protective formation. Dispatch riders—send word of this to the capital at the fastest possible speed.”

The deputy commander was about to acknowledge the order when another jade slip for transmitting messages lit up.

The message within the jade slip made He Lanyue’s face change completely.

“The South Sea Dragon Clan’s fleet of elderly and weak is being pursued by a tide of anomalies. Estimated arrival in Great Xia’s waters within two hours. The fleet carries two million four hundred thousand elderly, women, and children. The Dragon Clan requests permission to enter our territory for refuge.”

He Lanyue’s knuckles turned white as he gripped the jade slip.

He had received Wang Hao’s decree—the South Sea Dragon Clan could enter the territory, but on three conditions: surrender their Dragon Pearls, send the Holy King Canglong to the capital in person, and cede the northern part of the South Sea to Great Xia.

Those three conditions required the South Sea Dragon Clan’s Dragon King to personally sign the agreement before it could take effect. But right now, the Dragon King, Ao Guang, was still with the main battle fleet, at least a day’s journey away from the fleet of the elderly and weak.

In other words, the paperwork Wang Hao demanded, the elderly and weak fleet had no time to complete.

“General,” the deputy commander’s voice trembled. “What do we do?”

He Lanyue closed his eyes. The scars on his chest throbbed with pain as his heart pounded. He remembered what Wang Hao had said six months ago when transferring him from the northern frontier, patting him on the shoulder: “He Lanyue, I am entrusting the southern frontier to you because you have a quality no one else has—you can make your own decisions.”

He opened his eyes. All hesitation was gone.

“Open the harbor formation gate at Zhennan Pass. Mobilize every available vessel along the coast. Go and rendezvous with the South Sea Dragon Clan’s elderly and weak fleet.”

“General—” the deputy commander cried out in shock. “His Majesty decreed that without the signed agreement—”

“His Majesty also gave another decree,” He Lanyue cut him off. “‘Of the South Sea Dragon Clan’s three million two hundred thousand subjects, I will not kill a single one.’ Those were His Majesty’s own words. The paperwork can be handled later. Lives cannot wait.”

He leaped down from the city wall and ran toward the harbor himself. The border soldiers watched their general charging toward the docks like a madman, his black cape flapping in the wind.

“Arm all Armor-Breaking Crossbows and aim them at the black mist to the south! Fully charge all formation plates to critical threshold! All officers above the newly promoted Void Soaring realm, come with me out to sea! Hurry! His Majesty granted us Void Soaring Realm Breakthrough Pills to help us advance—we can never repay that grace. The time to serve His Majesty is now!”

The harbor formation gate at Zhennan Pass boomed open.

Warships of the Great Xia’s Southern Navy poured out of the harbor. Formation plates aboard the ships began charging, and the pale green glow of their arrays illuminated the darkening sea.

He Lanyue stood at the prow of the lead warship, gripping the message jade slip he had just received.

He looked again at the black mist growing closer on the southern horizon. Then he looked north—toward the capital, where Wang Hao was returning in triumph from his campaign.

Then he cursed.

“Your Majesty, I know you love to calculate everything. But this time, I’m acting first and reporting later. The enemy is too strong this time. Every extra ally helps.”

The warship cut through the waves heading south.

And in the direction the warship was sailing, the South Sea Dragon Clan’s elderly and weak fleet was making its last desperate struggle, with only a quarter-hour left.

The infant in Ao Yue’s arms had fallen asleep. The infant did not know that his three hundred great-grandfathers had just turned into golden light, that eight hundred wounded warriors had just been swallowed by the black mist, that his mother the Queen was using the cruelest means to protect what remained of her people.

All he knew was that his mother’s embrace was warm, the ship was rocking, and the sea breeze was salty.

Ao Yue looked down at the sleeping infant’s face. A single golden tear finally fell from her eye.

“Faster,” she said, her voice hoarse. “Faster—”

Then she saw them on the northern sea: a line of black warships.

At the prow flew a black dragon flag.

The black mist tore open in the darkest hour before dawn.

He Lanyue stood at the prow of the navy’s flagship, watching helplessly as the sky-darkening black mist on the southern sea suddenly split apart from the center—not driven by wind, not scattered by light, but as though a giant maw had opened from within, swallowing the black mist itself.

Then he saw something he would never forget for the rest of his life.

An eye opened in the tear of the black mist.

How large was that eye? He Lanyue could not find the words to describe it. He only knew that the eye filled the entire southern sky, and the diameter of its eyeball was at least thirty li. The pupil of the eye was vertically slit, and its color was an eerie green. Deep within that pupil burned countless twisted human faces—faces that screamed, wept, and laughed hysterically, every one of them clawing desperately to escape but unable to pull free from that eye’s pupil.

“What the hell is that thing—”

Before He Lanyue could finish his sentence, a second eye opened.

In the southern sky. On the western sea surface. In the clouds overhead. In the deep sea beneath their keel—one after another, eyes opened from the darkness. They ranged in size, the largest occupying half the heavens, the smallest still spanning hundreds of zhang in diameter. Every eye had a vertically slit pupil, every pupil burned with twisted faces, and every gaze was fixed on the same direction—

The north.

Toward the Eastern Wastelands.

“Not just one,” said a hoarse, aged voice beside He Lanyue. “Nine of them.”

Ao Yue looked back at the Great Xia liaison officer.

The speaker was Zhao Polu, deputy commander of Zhennan Pass. He was an old scout who had fought forty years on the northern battlefields. He had seen beast tides from the demon races, and all manner of strange anomalies, but he had never seen anything like this.

Nine Level Nine anomalies.

Not one Soul Devourer. Nine of them.

Within the black mist, the forms of the nine anomalies gradually became clear.

The first was the Soul Devourer, with ninety-nine tentacles, every tentacle covered in human faces. Its main body was a constantly squirming black mass of flesh.

The second was a pitch-black skeletal dragon, more than ten thousand zhang in length, its bones covered in eerie green anomaly runes. Wreathed in its eye sockets were two balls of ghost fire, crimson red—a color that only appeared after devouring countless living beings. The South Sea Dragon Clan’s scouts called it the “Bone Dragon General,” because it specialized in devouring the bones of dragons.

The third was a formless mass of black mist, within which countless twisted human figures were faintly visible. Its name was the Myriad Souls Matrix. Wherever the black mist passed, the souls of all the dead would be drawn into it, becoming part of the matrix itself.

The fourth was a colossal monster stitched together from countless corpses. The bodies included those of dragons, sea demons, humans, and even remnants of what seemed to be ancient ferocious beasts. All these corpses were sewn together by thick, eerie chains, and atop this mountain of flesh sat a tightly shut head—the first Dragon King of the South Sea, who had fallen seventy thousand years ago. His corpse had somehow fallen into the hands of the eerie beings.

The fifth was an enormous sea anemone that rose from the ocean floor, its tentacles covered in barbs.

The sixth was a sphere formed from a pile of skulls.

The seventh was a massive serpent whose body dripped with black sludge.

The eighth was a pitch-black stone statue.

The ninth was—a fist-sized eye.

But it was this smallest eye that made He Lanyue’s pupils contract to the limit.

Because it was not an independent entity.

It was embedded in the palm of a colossal black hand that loomed over the entire sky above the South Sea.

How large was that hand? Impossible to measure. It hovered above the eight ninth-tier eerie beings, its palm facing downward, and the eye in its center slowly rotated, watching everything below.

Each of its fingers was a hundred miles long, and its knuckles were covered in flowing dark gold patterns. Every time those patterns completed a circuit for every hundred miles in every direction, a tenth of the ambient spiritual energy was drained away.

“That is—” Zhao Polu’s voice trembled for the first time.

“Half-step tenth-tier.” He Lanyue finished his sentence.

Behind the eight ninth-tier eerie beings stood a half-step tenth-tier one.

It did not strike directly. Instead, it covered all eight ninth-tier beings with its domain of strangeness, driving them northward. It sought to devour more flesh and blood, gather more power, and complete its final evolution.

This was why the South Sea dragons fled.

It was not that they feared ninth-tier eerie beings—the South Sea dragon clan boasted five dragon gods at the demonic divine level. Though they could not defeat nine ninth-tier beings, they could at least fight a delaying battle. But the moment they saw this half-step tenth-tier being, they knew the South Sea was doomed.

Half-step tenth-tier was a power beyond Li Cangming’s.

Li Cangming was at half-step transcendence—the transitional stage after the peak of the martial divine realm and before entering the transcendence realm.

But beyond the transcendence realm lay even more terrifying planes.

An eerie being of the same rank was already stronger than a martial artist. Half-step tenth-tier meant this creature had already touched the threshold of that higher realm.

“Send a message to the capital! Now!” He Lanyue’s roar exploded across the flagship, his voice filled with unprecedented urgency. “Inform Your Majesty—the South Sea is not facing one ninth-tier eerie being, but nine! Among them is a half-step tenth-tier! The South Sea dragons abandoned their sea and fled not out of cowardice, but because this thing is simply not something a martial divine realm expert can fight!”

The frantic communications officer activated the highest-level message jade, and a blood-red light burst into the night sky, like a signal flare slicing through the darkness.

At the same moment, the eight ninth-tier eerie beings in the black mist moved as one.

Not forward—but toward the fleet of the old and weak.

The 2.4 million elderly, women, and children of the South Sea dragon clan had struggled for an entire night at the edge of the black mist. They used wave after wave of rearguard sacrifices to buy precious time—inch by inch, burning incense after incense, they trudged north. By dawn, they were less than three hundred miles from the Eastern Wasteland Sea.

Three hundred miles—for a martial divine realm expert, that was the span of a single incense stick. For a crowd of elderly and children, it was a distance that had to be bought with lives.

Ao Yue’s infant had woken three times. The little one did not understand what was happening; he only knew that when he was hungry, he cried, and after eating, he slept. Ao Yue fed him with her own dragon essence blood—the South Sea dragons had fled in such haste that they had made no preparations. Food on the old-and-weak fleet had run out three days ago. Adult dragons could survive by absorbing spiritual energy from the air, but an infant could not. So she used this method, drop by drop, feeding her forty-six thousand years of cultivation to the child in her arms.

Her face grew increasingly pale. The luster of her dragon horns dimmed more and more. But the baby in her arms grew stronger and stronger.

“Queen!” The handmaiden’s voice suddenly turned shrill, dripping with despair. “The black mist—it is accelerating!”

Ao Yue lifted her head sharply.

To the south, the black mist was no longer moving slowly. Like a living thing, it lunged forward in a massive surge. From within it, nine tentacles reached out at once—those of the Soul Devourer, every tentacle covered in twisted faces. The tentacles moved at an inconceivable speed, crossing the rear of the old-and-weak fleet in just a few breaths.

Then the tentacles coiled.

Three dragon boats filled with elderly dragons were snatched up together. Before the elders aboard could react, the faces on the tentacles opened their mouths.

Countless mouths bit into the dragon boats at once. Wood shavings, dragon scales, flesh, blood, souls—everything was devoured in an instant.

Three ships. Four thousand elderly dragons. Gone in three breaths.

“Faster! Faster!” Ao Yue’s voice was nearly a scream, cracking with strain. “All ships, full speed!”

But the fleet’s vessels were civilian boats, already being towed at maximum speed by dragons in human form.

And now, all the ninth-tier eerie beings in the black mist had fully mobilized—their speed was more than ten times greater than that of the old-and-weak fleet.