Outside the colossal pit, scorched into glazed earth by the terrifying heat, within the Imperial Capital encased in a pure white energy shield,
Everyone waited anxiously, awaiting the outcome of the battle.
The combatants outside the city had far surpassed human imagination;
With a wave of their hands, mountains would collapse and rivers would shatter.
It was a battle the world itself could barely contain.
Even the Purgatory-level Legion Commanders, compared to the weaker beings, could only gaze at the battlefield through the protective shield.
The last scene they witnessed was Chen Luo colliding with the monstrous entity, the fragile ground beneath them unable to withstand the pressure and directly collapsing into a bottomless chasm.
The battle between the two sides was so fierce that, in their endless descent, the residual shockwaves of their fight caused the Imperial Capital to tremble.
Had the city's shield not absorbed ninety-nine percent of the shockwaves with the frantic support of Zhuzhao, the city would likely have been utterly destroyed by the aftermath.
As the combatants plunged towards the Earth's core, the surface slowly began to calm.
"Big Sister, how is the Boss?"
Looking at the anxious legion members and the somewhat familiar elder legionnaires beside her, Su Xiao shook her head in confusion.
Having absorbed the legion's power and ascended to the second tier of Purgatory, she had thought she was a step closer to Chen Luo, even believing she might be able to help him in some small way.
But after merely observing a corner of the battle, Su Xiao deeply understood that the gap between her and him had only widened.
What unsettled Su Xiao even more was that the entire battle seemed to have been dominated by the terrifying monster.
With Chen Luo and the monster now plummeting underground, the outcome was likely difficult to predict...
Amidst the somber atmosphere, time crept by.
According to the rules of the Doomsday Game, Nightmare-level threats were only supposed to appear after the fifteenth day of the apocalypse.
However, in a desperate bid for survival, the Imperial Capital had proactively initiated a nuclear strike on the fourteenth day.
When the battle began, the energy Chen Luo channeled into the sky had already torn through the atmosphere, allowing starlight and sunlight to simultaneously illuminate the battlefield.
As time passed, the sun began to set, and the daylight gradually dissipated.
The stars in the sky, in the unhindered expanse of space, shone with unprecedented brilliance.
When the last rays of the setting sun sank beyond the western mountains, the stars and the blood moon illuminated the land.
The soldiers of Great Yan began their rest as ordered.
Chen Luo's battle with the monster might decide humanity's fate, but humanity still wished to do something in the end, even if it was just to pray for their hero.
Only the soldiers of the Crimson Legion remained silently by the city gates, gazing at the deep pit, awaiting the return of their commander.
Suddenly, Xiaoyue seemed to sense something.
Transforming into her silver-haired loli form, she struggled violently in Su Xiao's embrace, whimpering anxiously towards the distant deep pit.
Following this, Su Xiao and Hu Tao, after a moment of realization, leaped onto a nearby tall building and looked towards the bottomless pit!
"Xiaoyue! What's wrong? Is Chen Luo back?" Hu Tao patted Xiaoyue's hair soothingly, but Xiaoyue, still unable to speak human words, merely glared intently at the pit, her vocalizations growing increasingly fierce.
Seeing this, Su Xiao's heart sank.
Could it be...
Buzz!
Within the deep pit, the seemingly bottomless darkness suddenly rippled.
Before a natural disaster, animals often sense unease before humans do.
Some say this is because humans, embracing civilization, have lost that wild intuition, becoming a dulled existence numbed by civilization.
But at this moment, within the Imperial Capital, even the most dulled human felt an indescribable sense of dread.
It was a fundamental instinct etched into their genes, a primal fear of disaster!
Something was coming!
The darkness within the deep pit churned more and more violently, black energy coalescing into a dense fog that began to surge from the pit's bottom.
A strange song seemed to faintly echo in the ears of everyone within the city.
Hu Tao's expression changed; with a flash of sacred light, purifying power spread across the entire city.
Meanwhile, Su Xiao, along with Xiaoyue and Wei Heshang, rushed back towards the remaining piles of Zhuzhao.
Up to this point in the battle, no items had dropped. The mountain-like Zhuzhao had already been significantly depleted.
Within the Imperial Capital's protective shield, hundreds of millions of Zhuzhao shone as brilliantly as a galaxy.
"Everyone! Ignite all the Zhuzhao!!!"
As soon as Su Xiao finished speaking!
Bang!
A massive crack appeared on the protective shield.
All the Zhuzhao simultaneously shortened slightly, their concentrated light slowly repairing the fissure.
But within the shield, everyone was rendered immobile...
Death! An incredibly clear perception of death flooded their minds.
Frenzied system prompts seemed to echo in their ears, but no one had the strength to decipher them any longer.
At some unknown time, a colossal black mountain suddenly rose from the deep pit not far from the Imperial Capital.
The mountain was as vast as an island, with nine slender peaks piercing straight into the clouds.
The mountain was utterly black, its form unilluminated even by starlight.
Layers of palpable black ripples spread outwards from the mountain as their origin.
Where the light passed, all things were annihilated...
Hum...
As a wave of blackness swept across the Imperial Capital's protective shield, the scene from moments before occurred.
And the next wave of light followed, sweeping across once more...
Crack!
The fissures on the protective shield widened again, and the galaxy-like Zhuzhao began to fluctuate.
An incredibly terrifying restorative power surged forth.
But the black ripples merely passed by as usual, and after sweeping across again...
Boom!!!
All the Zhuzhao instantly ignited, hundreds of millions of them unable to withstand even the residual shockwaves of this aftershock!
The few Legion Commanders were the only ones in the city who could turn their heads.
But as they saw the black mountain rising in the distance, blood flowed from their eyes.
It was a monster that humanity could not directly behold!
On the land outside the city,
Starlight could not illuminate the darkness, but the light of the blood moon made the mountain's form clear.
Eight ferocious dragon heads and a desiccated corpse clad in armor, as if having survived an ordeal, bathed in the blood moon's glow.
Having lost the high temperature and pressure of the Earth's core, the materialized monster, merely by existing, was capable of destroying all things!
Suddenly, Theodore seemed to recall something and turned his gaze towards the city not far away.
Seeing that the residual power of his appearance had nearly shattered the protective shield with a mere gentle sweep, Theodore's expression turned to sheer panic:
"Damn it!! They can't die now!!"
The mountain-like monster, as if its tail had been stepped on, frantically suppressed its energy fluctuations.
As if afraid of killing the humans in the distance.
With the black ripples suppressed to their absolute limit, the energy shield stabilized once more.
Theodore finally breathed a sigh of relief, and his mountain-like body moved towards the city the next moment:
"I need to hurry. Before that guy arrives, I'll take over this city, and then..."
Thump...
An irresistible colossal force came from behind, and the pitch-black mountain abruptly halted.
"Oh? And then what?"
A gigantic golden palm gently pressed against the mountain-like monster.
The youth clad in golden armor offered a benevolent smile to the ugly monster.
Of course, if his body were not ten thousand meters tall, that smile might have been more friendly.