Behind the Black Door, Another Soul-Devouring Orb

South District. Mingke Residential Complex.

Franming and the others watched warily — the Shadow standing before them, the black spatial door, and the countless arms reaching out from within it.

None of them moved recklessly. As Night Watchmen, they knew better than most that Aberration phenomena could be deeply unpredictable. Acting without thinking could easily get someone killed.

The best course of action was to wait for Lu Yuan — unless the two strange entities decided to cause trouble on their own first.

Franming kept his eyes fixed on the Aberration Entity and said in a tight voice, "A-Wang, what's the status? Did you get through to Elder Lu?"

"Got him. He's on his way!"

Xue Wang replied hastily.

Franming didn't relax his guard.

"Elder Lu might be a while yet. Stay sharp — if something goes wrong, tie them down as long as you can. Don't let them escape!"

The others nodded, expressions grim.

But barely a moment had passed when space rippled, and Lu Yuan materialized in front of them.

At the sight of him, Franming and the others stared, visibly taken aback.

He had arrived impossibly fast.

*This is the genius who topped the Prodigy Rankings?* After breaking through to Battle King Rank, his speed was simply terrifying.

The Night Watchman branch headquarters was no short distance away, yet Lu Yuan had covered that ground in mere moments.

The realization left them all quietly stunned.

Paying no attention to their reaction, Lu Yuan studied the spatial door with its mass of reaching black arms. A look of genuine curiosity settled across his face.

When he extended his perception into the door, it simply stopped working.

More strangely, despite possessing a Sovereign Grade space gene, he couldn't detect any spatial anomaly around the door, nor could he sense where the spatial coordinates on the other side led.

That was deeply wrong.

Then again, Lu Yuan understood that Aberrations were, by definition, things that defied normal rules.

He watched the door with open curiosity.

He didn't walk through it. Even for him, caution was the right call when dealing with strange Aberration phenomena — if something went wrong, there'd be no time for regret.

By then, Franming and the others had shaken off their surprise. Franming quickly spoke up:

"Elder Lu! The Shadow and the spatial door appeared out of nowhere — we have no idea why they're here. This Aberration event is unlike anything we've seen. I've never heard of two Aberration Entities attacking each other... The door is deeply strange — we didn't even see it appear. But the Shadow is tremendously powerful. Those arms surging out of the door hit with staggering force, yet the Shadow deflected them without effort."

The others nodded vigorously. Lin Min in particular was still breaking out in a cold sweat, the lingering fear not yet fully settled.

Lu Yuan's expression darkened. He gave Franming a flat look and said, deadpan:

"That Shadow is one of my abilities. I left it to protect you."

The expressions on Franming's team froze — then ran through a spectacular range of emotions.

Their lord had left behind a safeguard for their protection, and they had mistaken it for an Aberration Entity.

*How do we salvage our image in his eyes? Asking urgently.*

Franming felt colder inside than he had when the black door first appeared.

The others quietly averted their eyes or stared at the ground, not daring to say a word.

Franming cleared his throat and forced a laugh:

"Ah — r-right, of course it's a technique you left behind, My Lord! No wonder it was so powerful... haha... I was just saying, what kind of Aberration Entity could possibly be that strong?"

Lu Yuan shook his head and let it go, offering no further explanation for where the Shadow had come from.

As one's power grew, high-tier Talismans, Gene Armaments, and unusual Spirit Techniques opened up more and more possibilities — a Gene Warrior at the top levels could accomplish things that seemed outright impossible to those below.

He turned back to the spatial door and narrowed his eyes slightly.

"Fall back a bit. I want to try entering that door."

Franming and the others immediately stepped back.

With a casual gesture, Lu Yuan summoned another Shadow. Behind him, the team's eyes went wide again.

They all knew how formidable a Shadow was — powerful enough to rival a Battle King. For Lu Yuan to conjure a second one on a casual whim was enough to make their hearts skip.

"Elder Lu truly lives up to being the top genius on the Prodigy Rankings!" Franming called out with genuine admiration.

The others quietly agreed, though they all suspected their captain was speaking rather loudly — a touch of flattery, perhaps. But given that he had just mistaken their lord's protective measure for an Aberration Entity, a little damage control was entirely understandable.

Lu Yuan paid Franming's praise no mind. With a thought, he sent the Shadow Clone moving toward the spatial door.

His plan was to use it to scout whatever lay on the other side.

As if sensing the Shadow Clone's approach, the black arms inside the door flew into a frenzy, lashing out with powerful force and an eerie, menacing aura — at Battle King Rank level of strength.

But as the arms drew close, a streak of pitch-black sword light flashed past.

Every arm severed at once. A dark, oil-like liquid gushed from the stumps as the entire spatial door shuddered violently. The arms still gripped by the first Shadow struggled even more desperately.

Even so, that Shadow held them without the slightest strain.

The Shadow Clone quickly reached the doorway and stepped through, heedless of the shaking door.

In Lu Yuan's perception, rather than disappearing, the Shadow Clone reappeared somewhere entirely different — a distant, separate location.

He narrowed his eyes and synced his senses with it.

In the next moment, he was seeing through its eyes.

A pitch-dark basement. No light at all.

Behind the Shadow Clone stood an ordinary-looking black wooden door, now open. Through it, Lu Yuan could see himself and Franming's team on the other side — but from this angle, the ghastly black arms were nowhere to be seen. It was like a one-way mirror.

*Incredible — a built-in peephole. This thing is basically a surveillance tool.*

*Would be perfect if not for all those arms.*

The wooden door must have been taken from somewhere. And given the way it kept trembling, it might well be alive — or perhaps it had escaped from somewhere on its own.

But if the door was a living thing, why had it been grabbing people?

Where had all those people gone?

Filled with questions, Lu Yuan pulled his attention away from the door and swept the rest of the basement.

It was largely empty — nothing remarkable at first glance. On the far side of the room, there was another door set into the wall.

Lu Yuan thought for a moment, then guided the Shadow Clone toward it.

He pushed it open — and immediately, a torrent of sounds poured through: shrill screams and agonized wails layered over one another in an ear-splitting chorus.

At the same time, black mist flooded out. Within it, hideous faces writhed in expressions of hatred and bitter resentment.

A cold voice rang out from inside the room: "Who are you?! How did you get in here?!"

The next instant, the entire mass of black mist surged forward. The raw power behind it made Lu Yuan's eyes go sharp — a jolt of genuine surprise.

*That is definitely not Battle King Rank strength.*

*But why does this feel so familiar?*

There was no time to think. His body blurred into an afterimage, vanishing from the spot and evading the surging mist.

A moment later, the mist contracted and withdrew back into the room.

Inside stood a man of unremarkable appearance — brown-haired, hovering off the ground. His eyes were pitch-black, threaded with tendrils of dark mist. The same mist coiled around his entire body, and within it, grotesque distorted faces surfaced and faded continuously, accompanied by a relentless chorus of screams and wailing.

Lu Yuan's eyes narrowed, a weight settling into his gaze. "Battle Sovereign?"

He had just placed why the man felt familiar.

The eerie black mist, the shrill screaming — it was identical to the Shadow he had encountered back in Xili City.

*A Soul-Devouring Orb?*

The thought was hard to believe.

An S-grade Aberration Entity — rare enough for one to exist at all, and yet here was another?

But the disappearance of over ten thousand people, combined with the countless faces writhing within that black mist, forced him to accept it.

The souls of those missing people had likely been devoured.

As for their bodies — there were too many ways in this world to dispose of a person's physical form without leaving a trace.

By absorbing the souls of over ten thousand people, this man had broken through to Battle Sovereign.

It made sense when he thought about it. Xue Ren had only devoured a fraction of that number back then, and his power had already reached Battle King Rank.

Ten thousand souls pushing someone to Battle Sovereign — Lu Yuan wasn't surprised at all.

The brown-haired man had noticed something odd about his opponent. A flat, cold look settled on his face. "A clone?"

Then he frowned coldly. "Pity. You can't stop me. I can simply leave this city and move to another one."

His gaze shifted toward the doorway — to the wooden door still struggling against the Shadow's grip outside. "I see... you came through the Abyssal Demon Gate?"

As he spoke, he became a blur, instantly shattering the Shadow Clone and charging toward the door.

But just as he neared it, a figure appeared on the other side. Blazing light radiated an intense heat — and the brown-haired man's expression shifted. He immediately pulled back.

In the same instant, a blaze of golden sword light — brilliant as the sun — swept across the basement floor, carving a scar in the ground that stretched far into the distance. The edges of the wound had melted under the searing heat.

Under that ferocious temperature, the Abyssal Demon Gate remained completely unmoved.

Aberration Entities could not be destroyed by conventional means.

The brown-haired man wasn't paying attention to the gate anymore. His eyes were locked on the young man who had suddenly appeared — blazing like the sun itself.

"You're the owner of that clone... no, that's not right. Your Combat Technique isn't darkness..."

His eyes narrowed, something calculating entering his expression.

The previous clone had been tremendously powerful. He could only assume the one controlling it was at least his match — which was precisely why he'd been so eager to leave. Without that threat, being discovered wouldn't have forced his hand; he could have absorbed a few more souls and slipped away before any Battle Emperor arrived.

But with that clone's owner in the picture, he'd needed to grab the Abyssal Demon Gate and get out fast before getting bogged down in a fight.

And yet — he hadn't expected another powerful figure to be waiting.

The sun-like young man in front of him was deeply unsettling.

He was clearly only Battle King Rank, and yet his aura was terrifying beyond what that rank should produce.

"Who exactly are you?"

With the Great Solar Spirit Body active, a mysterious sun-like marking glowed on Lu Yuan's forehead. His normally dark eyes were now suffused with swirling golden light, and even the foremost strands of his black hair had taken on a faint gleam — as though the radiance of the sun itself was flowing across his entire body.

This was the first time Lu Yuan had activated the Great Solar Spirit Body since its evolution.

He hadn't expected the appearance to be quite so... flashy.

*This doesn't match my usual understated style. I've always considered myself a quietly refined and handsome sort.*

But the ability was already his — nothing to be done about the aesthetics.

At the man's question, a smile curved Lu Yuan's lips. He gave a light swing of his crimson Fifth-rank Sovereign Grade greatsword, trailing wisps of golden sword light, and scorched streaks appeared across the ground.

"Never mind who I am. You can either die quietly on your own, or die after fighting back. Your choice."

The brown-haired man blinked — then the black mist around him surged denser, the screams and wailing growing louder.

Black mist filled his eyes. The corner of his mouth lifted into a wild grin.

"Oh? You think you've already won? Quite the genius, aren't you? A little too dismissive of your opponents."

Black mist churned around him. Eerie dark markings crawled across his cheeks and forehead in patterns like grotesque leering faces. The mist in his eyes condensed until his irises and sclera both turned an absolute, lightless black.

In his hand, the black mist coalesced into a longsword. An instant later, he vanished and reappeared directly in front of Lu Yuan.

The mist-forged sword slashed down at him, carrying with it a soul-chilling cacophony — the howling of ghosts and the wailing of the damned.

Lu Yuan felt the resonance against his mind — a tremor that made his expression go fractionally more serious.

Fortunately, his Mental Power had been amplified to an extraordinary degree by his Sovereign Grade genes and Sovereign Grade Gene Armament.

Otherwise, even a Battle Sovereign who lacked Mental Power enhancement would find themselves operating at half-capacity against this weapon's peculiar effect.

*Is this the fully realized form of what Xue Ren was in Xili City — back when he hadn't even fully matured?*

*No — this probably isn't even the complete form yet.*

*If this truly is an S-grade Soul-Devouring Orb, its fully realized state should be at Battle Emperor level.*

The thoughts flashed through his mind without slowing his body in the slightest.

He gripped the greatsword with both hands, pushed the Great Solar Spirit Body to full power, and met the black longsword head-on with an eruption of brilliant golden sword light.

**BOOM!!!**

A thunderous roar erupted as golden and black pillars of energy intertwined and tore skyward, obliterating the basement entirely.

The ground beneath Yali City shook violently, as though struck by an earthquake.

Where the basement had stood, the earth caved in to form a massive crater. Fissures tore outward in every direction, spreading several kilometers across, and the buildings nearest the crater lurched and crumbled.

Fortunately, Lu Yuan had already noted that this area was on the outskirts of Yali City — uninhabited, with only a scattering of abandoned buildings.

The brown-haired man had presumably chosen such a desolate location for his basement precisely to avoid detection.

Otherwise, Lu Yuan would never have engaged him there.

The intertwined columns of gold and black soared into the night sky, lighting up the entirety of Yali City. Every last person asleep in the city was jolted awake.

Those who hadn't yet fallen asleep rushed to their windows, staring at the pillars of light blazing on the horizon, eyes wide with shock.