The Egg

Lu Yuan glanced at the dispersing black mist and the three elders, then thought it over. *Now isn't the right time to show myself.* He'd find a chance to ask about it later.

He vanished into the shadows and flew toward Taichuan City. Only after putting enough distance between himself and the three elders did he use spatial movement to reappear inside the city.

He extended his senses and quickly located Li Qinghe's presence.

He disappeared from where he stood. In the next instant, he was at her side.

Li Qinghe was inside the Night Watchman branch building, flanked by several other senior branch officials. The moment she saw him appear, her eyes brightened.

"Little Yuan, how did it go? Did something happen over there?"

Lu Yuan smiled. "Just an Aberration phenomenon — it's been handled."

Li Qinghe gave a small nod. "Good. By the way, I've already told Branch Director Liu that the Soul-Devouring Orb bearer here has been eliminated."

Branch Director Liu was an older man with a deeply lined face and gray hair. He wore a gentle smile. "Elder Li told me everything. I'm in your debt, Elder Lu."

"You're far too kind, Branch Director Liu." Lu Yuan waved it off. "It was my duty."

Li Qinghe looked at him. "Little Yuan, shall we check on the other cities?"

Lu Yuan thought about it. The black mist that had surrounded the elf bore a certain resemblance to the aura of the Soul-Devouring Orbs — which led him to suspect the elf might well have been their true owner. And if even the elf himself was dead, the remaining bearers might have met the same fate.

That was his theory, at least. He couldn't be certain.

Still, he gave a nod. "Sure."

With that, the two of them left the Taichuan City Night Watchman branch and set out for the other cities where Aberration phenomena had been reported.

In the wilderness.

Li Xinghai, Si Qi, and Rafael Harold stood staring at the dispersing black mist, their expressions somber.

None of them had expected the elf to simply detonate himself.

After a moment of silence, Rafael turned to the other two.

"You'd encountered this elf before I arrived — did you manage to get anything useful out of him?"

Li Xinghai and Si Qi exchanged a glance. The lines on Li Xinghai's face seemed to deepen.

"We caught a fragment. This elf may have come from the Heavenly Calamity Cult."

Si Qi gave a slow nod, his expression darkening. "Mm. He said that Heavenly Calamity has already set its sights on Great Qi Star. This was likely just the beginning."

"The Heavenly Calamity Cult?!"

Rafael's face shifted. He stared at the other two, visibly shaken.

"That congregation of lunatics who worship Aberration — the ones who want to help Corruption consume the entire universe? *That* place is where this elf came from?!"

Li Xinghai nodded. "It would appear so."

"Then what do we do? Every one of those people is a fanatic. They'll use any means necessary to accelerate Aberration Events — they might even bring in Aberration Entities of truly terrifying power. And there are supposedly Divine Grade powerhouses among their ranks."

Rafael's brow furrowed deeply, worry plain across his face.

Li Xinghai and Si Qi shared the same look of concern.

After a pause, Si Qi spoke carefully.

"Let me be candid. Great Qi Star is not particularly powerful in the grand scheme — we don't even have a single Battle Saint among us. If we've truly been targeted, the Heavenly Calamity Cult won't likely bother dispatching anyone above the Saint rank to deal with us. We're simply not worth that kind of resource. So there's no need to panic entirely." He paused. "Moreover, we can reach out to other planets. The White Cloud Star Domain has a considerable number of human populations — and other races as well. Once they learn that the Heavenly Calamity Cult is on the move, none of them will simply stand by. This threat isn't aimed only at us — if Great Qi Star falls to Corruption, the fallout reaches everyone."

Li Xinghai and Rafael both gave slow nods. "You make a fair point, Old Si," Li Xinghai said. "Once we reach the Land of Origin, let's notify the Saints of the White Cloud Star Domain and hear their thoughts. Best to reach out to the human Saints first."

Si Qi agreed with a nod. "Let's check the area first — see if anything was left behind. If not, we head back immediately. Without us at the Imperial Capital, the Underground Containment Room won't be as secure."

Rafael nodded in turn. "I need to return to the Forbidden Zone defense line before anything goes wrong there."

Si Qi and Li Xinghai acknowledged this, and Rafael took his leave.

Deep within a dim cave, the Abyssal Demon Gate had closed, leaving behind scattered Aberration Entities. Faint, strange vibrations drifted through the air.

The entities came in all manner of forms — several hundred of them in total.

These were all the Aberration Entities the elf had extracted from the Underground Containment Room. He had intended to take everything inside — every single entity — but had been stopped before he could manage it. Only a fraction made it out. And in the end, he had left behind far more than just the entities: he had left his life there too.

At the center of the cave, the small girl from containment room A39 lay sprawled on the ground, a bloodthirsty smile on her face. She stirred slowly, trying to rise.

Then, without warning, a thread of eerie green light pulsed through the cave.

The small girl turned her head toward its source.

An egg, tall as a person and glowing with eerie green light, stood at the far end of the cave, releasing pulses of light at irregular intervals — like a heartbeat. Slow. Steady.

As that light bloomed outward, arcane runes began to trace themselves across the egg's surface, one after another.

Long tendrils of eerie green extended from the egg, snaking outward to bind the scattered Aberration Entities one by one and drag them steadily toward it.

One by one, the entities were hauled before the egg. When they made contact with its shell, the surface rippled like disturbed water, and each entity sank smoothly inside, absorbed without resistance.

A sound of chewing drifted out from within the egg.

The green tendrils coiled around the small girl and began pulling her forward. Shock flooded her face. Then, as she felt an irresistible force hauling her toward the egg, that shock curdled into terror — she screamed and thrashed, desperately fighting against it.

But no matter how she struggled, she inched steadily closer.

When she drew near enough, her mouth split apart — ripping wide into a massive, gaping maw — and she lunged, biting at the green egg. The instant her teeth made contact with its surface, ripple-like patterns bloomed outward from the point of impact. Her mouth was drawn slowly into the egg, then her head, sinking steadily deeper.

Panic seized her. She wrenched and strained, fighting to pull herself free — but her body moved with relentless certainty, folding into the egg piece by piece.

When the last of her had disappeared inside, a series of chewing sounds echoed through the cave.

Then silence.

Lu Yuan and Li Qinghe checked the other affected cities one by one. The report was the same everywhere: the Aberration phenomena had vanished without a trace, as if they had never occurred. By the time they finished their rounds, not a single new Aberration Event had emerged.

Lu Yuan thought of the elf and suspected the disappearance was connected to his death. But he had no evidence.

The following morning, both he and Li Qinghe received an urgent message from headquarters.

Their eyes widened as they read it.

"Headquarters was attacked?! Someone managed to infiltrate the Underground Containment Room?! Three Battle King-rank Elders were killed — though the intruder was ultimately eliminated by three Battle Emperors... How did he even get in?"

Li Qinghe could barely believe what she was reading.

The moment Lu Yuan saw the report, his mind went straight to the elf.

*If someone was killed — that would have been him, wouldn't it?*

He hadn't expected it. While the Soul-Devouring Orb bearers were active across the cities drawing everyone's attention, the elf had quietly slipped into the Underground Containment Room.

Fortunately, he'd been discovered in time.

A thought struck him. "I wonder if any Aberration Entities were taken from the facility."

Li Qinghe had reached the same conclusion. She nodded. "Headquarters is calling us back. Let's head there and assess the situation first."

"Agreed."

Lu Yuan took Li Qinghe and vanished from the Night Watchman branch rest room in Baiming City.

An instant later, they emerged above the Imperial Capital and flew toward Night Watchman Headquarters.

They arrived at the main building quickly — and to Lu Yuan's mild surprise, the structure was completely undamaged.

*Li Xinghai and the others must have used some technique to contain the battle's range. And if the elf tore open space trying to escape, that wouldn't have damaged the building itself.*

Turning the thought over, he and Li Qinghe walked inside.

One sweep of the lobby told him something had changed: every ordinary staff member was gone. Only Gene Warriors remained, none of them below Battle General rank.

*Probably because of the breach in the Underground Containment Room — keeping civilians here would put them at risk.*

Thinking this over, Lu Yuan accepted the greetings of the Night Watchmen around him and walked with Li Qinghe to the entrance of the Underground Containment Room. After passing through the security checks, the two descended inside.

The Underground Containment Room was far more crowded than usual. Even Gu An and Secretary Liu were present.

When Gu An saw them walk in, he paused, eyebrows rising. "I only just sent the message — how are you already here?"

Lu Yuan smiled. "My spatial abilities give me a bit of an edge when it comes to travel."

As he spoke, he glanced around at the surroundings.

The small containment cells lining the walls were every one of them wrecked. The floor was a ruin of debris. Cracks spiderwebbed across the ceiling. Whatever Aberration Entities the cells had once housed were gone — stolen or transferred, Lu Yuan guessed.

Gu An didn't press him. He nodded, expression turning grave, and addressed the group.

"The intruder's breach has damaged the Underground Containment Room. Until it's rebuilt, we need personnel standing watch over the remaining Aberration Entities at all times. Additionally, the Soul-Devouring Orbs appear to have been recalled by the intruder, which means monitoring Aberration phenomena across the cities is no longer necessary. That's why we called you back."

*So the elf did recall the orbs.* Something settled in Lu Yuan's expression.

Li Qinghe's brow furrowed slightly. "The intruder breached the Underground Containment Room — but how did he get in?"

Gu An glanced briefly at Lu Yuan before answering with a rueful smile.

"The strange wooden door Elder Lu captured earlier — it turns out it had a coordinate-locating function. The intruder had a matching door and used those stored coordinates to slip inside, without triggering a single alarm."

Lu Yuan was taken aback. *The Abyssal Demon Gate had that capability?*

*His own Spatial Type Transcendent Gene was far from weak — and yet he'd sensed nothing at the time?*

Then he recalled that the Abyssal Demon Gate hadn't generated spatial ripples when it opened. The confusion dissolved.

Others in the room glanced in his direction with slightly complicated expressions. Had they not known of Lu Yuan's exceptional talent — that he was among the finest of the young generation across the entire Red Maple Empire — some of them might well have suspected him as a planted spy.

Li Qinghe hadn't expected this either. She frowned. "Were any Aberration Entities lost?"

Gu An's expression fell. "Yes. After taking inventory — four hundred and fifty-five Aberration Entities are missing in total. S-rank entities alone number four, including the two Soul-Devouring Orbs. A-rank: thirty-two. B-rank: two hundred and ninety-one. The remainder are C and D rank."

The numbers landed heavily. Both Lu Yuan and Li Qinghe felt it.

"Can we locate them?"

Gu An shook his head slowly and let out a long breath. "No. The intruder took them through the wooden door — if he were still alive, we might have had a chance. But he's dead now, and we have no way to recover the coordinates from the door. They're likely gone for good. In the near term, we should expect a significant uptick in Aberration phenomena across multiple regions."

A heavy silence fell over the room.

Every Aberration Event meant lives lost. And S-rank and A-rank Aberration phenomena were on an entirely different level of terror — the equivalent of Sovereign Grade threats.

A ripple of dread moved through everyone present.

After a quiet moment, Gu An managed a smile. "For what it's worth — we did secure the vast majority of the entities. Relative to what we could have lost, what's gone is comparatively small. That's something to be grateful for."

That earned him a round of wry smiles.

"I'll have people dispatched to search for the missing entities. For now, our most pressing priority is rebuilding the Underground Containment Room. I'm counting on everyone here."

Everyone — Lu Yuan included — gave a nod of acknowledgment.

Even an Honorary Elder of the Night Watchmen had a responsibility to pitch in at a time like this.

Over the following four days, the turmoil left behind by the intruder and the widespread Aberration Events gradually settled. No new invaders appeared, and the tension in the air slowly eased.

When their watch rotation concluded, Lu Yuan and Li Qinghe both returned to the small villa in White Willow District.

Back in his room, Lu Yuan glanced at the Light Gate and found it ready — the Land of Origin was accessible.

He focused his intent. A white light flashed, and he stepped inside.