Chapter 42: Demonic Infiltration (Extra Chapter 8/10 for Alliance Leader Lan Ruoruo)
“I’ve already notified Zhou Wu, but his position may not allow him to arrive in time. However, the real reason I gathered everyone here is to share something important. Our district suffered a crushing defeat at the fifth stage, but as far as I know, in just the three southern provinces, twenty-eight districts have managed to keep Floating Cloud City secure. Even our own P City has five districts that passed the challenge successfully.”
“In other words, the strategies we used to defend Floating Cloud City were completely wrong—spectacularly so.”
“If we don’t want to repeat these mistakes at stage six, we must use these next fifteen days to reach a consensus together and prepare far more thoroughly.”
“There’s another piece of intelligence: regarding the rewards for the kill leaderboard. Based on current information, there are three types of rewards, distributed randomly—Frost Ring to increase frost resistance, Flame Ring to increase fire resistance, and Thunder Ring to increase lightning resistance.”
“The first place on the kill leaderboard receives +7 resistance, second and third place get +6, fourth to tenth get +5.”
“Eleventh to nineteenth place get +4 resistance.”
“Twentieth to thirty-ninth get +3 resistance.”
“Fortieth to sixty-ninth get +2 resistance.”
“Seventieth to one hundredth get +1 resistance.”
“There’s also a crucial report from the teams that cleared the stage: these rings, which carry the properties of magical artifacts, can be continuously strengthened, though the conditions for enhancement remain unknown.”
From the start, Xu Shan dropped several bombshells of information, genuinely startling Wei Cheng.
It wasn’t until he caught sight of someone sneering dismissively that he realized Zhou Wu’s team was not a monolith after all.
—
Xu Shan and Liu Sui’s wedding proceeded as planned. Wei Cheng, though he didn’t bring a wedding gift, stayed to enjoy a hearty meal—a gesture of thanks and blessing, for the gathering Xu Shan convened for the trialists had provided him with useful intelligence.
Though, in reality, it was not particularly valuable within their circles.
As for Zhou Wu, he never appeared, even after the wedding ended. Xu Shan failed to achieve the outcome she desired; the other trialists recognized only Zhou Wu, and even with her husband Liu Sui, they couldn’t match him.
Wei Cheng, of course, was even less qualified—the hundredth-ranked powerhouse on the kill leaderboard, did he really believe he was formidable?
Yet his decision to stay until the end of the wedding moved the usually silent Liu Sui, who insisted on personally driving him home.
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Declining Liu Sui’s offer of a ride, Wei Cheng walked home by himself. He truly wasn’t busy, and felt somewhat lost; after such experiences, everything on Earth now seemed like a dream.
What would the future hold? If they began working hard now, could they truly resist the demons in three hundred years?
Expecting mere mortals to accomplish what immortals could not was almost laughable.
But they had to believe it—otherwise, they wouldn’t even have the motivation to try.
Wei Cheng pondered deeply, unconcerned with direction: stopping for red lights, going on green, wandering aimlessly from dawn to starlit night, until he unwittingly reached the city outskirts. Ahead lay the ring highway, more than twenty kilometers from his residence.
“Hah! Here I am, worrying about things three hundred years from now. Let’s first see if I can live to that day!” Wei Cheng shook his head with a smile, about to turn back, when he suddenly froze, sensing something amiss. He looked up sharply—beneath the starlight, the Immortal Realm within the transparent sphere erupted with an indescribable disturbance. Countless tiny lights seized the moment, piercing some barrier and plummeting straight toward Earth.
Wei Cheng stood in stunned terror for a long time before regaining his composure—his scalp tingled, at a total loss.
This meant the trialist’s words were wrong; the demons weren’t waiting three hundred years to arrive—they were invading now.
The war had begun!
“What do I do? What do I do!”
For a moment, Wei Cheng was paralyzed.
If the demons truly invaded three hundred years early, they wouldn’t even have a chance to fight back!
Sweat poured from him as panic overtook him.
The tiny lights rapidly expanded, falling across Earth like a shower of celestial maidens, so swiftly that the government’s interception missiles couldn’t react in time.
Just three seconds later, a massive ball of fire crashed into the southeast corner of P City, less than a kilometer from Wei Cheng, but there was no shockwave or meteor impact as expected.
The fireball even extinguished instantly, as if nothing had happened.
“No—this isn’t an invasion. This is infiltration!”
Suddenly understanding, Wei Cheng hesitated only briefly before accelerating like a whirlwind toward the site.
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Covering less than a kilometer in ten seconds, Wei Cheng, eyewitness to the fireball’s landing, found it easy to locate.
It was an old residential building, six stories, five units, struck directly by the fireball. Yet the building didn’t collapse—not even a crack. The only anomaly was a faint grey membrane enveloping the entire structure.
Arriving just in time, Wei Cheng saw the grey membrane rapidly drying; in just over ten seconds, all traces would vanish from the outside.
By then, even the most elite officers and advanced instruments the government could deploy would find nothing.
In fact, if Wei Cheng hadn’t been nearby—if he’d been kilometers away—he would likely have missed it altogether.
“Infiltration!”
Wei Cheng’s expression darkened. He wasn’t stupid; he immediately realized this was even harder to guard against and combat than a direct invasion.
Watching the grey membrane fade, Wei Cheng gritted his teeth and stepped boldly into the building.
The instant he entered, a venomous force locked onto him, and an indescribable power spread, sealing both time and space. He felt as if he’d plunged into a mass grave.
But Wei Cheng was no novice; as he crossed into the stairwell, the internal strength of Mountain Moving surged within him, a vast energy spiraling in his chest. With a thunderous shout, he cried,
“Command!”
The explosion of his voice shattered the venomous power and graveyard aura, restoring normalcy within three meters of his body.
But in the next moment, Wei Cheng was secretly alarmed.
For this was clearly an ordinary residential building, yet now, everywhere around him—including his entryway—was pitch black, wrapped in a strange, viscous liquid, suffocating, and even his phone lost all signal.
The whole building was deathly silent, utterly severed from any connection to Earth.
Wei Cheng began to regret his choice. He even considered fleeing; he knew he was only one step inside—if he turned around, he could pretend nothing had happened.
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