Chapter 98 — The Filthy Abyss

  The underground drainage system of the South District was a relic from decades past. Brick-laid arches stretched nearly two meters high—structures once designed to carry runoff and waste away from the city.

  Now, they had become a breeding pit.

  A constant skittering surged out from the depths of the darkness—an endless rasp like countless fine blades scraping against stone. It crawled up the spine, raising goosebumps before the mind could react.

  Shadowfang’s draconic body coiled tightly around YiChen as they tore through the tunnel at full force. Wherever they passed, rat swarms were pulverized—flesh shredded, bones crushed, bodies reduced to indistinct fragments. Sticky gore plastered itself across dark-gold scales, while draconic pupils burned with naked fury.

  “Hah!” Shadowfang roared.

  “YiChen—did you drag this sovereign into a hellhole like this just to clean up stinking trash?!”

  The moment they breached the sewer proper, the stench struck like a physical blow.

  It wasn’t merely foul—it was alive.

  Thick. Invasive. Almost tangible, as if decay itself were dragging a slow, rotting tongue across the surface of the brain.

  Shixi whimpered inside the Consciousness Sea, his voice small and wounded:

  “Wuu… I’m such a pretty little fox… how could I be forced to come to a place like this…”

  Even as he complained, Shixi had already unfurled a pristine barrier—pale and translucent—sealing most of the toxic air away from YiChen. Still, the filth seeped through every invisible seam.

  “This is even more disgusting than the inside of that pig…”

  Gilded Flamefang Sovereign—

  YiChen’s chest constricted sharply.

  An image flashed through his mind—Xiao Yu, small and vulnerable, swallowed by chaos. His jaw tightened.

  Ahead, the rat swarm panicked, retreating into narrow branch tunnels like a living tide recoiling from fire.

  Shadowfang’s draconic form split instantly.

  Dozens—then hundreds—of dark-gold flexible blades erupted outward, slithering into every crevice like venomous serpents. The fleeing rats were shredded where they hid, their bodies minced into formless slurry.

  From the seams between bricks, what seeped out was no longer wastewater.

  It was blood.

  Thick. Viscous. Enough to coat the floor in sluggish waves.

  Shadowfang shifted in ruthless harmony with YiChen’s will—silver spikes, flexible swords, scythes of compressed starlight. Every heartbeat harvested lives.

  YiChen was more violent than ever.

  Two heavy strikes punched straight through the roadway above, concrete fracturing with thunderous cracks.

  A massive mutated rat lunged onto his back.

  Shixi’s barrier flared pale white. Corrosive fluid slid uselessly along the luminous shield.

  Shadowfang’s tail snapped.

  The beast detonated into flying pulp.

  Pain ignited like a spark striking a fuse.

  YiChen stopped fighting.

  He slaughtered.

  He hurled himself straight into the surging rat tide, abandoning defense entirely. Sensing his frenzy, Shadowfang fractured completely, dissolving into countless dark-gold blades that rained down like a storm of sharpened metal.

  Pshhk—

  Pshhk—

  Pshhk—

  The wet, dull sounds of flesh being pierced fused into a single, continuous roar.

  By the time the final shriek died out, the entire sewer had become a crimson basin.

  YiChen stood at its center.

  Blood streamed from his jaw, dripping steadily into the mire below.

  He didn’t move.

  “This isn’t even a fight,” Shadowfang said quietly, dragon eyes reflecting YiChen’s gore-soaked silhouette.

  “You’re venting.”

  Shixi’s voice followed, low and hesitant:

  “These filthy things… they’re kind of like black thorns, aren’t they…”

  The words black thorns stabbed into YiChen’s temples like silver needles.

  Slowly, he lowered his gaze.

  His hands were coated in blood. Thick. Dark. Indistinguishable from the filth underfoot.

  A low laugh escaped his throat.

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  —Right.

  And what difference was there

  between this abyss of rot

  and himself?

  ?

  On the surface, panic spread like a plague.

  Fiends wove through fleeing crowds, their twisted forms feeding greedily on terror made flesh. Fighters hastily formed defensive lines, shoving civilians toward evacuation buses—the last fragile lifeline leading to the shelters of the Church of Radiant Grace.

  The squad channel exploded with overlapping voices.

  “What?!” Logan roared as he cleaved a Fiend in half, the shock rattling his comm.

  “He went down there without even a gas mask?! Is that somewhere a human can survive?!”

  Han Yue’s Soulwhisper beast tore two Fiends apart in a blur of spectral light. His voice came low and heavy:

  “Again… always carrying everything alone.”

  “We need to reinforce him!” Ryan barked, rifle glowing red-hot as he fired controlled bursts without pause.

  Xu Wei crushed a soul core in his palm, voice steady and razor-calm:

  “With Shadowfang there, the rat tide can’t seriously threaten him. Holding the evacuation route matters more.”

  “Damn it!” Logan slammed his fist into a concrete wall, shattering it.

  “If he comes back out on a stretcher again, I swear—”

  “That’s enough, Logan!” Max cut in sharply.

  “Nine o’clock! Move!”

  The order scattered the circling Fiends and severed the argument mid-channel. Far ahead, another wave of screaming civilians surged toward the defensive line like a collapsing dam.

  ?

  Belowground.

  YiChen braced himself against the slick brick wall and retched again.

  There was nothing left to vomit. His stomach had long since emptied, yet the convulsions wouldn’t stop. Cold sweat soaked his back as he forced himself deeper along the South District’s primary drainage artery—

  toward an abandoned retention basin, unused for years.

  A dead node.

  The heart of the system.

  And the true nesting ground of the rat swarm.

  “Wuu… let’s go back…” Shixi whimpered for the fifth time.

  “Can’t we just… spare a few of them…?”

  YiChen wiped the bitter residue from the corner of his mouth with his sleeve, his voice scraped raw:

  “We have to find the Rat King.”

  Shadowfang’s draconic pupils glinted faint gold in the darkness.

  “You’re losing your mind—and dragging this sovereign along with you…”

  The flashlight beam swept forward.

  And hell answered.

  Decades of waste and decay had merged into a single viscous mire. Animal carcasses lay half-submerged, half-floating, bloated and split. Rusted metal scraps, bleached bone shards, shattered plastic toys—

  even half of a swollen ID card—were wedged into cracks along the walls.

  On the warped photo, a smiling face stared cheerfully into the dark.

  From the arched ceiling hung swollen sacs, distended like tumors, veined with blood-red patterns—

  storage bladders for the Rat King’s toxins and pheromones.

  The air itself felt thick enough to choke on.

  Then came the sounds.

  Rat screeches intertwined with distorted, childlike murmurs:

  “Mom… save me…”

  “Dad, come quick…”

  “Hee-hee… kill… kill them…”

  “AAAH—”

  The voices sounded as if they had been squeezed out of rotting throats, echoing endlessly through the narrow tunnel.

  YiChen’s spine went cold.

  Finally—

  he saw it.

  The Rat King squatted atop a mound of decayed bones, its two-meter body like a corpse wrapped in iron thorns. Steel-needle black fur gleamed with a metallic chill. Four massive claws dug deep into shattered skeletons, while a thick, blood-red tail lashed the air, spraying filth and gore.

  Its crimson eyes boiled like open wounds.

  Between its brows, a twisted red sigil writhed beneath the skin—as though something inside the body were trying to tear its way out.

  Around it crouched four enormous female rats.

  Their gray hides were smeared with slime and blood, swollen bodies convulsing violently.

  Malformed offspring spilled onto the mire—

  still blind,

  already baring hunger.

  “Ugh—”

  YiChen’s stomach seized again, acid scorching his throat.

  “YiChen!” Shadowfang’s voice detonated inside his mind.

  “This sovereign is actually expected to kill something this filthy?!”

  The Rat King snapped its head up.

  Black fur bristled.

  With an ear-splitting shriek, the grotesque body blurred into motion—

  a storm of blood, stench, and shrieking madness—

  lunging straight at him.

  ?

  No. 112 Azure Radiance Street, 1:00 a.m.

  Elena lay curled on the sofa, tears soaking her face until it shone faintly under the dim light. Crumpled tissues piled on the coffee table like a pitiful little mountain, marking the uneven rhythm of her broken sobs.

  “The rat tide… what is it really like?” she whispered hoarsely to herself.

  Bernard stood nearby holding a cup of warm water, his brow deeply furrowed. He had already tried to persuade her three times, but the young lady was like a doll with its mechanism broken—neither eating nor drinking, only staring stubbornly at the front door, as if sheer will might summon that person back.

  Memories replayed again and again—

  blood blooming across his shoulder,

  his clenched jaw as poisoned thorns were torn free in the forest,

  bandages soaked through with red.

  Each image tightened around her heart. Fresh tears slid down, scalding the back of her hand.

  “Miss…” Bernard sighed, gently draping a blanket over her shoulders.

  “Please… please come back safely…” Elena clenched the edge of the blanket until her knuckles turned white.

  “I’d trade anything… anything at all…”

  No one knew how long it was before exhaustion finally dragged her sideways against the sofa. Even in shallow sleep, her lashes trembled restlessly, tear tracks still drying on her cheeks.

  In her dream, YiChen lay motionless in a pool of blood.

  Outside the windows, the night pressed heavy and unyielding.

  The front door remained tightly shut.

  ?

  “This sovereign is being humiliated!”

  Shadowfang’s draconic roar shook the sewer, dust sifting down from above.

  The Rat King fought with savage cunning, yet again and again its attacks slid past YiChen’s ghostlike footwork. When its third strike missed, Shadowfang’s tail lashed out like a silver whip—

  Bang!

  Rotten flesh and shattered bone burst against the wall in a spray of crimson.

  The beast fled, abandoning even its birthing mates and offspring. YiChen loosed an arrow; the shaft screamed through the air and punched straight through that filthy heart.

  “It’s over.”

  A storm of silver needles rained down, pinning the writhing flesh and the massive mother rats to the blood-soaked ground. Shadowfang coiled around YiChen and surged upward as Shixi’s tearful voice echoed through the Consciousness Sea:

  “We can finally leave this horrible place!”

  “This stench—I’ll need ten years to wash it off! And if you ever make this sovereign set foot here again—”

  Shadowfang’s furious bellow cut off abruptly.

  Boom!

  They erupted through the ground, tearing into the night sky as though a blade had split it open.

  What greeted them was an even more desperate scene.

  Fiends swarmed the air like locusts. Soldiers formed living barricades as buses were packed with fleeing civilians. The stench of burning flesh mixed with screams that tore the night apart.

  The South District had become a carnival of demons—a feast for monsters.

  The next instant—

  A storm of interwoven dark-gold light slammed straight into the Fiend swarm.

  Shadowfang roared, dragon claws carving wide arcs as black mist detonated in sheets. Spirit markings flared across YiChen’s body, his short blades flashing like falling stars. He was a hurricane of steel, a wraith moving through hell—leaving nothing behind but ash.

  From below came Logan’s rough, triumphant shout:

  “I knew this bastard wouldn’t die!—Fuck! That smell’s worse than a corpse!”

  Xu Wei’s sniper scope flashed cold as another shadow-spirit collapsed. Han Yue swapped magazines, eyes locked forward, expression carved from ice.

  High above, YiChen looked down at the inferno with empty, unblinking eyes.

  He did not turn back.

  He said nothing.

  There was only a single thought—

  If no one will cleanse this hell,

  then I will shatter it myself.